A Beautiful Fall-like Day

Irene is gone !!  She is replaced today with a beautiful Fall like day with a gentle breeze. She left our lovely VT in a mess.  Our road is still partially closed, can only go 1 1/2 miles north before coming to a gaping hole in the road.

The Post Office is still closed as the mail delivery truck can't get there. It is located at a four corners 2 miles north of our place. The only way in is over a covered bridge on a back road and it is not able to bear the weight of heavy trucks. BUT where there is a will there is a way!!  But not in our society today !    In 1959 our main road here was washed away by a spring freshet but our postmaster and my dad put a long, wide plank across the chasm and when the mail truck came as far as he could, the driver  unloaded the mail and like a bucket brigade they passed those mailbags along from one man to another and finally they reached the other side where the mail was taken across the street to the post office and sorted with just about no delay.  So I took some important letters to the little post office 2 miles south of here today.

We hear of so many people without electricity today too.  Without it our society grinds to a standstill.  Just about everything needs to be plugged in.  There are some still stranded at their homes with roads washed out and with no electric.  Most don't have generators to run to keep their refrigerators humming.
My hubby has one on a small trailer that we use if we are without power here for very long.  One spring, it being portable, we shared it with all 3 neighbors, each in turn, using it to keep the fridge cold and in some cases the water pump needed to run a bit too. He's off this afternoon helping friends get their van out of the mud and mire that tried to suck it under as the water receded from their yard.

We were so fortunate here on higher ground ...  remember the hymn ..."Lord, lift me up and let me stand, by faith on heaven's tableland; a higher plane than I have found; Lord, plant my feet on higher ground."
"Count Your Many Blessings" keeps popping up too !

I took a walk this morning down near the river and the little brook with Den's footbridge across it.  It is really way under water!  I will add a picture of what it looks like today compared to how it looked in my last blog.  Also got some pictures of our backyard view of the river today and put a new picture at the beginning of my blogs which shows how it normally looks.  Will add a few pictures of our area too so you can see how Irene treated us.  Thank God there weren't more people killed.  My prayer is for comfort to all those hurting in so many places here.

I should make some tomato sauce with all my ripe tomatoes.  We picked them just before the storm.  I've been eating LOTS of toasted tomato sandwiches and zucchini and tomato w/cheese casseroles lately!

     
This is what we see today.  No ripple at all ! Compare to photo at top of my blog.

This is where the little footbridge in my last blog should be. About 1/3 way from bottom of photo.

This is the morning after.  Just a ripple where the dam should be. (Top of photo)

This is why we can't get to the Post Office !

Storm Report

How fortunate we are to have electricity!  Irene was sure a wild one!   Rain, rain, rain and still more rain.  Seven inches fell here by 3 pm today and it is now 9:30 pm and I'm sure the rain gauge will show a higher number than that.  We lost our electric at 7:15 tonight and it just came back on.  I checked http://www.weather.com/ and clicked on VT happenings in different towns, watched some of the videos and look at the devastating pictures.  So many towns have deep water running down their streets. Roads are washed out etc.  You could check this site for yourself.  The TV mostly talks about NYC and doesn't show the real disastrous stuff happening here. 
The river that runs in back of our house (thankfully a long way down over an embankment) is really raging!  Muddy and just hurtiling over what is normally a 12 foot dam but now is just a furocious. racing wall of water.
The rain finally let up and then the winds came, knocking out the power.  Darkness was approaching and with the trees swaying on the edge of our backyard high above the river, I really didn't want to go out and take any pictures!  I think the river will not even crest until noontime tomorrow.  I will go out and get some pictures in the morning as I think our wind is beginning to die down now.
Through it all my daughter and my neighbor came for lunch and again for supper, bringing something to contrubute to the meal.  We took a little walk before the wind came .. in the rain with our big umbrellas. The little brook that flows down off the mountain has turned into a river that doesn't fit through the culvert under the State road at the end of our street. So it is backing up and covering a field as it waits to get on its way to the river.  This brook which is joined with another one like it a bit south of here,  flows tothe river below our house bout a quarter of a mile.  My hubby has built a nice footbridge across this brook and that now is way under water.  It usually gets damaged every spring by the ice as it goes out of the river but hope the water doesn't hurt it too badly.

 Den and his bridge in Spring

But it is the people of VT that I am so concerned for tonight.  People not so fortunate as we are, who have lost so much to this storm.  It will be a long time before this gets all cleaned up and we get back to normal.

Goodnight Irene !

Today was a nice summer day here in VT.  As we drove to our friends' place on Darling Hill where we like to spend time off and on in the summer, we couldn't help but think of the threat of hurricane Irene which is coming up the east coast and is expected to give us a lot of grief with high winds and lots and lots of rain.  How different than in the old days when there was no doplar radar and the media wasn't doing so much warning as they do now.  The farmers out getting in their hay would have had no clue that the next day was to be a horrible, windy time of disaster and destruction.  I am still hoping this hurricane will take a turn and head out to sea before it goes much further north.

