The Yin Yang of Cups
The Two of Love
Winter Gets a Divorce
Note: Comments may be shut down on Sunday as Loose Leaf is being moved to Wordpress. I'll be back posting on Monday with a new look that even I will be surprised to see.
That should say "in three easy parts," and in this case, our snowman turned out to be a girl.
Kaylee did most of the work. She rolled the balls while I shoveled her snow for packing. I would have helped more but had my hands full with Bryce who needed help walking in the deep snow and keeping his sock mittens on.
It took two of us to lift the middle part. I felt like Atlas lifting the world.
Soon our snowgirl was slowing traffic, getting waves and comments from passersby.
The wig was my great idea. I pinned it down with stretched out paper clips. Kaylee put on the carrot nose, big button eyes, and pink hair tie for lips. We named her "Big Sister."
Meanwhile, HERE'S a funny video clip of Bryce. He gave it a good try, spent 10 minutes trying to put his own boots on before I asked if he wanted some help and he gave up and took it. HAPPY 28th birthday to Bryce's daddy Dylan!
1. Flight Risk
2. Down and Out
3. Santa's Big Hangover
4. Brighter Days Ahead
We were driven out of our house by ice escapades, laden trees dropping bombs of ice on to our roof.
With a gunshot cue, they were off like a stampede of horses at the races, like ladies at Filenes Basement, like Santa's reindeer landing his sleigh.
Fireworks were exploding. Mudslides were sloshing. Limbs were breaking and squirrels were fighting over nuts.
We went out to investigate the damage, taking cover under an umbrella because it was raining ice, not from the sky, but from the trees as ice melted off in an avalanche of chunks.
Santa heads home with his sleigh
A new year is a clean slate
In between years on New Year's Eve
No one said it would be easy
Most of the ice is gone now but its memory can be seen in the fallen tree limbs all over my yard that broke from the weight of it, and in the ice pictures I took of it in various stages of melt.
Dog wood buds looked like aliens in space helmets and reminded me of cryonics.
This was an ice storm with teeth.
As it warmed, icicles froze mid drip.
1. I think I should charge The Gap for the posting of this picture.
2. Andrew Wyeth was here.
An overflow of snow
No dry place to sit
No Christmas card delivery
Just a still life scene of white serene
The creeks are running and puddles are the growing.
A few hours of sun brings a mush of slush.
A December thaw is a good day for walking
I love trees.
Besides eating Thanksgiving turkey at a Zephyr Farm potluck, we played a rousing game of Taboo.
We lined up in the kitchen at Amy, Rowan, and Zeph's house for Vietnamese pho soup. One beautiful bowl of pho begged to be photographed.
We visited six hands of the Sixteen Hands Studio Tour at Donna Polseno and Rick Hensley's homestead and pottery gallery on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Donna's work was recently shown at Roanoke's Taubman museum, including the piece pictured here, Irretrievable Losses, in which the broken pot is part of the composition. Donna's displays are works of art within works of art.
My son potter Josh Copus, the newest Sixteen Hands member, was in town from Asheville showing his latest work at Rick and Donna's. He and Donna were set up in the old farm storage building that Rick recently renovated into a gallery. There was a spread of food and beer from Floyd's Shooting Creek microbrewery to partake. Enthusiastic pottery lovers were warmed by the toasty wood stove as they mingled and shopped for prize pieces.
Josh's big jar pots made for an impressive display on the newly built deck by the outside fire pit.
Later, we were uplifted by breaths of fresh air and lovely views as we opened a window into Josh's life by looking at his latest collage journal. (Insert singing Love is All you Need from the Across the Universe musical movie that we watched with friends on Thanksgiving night HERE.)
At some point during the long Thanksgiving season and after a long day we enticed Bryce to join us for a series of family photos (minus Josh who came too late for this one) and gave thanks for the shots he managed to sit still for.
Loose Leaf
Life So Far
Owner's Manual
First Santa Sighting
Have a Ball at the Mall
'Twas the Month before Christmas and All Through the House....
Story time is HERE.
1. A Watered Down Version of Trees
2. Tunnel Vision
3. Tangled up in Blue
4. Honks for Food
Note: A short video revealing the tops of the watered down trees is HERE.
I saw a couple of cowgirl trick-or-treaters and rows of lit up jack-o-lanterns bobbing up and down the streets of Floyd on my drive through town last night. It was a misty dusk and I was on my way to The Pine Tavern Pavilion for their annual Halloween party featuring the music of The Kind. Once there, I saw blogger Fred First in a bathrobe and some other scary sights, like this Bride of Blood, posed (above) with my witchy woman friend Kim.
This was the first Halloween in years that I actually showed my real face, so I was shy at first. I hung out with the mimes (Sally and Laura) who turned out to be excellent dancers.
I had watched a youtube clip of John Belushi and Dan Akroyd singing Soul Man to get in the mood before I left the house. "Somebody hand me a cheeseburger (if not a harmonica)" was my line for the night. I did some Belushi moves on the crowded dance floor and got in touch with my Motown roots. I also got some attention from my roaring 20's flapper friend Ilima.
Some people made pit stops to the town costume collector's closet before showing up to the party, and that's how the Blue Fairy (Alina) was transformed into the Queen of Hearts and her Prince of Peace Piper (Chris) became the Mad Hatter.
I was sure Mara was the recently kicked out planet Pluto, but she informed me she was really "The Center of the Universe."
I'm still waiting for my friend Rowan to let me borrow his Mexican hat dance hat. Halloween is a great time to reveal alter-egos and let the child within play, and the group pictured above takes the Halloween party cake!
She's at home in the woods and needed to be near water before winter sets in.
Although, we didn't hike all the way to the Cascades waterfall, we were uplifted by the natural setting, made giddy by the rushing water, and humbled by the randomly placed giant boulders.
Our conversations on life and death ebbed and flowed as walked, picking up leaves and looking up to see which trees they fell from.
I was excited by the fungi growing on an old log. She had me take photos of the pools and creek stones so that she could sketch them later.
At the Inn at Riverbend, where we spent the night, the dog Jackson sniffed around my pocketbook for the egg roll I had stashed from lunch, while the inn host showed her the view from the back deck.
The view was impressive, overlooking the New River. We were continually entertained by trains running on either side of it and the sound of their whistles.
We watched mockingbirds, chickadees, and cardinals. I picked out a favorite tree and watched the shadow it cast on the open field.
Sun, rain, wind, a moon but no stars all brought a sense of peace as we took in the wide canvas of sky from the deck outside our room.
Note: See more of the Riverbend view and hear a train whistle HERE.
The grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.
And witches scream meaner when it's nearly Halloween.
1. Too Tired
2. A Heart of Stone
3. A Mug Shot
4. A Blank Check
1. Toe the Line
2. It's High Time
3. Are My Bangs Straight?
Leave possible plots or thoughts in a comment.
I don't know why but when I stare at this picture I keep expecting Mr. Ed the talking horse to come out and snort hello.
This time of year, my favorite summer sundress is almost as worn as this butterfly's wings.
There was a time when I thought hay bales were put there by farmers for Andrew Wyeth to paint.
1. Conversation
2. Procrastination
3. A Heavy Heart
4. A Feast of Color
1. Bedrock
2. A Goatee?
3. Sun ripe
4. The Potter is in
5. Walking off into the sunset
Post Notes: Taken from last weekend's visit to my son Josh's Carolina Kiln Build. Pictures and video clips of that are HERE.
When they look like this
Or this
Or this
Note: I pulled over for the first car in Roanoke. The others lured me in Blacksburg.
A cloudy day isn’t good for washing and hanging laundry, but it’s great for photographing flowers.
Some flowers remind me of fireworks.
Others remind me of women’s hats.
Flowers have such personality. I call this one Freckle Face.
I’m partial to purple, so much so that I have a garden of mostly purple flowers that I had forgotten I planted so close to each other.
Note: All of the photos in this blog post garden were taken in my yard.
When the Well Dries Up
When it Rains it Pours
Bringing Rainbows and Sweetheart Shadows
1. Show stopper
2. Scene Stealer
3. Heart Breaker
4. Side Splitter
A Maze of Daisies
A Vase of Daisies
She Loves Me. She Loves Me Not.
She Loves Me!
1. My favorite dust sprinkling Blue Fairy walks on clouds.
2. View of the Floyd Country Store from the newly renovated Station at Locust Street, which was celebrating their Grand Opening with tours. The building, once home of Mama Lizzardo’s Restaurant, combines studio businesses, a tasting room, restaurant, and apartments upstairs. It's very impressive inside and out and the tour was a highlight of the day.
3. The Floyd Artist Association moved from Art Under the Sun and has a new gallery in the Station. The group also had an outside booth for the day (pictured). Tina Liza Jones (far right), a FAA member, led a group in an old time jam.
4. Looking down from one of the Station’s balconies onto Jubilee venders selling pottery, clothing, jewelry, art, food, and more.
5. A Wizard of Oz wind blew up and vendors helped other vendors hold the forts down.
6. Veterans raising money for veteran causes selling paper poppy flowers as a jamboree mountaineer passes by.
7. Young Actors Coop and Floyd belly dancers paraded through downtown bringing whimsy and theatrics to the event.
8. The first annual Floyd Jubilee was also a celebration of the new Warren Lineberry Memorial Park, named for a Floyd judge and active community member who passed away in 2003, and was brought to us by The Partnership for Floyd citizen group. There was general frolicking on the lawn all day, in this case to the tunes of Upland Express.
9. It was a great turnout and I think everyone who attended would agree the Jubilee was a success. There were tractor rides and a garden Par-Tea on the lawn of one historic home. I was sorry I missed some of the other musical performances, Rob Neurirch’s storytelling at the Hotel Floyd amphitheater stage, and the Hollerin’ Contest (but cafe owner Sally Walker gave us a good sample of the hollerin’ at the Café del Sol Spoken Word later that night).
Eye on Iris
Fallen Out of Love
A Petticoat of Petals
Bleeding Heart
A photo shoot of the 3rd annual Tour de Floyd, with 98 riders cycling 63 miles (mostly) on the Blue Ridge Parkway to benefit the Floyd Rescue Squad.
A weed walk with Thrivalist Frank Cook, who taught us what we could eat from the land surrounding the library parking lot.
A story on the latest Young Actors Coop play about a Boy Band with fake British accents, their groupies, their evil super producer trying to capitalize on the Beatles, and an investigative reporter.
A birthday cake (mine)
or two (Bryce's).
The crowning of my grandson as Prince of the 1st Birthdays.
Add a bout of gastric disturbance, a missed Spoken Word Open Mic, a trip to the hospital to visit our former foster care resident who just had emergency surgery, a stop at K-mart to return some lawn chairs, and the movie Babel checked out from the library and you'll understand why the first thing I said to Joe upon waking up this morning was, "I'm dead meat."
More on these stories later. In the meantime, LOOK who came to Bryce's birthday party.
1. The Vanishing
2. The Loitering
3. The latest Evidence of Spring
Tu Tu Cute
Aroma Amore
Come in a Little Closer
1. Screen Saver
2. Eye Opener
3. Attention Seeking Grandmother
Photos: 1. At the Blacksburg Duck Pond. 2. Tulip in my yard. 3. Sunday's Chateau Morrisette Winery Open House with Bryce and his mom and dad. The spare lips are also a kazoo and not the only thing I tried to get Bryce's attention. See the video clip HERE.
1. Reason to wear gloves in April: Stinging Nettles from my neighbor's farm.
2. On the move fast food. Look what else Bryce can do HERE.
3. Rip Van Winkle slept here.
Tofu tempura, miso soup, maki rolls, and salad were on the Easter meal menu on the last day of the Teen Meditation Retreat this weekend at Earthsong Farm. Wolf (teen who couldn't make the full retreat but is part of this community of young meditaters) and I got lost three times driving from Floyd to Patrick County for this tasty macrobiotic meal. We burned up a lot of calories backtracking and trying to figure out where we were, so we were hungry when we arrived.
The retreat features Walking Meditation, Sitting Meditation, and Kitchen Meditation, practiced with loving skill by Jagadisha and Linda (pictured).
