54 Treasures in a Nearby Orchard

In an orchard next to my house, which by now only hints at being an orchard – lying there, as if at an agricultural exhibition, are tools that have seen better days as well as old boxes, poles and pegs arranged in piles on an ancient wagon, of which only a rusty frame remains. And close to the fence that marks my yard stand two elongated sheet metal shacks out of which one can glimpse building blocks, rotting planks, old doors and ladders without rungs. I never looked inside these shacks. Our cats visit there occasionally and more than once have I heard hair raising war cries emerging from there. Who is fighting whom? I don't know. The cats, who at times return wounded from their wars, don't say a word. Perhaps the huge snake that we found in our garden one morning lives there.

Almost daily I cross this little orchard whether on my way to the bakery or the bank, the post office or the spice store. Today on my way home from such a trip, I discovered that the orchard owner had placed two rolls of wire next to the short cut through the orchard. But perhaps they have been lying there for years and I have not noticed them.

The sun shone directly on them and it was possible to see the bushes that were trapped within and had become entangled in it even before it was transferred here from a different place. Long greenish-yellow and yellowish-white stalks fill the insides of the wires rusting iron and create together one round mass that appears to be airy and spongy but is actually quite solid.

Look at this cylinder – this wonderful entanglement of stalks and metal. I photographed it close up so that the object fills the field of vision. Such images have been created on painting canvases by using many tubes of paint. And lo and behold – a man walks nonchalantly in an orchard next to his home and sees a treasure like this.