Another Halloween

Halloweenfest is one of our town's biggest street festivals.  Vendors line the closed streets offering all sorts of craft items and foods.  The stores are all decorated.  Music fills the air.  And the laughter of the children is heard everywhere.  It is such a fun time.

Our little town has many hills and there are three streets that are the best for trick or treating. The streets run parallel to one another and have lots of houses in a concentrated area.  Because so many children trick or treat on these three streets, the whole town helps out.  Various stores have boxes for donations of treats or money to purchase them.  These are distributed to the folks living on these three streets and in some cases people volunteer to assist giving out candy if needed.  Most of the children limit their trick-or-treating to this area.  Safe for the kids.  Easy for the parents.  And community participation.  What a great little town.

I'm sure that one reason we celebrate Halloween with such vigor is that our county is Transylvania.  Many cars have stickers of bat silhouettes and proclaim, "Transylvania County.  Bite Me!"

There are so many things for the children to do at Halloweenfest.  The usual face painting, cookie decorating, tractor rides, bouncy houses, etc.  But my favorite by far is the Great Pumpkin Roll.

The event is called the Great Pumpkin Roll

But almost everyone in town calls it the punkin' roll.

Local farmers donate the roundest pumpkins for the roll.

The pumpkins vary in sizes encouraging speculation as to which is better, the small ones or the larger ones.

Everyone has a "scientific" reason one is better than the other.

 This is the top of Jailhouse Hill

(Yes, the hill that no longer has the jail.)

There are bales of hay at the bottom where the street is barricaded.

No, there has never been a pumpkin making it to the bottom of the hill.

 The kids line up and lots of folks cheer them on.

Wave after wave of children participate in the pumpkin roll.

 I especially love watching the children gesture and shouting encouragement to their pumpkins.

When I was a child, we went trick-or-treating at night and on Halloween night.  Most communities now have designated hours the weekend before.  In the daylight.  I know that is how it must be but I'm sorry that children no longer have the scary fun of going out in the dark.

We also had large Halloween Carnivals at school.  I'm not sure if they do that anymore, but I still remember those peeled grape eyeballs, spaghetti brains, and the fortune teller who looked remarkably like my friend's mother.  What a fun time.  Thank goodness our little town still celebrates Halloween.

So today is actually Halloween.  And we are in the 70s here in the mountains.  We may set another record for high temperature this last day of October.  And the heat is expected to continue all week.  Seriously?

We Love Lucy

Our house sits on top of a hill and the backyard slopes down to a little creek below.  It is a cool spot in summer and a fun place for Lucy to explore.  She especially likes it when the Autumn leaves have fallen.  She and Ellie use to chase each other around and around the laurel thicket there.

Like many areas of the mountains, our Autumn color was muted this year with many leaves turning a little yellow and then all brown.  Strong winds have made many trees bare already.

Lucy sniffs her way up the stone path

 

 Lucy at a forced sit and not at all happy about it.

You might make me sit but I'm not looking at the camera.

And I'm not going to smile.

Yes, we have chairs in the woods and tables and benches made from logs

 It's very dry here and our little creek is barely a trickle

Don't some of your trees have faces?

There seems to be a massive sense of unease throughout our country.  I do hope that will subside after the election.

Many people around our planet are troubled and in pain.  From Nature's wrath and the most evil of our fellow humans.  Bombs are deliberately aimed at schools and hospitals in war-torn areas.  So when we ask for peace, let's be sure to remember all of those who are suffering.

This week's quote is from Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek,
But a means by which we arrive at that goal” 

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE!

Always buy your favorite candy to give for Trick or Treat.  So if there is any left over you can eat candy with impunity.  No calories in leftover Halloween candy.  You heard it here first.

A Special Birthday

It has been a nice break and a great visit with our daughter.  The weather was perfect the entire time although we would have liked some rain.  It is frighteningly dry here with fallen dry leaves and pine needles.

Today is our daughter's birthday.  Our firstborn and only daughter.  She was born in Indiana where my husband was serving his two-year obligatory stint in the Navy.  Our first three choices (they actually asked for our preferences) were all overseas.  So we were sent to Indiana of course.  We lived on base at the Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD) in Crane, Indiana.  NAD Crane was established in 1941, the Navy taking over 100 square miles spanning four counties in southern Indiana for the purposes of producing, testing, and storage of ordnance.  When we were there, the base had a small number of military personnel so we lived in a lovely two-story house that would previously have been given to a much higher ranking officer.  It was  a lovely place to have our first baby with miles and miles of paved flat private roads that led to the storage bunkers, trails and old homesteads, a very large lake and extensive recreational facilities.  Twenty miles southwest of Bloomington, our gates were often the site of protesters from IU.  (We had much more in common with the students than with the Navy.)