Noble Silence, Small Discussion Groups and Workshops are also part of the schedule. One of the workshops the teens participated in was the building of a thatched roof wigwam (outdoor sleeping quarters). My camera ran out of batteries before I could get a shot of that, or of the whimsical bed springs arbor that leads to resident caretakers Emily and Cameron's home and gardens.
My husband Joe (one of the meditation teachers) and others at the farm had been working these past few weeks on getting the cabins ready for the event. They painted the Dharma Hall cabin - where sitting meditation, dharma talks, and a final day gratitude ceremony takes place - a "Tropical Essence" turquoise. Leah thought the cabins should be named, maybe by the paint colors. The girl's cabin was "Heather Mist."
Conversations were lively and the fellowship meaningful. Hugs were passed all around as teens, teachers, parents, and friends said their goodbyes, some promising to meet up again at the weeklong summer retreat in August. You can read more about Earthsong Organic Farm and Retreat HERE and MAYA (Mindful Awareness for Young Adults), the national organization that the Virginia branch of teen meditation retreats is part of, HERE.
A Fallen Star
A Close Encounter
Bug-eyed
An Eye Opener
Spreading the Wealth
Weeping Willow
The Other Side of the Fence
Grandkids Rock
There’s No Place Like Om
Flight or Fright
A Penny for Your Thoughts
1. Dunes and Dudes
2. Sleeps Like a Log
3. Couple’s Only
4. Beach Attire
Here in Hull at my mother’s house, the landmarks of my life are the pieces of litter I pass on my daily beach walks that have been washed up from winter storms – the plastic dish detergent buoy, a single abandoned Christmas tree, an array of lost and tattered toys, cups, shoes, and gloves.
From Nantasket beach you can see three lighthouses (Graves, Boston, and Minot) and can watch low flying planes navigating in out of Logan airport. At low tide the beach is like a wide open track for joggers, dog walkers, and beachcombers like me.
When I walk I expect to see dogs chasing sticks and joggers plugged in to their ipods. What I don’t expect to see is a 4 foot plastic alligator or hydrangea blossoms blown from nearby yards skipping on the shoreline like tumbleweed. I don’t expect to see so many sad deflated balloons tied to colored ribbons tangled on the beach.
I like the way the finest sand collects like snow drifts. Dunes with a few tufts of sea grass growing in them remind me of a desert. Sunken footsteps look like those of astronauts who have walked on the surface of the moon.
A plastic bag carried by a sea breeze scoots in fits and starts like a sandpiper along the water’s edge. A woman walking her dog pauses. “He likes people,” she says as the dogs sniffs near me and wags his tail. I smile and say hello but don’t stop long enough for petting.
Bored with snapping more photos of unlikely litter, I’m on a new mission, filling my pockets with shells to send to my Asheville potter son Josh. “We need shells for the next firing,” he said when he called, explaining that they use shells as props, to separate pots in a loaded kiln. Shells are mainly calcium with a residue of salt from the sea. When a shell flashes to vapor in the kiln the sodium leaves interesting marks on the pots, my alchemist potter son tells me.
Josh was hoping for scallop shells or something with ridges but all we have in Hull is quahogs, the kind we painted as kids and used for ashtrays when we left home to get our own apartments. There is also an endless supply of common mussels in shades of dark blue-purple, but having grown up with seeing them constantly they hardly register now and I rarely include them in my collections. Today, I stuff a few in my pocket. I wonder what kind of vapor flash a wood fired purple mussel shell will make.
Glow Tide
Speed Bump
Soda Pop
Surfing a Virtual Net
Post note: Nantasket Beach Walk #1 can be found HERE.
Hook
Line
And Sinker
Post note: First beach walk upon arriving at my mother's house on Nantasket Beach in Hull (MA) where I'm helping out while she recovers from shingles.
With more than eight inches of snowfall on the Parkway there was no chance of flying to Boston today (where I was due to help my mother who is recovering from shingles). There was no chance of even driving into town.
All trips and blog posts have yielded to the weather. So have the weighted branches of trees laden with a mix of ice and snow.
Joe had to help me pull on my big L. L. Bean boots (which I haven’t worn in approximately 10 years), over my wool mukluk slippers. The ordeal reminded me of all those past years of dressing kids for snow, first my younger siblings, then the kids at the daycare where I worked for many years, and later my own two boys. Once outside we saw that our cabin was hidden under a canopy of snow filled trees. Sadly, a favorite dogwood tree in the Narnia part of our yard had cracked in half from the weight.
Jasmine, our chow, got to play sled dog, forging a path ahead of us during a mile long hike in the snow.
While hiking, I did some investigative reporting while Joe, the hunter, kept his eyes open for animal tracks. We found some rabbit ones (two long feet side by side from hopping) that led straight into a hole in the trunk of a tree.
At the top of a ridge looking out onto Sugarloaf Mountain we enjoyed the view down into Woolwine.
By the end of the hike my legs were tired from trudging in the winter wonderland, but we also felt enlivened, like two kids on a snow day vacation. Returning to our cabin with smoke coming out of the chimney was like returning to our mountain chalet. With boots, socks, and coats hanging from the clothes rack by the woodstove, we remembered what winter is meant to be and what we had been missing about it.
Post note: Watch a clip from our mountain hike HERE. Boston is penciled in for later in the week.
Snow Gets a Green Light
Black Top Turns White
It's Fur Coat Weather
That’s All She Wrote
1. The Cold Shoulder
2. Thread Bare
3. Shop Till You Drop
4. Thanks A Lot
Post note: Alternate caption for #2 is "Embarrassed," as in "I'm bare assed."
Bright white against a blue sky gives cheer to the gray mid-winter scenery. The clouds look like drifts. The trees are outlined in snow and slick hills glisten in the sun.
When it snows the Blue Ridge Parkway closes. Its federal land and they literally lock it down. From my house I can only drive south as far as Rocky Knob Campground, which is where I was when I discovered a dad and his two daughters sledding.
It made me happy to see them, but I also felt nostalgic, remembering when I was a girl sledding down the Hull Village Cemetery hill with my brothers and sisters. We had radio flyer sleds with metal blades that we could steer. I called my sled Betsy because that’s what my mother named all our old second hand cars. She would talk to them on cold mornings, beg them to start.
When my sons were boys they would stay out sledding for hours in their green rubber boots from the thrift shop that never seemed to fit and with their plastic sleds that were hard to steer. A snow day always makes me think of reading to the kids when I worked in day care. I especially remember reading Ezra Jack Keats “A Snowy Day” with a boy name Peter in a bright red snowsuit on the cover.
Post note: LOOK.
1. Invitation
2. Confusion
3. Blueman Fashion
4. Raising a Red Balloon
This is the way we head south from the mountains.
Or is it North?
Somewhere where the pipes don't freeze and it’s warm enough to swim like fish.
Note: That’s our friend Rowan who was here for dog sitting instructions.
Photo booths have come a long way from the ones I remember at Paragon Park, where for a dollar you could get a strip of black and white Polaroid style pictures.
In the Mac computer photo booth with Joe, I realized all my kaleidoscope and fun house mirror dreams.
Joe and I boldly went where no one has gone before in a sort of giddy bordering on queasy way.
Note: Watch Colleen lose it in the Fun House HERE.
1. A Dickens of a Haircut
2. A Peaceful Place to Pause
3. A Humble Stable
4. A North Pole
1. The Red Carpet
2. Two Mannequins and a Man
3. Cherry Garcia
4. Country Sleigh
Photos: 1. Taken at a hotel in at National Harbor, DC, where we recently saw Cirque du Soleil. 2. A man decking the halls at the Winter Sun Clothing Outlet. 3. Santa passing out candy canes at the Dickens of a Night in Floyd. 4. The entrance of Floyd's family-run Sweet Providence Farm.
The water in the dog’s bowl froze.
I spotted my first snow shovel at the Floyd Elementary School when I was there as one of the judges for Reflections, a literary and art contest. My favorite part of this photo is the matchbox car on the bench and how in my twisted mind I can see how it and the shovel relate.
A cold and snowy day is always a good day to play Scrabble with friends. Well, any day is good for that.
I was shopping at Schoolhouse Fabrics when a mannequin scared me. Even she looked dressed for the snow.
I wondered why I don't have any snow pictures of the overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and then I remembered that the Parkway closes during bad weather. But we only got a couple of inches and I was able to make it up to Rocky Knob, just a few miles from my house, without sliding on black ice.
I call this Sign of The Times.
1. The Power of Suggestion
2. Determination
3. For Spot
4. Air Guitar
5. A Well Rounded View
6. Light at the End of the Brick Wall
Photos from summer travels: 1. Boston Commons fountain. 2. Nantasket Beach in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts. 3. Downtown Marshall NC, where my son Josh lives. 4. Downtown Marshall. 5. Downtown Portsmouth, VA, while visiting Maury Cooke. 6. I honestly don't remember where this one was taken. It seems manifested from a dream.
1. Living off a Blue Ridge Parkway dirt driveway with no other houses in sight, this was the first time in the 17 years we’ve been here that we got any real live (two!) Trick or Treaters.
2. I didn’t have any candy so they settled for apples (which I didn’t make them bob for).
3. I wanted to trade some apples for a few coconuts off their mom’s costume but her coconuts weren’t ripe yet.
4. Later that night, Joe and I went to dance to The Kind at the Pine Pavilion. The band is longtime local favorite that plays mostly Grateful Dead cover tunes. They inspired my costume (see below), created for the Grateful Dead song “Dark Star” and influenced by recently seeing the movie Star*dust.
5. GET DOWN WITH YOUR BAD SELF!
6. Major Tom, the bartender host, dressed as The Colonel. In the email Costume Party invite, he posed: Join us as we attempt to answer the ultimate Halloween question … why do so many Floyd men seem to enjoy wearing women’s clothing?
7. My friend, builder Bob by day, who won a costume contest at the Sun Hall as a lady a couple of Halloween’s ago, can attest to how much fun it is to wear a skirt and wig.
8. I call this: Blind Date Gone Bad.
9. And this one: The Stalker
10. Question still looming: Are you a good witch or a bad witch and which witch is which?
11. The fortune teller predicted it would be a fun night of dancing, and it was!
Note: Soundtrack clip is HERE.
This is the time of year when there are big changes around here. Not only do the trees along the Blue Ridge Parkway light up in blaze of color, but cars, trucks, and motorcycles stream up and down the road to see them.
I live down one of those wooded dirt roads tucked away off the Parkway and regularly drive up to the Saddle or the Rocky Knob overlook, just a few miles from my house, to watch the moonrise, the sunset, or just to get the perspective that I can only get under a big sky.
Since we moved here in 1991, the Parkway has been an important part of our lives. Before we were married Joe and I went to the Parkway to exchange our yearly vows in a ceremony we called “United Untied.” In 1997, when we did decide to marry, we had the wedding ceremony at the Parkway Saddle and our reception party at the Chateau Morrisette.
At any other time of year, I barely see another vehicle on my short trips up to the Parkway overlooks. This weekend, while Joe was teaching meditation, getting us firewood, and playing soccer, I went on an apple picking and photography outing with a Wall Resident client who was staying with us over the weekend. I did not own the road, could not pull over at every whim for every spectacular scene. The overlooks were packed with hikers, family picnickers, nature lovers, tourists, Hokies, and family reunion goers.
After taking in and photographing the views, my friend and I headed down to the Rock Castle Gorge trail to the same abandoned orchard where Joe and I went in the spring to see the blossoms and where we go every fall to pick apples. We found the trees were full of fruit high up in branches, so I picked up a stick and started whacking like the big bad wolf trying to shake down a little pig.
The moral of this story is apple crisp for everyone.
Post notes: See the apple orchard in spring bloom HERE.
And apple picking with Joe in a past year is HERE.
