For a period of my childhood, I lived on a flower farm with my parents, my mom’s best friend, Suzy, and a hoard of animals. This included a goat, a peacock, chickens, dogs, rabbits, the list goes on. When I reminisce on my years as a kid, my mind immediately turns to the memories of eating flower salads, swimming in river eddies, bathing with baby ducks, and being chased by an angry goose. Clearwater Farm will always be the most special place I have ever known.

Let me paint a picture of this wild and complicated place. The front house, where my family lived, is old and, quite frankly, falling apart. But that is so much a part of its character. It butts up against an unkempt but well-loved garden, where I spent my days wandering through flowers taller than I was, getting lost amongst the smells of sweet peas and pansies. A pond sits alongside the garden, where ducks would swim and chatter at each other. The hen house is in the back, where I learned to reach under the hens’ warm bodies to find a treasure in the form of an egg (this lesson was not learned without a few pecks on the hand). Suzy’s soap-making shop is in the front as well, a simple wooden structure with the scents of soaps filling it up. Down the winding road where the trees grow so close that they scrape against both sides of the car (and where I learned to drive), a tiny little hut stands that was made for me as a playhouse. We found a few too many spiders in it though, so it sits sentinel and quietly amidst the forest.

Here comes my favorite part: Suzy’s house. The first sight to see is an old yellow truck from the mid-20th century that Suzy used to drive her goods to the farmer’s market in. A pack of dogs will usually run up in greeting, barking and playing. At the entrance of her house is another garden, one that has taken over the stone path leading to the front door and grows up the sides of the house. Words can hardly do justice for how overwhelmingly wonderful the inside of her house is, so I’ll just allow the photographs to do the work. (To note, the black & white images were taken in the winter, the colored ones in autumn)