So our first child was born in nearby Bedford.  A real little Hoosier.  She was a beautiful baby and such an easy infant to care for.  Always adaptable to our young parenting skills.  She was a delight and I thought motherhood was very fine indeed.  She was the apple of her grandfather's eye who held her at every opportunity and logged miles in her stroller.  I carried her in a backpack-type carrier in the tiny nearby town of Odon, IN.  The folks stared at the strange method of carrying a baby.  We drove through the Amish communities nearby.  She loved riding in the car.

Yawning as if she were already bored.

The day she came home from the hospital.

She grew into a delightful toddler.  Full of good humor, she never had a single tantrum.  What on earth were those folks talking about those "terrible twos?"  She was a compassionate little thing from early on.  She loved the children's television show "Sesame Street."  But she ran from the room when the Sesame Street baker invariably fell down and dropped his cakes.  She saw nothing humorous about falling down or dropping cakes.

One of her last photographs as an only child.

When she was a little over two years old, her baby brother was born.

We moved to Milwaukee when she was twelve and she lives there still.  But she also loves the North Carolina mountains as much as we do.  She comes to visit several times a year and we spend most days traveling on mountain roads and the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We ramble small rural roads and find all sorts of wonderful sights we might otherwise have missed.  She's a great traveling companion.

She is an accomplished fisherman and she and her fishing buddy fish in Lake Michigan and in rivers and the other lakes all over Wisconsin.  They have even gone on a week-long fishing trip in Canada with a guide and rather spartan living conditions.

She caught her first Steelhead Trout this year.

It is held up by her fishing buddy.  He was as happy about it as she was.

She knows more than I do about birds and she and a friend often go birding all over WI.

Most importantly, my daughter is one of my very dearest and most trusted friends.  We can be together for long stretches of time and still enjoy each other.  We both love the same British comedies and mysteries. And the old Bette Davis and Vincent Price movies.  And many of the same books.  And yet we can share quiet time as well.

Lucy loves for her to visit and sits close by, demanding a lot of petting. At night, before I would put her to bed, Lucy would wander to the sofa to greet our daughter once again.  After our daughter went back to WI, Lucy would stare attentively at the guest room, hoping that she wasn't really gone.

So here's a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our first born. From us and from Lucy:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR DAUGHTER

HERE'S TO THE START OF ANOTHER YEAR FULL OF FUN AND ADVENTURE!

We Love Lucy

Finally.  We are having wonderful Autumn weather.  Cool and crisp mornings and warm and sunny afternoons.  Lucy does thrive in this weather.  She forgets that she is eleven now and she still runs like a puppy, then sinks to rest.

She even curls up like a puppy, head between her paws.

 But she is on her feet when I open the pill bottles.

Always ready for a pill sammich.

I will be taking a blogging break for at least two weeks.  Our daughter is coming for a visit and we will be hitting the mountain roads.

We don't subscribe to THE NEW YORKER, but here is their clever cover.  Like a determined terrier, a certain politician simply cannot let go, even when it's in his best interest to do so.  I understand he was up in the wee hours this morning still tweeting away.  So this cover is appropriate.  In case you cannot read the sash, it's "Miss Congeniality."

I get rather depressed sometimes thinking about all the problems we have in this time.  The damage we inflict on our mother earth, the damage we inflict on our fellow humans across the globe.  And I feel overwhelmed with a desire to do something.

In those times, I remember the words of Edward Everett Hale.  I may have shared them before but they are especially appropriate now.

I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND, EVERYONE

DO THE SOMETHING YOU CAN DO

 

Wonderful Diversion

I saw flashes of him several times.  But never when I was outside with the camera.  I knew he would soon be joined by others but their time among us would be brief.  So I spent quite a bit of time hoping for a photograph.  Of one of my favorite migrants, the Rose-breasted Grosbeak.  The males come first and stay a week or so and then the females join them for a few days.  The males travel on their southward journey and we enjoy the females for another week or so.  They stay in our area to rest and refuel for the remainder of their journey to Central America or South America.

The Rose-breasted Grosbeak is about the size of an American Robin.  In spring they have a song similar to the robin, only more beautiful.  As if a robin took singing lessons.  The grosbeaks do not nest here and we are treated to them only during the spring and fall migrations.