1. Hesitation
2. Tenacious Persistence
3. Unshakable Perseverance
1. A Peter Pan Complex
2. For the Birds
3. October Surprise
4. Pink Floyd is Turning Red
My interest in mushrooms has mushroomed. I live along the wooded Blue Ridge Parkway and recently the right combination of damp dark weather followed by sunshine has resulted in a virtual mushroom invasion. On my daily walks to the mailbox I find these spore-bearing fruit bodies of fungus popping everywhere. I don’t know most of their real names so I have nicknamed them thusly:
1. A Hole in Smurfette’s Hat
2. Coffee Grounds on Donut
3. Forrest Corsage
4. Candy Cane Zombies
5. Foam Rubber Flower
6. Dish TV
7. Nesting Dolls
8. Saucer Landing
9. I Hope it Wasn’t Poison
10. This One Takes the Cake
Note: I know #3 looks like lichen but it had a mushroom stem. See yesterday’s Mushroom’s Among Us HERE.
These Alien looking organisms can kill you or cure you. They can give you hallucinations or be part of a gourmet meal, and they’re just as likely to end up in a Science Fiction plot as they are to be the subject of a fairytale. The following mushrooms were all found in my yard and along the gravel driveway that leads to my mailbox. They seemed to have popped up overnight, as big as plates or smaller than a dime. I found over twenty varieties in one day. I gave some of them pet names:
1. Piece of the Pie
2. Venus of Willendorf
3. Sun Sombrero
4. Pottery Shards
5. Chocolate Truffles
6. Triple Scoop
7. Baby Bird Bath
8. A Fairy Trail
9. Mushroom Clown
10. Haunted Hands
11. Turtle Helmet
12. Lemon Shell
More Spore Lore: Many people do not know that mushroom identification is extremely difficult--not at all like identifying, say, trees. There are about 200 (natural) species of trees in North America, and a good field guide can usually help you figure out what tree you're looking at. In contrast, no one knows how many mushroom species there are (estimates range as high as 30,000 for North America); scientists do not even agree on what constitutes a "species" of mushroom or on how they can be identified; and most of the species that have been named so far require microscopic analysis for positive identification. ~ From mushroomexpert.com
1. Downtown Upkeep
2. Flood of Memories
3. Light at the End of the Tunnel
Post notes: I got some pictures developed yesterday and thought these three somehow went together, visually and in a past, present, future sort of way. 1. Farmer’s Supply in Floyd recently got a touch up. 2. Nantasket Beach at sunset in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts 3. Chesapeake Bay Tunnel on Virginia’s eastern shore. The future is in sight.
1. Hollyhocks and Bees
2. A Birthday Tea
3. A Rainy Day Pair
4. A Window of Opportunity
1. Magic Marks
2. Land Shark
3. A Bowl of Hole
4. A Strand of Sand
Post notes: During my beach days in Hull and Bethany Beach I regularly walked the beach and often came across interesting sand art. The first photo was taken when I was playing Scrabble on the beach with my sister Tricia and her sons. Her son Matthew had tattoo markers, which he used to draw a tattoo on my thigh as we played. The second photo is from Bethany Beach. That's Joe in the background not worried about the Land Shark that nephew David and I found nearby. Photo three is from a beach walk in Hull on a less than sunny day. That's my sister Kathy's grandkids Isabelle and Dom playing in the giant hole we came across. The strand of sand snowballs was some of the sand art I found on a sunset walk. I always felt bad knowing people's creative efforts would be washed away by the tide each night.
1. View for Two
2. Catch of the Day
3. Crab Grab
4. Card Sharks
5. Playing for Sand Dollars
Post notes: Photos were taken during a visit to Joe’s family at Bethany Beach. A video clip that could be a scene out of Jaws is HERE.
1. The Yin Yang of Flip Flops
2. Don’t Drink and Drive
3. Achoo and God Bless You
4. Time to Catch a Ride
Video: Chasing Sandpipers on Nantasket Beach HERE.
Joe and I went to a wedding.
I let him do the heavy lifting.
Leaving me with most of the kissing.
My son has a son.
And a beautiful family.
Blessings to my daughter-in law Alexis' sister Darla and her husband Adam. It was a beautiful wedding and fun party. Watch Kaylee’s strobe light dance HERE.
1. Summer Snowball
2. Flower Shower
3. A Flurry of Flutter
4. A Butterfly bar serving nectar on tap
1. Powered by the Sun
2. Baby's Moon Roof
3. Flights of Fancy
4. Fleeting Youth
Post Note: The above photos were taken last Wednesday when my grandson Bryce's sister Kaylee and I babysat for him while his mother went to a class.
1. A Tolkien Tree
2. A Martian Landing
This is the part where spooky music is played and you wonder what happened next.
1. Keep your eye on the road
2. Keep your eye on the ball
3. Keep your eye on the camera
4. Keep your eye on the sky
And don’t forget to stop and smell the wildflowers.
Photos: 1. Hay is being cut all over Floyd County. I got behind a load of it on my way home from town yesterday. 2. Our nephew, David, who reads my blog, takes a practice swing. He’s in town to participate in the Teen Meditation Retreat that Joe is managing, hosted by at Earthsong in Stuart. 3. What can I say? I said ‘say cheese’ but only one person was listening. 4. A row of children watching the fireworks on the Fourth of July. 5. I was thinking of Sandy -- who lives in Florida and misses the wildflowers of this area -- when I took this photo on the side of the road. At least one person pulled over to see if my car had broke down.
AKA: M&M&M
Little did my friends, Maria, Miriam, and Mara, know they were posing for a stars and stripes 4th of July photo when they struck this celebratory pose after dancing to Laura Reed and Deep Pocket last Friday night. Happy Fourth of July! ********** ////////////// ********* //////////********* //////////******* //////////******* //////////******* ////////
1. Here in Floyd, we have Old-Time Bluegrass Pickin’
2. And Blue Ridge Parkway views
3. Another kind of blue perspective
4. Another kind of pickin'
Photos: 1. A street scene from the Friday Night Jamboree last week. 2. The Saddle Overlook, near where we live. 3. My favorite summer sun dress (from Winter Sun), as seen through my reading glasses. 4. Last night I picked two tubs of blueberries from our garden.
1. Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.
2. "I beg your pardon?" said Alice. "It isn't respectable to beg," said the King.
3. "I am real!" said Alice, and began to cry. "You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweedledee remarked: "there's nothing to cry about."
4. 'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'
5. "That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy at first-----"
6. But it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.
7. Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.
Post Notes: I’m getting some dental bridgework done in Blacksburg, so I’ve had more opportunities to take pictures of the mirrored mosaic wall on the Food Time gas station, which is near my dentist. The above lines are from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Every shot is self-portrait. More photos of it are HERE.
I felt the need for some mountain green scenes. This one, just up the road from our The Blue Ridge Parkway driveway, was taken during the greening of May.
It's still easy to get farm fresh eggs here in the mountains. This sign is for the family-run Sweet Providence Farm, which I recently passed on my way down the mountain to Roanoke to babysit for my new grandson.
One of my neighbors. I actually got chased by a bull once, so I used my zoom lens for this shot.
1. Double Take
2. Triple Threat
3. Double Trouble
4. One for the Fun House of it
1. Downtown Floyd
2. Upside Down Floyd
3. Down to Earth
4. Downright cute
1. Changes in downtown Floyd: Joe at the new sitting wall with the new timber framed public bathroom building in the background.
2. Someone was having fun with the window at the renovation for the Village Square. See another funny scene at the same window HERE.
3. Mounding potatoes in my garden.
4. Notice the name on the hat, same as my last name. Must be a second cousin. I didn't know we had scarecrows in the family.
1. For a small window of time in the spring, three blooms converge in symphony of color in the corner of my yard.
2. Dogwood, azalea, and baby irises come in one after the other, and for a week or two they co-exist together like the colorful layered fruit of an English trifle.
3. I especially love this winning combination because all the players are wild. A purple carpet of naturalized irises circles the white blossomed dogwood tree, while wild azaleas spin around it like a pink skirt. I’ve take dozens of pictures at different times of day and in different weather but none of them do the scene justice. It’s a like a poem that needs to be heard out loud, a living beauty that needs to be seen face to face to be fully enjoyed.
Post note: Happy Birthday to my brother Johnny.
1. A front row seat at the First Friday Irish Night Jam at Oddfellas Cantina.
2. Lucy Goldman Singing Dougie Mclean’s “Ready for the Storm.” Tina Liza Jones (on the left) was strumming an unusual guitar; I think it was THIS.
3. Several played fiddle and one played a harp. I wish someone in the group played THIS, an instrument that when played well can bring tears to my eyes.
1. Last May I hiked down into the abandoned orchard, where Joe and I pick apples in the fall, to see the trees in bloom. But because of a late freeze, there wasn’t a single a bloom on a single tree. Disappointed, I trudged back out of the valley knowing there wouldn’t be a single apple in the fall, and there wasn’t.
2. After seeing that the crabapple tree in our yard was in bloom, I knew it was time. We parked the truck on the Blue Ridge Parkway and hiked down to the orchard.
3. We were giddy with delight at what we found, a spectacular abundance of bloom. Where last year I felt life’s frailty, now I felt its fertility. How magical to think that every flower would be transformed into an apple -- winter food, pies, and crisp -- and that each seed from each piece of fruit could become another tree.
3. Our favorite tree at the bottom of the valley looked like a bride in gown of lacy white.
4. No charge for this affair. No planning. Nothing to buy. Free corsages for all the spring prom dresses, for the maidens and maids of honor, and the fairytale heroes and heroines.
5. We laid on our backs in the grass and watched a butterfly feasting on flower nectar. Bees buzzed, birds chirped, and with every gust of wind paper thin white petals, popped from fuchsia pink buds, drifted down on us.
6. Drinking in so much apple blossom aroma can be intoxicating. I thought about Sleeping beauty and Rip Van Winkle and remembered the time we set up camp on a beach in St. John and woke up in bed of jasmine. I drifted off, wondering if there would be an apple blossom hangover the next day.
Post note: Read The Romance of Wild Apples (the orchard in the fall) HERE.
1. Illumination
2. Social Graces
3. Bold Faces
1. A friend of a friend, named Pet Pet Ping Pong.
2. Breakfast at Alwyn’s, where I recently spent the night.
3. Someone saved a seat with their flat footing dance shoes for the Friday Night Jamboree.
4. Chalk on the sidewalk in front of the Blackwater Loft.
5. Is that a six word memoir Chelsea is writing on Mara’s cargo shorts, under the skirt that she wore to the Country Store poetry reading?
Post notes: Read my cargo pants interview with Mara HERE.
Poets at the Floyd Country Store is below or HERE.
1. A puddle of petals
2. A litter of yellow
3. Not crying over spilled flowers
1. Winning Hand
2. A Pupil of Poetry
3. Self portrait in the eye of the beholder
4. Pose of Ponder
5. Gold Finger
Post note: Body Language Part I is HERE.
1. My Father’s Nose
2. Teardrops
3. Last Leg
4. Earshot
Post note: All the above photos were taken while on a walk in the neighborhood with Joe yesterday.
Poet pandemonium
at the VMI Poetry Symposium
The Power of Poetry makes us say Cheese
It rhymes with Please
Post Notes: Left to right, back row first, is (mostly): Kara, Mara, Julie, (and then Noren), Sharon, Sharon's husband. Colleen and Melanie are in front. The first photo also shows VMI Professor Gordon Ball. To read more about The Power of Poetry Symposium, which feature Claudia Emerson and Bruce Weigl, and to view more photos, go HERE and HERE.
1. This is my version of ‘I can’t resist a man in uniform.’
2. So I follow him around like an adoring fan.
3. This is him, my soccer coach husband, simulating the bicycle kick he did on the soccer field during practice earlier that day.
4. This is what the second part of a bicycle kick looks like, the part where you end up on the ground. The one he did on the field while coaching made a goal, causing an uproar of cheers.
5. This is about as close as I get to kicking a soccer ball.
Washington D.C. has it's cherry blossoms. We have forsythia bushes.
They surround our porch, casting their buttercup glow, their 100 watt sun-loving gold, and wide-eyed early spring bloom.
For the next couple of weeks we’ll be wearing sunglasses.
