The Oz Farm
Today I rode my bike past an old farm. First, I noticed the quintessential red barn. It should be straight, perfectly painted, with box windows and a white picket fence around it. But chipped paint covered this barn, faded to shades of terracotta and pink. The carelessly cut windows tilt in crookedness, and blank slabs of soggy wood support a run down wire fence surrounding the pasture of tanned grass. A few more tilted buildings, slight and rotting, scatter randomly through a broad field. Beside a rusting tractor, countless brilliant flowers situated in perfectly groomed gardens surround the blindingly white house with respectable green shutters. Throughout the garden sit a myriad of strategically placed statues, perching and protruding, hidden in every possible spot like munchkins popping out through layers of gigantic flowers. The garden and house are exaggerated and immaculate and argue the effort of the woman of the house to cope with the habits of her farmer husband. She is splattering beauty, pouring buckets of effort to erase the chaos.