It's getting late and I'm tired so I will get along to bed.  Our Miss Lizzie is sitting here staring up at me and wondering why I'm not on my way to bed yet.  She has to get us all tucked in before she makes her final rounds of the place and then comes in to sleep at our feet.  I'll leave with a prayer for safety for all who have to deal with Irene.  Goodnight Irene !  Go out to sea !

God Surely Blessed Our Day !!

My friend BJ's photo of the Fireworks

WOW!!  What a fantastic day we had as we celebrated Weathersfield's 250th Anniversary of the signing of our charter in 1761 !

Sandwiched between two days which produced rain and thunderstorms and some muggy weather, was a picture perfect, temperature ideal, blue-sky day....surely a gift from on high!  We all showed our appreciation of this wonderful day with a lively parade, lots of activities for all ages and fantastic food!
The chicken barb a q was delicious with roasted fresh local corn on the cob and salads. All thanks to our fire department guys.

I did find time Sat. morning early to make a pie for the pie baking contest and I am really glad I did 'cause I won First Place in the contest for one crust pies.  My prize was a lovely 10" pie plate with engraving on the bottom " First Place 250th".  Very exciting !

Another highlight of our day was eating the cake quilt and lots of ice cream, after the judging of the cakes which had all been placed tightly side by side to form what resembled a lovely sampler quilt. Free  to all who like cake and ice cream.  Like who doesn't !

The Quilt Show was a huge success as many folks climbed the stairs to the sanctuary of the old church to view the breathtakingly beautiful lovelies, all 30 of them, all made by folks in our town.  A few really old ones were also displayed, one from the 1870's in excellent condition was the oldest and several other oldies so painstakingly made by hand. The oldest lady to display was 86 and she made her last quilt just a few years ago.

At night, soon as it was dark, we were treated to the most wonderful display of fireworks sent up from an open field on one of the highest hills in town.  They tell me the show was set to music, just like they do in Boston !!   I wore out before dark and we came home, down in the valley, where we got all cozy, as I wrapped in a quilt, of course and Den slipped into his warm shirt and we sat on our back patio and just looked east toward the Center (where we can see the spire on the Center Church when leaves are off) and sure enough!!  There we could see all but the very lowest ones!  These went on and on for about a half hour.  So bright and pretty against the night sky and through a few leaves on our trees above the river.  Perfect end to a glorious summer day of celebration by so many.

Raspberry Cream Pie

It's good to be busy!

Enjoying the Oriole's orange !

A peaceful, rainy day today.  After a great weekend and a fine week of sunshine and 'just right' weather.

We traveled north of here an hour on Sat. afternoon to visit my sweet friend and meet her husband for the first time.  My daughter and husband were invited as well and the ride was nice as we hadn't been this way for some time.  VT is always so beautiful in any season!! (Well, maybe not so much during a snowstorm unless you are home beside the fire just looking out the window!)   We had a wonderful time, cookout with fresh picked corn on the cob YUM! and played a lawn game that kept us in stitches. Dessert was a fantastic lemon cake with a zippy lemon glaze and a big delicious fruit salad.  Best of all was the great fellowship.  At the end of our evening, we watched a very full, most beautiful harvest moon rise higher and higher as we traveled on home.

This is a busy month around here.  Lots of the towns in our area are celebrating the 250th anniversary of their Town Charters.  SO many things to do.  We have our celebration on this next Sat. with a parade, booths of all kinds, an art and quilt show, chicken bar b q , dance, pie baking contest and a quilt formed by many 8X8 decorated cakes put together on a very large table and as a grand finale..Fireworks.  That's a great lot of activity for a town as small as ours.  I am working on the quilt show and hope I have time to enter the pie contest.  Will have more to say about all this later.

Went to a great concert yesterday afternoon in a neighboring town.  This was a part of their 250th  celebration.  Wonderful music by many of the church choirs there.  Then a song by the combined choirs that rocked the building !!  What a testimony and acknowledgement that God surely is still a big part of the lives of so many in our small towns !!  The grand finale to this concert was an ice cream social where all who couldn't resist were invited to make their own sundae.  Of course I had one!  Didn't even want to resist!

Now I guess I'd better take advantage of this rainy day and do some much needed housework.....inside stuff.. OR maybe read more of my new book.  

"Whatever you can do,

Or dream you can...

Begin it!

Boldness has genius,

Power and magic in it! "

                                      Gothe

Summer Bouquet on the woodstove

What a beautiful evening it was last night with the near full moon and some big puffy clouds floating around.  The neighbors invited us over for a campfire and some-mores.  Also our neighbor up the street.  We sat and visited, laughed and toasted a few marshmallows.  It was just cool enough so the fire was a welcome radiance of warmth.