It’s the only place I drink tea and wine at the same time. The Winery was where I first discovered sachet pyramid tea, and I look forward to sipping it whenever I’m back. I usually don’t order wine because it tends to make me feel tired, but Sweet Mountain Laurel is different. Light, sweet, with a fresh grapey taste, I can drink it like well water.
Last year, we knew we were in the right place to celebrate Easter in style when we saw the orchid colored orchids in the Winery lobby and were greeted by the familiar Floyd faces of people we know who work there. This year the faces were still familiar and friendly and the orchids were white.
The Chateau Morrisette Restaurant, which once housed the whole winery, is where Joe and I celebrated our wedding with our family and community. A few years later, Joe worked as a timber framer when the new Winery building was being built.
We had worked preparing the garden all morning and were ready to be pampered. I had quiche with a perfect pastry crust, garden and pesto pasta salad, bacon, and home fries. Joe had lamb with all the fixings. Once we were full, I took a deep breath and let the warm glow of wine take hold while my eyes soaked up the sun drenched room full of people wearing bright Easter colors.
A big draw of the Chateau Morrisette Easter Brunch for me is the desserts. It’s the reason we started the Easter Brunch tradition. I was sad not to have any kids doing Easter egg hunts anymore. Sampling the desserts at the buffet table was like seeing what the Easter Bunny brought for me. This year the Winery Easter Baker put a smile on the face of the girl that lives in me.
All Over Again
When the Café Del Sol Spoken Word chair is “off-duty,” it sometimes hosts unexpected guests that aren't necessarily poets, like those on their home to Boston from a car show in Florida; my sister Kathy and her husband Ozzie.
Waiting for my grandson to be born
Alternative to Scrabble
1. The Tin man’s hat
2. Rumplestiltskin’s moonshine jug
3. Peter and Wendy’s shadows
4. Three wishes granted
Post notes: Photos were taken on a fairytale walk in the neighborhood with Joe this past Sunday. The flower, one of the first signs of spring, is coltsfoot.
1. Distracted
2. Two-faced moon
3. Triangle angle
4. Fashion Feng Shui
Post notes: 1. Downtown window. 2. Kitchen window. 3. View from my cellar stairs. 4. In Feng sui, the Chinese art of right design placement, splashes of red are said to bring good luck and overcome negative energy.
This is the place where a tropical winter vacation picture should be, but instead it’s photo of our truck that just had an $800 repair. Our dog Jazzy is guarding our investment. A couple of hours after I took this shot it started snowing. HERE is the videotape that resulted from that, titled “Truck Full of Snow: AKA This is going to take awhile."
1. Magnets and words go together for me like peanut butter and chocolate.
2. When I was a little girl, my grandmother had Terrier dog magnets. They were my first introduction to magnets and I remember thinking they were magical, the way they stuck to each other. I tried hard to make the ones that repelled each other stick together because I thought they should, but they wouldn’t.
3. The first time I saw magnetic poetry was in a café in Radford, Virginia, that no longer exists. The booth I sat in had a portable magnetic stand. A friend joined me and we played with the words as we talked. It was like two conversations going on. I couldn’t think of a more fun way to spend time but eventually had to pull myself away.
4. Magnetic Poetry was invented in 1993 by Dave Kapell. Suffering from writer’s block while trying to compose lyrics to a song, he wrote down interesting words on paper and rearranged them in different ways for inspiration. Everything was fine until he sneezed and the paper words went flying, so he glued the words to pieces of magnets and stuck them to a pizza tin. From there they found there way to the refrigerator and the rest is history.
5. I love it when a word escapes the hold the fridge has on it and I find one while sweeping the floor. Picking it up to read, I always feel like what it says is a prophetic message just for me.
6. Once I found a green word outside in the grass that said “GROW.”
7. Over the years some of the novelty of magnetic poetry has worn off, or maybe I’ve stopped playing as much as I used to because the words are just too small for me to read easily now. I want big words that stick to other places besides the fridge.
8. Once I arrange a collection of words in an order that feels just right, I hate to interrupt it or move it. But I’m not the only one who plays makes fridge poetry. I don’t know who left so many interesting the messages on my fridge. Some are my own messages that have gotten so old they are now new to me again.
9. This post is dedicated to Ampersand who likes to take photos of magnetic poetry words that have traveled far from the fridge. She, who has a better camera than me, has recently re-inspired the magnetic poet in me.
1. For some reason whenever the electric power goes out I begin to feel that my normal clothes look dirty and I wonder why I didn’t do a wash yesterday when I had the chance. When water doesn’t run freely from my faucets, I’m thirstier than normal and start to feel that I simply must wash my hair.
2. We have a generator but discovered it was broke when the ice storm caused the power to go out at 11:00 a.m. on Friday. Even if it was working, ours doesn’t generate enough energy to run the water heater or cook on the electric stove. I’m not much of a cookout griller, but I bought a grill a few years back because it had a propane burner on one side that I knew I would use for emergency tea making. I can do without a lot of things, but tea isn’t one of them.
3. The dogwood tree in front of the house, laden with ice, has bent forward and reaches the porch now. I open the front door and say to myself, “Oh, look who came to visit.”
4. Being colder than the rest of the south and warmer than the north makes Virginia prone to ice storms. What would be snow is rain. What should be rain turns to ice. Ice is pretty to look at but does a lot of damage.
5. My yard looks like the Ice Queen’s Palace from Narnia. Such a treacherous beauty. Diamonds couldn’t be any prettier. Icicles sparkle in the sun.
6. It sounds like a shooting gallery. Pop. Pop. Bang. Trees branches, too heavy with ice, snap and crash down. As the day warms, it begins to rain melting ice. Avalanches of it periodically fall from the roof.
7. A walk to the mailbox can be dangerous. The dog is skittish and won’t come. A tree seems to explode close by. I duck and run. Everything smells like fresh pine, the most vulnerable tree to ice damage. Some trees are completely uprooted. Others bow and lean, making an archway to walk under.
8. By the late afternoon, the sound of the tree falling blitz has been replaced by the hum of the new generator, arrived just in time to save the food in our fridge and our freezer full of venison.
1. He tells me I’m sweet like the Princess in Aladdin. I say thank you because I figure it’s a compliment.
2. Strolling along Morning Dew, the dirt road I named after the Grateful Dead song, we picked up litter. “Do you see anything red?” he asks. “No,” I answer. I point to an old flattened Dr. Pepper can and say, “I think this used to be red, but now it’s faded into pink.”
3. “People should know better,” he says examining an abandoned plastic green bottle.
4. When the weather was warmer and he called me Mary Poppins, we walked along the Parkway waving at motorcycles going by. But not now. The weather is cold. I don’t think I saw a single car the whole time we walked.
5. The trash collector is also a good dog trainer. Before heading back to the house, he whistled for the dog to come out of the woods, and she did.
Note: When I’m not writing or being supposedly retired, I provide respite for foster care provider families that offer live-in care to adults with disabilities, something I used to do full time. MINUTE POST UPDATE: Hit comments and see # 9.
1. Upscale
2. Just my type
3. Posers
4. Still for butts
Photos: 1. When the scale hits 120 I jump up and down, not because I’m happy but because I need to burn some calories.
2. The old typewriter donated by a retired Bank of Floyd worker for the Hotel Floyd Writer’s Room spent a few weeks at my house.
3. A Bizzaro Srabble game between Max, Mara, and me recently converged with the Floyd Home Companion play practice. The Young Actors Coop was using the Oddfellas’ logo sign for ad spoof in their radio drama play. The restaurant logo was conceived for Floyd’s oddfella mix of farmers, hippies, and businessmen.
4. A recycled toilet’s new incarnation as an ashtray. Seen in front of Wills Ridge Building Supply in Floyd.
1. Barring bad weather
2. Snowy white beard
3. The cold shoulder
4. Dog in need of a sled
5. Escape
Post notes: All of the photos above were taken on the morning of 1/17/08 after waking up to our first photo worthy winter snowfall. HERE is a previously posted poem to accompany them, which I may read tonight at the Spoken Word open mic if it's not canceled because of more snow.
1. Alignment
2. Angle
3. Cross reference
4. Behind bars
5. Checkered past
6. Split personality
These days, I’ve been drawn to the late afternoon shadows looming long in the low winter sun. The above photos were taken within an hour of each other late Sunday afternoon. # 2 was the first one I shot, taken at the Floyd library, where I was covering a story on a knitters meeting for the Floyd Press. I then met Joe for an early supper at El Charro’s restaurant. He took photo #4 after telling me that I looked like a zebra. It was at that point that I saw a theme developing. # 3 and 6 were taken on the back porch of El Charros as we were leaving. On our way to the car, we walked through the historic Old Jacksonville Cemetery, reading the old gravestones. From there I saw the grille on the back of the old Mama Lizardo’s building and noticed that if I peered into it I could see through to the front of the building where a truck was parked. The first photo was the last one I took, which I spotted on my way driving home.
1. First Curve in the Road in the New Year
2. Some things aren’t easily explained (Better days are HERE).
3. Reading the Classics
4. Missing You
Post note: I'll take any questions about the nature of these photos off the air (which means in the comment section).
1. Full moon on the Blue Ridge Parkway
2. Yankee Swap Christmas Eve Class Picture
3. Break for recess
4. Two heads are better than one
5. But more is fun
1. Windows draw me in, the warm light they radiate, the sense of being on the outside wanting to be in.
2. A few days before Christmas, Joe and I went window shopping in downtown Floyd. With our shopping already done, it was fun just to enjoy the festive displays and stop and chat with the shopkeepers.
3. Life is so much more than the obvious. Every window is a mirror, every reflection suggesting a rich inner life.
4. Many years ago I worked in a boutique in downtown Boston. One year at Christmastime, I stood in the window as a live mannequin and drew a crowd of people who waited to see if I would move.
5. But even longer ago than that, when I was five years old I went with my family into Boston to see the Jordan Marsh Christmas window displays. The moving mannequins were dressed in late 1920’s clothes and arranged in homey Christmas settings. It was a formative experience that I will never forget. The magic was very real to me then.
6. Every window Joe and I saw was like a wrapped Christmas package waiting to be opened, invoking visions of sugar plums, gifts of the magi, gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
7. A big part of the pleasure of window shopping was being outside, walking arm in arm with Joe, bundled up, going from shop to shop. With so many downtowns being lost everyday, I’m thankful an outing like ours can still happen. I’m wishing you all a magical holiday full of surprises and peaceful moments.
Post notes: Window Shopping #I is HERE. Photos are of: 1. New Mountain Mercantile. 2. Bulletin Board on Locust Street. Yes, that's Elvis. 3. Oddfellas Cantina. 4. Finders Keepers Antique Store. 5. Sue's Flowers. 6. Cafe Del Sol. 7. Finders Keepers.
1. The Fog of Christmas
2. Two Redmans
3. The Presentation
4. Deck the Boughs – AKA Tree Branch Feng Shui
5. Santa Wears Red Sox
Post Notes: My Christmas memories involve snow and presents -- mostly the anticipation of presents. My strongest Christmas memory is standing at the top of the stairs with my eight siblings waiting for my dad to call us down for Christmas morning after he had gone ahead to plug in the tree lights and check to see if Santa had come. It was the pinnacle of anticipation and excitement. White Christmases were common where I grew up in Massachusetts. Although it was foggy here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia yesterday when I snapped the above photo of my house, there was some snow on the ground. Today, because of the rain, it's looking like we'll be getting more of a white wash Christmas than a white one. As for photo #2, for those who don’t know, my last name is Redman. The Sunday Scribblings prompt for the weekend is holiday memories.
The following are downtown shop windows with scenes of Floyd reflected in them.
1. New Mountain Mercantile
2. Oddfellas Cantina
3. Bell Gallery
4. Farmers Supply
5. Floyd Barber Shop
6. Blue Ridge Muse
Post notes: More on reflections HERE.
