an infrequent repository of mostly new stuff
Big snow storm tonight. Took two hours to get home, and Terri is still stuck in town, staying with friends.
It’s already deeper than the dogs. Emily is outside with them, and they bound through it like antelope, or burrow like groundhogs. I can hear her laughing in the dark.
It will fall through the night and into tomorrow.
A good night to be warm inside by the fire.
We’ll have a White Christmas.
South Branch, Hardware River, along
The Plank Road runs west from Keene toward the mountains. It was a toll road, and the original toll house still stands, a private residence now. It’s a very old road, once paved in wooden boards, and along it teams of oxen rolled huge hogshead barrels and cartloads of good from over in the Shenandoah Valley, coming down the switchbacks through Rockfish Gap. Continue reading “Cocke’s Mill”
Batteau Anchor and Sweep Oarlock
Scottsville is over 150 miles from the coast. The western horizon is rumpled by the Blue Ridge and, beyond that, the Alleghenies. It’s a small town of about 500 people, give or take, situated in horse country at the northern edge of what was historically a tobacco growing region. Not exactly the kind of place you’d expect to find a hot bed of traditional boat building. Continue reading “Batteaux”
Apple Orchard in Bloom, Blue Ridge
We drive through the little valley below Jefferson’s Monticello every day. Up above Monticello, along the ridge of Carter’s Mountain, is an orchard and vineyard with wide views of the Piedmont to the East and the Blue Ridge to the West. We’ve been going there since the kids were small, picking warm peaches in summer, pumpkins for Halloween, then apples and cider right up to first snows. In Spring, cycles of bloom sweep over the ridge like vast, slow moving clouds, starting first with the cherries. Continue reading “Mountain Orchards”
Forest Fog
Spring is taking it’s time getting here, like it lost its way, stumbling about.
Mornings are cold and damp. Not really raining; just steady dripping from eaves and limbs, buds closed up tight. Hills and valleys stay swallowed in fog.
Viewmont
It came down all day and all night, whistling in the chimney, blowing in under the eaves, onto the porch and woodpile. And down collars. The wet kind, that sticks to limbs and bark and poles and wire.
The maples are already in bud, and the narcissus and daffodils are up, now all pushing up snow.
Only three weeks ‘til Spring.
Ice Storm
First mark of Winter.
In just a week or so, a flock of robins will be here, and will spend a few days stripping the Holly tree of berries. They’ll start at the top and slowly work their way down, leaving no berries behind. Then they’ll leave.
But for now, the berries are glazed with ice.