This was a fine end to a great day.  A good friend from our early school days phoned in the morning hoping to find me home and came down from a few miles away to have lunch and spend some time catching up on things.  How precious our friends are !   The weather was so perfect that we decided to have our lunch out on the patio, it is usually kinda warm there at noontime, but today it was just right. Also a great chance to pawn off some more pole beans !  The little cherry tomatoes are flourishing too but they go pretty fast as they are so sweet and good.

I even got around to sewing on a quilt I am making and putting a 'sleeve' on another one so it can be displayed as a wall hanging.  Even the mailman was good to me today!  Brought a newly published book written by my husband's grand niece who is not even 20 yrs. old yet!  It is going to be a good story if the rest of the book reads like the first chapter which I found time to read while supper was cooking.  She is a Scottish history buff and writes her stories around old Scotland.

And today we are meeting the cousins for lunch at a new restaurant in town before they leave to return to North Carolina.  Just now the Harvest Fly is singing his long drawn out song and a couple crickets are chirping.  Oh, yeah... there ARE more pole beans to be picked !  So life here 'in the sticks', is full and very rewarding this summer.  I am praising God for his great goodness to us.  Don't forget to stop and just enjoy your day wherever you may be.  

Picnic Visitors

Yesterday was a wonderful summer day to be out on the water in our kayaks... four gals, my daughter and I and my two cousins who are sisters.  My good husband loaded our kayaks and all our gear into his truck and we all piled into the car, smeared with sunblock, big hats, sun shades and of course, our lunch packs and water bottles.  Dennis deposited us at our destination, a large pond off on a dirt road miles from the sound of automobiles, motorcycles and noises not from nature.  Our lucky day!  No other people there either!  The pond all to ourselves!

After posing for some great pictures, we paddled off into the morning to enjoy the peace of being afloat in a little boat with a gentle breeze at our backs.  The tune to "This Is My Father's World" kept coming to my mind.

When we decided to take a break and have our lunch, we pulled in at a small island, climbed out of our kayaks and up a hill to a clearing in the sweet smelling balsam trees where others had picnicked before.
Someone had make a crude fireplace with the round rocks at hand and even left a pile of neatly stacked wood for the next fire.  Being plenty warm enough and having a cold lunch we left the logs and the fire for the next visitors.  We found seats on a big log and enjoyed our lunch. When nearly finished with my chicken salad sandwich, I was startled by a slight noise behind us.... turning around I was nearly nose to nose with a rather large Canada Goose !  He'd  brought along all his relatives and crept up so quietly on us that we never heard them come up the path from the water behind us.  We gladly gave the leader a piece of sandwich and of course all the relatives were closing in for their little tidbit.  But we were about finished and didn't have enough to go around.  They became rather insistent !  One tried a nibble at my arm and that got us all up and on the defensive.  They slowly turned around and waddled back down the path grumbling all the way and splashed into the water and swam away.  Not before we got their pictures though.  It really helped to make our little adventure more pleasurable.

After such a nice paddle, lunch and encounter with the Canada Geese, our 'boatman' came and loaded up our kayaks for the trip home.  On the way we found a great place to stop for nice tall ice cream cones.  Moose Tracks and Orange Pineapple were the flavors of choice.  Nice ending to a perfect day.

Here's  an exert from my poem  "My Kayak" written a few years ago.

My sweet little green boat!

My "Golden Ages Toy"

In which I find pure joy

Whenever I'm afloat:

I've never known a feeling freer,

As rhythmic paddling pulls me on

Through waters still and calm,

Be it on a lake or on a pond....

The Picnic Crashers

On Gardens and Masterpieces

The Sky  (More later !)

How glorious these summer days!  The garden is keeping me hopping!  String beans anyone??  Most folks I know are overrun with zucchini but this year only one plant came up from out of the 3 hills I planted. And just blossoms on that one so far.  Lots of green tomatoes so that means I can have some fried green tomatoes, which I just acquired a taste for a couple years ago.  I am the only one in my family who really likes them so I make them just for me.

Yesterday was a no work day for me.  My friend Betty came over, arms loaded down with oil painting stuff.  We had scheduled a day, set aside time etc. just to get out the paints and brushes with which to create a masterpiece , make that two masterpieces!  So cocky and sure we were!  Well, we started out just fine, I got a lovely sky going...  blue sky day, pretty clouds etc. (Skies are my favorite) BUT the composition for my masterpiece landscape, escaped my grasp and what ever I started to build just didn't work!  Betty had the same problem... please tell us WHAT that problem was !!  We hadn't had a good face to face visit since spring and eventually we decided to just enjoy each other's company, giggle a bit, look at some great paintings on line and eat our lunch.  Now that was FUN...so guess we weren't meant to make masterpieces that day.  We plan to try again soon.  Maybe we'll remember to ask the Lord's blessing on the project next time!