1. Anna's shoes
2. Enough for an Army
3. Reggie gets a blaze orange bow
4. The line for food forms here
5. Or here
We spent Thanksgiving the same way we have for the past twenty one years, at Zephyr, a neighborhood farm community. My friend Katherine was the hostess with the mostest this year. Every year the crowd is slightly different. This year Katherine’s son Rowan brought a posse from college, including two brothers from Uruguay. Rowan’s dog Reggie’s alpha maleness was not threatened by the wearing of a bow for hunting season. My son Josh, his girlfriend Anna, and her brother were in town from Asheville. Anna plays fiddle and has a taste for fun shoes. Her mother, father, and sister, who drove all the way from Minnesota to spend Thanksgiving as a family, rounded out our circle. New friends were made and old friendships strengthened. After dinner and dessert, we played Celebrity.
1. Day-glo
2. The Shortcut
3. The Up-date
4. The Leftovers
Post notes: click on comments (below) for further explanations on these photos. For more photos and captions go HERE and scroll down.
1. Who dropped the red paint?
2. A red-blooded leaf.
3. Bad dye job.
4. Not fully committed.
1. The view from my porch is a tease. It’s like a painting of peak fall foliage that I can’t touch because the paint is still wet.
2. The breakfast nook where my husband and I meet on sunnier days is deserted.
3. The trampoline looks like an uninhabited blue planet.
4. The hammock looks haunted by the ghosts of past Octobers.
5. But I can still have fun. I call this one “fun house mirrors.”
Without a paddle she straddles the middle of a puddle as if it was a pond and she was a traveler bigger than Gulliver.
She ponders the riddle that looks like a doodle reflected in shadow in the muddled oracle.
She dawdles a little before she settles hands on handles and feet on pedals.
She splashes as she cycles through the sun drenched puddles. With sprinkles on her ankles, she giggles as she goes.
Post notes: These photos were taken at First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach a few weeks ago. The thrid one is actually my husband Joe's shadow. More from that trip is HERE.
Part 1 of this entry can be found HERE.
1. This is Alder Burnette-Holliday and Abe Gorskey representing Phoenix Hardwoods, the woodworkers who created much of the handmade furniture in the hotel. They're standing in front of one of their Phoenix Hardwood headboards in the Crooked Road room. I love this photo because I knew both these talented young men when they were children.
2. I’m probably not supposed to have favorite rooms, and if I did it would be the writer’s suite, right? In truth, all the rooms are beautiful and unique, but The Old Church Gallery is one on my favorites list. It was primarily designed and decorated by Old Church Gallery director and longtime Floyd art school teacher, Catherine Pauley, and Kathleen Ingoldsby, a member of our Writer’s Circle and Historical Society activist. The Old Church Gallery, founded in 1978, is just a stone’s throw from the Hotel. It preserves and showcases Floyd’s cultural and historical arts and currently houses an exhibit of a once active moonshine still. Catherine wasn’t able to attend the party due to a death in her family, but she was on everyone’s mind.
3. I got a tour of the Country Store Room by the store’s owner, Woody Crenshaw. He and his wife Jackie decorated their room. Woody named some familiar faces of local Jamboree icons shown in framed photos for me, and he had a few good jamboree stories to tell. It’s hard to see here, but the photos over the bed are of hands of jamboree fiddle "pickers” in action. The hotel is within walking distance to the Country Store and other Floyd hotspots.
4. Even the refreshments were locally made by some of Floyd’s best. We were served wine by the Chateau Morrisette Winery crew, who also have a room in the hotel. The food – lamb with cucumber raita, hummus, tuna, and stuffed mushrooms – was made by Over The Moon's chef. Sally from Café Del Sol provided dessert and coffee. Unfortunately, I stashed some dessert for eating later at home, but I left it idle too long and it got cleaned up. I’m still wondering how those chocolate fudge bars dripping with strawberry sauce and topped with whip crème would have tasted.
5. This is Malawi Room, inspired by hotel owners Kamala and Jack’s Zion Lutheran good will trips to Africa. I was really impressed when I heard that Jack pulled this room together. He told me he hopes to schedule a public open house for the hotel to coincide with the neighboring Village Green opening sometime in November. Joe and I were one of the few couples who stayed till the very end, talking to Jack and Kamala. We sat in chairs out in the grassy courtyard, where an amphitheatre for music will be built, talking with Jack, Kamala and a few others. At one point a couple came to check into one of the four rooms we didn’t get to see because they were either occupied or reserved. “Oh yes, now we have to run this place, don’t we?!” Kamala joked. Somebody got up to sign in the couple.
1. The Hotel Floyd is an eco-friendly building in downtown Floyd that began construction this past spring and opened on October 1st. The owners wanted to showcase Floyd art, furniture, music, and culture, so they called on local groups and businesses to design fourteen themed rooms. Since the beginning I’ve been working on a Writer’s Room with other members of Writer’s Circle I belong to. Other rooms are: The Crooked Road Room, Blue Ridge Parkway Room, Country Store Room, Jacksonville Center Room, Floyd Artist Room, Floyd Fest Room, Harvest Moon Room, Winter Sun Room, Jeanie O'Neil Room, The Malawi Room, Bell Gallery Room, Old Church Gallery Room and the Chateau Morrisette Bridal Suite. On Oct 7 the hotel owners hosted an open house party to thank all the groups for their work. The following photos were taken then.
2. Writer Circle member, ceremonialist, herbalist, and one of the Harvest Moon’s managers, Katherine Chantal made the first entry in the Writer’s Room journal on the desk that she and I picked out last spring. In it she welcomed guests and invited them to leave a journal entry of their own. The first writing in the journal was our version of a champagne bottle breaking dedication.
3. Another Writer's Circle member, Jayn Avery, is resting on the bed in one of the two bedrooms in the suite, below Fred First’s framed “January Tree.” She deserves to. The day before the party I read on Blue Ridge Muse that the hotel was booked to capacity for the weekend. I didn’t even know it was open! Jayn was down the mountain selling pottery at the Roanoke Market, so I called another friend involved to find out more. When I learned that it was indeed open and full of guests, I asked, “Did you see if the doily ever got put on the back of our loveseat?” I was there the day furniture and art got moved into the rooms on September 24, the same day Jayn and I found the doily. She took it home to wash and I headed for the beach with Joe for a vacation. The doily seemed like an important finishing touch detail. “Yes,” my friend reported. She had seen the doily.
4. Rick Cooley is looking through the writer’s scrapbook on the credenza built by local furniture maker, Sam Hancock. This photo was taken minutes before I learned that Rick had designed the hotel’s logo art for their webpage, postcards, and other advertising. He’s a member of the Floyd Artist Group with a themed room next to ours. Notice the high definition flat screen TV in this photo. All the rooms have them, as well as wireless hook-up capability. That's Lora Geissler's "Shell Ginger" behind Rick.
5. Yes, we spent a lot of time in the Writer’s Suite. It took awhile before we could break away to see some of the rooms that other local groups had decorated. In this photo Jack Wall, one of the hotel owners, is talking with two people from the Wall Residence Community. Wall Residences is a Floyd agency, which Jack is the director of, that provides foster care placements for adults with disabilities. It’s the agency I worked for (and am still involved with part-time) for nine years as a foster care provider. Notice the lamp set on a base of books that designer Jeanie O'Neill found for us.
Post note: Part Two with photos of other rooms and more will be posted tomorrow. Update: Part II is HERE.
AKA: We’re on our Way Home
1. Re-entry
2. Remembering
3. Returning
4. Point of departure
Photos: 1. After a leisurely couple of days at the campground, it was hard to adjust to the speed on the drive into Portsmouth to meet up with a colleague of Joe’s. He treated us to an amazing gourmet meal at a restaurant called Fusion. I boldly snapped a picture of my dinner, piled high and shaped like a volcano, and would have posted it here but it looked out of place in the mix. 2. I lingered on the walkway to the beach taking photos of the long lined shadows, knowing we would soon have to pull ourselves away and head for home. 3. I was drawn to watch a woman on the shoreline because I saw myself in her. Kneeling down in the sand, she was completely absorbed in an activity and then was taking pictures of something with her camera. After she left I walked over to where she had been and was uplifted by the spiral of small stones she created and then left behind. 4. Just one of the interesting creatures I came across on my beach walks. HERE is a poem about beach living in which the horseshoe crabs of my youth make an appearance.
1. While in Virginia Beach, we visited the A.R.E. complex (Association of Research and Enlightenment), founded to carry on the work of Edgar Cayce. We picked up wireless in their library and had lunch in the meditation garden by a pond. The pink water lilies were in bloom and large gold fish swam between them.
2. Even with all the martial arts training Joe has had, he couldn’t budge this giant beach ball.
3. On the boardwalk, we met some Monks from Thailand. They wore long orange robes and were snapping pictures with their cameras. One gave Joe his card.
4. It was the weekend of The Neptune Festival, which went on for over 30 blocks, with vending tents, carnival rides, and bands playing. The main event was a sand castle contest. A line of tall colorful flags flapping in the ocean breeze lined the entries and made for an impressive display.
5. From a distance I thought it was a pirate game and that children were walking the plank. I was immediately drawn in, so we went to get a better look.
6. A crowd of children had invented the best ride in town. It was a self-created rite of passage game in which they lined up and took turns jumping several feet into the sand from the end of a long black plastic pipe. Some jumped bravely, others edged their way out to the end, and all were witnessed and cheered as they jumped. We never figured out the official purpose of pipe, but we knew it was non-commercial attraction because no one was taking money.
7. We made it back to camp in time to watch the sunset from our backyard beach, which we have come to call the Volley Ball court. It was like a honeymoon date because after the sunset we stayed for the moonrise, remembering how the sun and moon played a symbolic role in our wedding. We reminisced about our first meeting, a story we call our “creation myth” and which we like to review every couple of years.
8. The next day we avoided the Virginia beach crowd and stayed at the campground, setting up our cabana and chairs on the beach there. Joe read some wonderful passages out loud from an insightful book on meditation. After that I got down to business because no beach vacation is complete until I have completely flipped through an issue of People Magazine.
1. The type that doesn’t wear seatbelts
2. Presumed innocent
3. Litter bug (aka shutter bug)
4. Justice
5. There’s one in every crowd
Post notes: Photos -- 1. Typewriter donated to the Hotel Floyd's Writer's Room being transported. 2. Mug made by the Asheville Potter son. 3. Colleen putting eight month's worth of pictures in her photo album. 4. Clay at Josh's ClaySpace studio. 5. On of the many Christmas tree farms somewhere in Floyd. Also, because we're experimenting and the manual moderating comment feature is currently not on, comments are taking a little longer to post. I guess it's taking Hal some time to make sure they're not spam. Sorry for any inconvenience or confusion.
1. Last call
2. It flew right by.
3. I'm already looking forward to next summer.
Post Notes: 1. Butterfly in my yard. 2. Chair seen by the side of the road in Christiansburg on Friday morning when I was driving home after the John Mayer and Dave Matthews concert at VA Tech HERE. 3. Sign seen at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd where our Writer's Circle met yesterday and where we had a discussion on punctuation! Fellow Circle member, Mara Robbins and I will be reading our dueling poems on punctuation and poetry at the Next Spoken Word Night at the Cafe Del Sol, Saturday, September 15th, 7 -9.
1. Red on red collision
2. A case of mistaken identity
3. My husband went to a Red Sox baseball game and all I got was this T-shirt.
Note: For something that will really make you see red, go HERE.
The following are photos from the Community Temple Kiln Building. For more photos and narrative, scroll down to the next post or go HERE.
1. An inside job
2. Josh and Karl pondering the plans
3. Checking on the progress
4. The law of attraction
5. The mud that holds it all together
6. Noah's Ark?
7. Fixing a hole where the rain gets in
8. Very cool!
1. Wild Tiger Lily
2. Mullein army
3. Parkway purple
4. Don’t spare the goldenrod
Post notes: All of the above flowers grow wild on the Blue Ridge Parkway and can be found within walking distance of my house. The ironweed and goldenrod are prolific now. The lilies are native but rare, which is why I'm excited to have two growing in my yard.
1. Role model
2. Pink clique
3. Fall Fashion statement
4. Fresh faces
5. Attendance taking
6. Most likely to be teacher’s pet
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.
- Jean Giraudoux
1. Start Here
2. in fast motion
3. because every ending
4. is a new beginning
5. and life lives large
More virtual flip art with flowers HERE.
