Buckley Farm | Rural Fairfax

... Or this detail, taken of the now purposeless gutters at the abandoned Buckley home.

The chimney of the Buckley house. I'm no expert, but it looks to me like the bottom part of the chimney just might have been reused from an older structure that was once in this location.

This is not usually the kind of blackberries that I prefer. And I really was quite ensnared when I was trying to get this shot.

Here's another angle of the smaller house from the "Buckley" property, in all of its ominous glory.

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From the looks of things, this very well could have been an outhouse at one point in time. Which is why I elected not to get much closer to it than this.

"Buckley Farm's" 20 years of stubble is most evident in the field facing Braddock Road.

I'm sitting on a set of new photos that're waiting to be processed, and will hopefully be going out again this Friday to a couple of development-threatened sites up towards Dulles.

In other words: Stay tuned! More's on the way!

Another angle of the Buckley residence. This tree is in a slow state of collapse, like the house itself.

The roof of this house is slowly being overrun by a group of particularly triumphant vines.

The kitchen at the Buckley home seems to have succumbed to a falling tree at some time in the distant past. What was once a comfortable place for family gatherings, sadly, is no more.

This shed doesn't appear to have much time left before it becomes a much closer part of the ground it sits on. And the field between myself and it was absolutely covered with briar bushes of some sort, making any approach closer than this completely impossible.

I think the shot, with a little bit of selective editing, tells the story well enough.

This is not the kind of environment that one usually associates with a bustling County such as ours. And, as tranquil as it might be, it is still somewhat unnerving to note that this area is slowly decaying from the well-kept state it used to be in.

If I weren't so intent on sticking to the photographic aspect of things, I'd say this is a perfect allegory for our national culture over the past 20 years.

Thankfully, I am very disciplined, so I will dutifully refrain.