Archie Holland-----

--childhood friend and computer savant came to visit on the day before Thanksgiving and gave us one more reason for gratitude--he oversaw and troubleshot (trouble-shooted??) our transition to high-speed cable internet. Here, he delivers his "I drive an hour from my Mom's place to see you guys and WHAT do I end up doing (as usual??)" look. Thanks, Ashtu!

Betsy, Etc.

Photos from visit and shopping with my baby sister Betsy last Sunday: here you see the Woman herself(we were experiencing mediocre-verging-on-alarmingly-submediocre fish'n'chips at TGI Friday's), cat Schoodie and the wonderful wall o' jadite.

Okay--So Maybe We Really DO Need TV...

In case you EVER wondered what people without television do on weekends: Friday evening at Club Thirteen. We hang with Stan, practice our photojournalism ("Primitive denizens of Lake Arrowhead--innocent, emotional Children of Nature!") and strive for a range of expression while waiting for the grill to heat up. Which image for the Christmas card this year?

Milford, VA--Still Life with Cats

Visit last weekend in Milford with Chad in his dreamy dim aristocratically derelict booklined and glass-trimmed and wonderously askew farmhouse, with Anne Berry, black cat Satan and another really lovely and slow and heartbreakingly dignified cat of impecable deportment that I was so taken with I had to photograph him and now damned if I can recall the gentleman's name...

Weekend Highlights !

Progress on Stan's portrait and catching up with a repatriated Anne Berry at Panera Bread in Garrisonville.

The Ground Level: Two Beginnings

A couple of new things: Stan's portrait, still in the "Which way do I want his ears to go?" stage, and the mountain hunting cabin that Drew and a friend have rented and are (soon to begin?) repairing.

"The Comeuppance Tour" or "Still Lucky"

This was the last long ride of the season, and we started off on Friday in a chill October rain, on the theory that the weather would change by the time we reached the mountains. After all, hadn't we ridden 2,600+ miles this summer with only a half hour of rainy road? Weren't we lucky? Weren't we invincible?
Theory tested and discarded: by the time we reached the mountains, the rain had grown both heavier and colder, verging on icy. We rode with three other couples, and all agreed that it was about the most severe weather they'd ever endured on two wheels. We wore full leathers, layers, and rainsuits and were still uniformly frozen and soaked by the time we reached our rented cabin in the West Virginia mountains. Our goggles were opaque with beaded water; fingers, stiff inside icy wet gauntlets, could not obey brains and brains were not doing so great, either. And then it got dark. Wet, feezing, hungry, exhausted--this was comeuppance in spades for all those days last summer when we cheated fate--riding dry and blithe while storms raged all around us.
But we WERE lucky, actually: Nothing developed that woodfires and sleep and hot food couldn't mend, although it took two days for our leathers to dry. Weather on Saturday was still spitting rain and we shopped for food and then holed up in front of the fireplace, resting, reading, talking, and watching movies. On Saturday night, although it was still damp and frosty, we bundled up and scooted five minutes down the road to the nearest restaurant which--lucky again!--turned out to have acceptable food and a more than acceptable blues/rock band (Macho Willy!) playing.
Sunday and Monday were ideal, as these pictures show. Here you see: our dripping leather laid out to dry in front of the woodburning stove downstairs; the cabin; mountain roads wreathed in autumnal glory; Drew gassing up the Road King; my Dream House (note exterior woodburning furnace); river glimpsed through bridge-lattice; a visiting deer who discovered that garlic croutons were dee-licious; a window looking out into the forest; general store at Seneca Rocks and the formidible Rocks themselves.

I'll Sing You This October Song

Okay--it isn't October for two more days, but this is what it feels like: milky chill in the evening, oak leaves barely bronzed here and there, and roses cast one last smattering of blooms before retreating into drabby deadlookingness for the next six months. Thanks for everything, guys; I'll miss you. Stan secures the perimeter.

The Garden in September

To appreciate the fall garden--at least, to appreciate this fall garden, you've got to have Zen----it's wabi-sabi to the -nth degree--the ineffable beauty of imperfection: forgotten empty seedling pots, now home to spiders too menacing-looking to evict, fallen fruit, tarnished blossoms, broken stems....The perennial sunflower stars right now, as you can see, with big brilliant coarse flowers that draw your eye from 'way down the street. I love the way he--if flowers can be gendered, this one is unmistakably a guy--leans across the fence, like a giant stretching.
We are crushing the last of the basil into pesto and freezing it in ice cube trays; the small food processer that Drew's sister passed on to us last year is working its little blades off now. In these pictures you see, besides the brobdignagian helianthus:

red morning glories and improbably tall marigolds tangled in the corpses of tomato vines.

raggedy but still attractive (to butterflies and to me) butterfly bush

a seedling rose of Sharon that emerged this summer spindly and blinking from beneath a cedar tree

guardian lion and the sickly, temperamental but really gorgeous Garden of Eden-y-looking tiny crabapple tree that Drew likes to threaten to chop down because it is such a mess several times over (fallen blossoms, then fallen fruit and eternally falling bird droppings!).

a sweet little seedling rose that had to wait a long time to get planted. Got it in the dirt today. It's a hybrid musk rose of some sort.

This is it, guys--the end of the 2006 garden. The next batch of photos will be a post mortem.

Well, Great Souls are SUPPOSED to Languish in Garrets, Aren't They?

This is my 4th-5th grade classroom in the attic of the Milk Barn: until a couple of weeks ago, it was a curriculum library and auxiliary teaching chamber. Now it is mine, mua-ha-ha-ha! Note my groovy little desk area (with requisite cookie jar!). Walls are sloped, so everything falls off the bulletin boards unless anchored twelve times over. Coats and bookbags hang in the precipitous tiny stairway, and the room is baking hot if the inside door is closed, and polar if the door is left open, so we alternate. I really do enjoy this room; it's got a lot of tattered charm and will get better (more charming and undoubtedly more tattered). You can't see the little reading area near the outside door (which opens up onto catwalk overlooking the playground): it has a wicker chair and...well...a wicker chair is about it right now, but that too will improve. Nothing deficient in here that money can't fix. Except size: when there are ten children in here, and two teachers, it is intimate to the point of claustrophobia.

"...the maid is not dead, but sleepeth."

I haven't forgotten about my blog, but am wrapping up summer teaching while simultaneously preparing for fall teaching and have been very, very, very....tired at night. Fall updates as soon as I wake up.