1. FloydFest Vest
2. Where’s Waldo?
3. Is it live or is it Memorex?
4. Predicting the best yet FloydFest
5. Bowled over
6. Yielding to gravity (AKA Floydfest rest)
7. Look what found its way center stage during a “Railroad Earth” set.
8. Look closer. This is what it’s all about. (Read more on “Building Community” brick by brick HERE.)
Post Note: Coming soon to a blog stage near you, the FloydFest Poetree Players.
In between checking out the paint color in the newly painted Hotel Floyd Writer’s Room and riding up and down Floyd’s windy back roads with my gas tank on empty on the way to visit an artist whose work we want to use in the room, I’ve been harvesting beans, cleaning the dirt off of onions, and squishing Japanese beetles that like my zinnia flowers and basil.
When I’m not reading poetry at open mic night, playing Scrabble with my friend Mara, attending a wedding, or practicing my part in a woman’s poetry collective that’s performing at Floyd Fest this weekend, I’m hunting down cucumbers that have hidden under leafy vines, waiting for green peppers to turn red, and pulling back little corners of corn husks to see if they're ready to pick.
And when I’m not cutting Swiss chard, stuffing cherry tomatoes in my pockets, or pulling up the front of my sundress to fill it with potatoes, I’m researching remedies for my dog’s skin sores, googling lyrics of Peter Pan songs for a poem I’m writing, or helping Mara’s daughter count the rings in a tree stump by the Zion Lutheran Church parking lot.
Photos: 1. Hotel Floyd Writer’s Room. 2. Rosemary, Mara, and Allie, members of the woman’s poetry collective at the Zion Lutheran Church rehersing for our upcoming Floyd Fest performance. 3. Mara’s daughter counting the rings in a large tree stump. More about the Hotel Floyd and the Writer's Room HERE.
And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin
1. Start Here
2. Come in close
3. Watch it change
4. Frame by frame
5. I bet it can make you smile.
I’ve always been fascinated with flip books, since the days when my school friends and I would scribble little stick figures on the corner of our notebook pads and make them move by flipping the pages. All film animation is based on this simple practice. I have a collection of flip books, Mona Lisa’s smiling, a shark biting, King Kong flaying. And I’ve noticed that when I take a group of photos of the same scene from different angles with my digital camera, and then click through them to see how they came out, it creates a flip book effect. But a computer click is not the same as a paper flip or a camera push button press and a fast scroll only blurs. So I'm using my imagination.
1. Clowning around
2. Best land shark singing telegram in town
3. Don’t try this at home
4. The usual suspects
5. Family resemblances
6. Life at the beach is a bowl of cherries
7. Beachcomber
Photos: 1. My sister Trish struck up a conversation with a clown while waiting for our friend Nancy and I to pick her up at a designated meeting place. We found her on the sidewalk with him waving to us when we arrived and before heading out to the North End to eat Italian food. 2. Jim's daughter Val and longtime family friend, Ernie, with the singing telegram shark at my brother Joey’s 4th of July cookout. His kids hired the shark to sing Happy 50th birthday to him and their mother. 3. Curious is my middle name. 4. Which float would you trust? 5. My nephew Patrick and I have something in common. Read what it is HERE. 6. Beach snack. 7. I do like to comb the beach for shells, rocks, and driftwood, but sometimes I need a comb for other reasons, like THIS!
1. When fireworks became illegal in Massachusetts, the people took matters into their own hands. On the night before the 4th of July something akin to The Boston Tea Party takes place up and down beaches of the north and south shores of Boston.
2. Rows of huge bonfires are set. Hordes of people come out to watch the three hour nonstop display of professional quality fireworks being set off by citizens.
3. Screaming Mimis, diamonds, gold fringe, green caterpillars, and red cobras. With a cold beer and from a blanket in the sand, we oohed and ahhed and named the fireworks as they exploded above and from left and right for as far as we could see.
4. In a scene reminiscent of war camp bonfires and songs about rockets red glare, boats and ships anchored near the shore to watch.
5. It was a photographer’s dream with scene after scene of dramatic celebration. A feeling of freedom was all about.
Post Notes: Read more about this tradition HERE. See a video clip of last night’s celebration that my sister Sherry, her husband Nelson and I went to HERE.
1. Petal pusher
2. Beach bums
3. Rock on
4. Four eyes
Photos: 1. A bee's nose in a New England beach rose. 2. In New England butts are called bums. 3. It was a good day for building sand castles and playing in the sand yesterday on Nantasket Beach. 4. You've heard of putting cucumbers on your eyes? These are clam shells. One of the beach bums (my nieces) snapped this photo.
1. The bride and groom were a vision in their wedding robes of gold, as they read their vows by the Little River in the presence of family and friends.
2. The impressive chocolate raspberry wedding cake was delivered from the back of an SUV. Heads turned as it was being set up, like a work of sacred art sitting center stage on an altar.
3. It took eight hours to bake and another eight to decorate the proud master baker creator told me.
4. Oh, it was so hard to wait and to keep from touching it.
5. Soon it began to draw a crowd.
6. Then the cake paparazzi descended, snapping pictures. The bride and groom were cheered on as they ceremoniously cut into it and began putting slices on plates to pass around.
7. It tasted as good as it looked, and there was more than enough to go around. Some people (me) took home a dessert doggie bag.
Post note: Congratulations to Luke and Laurel!
AKA: A higher love
1. The adventurous type
2. The grounded one
3. The invitation
4. The answer is yes
Post note: This is Joe's and my favorite tree. We've been climbing it on and off for twenty years now. It's five miles from our house on the Blue Ridge Parkway and is named "The Family Tree." We named it that after two of my sisters and my niece and nephew who were visiting from Massachusetts all climbed it with us, spreading out on different limbs, for a family photo shoot.
I’ve been known to chase butterflies around my yard with my camera in hand. I’ve staked-out a corner of my porch waiting for indigo buntings to show up at the bird feeder so that I could capture an image of their beauty.
As unlikely as it sounds, today I chased down a woman who was pulling two children in an oversized plastic red wagon. As I pulled into town in my black CRV, I could see her from a distance crossing the street with wagon in tow. It was Flag Day and an American flag was hanging above her. On the same day that I spotted this perfect image of small town summer life, a photo I took of the Mabry Mill framed in rhododendrons was featured on the front page of The Floyd Press. I knew what I was seeing in front of me was as worthy of print, but moving targets can’t be posed, and I missed the shot. 
Driving slowly, I followed the woman with the wagon around the block. She’d have to cross the street again, I thought. The idea of traffic yielding to a woman pulling children in a wagon seemed irresistible to me. At one point I got out of my car and tried to look casual as I waited for her to appear from around the bend. I had just come from the Hotel Floyd construction site where I and another writer met with the artist who is designing the Floyd Writer’s Room, one of the hotel guest rooms that will be featured. It was drizzling rain and I had a bright purple calf length raincoat on, so it was hard not to stand out. In fact, the designer from my earlier meeting rode by and called out from her Subaru, “Hey, nice raincoat, Colleen!”
But where was the woman with the wagon? Her walk was not as predictable a block as I anticipated. When I spotted here again, I was back in my car and passed closely by her. The children in wagon were laughing and red and yellow colors on the wagon seemed to animate an otherwise typical day. I considered stopping to ask her if I could take a picture, but not only was I too shy, I knew that if I did the result would not live up to the composition I initially witnessed. Worried that she might think I was stalking her, I headed to the Post Office to check The Museletter box.
I had forgotten about the whole affair by the time I was once again approaching the traffic light after my Post Office errand. From a distance, I saw her! She was crossing the street under another flag. The four way traffic stood at standstill as though she was parting the red sea. I was too far away. Teased once again, I missed the shot. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be. ~ 6/14/07
Post Note: This is the caption the Floyd Press posted under the above photo titled "Parkway Attraction" -- A popular, historic mill gives another photo opportunity with flowers and ducks out on the pond. Mabry Mill, a top tourist stop on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd County, is still a working mill providing demonstrations of Appalachian life in days gone by.
1. Contradictions
2. Early sightings
3. Anything absurd
4. or overstated
Post note: The following photos were all taken last week during a ride down Bent Mountain and into Roanoke to record THIS essay at WVTF radio station.
The following are construction site outtakes from the kiln shed roof raising that my husband Joe (on the roof) and I took part in at my Asheville potter son Josh’s place this past weekend.
1. The powder room
2. Hood ornament
3. Bucket seats
4. Knight on shiny tractor
5. The end of civilization as we knew it
6. Who do you trust?
7. Few walk on water. Others (like my son Josh) do this.
Post note: You can view the Youtube movie clips HERE.
1. A new take on Mary Kay?
2. Flocks of Phlox
3. I left my heart at Slaughters Garden Center.
4. My pink sneaker with a view.
Post notes: All of the above pictures were taken around Floyd on THIS day.
AKA: The View from my Lawn Chair
I may have a carrot cake hangover and sore muscles from dancing non-stop to American Dumpster last night at the Winter Sun, but I’m not ready to kick the bucket.
Last night’s wrist band is pretty enough to wear the next day, and it looks pretty good with my notebook, the one I don’t go anywhere without, even if it’s to my lounge chair to supposedly do nothing.
I don’t have to look too far to spot a birthday gift. This one was given to me yesterday by my husband.
I’m thinking about working in the garden.
But I have some important decisions to make first.
The first porch vacation in May didn’t happen on the porch. It was too wet and cold Saturday morning, so we lolled around on the living room couch and watched the world from the window. Soon, I couldn’t contain my excitement. “Look, the bluebird of happiness!” I squealed to Joe, as I spotted a robin’s egg blue bird looking like something out of a fairytale and scratching around the birdfeeder. I’ve seen indigo buntings on Woods Gap Road on my ride to town, but this is the first time any have visited our yard. “Look! There’s two now! One for you and one for me!” I knew it was going to be a good weekend.
It warmed up enough to take a short walk, which was when I noticed that the Azaleas in our yard had bloomed. Walking hand in hand, we passed a neighbor, a single guy on a shiny new tractor working in his yard. As someone who likes tools and equipment, Joe looked longingly at the tractor. Not only does he not have one of his own, but he was worn out from the work week and feeling a little guilty about not having enough energy work in our yard. As if I was reading his mind, I squeezed his hand, looked at him and said, “Yeah … but you have a woman.” He laughed and felt better.
On Sunday, after cleaning up from working in the garden, we headed out for the Cinco De Mayo benefit for Ito, a Costa Rican friend of many in Floyd who recently lost his wife. She sadly died soon after giving birth to their daughter, who is doing fine. The community came out in large numbers. There were raffles, Guatemalan clothes, and food for sale. Kids spun across the wide open floor and twirlers in bright colors danced as bands took turns on the stage. Several bands played, including Solazo and hip-hop saxist Emily Brass (formerly of Foundation Stone). The Kusun Ensemble, a group from Ghana, now based in Floyd, were dressed in their traditional clothing. During their performance some of them jumped off the Winter Sun stage and danced.
We cooled down from dancing in the Café Del Sol, which was immersed in an ocean of blue with dolphins diving and swelling waves that any surfer would envy. It was 7:00 p.m. but still sunny enough to warrant wearing sunglasses inside. Laurel Cook, the artist whose work was displayed looked beautiful in orange against the blue of her paintings. Her daughter and my son, Dylan, were in the same class at Blue Mountain School years ago. She recently returned to Floyd from Hawaii. I guess the island inspired her work.
I ordered a soup, a beer, and some baklava. It the first Sunday of the month, so musicians were starting to gather for open mic. While paying for my food, I snapped a photo of the two-headed barista action figure that sits on the check out counter. Nice tattoo, huh.
1. Shedding some light
2. Inner light
3. Self potrait reflection in sewer water
4. The night stars the moon
Photos: 1. Cafe Del Sol window at night. 2. Photographing a tulip in my yard. 3. Sewer grill in Roanoke. 4. Watching the moon from my yard last night.