Finally.  I'm there with my camera and the bird appears.  The bird I've been looking for.

Getting a drink from the bird bath.

Oh, you are gorgeous.  I do wish you would turn around.

 The bird turns around and sees me.  He is not at all sure if he will stay in my presence.

 You talking to me?

 Oh, yes.  You are almost as pretty as you are in spring.

 Thank you for visiting us.

I sometimes feel a bit guilty photographing birds who clearly notice me.  This one did not take another drink after he saw me.  He quickly decided he was too uncomfortable to stay and off he flew.  When he did I moved away so he could come back for a snack and a drink.

We will enjoy these bright male Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and will be a bit sad when we see the first of the migrating females.  That will mean the days of seeing this beautiful rosy breast will soon end.  But there will be other days and other new birds.

I won't even turn on the television during the day.  I'll be outdoors.  The beautiful news of the migration outside is a wonderful diversion from the frightening reality series of politics.

We Love Lucy

Autumn is here!  The panic gasoline shortage is pretty much over.  The Colonial Pipeline was quickly diverted around the leak and the pipeline fixed.  So we will be able to get up to higher elevations to see the changing colors.

Lucy has developed some contact allergies and has two more "hot spots" and a rash on her underside.  She's under treatment and new drugs so we're hoping everything will heal up nicely.  The veterinarian thinks this will be seasonal but one of the newer drugs can be given year round if she develops chronic allergies.  We think it has to do with grass since she gets much worse walking in the grass beside the roads.  No, our community does not spray anything on the grass.  But this has been an unusually hot dry summer.  The veterinarian says she is seeing many more allergies this year than usual.

The following photograph was during a rest period after a romp in the park.  It's difficult to know whether she is smiling because she is happy or whether it is more of a sun grin.

Lucy grinning in the bright sun

 The following is a genuine grin.  I had just asked if she wanted a cookie and snapped this before she could get up.  We call all treats "cookies."

 Oh, yes please.  I'd love to have a cookie

To those of you who are losing your summer birds, we thank you for sending them to us.  The migration has begun once more and we truly welcome the visitors who spend a week or so with us before heading to parts further south.

I do hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  I'm not watching much television at all, although I did stay up late Wednesday night watching the Charlotte protests and then the rioting.  So sad to see.  And I don't want to hear one more prediction about what the Presidential debate might be like.  I won't even be watching.  I'll wait for Samantha Bee to fill me in afterwards.  And thank goodness John Oliver is back from his break.

I actually heard a woman tell a reporter, "Well it's time to shake things up.  Maybe we do need to put a bull in the china shop."  Silly woman...not good for the bull and certainly not good for the china shop.

Today's quote is actually a poem by Gaby Comprés.  It makes me feel good every time I read it.

There are stars you haven’t seen and loves you haven’t loved
There’s light you haven’t felt and sunrises yet to dawn
There are dreams you haven’t dreamt
And days you haven’t lived and nights you won’t forget
And flowers yet to grow
And there is more to you that you have yet to know.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND, EVERYONE

DREAM THOSE DREAMS

 

Hint of Color

It's beginning to look and feel more like Autumn in the mountains.  We love to drive to the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway (BRP) where the color first appears around here.

I took this photograph for the clouds, not the color

 Spots of color give a hint of the beauty to come

 The wildflowers and shrubs add to the color

 And the clouds again.  Almost like a huge contrail

Just mention the words, "possible flurries" during the winter in the south and people run to the grocery store.  In no time at all the bread and milk are sold out.

Likewise, mention the words, "some gasoline shortages" and everyone drives to top off their tanks.  Immediately.  So it comes as no surprise that there is no gasoline anywhere in our county, and likely not in neighboring counties as well.  And by the time of this writing there may be none anywhere in North Carolina.  The Colonial Pipeline carries most of the gasoline delivered to the East Coast has a leak and spill in Alabama.  So warnings were issued that gasoline supplies might be reduced.  That statement created a self-fulfilling prophecy and the gasoline stations sold out completely by Sunday morning.

 Photograph from a mountain newspaper

Our governor (and other governors in the Southeast) has declared a state of emergency as the delivery interruptions might create huge problems for the school system and emergency services.

A diversion around the leak is in process and hopefully the gas deliveries will return to normal soon.  Meanwhile, there will be no casual driving on the BRP to see the colors unfolding.