Pink tutu
Tightlipped
Siesta
Two lips
AKA: Word for the Wise
1. Resiliency
2. Possibility
3. Community
4. Renewal
Photos: 1. A cut-above tree branch seen at the New River Valley Mall. 2. My Garden as it looks right now. 3. Chairs in the country store before they got filled with Friday Night Jamboree attendees. 4. New sculpture on the Harvest Moon lawn in Floyd.
1. Escape
2. Innocence
3. Easy Come
4. Easy Go
Photos: 1. Riding home from fluffing a friend’s pillow who is recovering from a hernia operation, I saw a red balloon. 2. Kaylee’s new bedroom. I’m jealous. Joe asked if her bed had a mosquito net around it. I told him, no, it's a princess net. 3. Blue sky, dogwood, and a patio umbrella. I saw this in Roanoke on Sunday while visiting my son, Dylan, and his family. 4. Two hours later I was back on the mountain in Floyd. My tulips had been brought to their knees from the cold and unexpected snow.
1. A ladder that allows hikers to bypass a barbed wired fence seems to separate one world from another.
2. Once we cross over, our mood becomes somber, as we discover and explore an abandoned house site.
3. We come upon an old bed of springs from which a mass of bramble bushes is growing out of. Next to it is the rusty outline of a couch. I think about all the forts and outdoor clubhouses my girlfriends and I used to build when we were kids.
4. “Here’s the matching chair,” Joe shouts from further up the path.
5. “The family car!” I shout back. The road it drove on to get here is no longer visible.
6. I’m excited to find a patch of pink phlox growing nearby the metal remains because I know it had to have been planted there. The hands that planted it have long ago left this world, but the beauty of their efforts still returns in the spring.
Post note: More Easter Adventure is HERE.
Which will it be today?
1. The other people in the dining room probably thought Joe and I were food critics because we kept taking pictures of our plates of food. It was the Chateau Morrisette’s Easter Brunch, and we couldn’t resist. It was a feast, and the food was not only very tasty, it was pretty and photogenic.
2. Joe sampled two types of red wine and then worried about drinking a whole glass so early in the day. “Why don’t you just get a glass of Sweet Mountain Laurel (my favorite white)? You can drink that stuff like it’s water!” I lobbied. We decided to share a glass of it.
3. It’s not only the food we like at the Winery. Whenever we go, we get to visit with the latest crop of young Floydians who work there, many of whom we watched grow up. Our server, Logan, talked soccer with Joe. I remember when his mom was pregnant with him. We caught up with Alicia, got the latest on her and her family, and reminisced about the days when my son Josh worked there. “I’m so impressed. They all turned out so well,” I kept saying to Joe.
4. Anna, Winery hostess and my friend Mara’s youngest sister (pictured in #3), took me over to lobby to see the orchids before we left, which turned out to be a highlight of my day. “Orchid orchids!” I said referring to their color while snapping close-ups of there exotic flowered faces.
5. “All-you-can-eat buffets are wasted on me, even gourmet ones,” I said to Joe as we strolled around the winery grounds hand-in-hand, working off what we had mananged to eat, "because, like my mother used to say, my eyes are bigger than my stomach." The Winery mascot trotted by. It was the black dog whose image is plastered all over the place and who is the namesake of the Black Dog Jazz Festivals in the summer, as well as a variety of wine.
6. Although it was a little colder than we would have liked, the fresh air and sun felt good, so we went on a hike, one that eventually took us on the trail down to Rock Castle Gorge. The waterfalls and moss covered rocks we came upon mid-way reminded us of Glendalough, Ireland. “This one will be called 'Place of Worship,”' I said to Joe as I snapped an Easter photo of him wearing my purple scarf.
7. We found some wildflowers peeping up through the brown oak leaves and spotted some phlox near an old abandoned house site. I stopped to take a photo of a row of icicles under a wet log and picked up a few pieces of glittering quartz, dropping them in my overcoat pocket.
8. Because Joe and I both live far away from most of our family, our Easters are usually pretty simple, which is fine with me. Even so, there were a few minutes earlier this morning when I felt sad not to have young children to fix Easter baskets and egg hunts for. But by the time we left the gorge (no pun intended) our wide smiles reflected the renewal we felt. The bright sun, grass greening, flowers blooming, and waterfalls rushing were having their effect. “Now this is resurrection. This is spring!” I shouted. What a blessing, we both agreed.
9. And look what the Easter Bunny brought me. It’s not a basket. It’s a doggie box full of delicious desserts left over from the Winery Brunch.
Post note: The Blue View - More Winery adventures HERE.
1. Bring me a higher love
2. High five
3. Keeping a high profile
4. High minded or head in the clouds?
5. the sunset is the highlight of my day.
6. High and dry in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Photos: 1. My husband, Joe, at the top of the stairs of a shop in Cedar Key, Florida. 2. Floyd County high school glove on the top of a truck antenna seen at a recent soccer game 3. My great niece, Samantha, jumping on my trampoline. 4. My reflection in the back of my car 5. Evening sky behind the Cafe Del Sol. 6. Empty red cup seen while walking on Morning Dew.
1. A Penny for your thoughts.
2. I can not tell a lie.
3. I want to be alone
3. Home is where you hang your hammer.
4. Oh, so that’s where I left the car door.
Photos: 1. Found by my clothesline. 2. Seen while walking to the mailbox. It used to be my neighbor’s apple tree until the ice storm terminally damaged it and he cut it down. 3. Deck Chair at Annie’s Café in Cedar Key, Florida. 5. Spotted while in Cedar Key. 4. On a walk last week, Joe and I returned home via the back woods and saw this behind the shed. It actually went to the truck we gave Josh for Christmas. I wonder if he's missing it.
1. Discipline
2. Isolation
3. Culture Clash
4. Air force
5. Off Duty
Post note: All the above photos were taken during our recent vacation in Cedar Key, Florida. The last one is called the “honeymoon hotel” by the locals.
By the time we arrived in Manatee Springs, Florida, about an hour north of Cedar Key, the weather had changed and it was cold enough that I had to wear gloves to hold my camera. I couldn’t get a shot of the manatees because only their noses came out of the 70 degree crystal spring water. I had better luck photographing a heron that was stalking its next meal.
The gangs of vultures that also inhabited the state park were more than willing to pose. At night they gathered together and roosted in the trees by the hundreds. During the day, they brazenly mulled about as if they were at a convention.
The people who created the interpretive signs on the long walkway out to the river have a good sense of humor. One sign warns against contracting squirrelitis, the feeding of wild animals. There's a mirror attached to the sign to show who is most likely to catch the disease.
We noticed about ten German campers and met some of their owners who were on a 5 month tour of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. One German woman expressed, in broken English, her horror at the poverty she saw while touring through Mexico, as witnessed by all the dead dogs they came across. Her husband, who had lived through WWII, was keen to talk politics with us. They had recently come from a rodeo and were uncomfortable with the nationalistic display that included public prayer and much flag waving.
After 5 days camping along the Gulf of Mexico in Cedar Key, Florida, Joe told me he had a Valentine’s Day surprise for me. By the end of the day we were standing on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean in Ameilla Island. “The real ocean!” I squealed with delight.
By then I was wearing my down parka. The beach was littered with thousands of dead jellyfish! Apparently, jellyfish have a very short lifespan and they wash up like that every year. “It stinks pretty bad for a few days,” the ranger said when I asked him about it.
We were still in Florida, but it was cold. By the end of our walk on the beach, I was calling Joe “Kenny,” the South Park cartoon character who can’t talk because his jacket is zipped up over his mouth. It was as if we were preparing ourselves for the icy cold weather we knew we’d come home to. We decided to pamper ourselves after a week of camping. We ate at the “Gourmet Gourmet,” got a motel room, and watched the movie “Dirty Dancing” all the way through for the first time.
Today I stopped to smell the roses that were sprawled along a white picket fence..
I walked through a pink door into a store that sells books and has a wireless internet connection.
I did not go fishing.
Today I sat on a purple bench to write this down.
I learned that palm trees drop berries.
Post note: Scroll down to read more about our Cedar Key vacation.
1. The first sign of spring we saw on our south bound road trip was in Statesville, North Carolina, when we had to detour off Interstate 77 for an accident and drove by a house with a front yard full of purple crocuses.
2. We were driving slow enough at that point that I rolled the truck window down and snapped a picture of it and the fountain in the middle of the lake next to it.
3. By the time I spotted the next sign, a first-sighting of a pink house, I had become aware that the truck windows were down and I wasn’t cold, a big change from the frigid temperatures we left behind in the Virginia Mountains.
4. The sky looked like a gallery of hanging clouds, or a school of great whites in a sea of watercolor blue. The black truck in front of us had a license plate that read “Summer,” as if it was a guarantee that by tomorrow the weather would be even warmer.
1. At the crossroads
2. Living lightly on the earth
3. Now you see it
4. Now you don't
Post note: On my walk to the mailbox on Thursday, I documented the much anticipated inch of snow we got, which was gone by the next day. The face pot in the tree is one made by Josh, my Asheville potter son. It likes to have the last laugh.
1. I’ve got to get out more
2. Overloaded
3. Burned out
4. The Afterlife
Photos: 1. Abandoned car seen at Nags Head this past summer. 2. Car at the stoplight in Floyd, so full of watermelons and pumpkins that we couldn’t see who was driving. 3. A remnant of a car that I see on my route to and from town. 4. Is it Mary Kay? Spotted in Blacksburg at a rental place. More "car talk" aka "cah tock" HERE.
1. Money doesn’t grow on trees, but music might.
2. Mary Poppins might have been here.
3. Dumped
4. Think twice
What did you see?
Post note: All of the above photos were taken around town in the past few days.
AKA: PHOTOS that never got posted.
1. Best outfit worn at a cookout
2. Best tattoo
3. Best attitude
4. Best view
5. Best blue view
Photos:
1. My mom at the cook-out Joe and I hosted after my son Dylan’s wedding in July.
2. Mara’s girlfriend, Leah, shows off her tattoo during a summer game of Scrabble.
3. Dylan’s wife’s daughter at the wedding. She’s the same one I learned how to do THIS from.
4. View from a swing chair in our neighborhood.
5. That's why they call it The BLUE Ridge, also in our neighborhood.
1. The number of people who fit on my couch on Christmas Eve broke a record.
2. A present so big it was used as a coffee table.
3. Best T-shirt
4. This is the present I got in our Christmas Eve neighborhood Yankee Swap. I call it Steve Martin’s brain.
Post Notes: Other unique gifts in the Christmas Eve swap included: a vase full of tootsie pops, a water saving shower head, sex game dice, and Where the Wild Things Are slippers from Spain.
December skies in late afternoon remind me of a child’s nursery. The walls are painted in hushed pinks and pale cool blues. The setting sun is like a nightlight clicking off.
One day the sky is like a frozen pond of clouds. This one is slashed with white streaks, as if ice skaters have dragged their blades across it.
The next day it’s like an endless rolling countertop. Clouds curdle and ripple. They spill but never fall off.
Clouds are like floating islands surrounded by a sea of blue. Sometimes a faint moon appears out of the mist like an approaching boat that has come from another country.
The sky is like a vast uncharted territory that makes me think of polar bears and angels. While I watch it, I talk to my brother, who loved clouds and all kinds of weather. “Are you seeing this, Jim?” I ask out loud. I’m not the type to talk to the dead, but I do. Since he’s no longer here, I look at the world for him, especially the sky.
1. Red ink batik
2. The empty nest
3. The uninhabited planet
4. The great beyond
5. I flunked vegetarianism
Post note: All the above photos were taken in my back yard or in my Blue Ridge Parkway neighborhood.
This is my favorite photograph taken yesterday at a neighboring farm community where Joe and I spent Thanksgiving. I call it “Reunion,” and it was taken from the balcony where the best rocking chair in the house is and before diving into our lucky pot luck feast. I promise that, although I do have to go to Christiansburg today, I will not be shopping.
1. The leaf within
2.The youngest among us
3. Impressionable
4. Food for thought
5. As far as the eye can see
Update: My WVTF radio essay "Born to Blog" will air on Public Radio this Friday at 6:55 and 8:55. I'll post the text here over the weekend, but you can hear it now at their website, HERE.
1. Fate
2. Confrontation
3. Insight
4. Possibility
Photos: 1. Leaf found at the end of our driveway, hanging by a spider thread. 2. The inside of Joe's old truck got wet, so he drove it in the middle of the yard one day so that the sun could dry it out. 3. This is an abandoned house down the street from us. When my son's were little they called it "Jason's House," refering to the horror movie "Friday the 13th." 4. I pulled over while driving in Christiansburg to get a shot of these stairs with the song Stairway to Heaven playing in my mind.
Among the costumes posted below is the one I wore at the Winter Sun Spookfest this past Saturday Night. Be the first to guess which one it is and get your name up in lights here at Loose Leaf.
1. Will the
2. Real Colleen
3. Please
4. Stand up.
Post note: Identities will be revealed this weekend.
1. Safety in numbers
2. Ahead of their time
3. The best of both worlds
4. Express yourself!
5. The shape of things to come
1. And now they’re falling like a steady rain …
2. in a storm of color in late October …
3. Leaves on trees ... bright flags in sunlight …
4. ride October’s fast parade
1. My better half
2. Bleeding heart
3. Falling for you
4. We’re quite a pear
1. Do your own thing
2. In your own time
3. Follow your own instincts
4. We’re not in Kansas
Post notes: All the above photos were taken in my neighborhood on the Blue Ride Parkway. In the last photo you can see the top of Buffalo Mountain, Floyd’s highest peak, at nearly 4,000 feet. You can view more photos of the mountain HERE and learn more about it HERE. Review the year in photos from my photo journal HERE.
1. A car trunk-full of foraged apples played a role in the very first meeting between my husband, Joe, and me. Years later, a red apple was offered and ceremoniously eaten during our wedding on the Blue Ridge Parkway.
2. To this day, we are still held under the spell of wild apples, and each other. Every October, we hike into a remote valley off the Parkway to pick apples. As soon as we climb over the cow gate, it’s as if we enter a fairy tale, a place where paradise still exists and magic is possible.
3. Avoiding the cow patties, wet from the weekend rain, we pass an abandoned house site on the way to the hidden orchard. Or maybe the rubble of weathered chestnut timber on top of a flattened tin roof was a barn. The first tree we see full of red ripe apples takes my breath away.
4. A little further on, the pasture drops down into the bottom of the valley, where one lone apple tree stands. It’s our favorite. Something about the rich red color of its apples against the wide open blue sky feels timeless and renews my sense of the scared. A black crow calls a warning. A few grazing deer scatter as we approach.
5. Besides apples, we find pears. With our knapsacks full of bounty, we keep our eyes on the sky as we hike our way back up to the road. The late afternoon sun is already casting a golden glow as it drops low. But there’s still time to make it to the Saddle Overlook (where Joe and were got married 10 years ago) to watch the sunset. Sunset in the Blue Ridge Mountains is like a like an exclamation point at the end of a “once upon a time” day.
Post Notes:
1. To read about last year’s apple picking romance, go HERE.
2. Regional bloggers and those who read blogs are invited to the Café Del Sol on Thrusday at 11:00 to meet Terri Dulong of Island Writer. Terri is a published author and a Cedar Key neighbor of Floyd county tree farmers, Pat and Tom Devrin, who winter in Cedar Key.
Strand by Strand
her world closes in
By her own design
she hangs by a thread
1. Déjà vu
2. His kind of yoga
3. Her kind of yoga
4. On equal footing
5. On our way home ...
1. Birds of a feather
2. Flock together
3. King of my castle
4. Honey, I’m home
5. The family Pet
1. Overbooked
2. Overcrowded
3. A sweeping change
4. A clean sweep
5. Even lawnmowers have bumper stickers
Post note: There's a change on the horizon, having to do with getting away from it all and involving my favorite thing, the ocean! Posting may be erratic. See you soon!
1. Peer Pressure
2. Question Authority
3. An Invitation
4. Off duty
5. A Taste of What’s to Come
Summer on Sale
Cold enough for socks
Putting up the harvest
Everything’s coming up Mums
Future Thanksgiving pie
Is the woodshed half empty or half full?
We used to think hay bales were put there by farmers for Andrew Wyeth to paint.
Conformity
Do Your Own Thing
Loyalty
Perspective
End of the Season Temptation
Note: All the photos were taken in our Blue Ridge Parkway neighborhood, except the pool closing one. The dog is Jazzy, chow, inherited from our son Dylan. I think he should have named her Aslan.
AKA: Friends in High Places
Numero Uno
Two is Company
Three’s a Crowd
1. Peaceful
2. Fragile
3. Distant
4. Impermanence
5. Nostalgic
Photos: 1. A floater at Great Oaks Country Club in Floyd. 2. Gone to seed plant in my yard. 3. Buffalo Moutain as shot from The Saddle on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Floyd, Virginia. 4. Sand castles at Bethany Beach, Delaware. 5. Aging sunflower in my garden gazing at a newly blooming patch of Jerusalem Artichoke flowers.
AKA: In the Pink
1. Flighty
2. Fickle
3. Been Around the Block
4. New Kid on the Block
1.Jack in the hat. Jack (on the left) is a member of the meditation satsang I belong to. Here, he and his friends in various hats are volunteering at the Jacksonville Center information booth.
2. Is it any wonder that I lost my parked car and almost missed my scheduled reading under the Poet Tree?
3. The go-go-girls of Hill Holler Stage. Anonymous friend, Grace, and Kyla.
4. This is Iris Dement singing on the Dreaming Creek main stage. I enjoyed her song about her mother giving her truth. She’s a songwriter who stands for something. Recently, in an interview she was quoted as saying that “the poor are treated like the enemy.”
5. Deana likes the lights in the beer garden. I like the antique fence that surrounds it (connected in places by grapevines). It’s my favorite place to hang out at Floyd Fest because it’s cozy and wooded and off the beaten track. And see Tabor, I’m wearing cool summer clothes here that are not black.
6. Under the Floyd Fest Big Top, you can buy festival music, T-shirts, and posters, and even books by moi. You can meet the performers and get your CD’s signed by them here as well.
7. Kathleen, a member of the writer's workshop I belong to, always has an interesting perspective. Here, she’s holding a frame that once held a poem that was hanging from the Poet Tree. Remember the magic mirror from Romper Room? See you next year, boys and girls!
1. Loneliness
2. The Promise
3. Blue Ridge Rest Stop
4. The Love Seat
5. Bad Hair Day
1. Great Oaks Country Club Pool on a Sunday
2. Pretty soon there will be so many red ones I won't know what to do with them all.
3. Pit stop after the Winery. No, we're not drunk.
4. This is were I sit everyone for a photo shoot in my yard. It's my sister Sherry and her husband, Nelson.
5. I can never get my sunflowers to pose.
What goes up
Must come down
What goes around
Comes around
Mara and Leigh came over to play Scrabble yesterday. Leigh’s little sister, Mara’s daughter, and friend were with them. More than Scrabble was played.
What do you like to play?
1. Most Confident
2. Most Improved
3. Most Daring
4. Most Studious
5. Most Stylish
6. Most Improvised
7. Most Patient Audience
My son Dylan and Alexis are married! Alexis’ sister was the Maid of Honor and my son Josh was the Best Man.
This is my husband Joe’s sister, Maryanne, and me at the rehearsal dinner. Notice the framed picture behind us.
Why do they always have to play the twist at wedding receptions? My sister Kathy and her granddaughter Samantha didn’t mind.
Josh is vying for the hula hoop contest title at the family cook-out that Joe and I hosted the next day.
It’s Josh’s birthday! We all helped him make a wish for the Red Sox to win the World Series this year.
Then everyone did their own thing.
My sister, Sherry, loves blueberries! Is this why Josh got a carrot cake for his birthday instead of his traditional blueberry pie?
Post Notes: Congratulations to Dylan and Alexis! Happy Birthday Josh! More wedding photos can be viewed at my niece Chrissie’s site, HERE.
Older son in town for younger brother's wedding does laundry. Gorilla suit. To be continued ...
Look who crawled under the netting to the blueberry patch; my 6’ 2" 26 year old son, Josh. He inherited his father’s dislike of mayonnaise and his mother’s love of blueberries.
When he was a little boy he used to set up battles between blueberries and grapes. The blueberries always lost because he ate them.
This time of year, I spend at least an hour each day in the garden. On weekends, my husband joins me. We get paid well for our labor with the green currency of Swiss chard, broccoli, lettuce, and kale.
In August, we’ll strike it rich with the gold of corn and Yukon potatoes.
1. Wise Women: Girlfriends at Zephyr Farm attending one's twin daughters' high school graduation party.
2. Green Eggs and Ham (not): Eggs from Ed and Randye’s farm. There really are some green ones.
3. My Favorite Most Photographic June Flower: A peony from the garden at The Harvest Moon Health Food Store.
4. All that Jazz: She writes in her journal, ‘What would our dog Jazzy write if she could?’
5. Stairway to Heaven: The road to Floyd town in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
6. Stairway to Heaven II: AKA My feet are my only carriage (words by Led Zepplin and Bob Marley respectively).
7. The Class of 2006: My great nephew, Dom, graduates from pre-school.
First pedicure, given to me by my sister Tricia.
Inspected by her fireman son.
This is what I do on my birthday.
Walk a mile in my massage sandals.
The work week begins. Someone works at home
and someone doesn't.
What do your feet do?
1. Somebody rescued a scarecrow from somebody else’s trash and put it in my garden for a surprise. It’s meant to scare crows away from our corn seedlings, but it ended up scaring me. I thought it was a stranger loitering in the garden!
2. Somebody played pool with my husband in our cellar on the pool table we bought when the boys were teenagers to keep them home a little longer.
3. Somebody went to hat party to celebrate the successful foster care re-placement of a man with developmental disabilities who used to live with us.
4. Someone danced with me in my living room to Shania Twain’s “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” while her mother took a photo with cell phone. We especially liked singing the “So you think your Brad Pitt” part.
5. Somebody made strawberry shortcake for me and a mutual friend who has a birthday the day after mine. We ate it at a birthday picnic celebration at Floyd's Oak Grove Pavilion’s seasonal music kick-off event.
6. Somebody bought me a new digital camera for my birthday so I could later sneak a shot of him doing this. XO
7. Somebody graduated cum laude from Jefferson College of Health Sciences in Roanoke and is now an RN.
8. Somebody home from college came for a visit and showed off his gymnastic skills (one of his college classes) on my trampoline. I took a movie of him with my new digital camera.
Answers: 1. My husband, Joe. 2. My husband’s niece Angie. 3. I did, but my friend Virginia had the best hat. 4. My great-niece Sammy 5. My friend Katherine, and it tasted spectacular! 6. My sweet husband, Joe. He gets me all the technological stuff that I don't even know I need. 7. My son Dylan’s fiancé, Alexis. 8. Family friend, neighbor, and one of Dylan’s best childhood friends, Rowan.
Colleen at play.
Colleen at work.
Most Days I Can’t Tell the Difference.
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The downside of Floyd country living here.
The upside of Floyd country living here.
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Post Note: Area bloggers and would-be bloggers are meeting tomorrow, May 11th at 11 a.m., at the Café Del Sol. For more information, go here.
AKA: I call it The Magical History Tour.
I haven’t made a collage since I started blogging. And what is a blog, but a blank page to fill up with images and words that tell a story?
Some pages from my eldest son Josh’s collage journals were exhibited in an art show this past March in Winston Salem., N.C. My youngest son, Dylan, on the other hand, is not an open book. His art is made with electrical wire, plumbing pipe, and lumber.
A collage works in the same way a dream does. It’s a visual snapshot of various symbolic images that can bypass the brain’s slow process time and convey a lot of information at once. It’s like a window into a large house of many stories.
I write because I hate to lose anything and writing something down is a way of keeping it. Cutting and pasting things onto paper does the same.
Post Note: The above are photos of the collage journal I made to sum up my life when I turned 50. I'm planning to post some of Josh's pages soon. Caught in the act: here.
