It Just Wasn’t My Day – Or Was It ? June 24th

I let myself sleep this morning until I just woke up on my own, which meant it was morning but not by much when I got up.  I decided to continue chillin’, so I went out & washed my kayak, located all the kayak stuff in the yellow bedroom & put the kayak paddle together (it comes apart for storage.)  Loaded the kayak et all into my truck & headed over to the Rivanna for some paddling.  It was hot but clear.  Unloaded the boat, got it in the water, pushed off & flipped.  The 3 guys and 2 boys fishing at the put-in got their afternoon comic relief performance.  I was a bit short of dignity at this point but managed to re-launch nicely if not all that elegantly.  At least I didn’t loose any gear.

Paddled out of sight of the landing as fast as was prudent - one flip in a “No Swimming” impound was enough for me – & headed towards the Ivy Creek Natural Area coves.  Well at least I was a great deal cooler than when I unloaded the boat, being as I was soaking wet.   A great blue heron flew over and landed at the head of the first cove & proceeded to get lunch-to-go in short order.  I halted the kayak & watched said bird enjoy its suchi snack, then headed on into the 2nd cove & watched some turtles swimming in front of my boat. 

Unfortunately I forgot to watch the weather.  Just as I reached the back of the 2nd cove the sky gets dark, the wind picks up and the thunder starts.  Great.  I’m in an open boat, a thunderstorm is building & I’m about a half mile from the landing with the wind strong & against me.  So I paddled to an opening in the trees near a granite boulder and beached the kayak to wait out the storm.  Serious storm too, half an hour of locally severe weather, at one point I couldn’t even see the other side of the cove & its a modest cove.  Once the weather moved on I paddled back to the landing post haste by following the shoreline.  The wind was blowing diagonally across the water & strong enough to produce a nasty chop, so along the shore was prudent.  I’ve flipped once already, let’s not make it twice !  Made it back OK, just very wet & very chilled.

Once I got home & into dry stuff I headed back out to C’ville for dinner, except C’ville had no power & thus no functioning places to eat out.  This is clearly not exactly my day.  Finally found a pizza place open on the way back home & had a meatball sub.  Oh well.  I had a good if somewhat shortened paddle, I finished the forsythia trimming & pine trimmings disposal after dinner and generally have recharged my internal batteries.  Spent the remainder of the evening doing various small sewing projects since C’ville had no power & thus I had no interwebs.  Funny thing, those servers want electric juice.

Just Chillin’ – June 23rd

The “Buckingham” coming into Scottsville.

I get home from work, I go to bed & the phone rings at 11:15am.  Seems I had brought a piece of equipment home from work, so I got up, got dressed, drove to work, turned in the item in question & then drove back home.  What a great way to start the day.  I looked at my To-Do list, said “Phooey”, & decided to treat myself to  “Just-For-Me” time.  So I grabbed a camera & headed off for the James River Batteau Festival stop at Scottsville.

There were 28 batteaux in this year’s fleet, plus various canoes & kayaks escorting them as they drift down the James River.  All the boats have names but I wasn’t always able to see & read the wooden name plates.  Some where quite faded.

This is the “Maple Run”.  It is one of the shorter batteau.  It steers quicker than the longer batteau but obviously can’t carry as much.   The Batteau Fest starts in Lynchburg and floats its way to Richmond in 8 days with various pre-arranged overnight stops with camping..

This is the Rose of Nelson.  The batteau vary somewhat in length and just how they’re set up.  Not all the boats have awnings although they all have steering oars fore & aft.   Basically these craft float or are poled downstream, although it is possible to pole one upstream if the current is modest.

Most batteau have a short pointed stern & prow on them, but some are flat at both ends rather like a barge.  The wooden boxey things in the center are for gear storage on the reproduction boats.  The originals would have had hogsheads or other freight filling most of the batteau.

This is the ‘Spirit of New London” steered here by none other than Dulcimer Dave McNew of OVPR fame.  He was singing a chantey as the batteau drifted into the landing. 

The day was very hot & humid when I first got to Scottsville but a line of squalls cooled things off nicely without actually raining on the festival.   There were various food & craft vendors available, nice food, decent modern crafts. 

This fellow was snitching food from various folks, I caught him at 560mm.  Isn’t Image Stabilization nice !  I also lost my camera lens cap somewhere at the Fest.  Bummer.

Stay-Cation Part 2 – June 18-20

Friday I relocated my box of Round-Tuits.  Started the day by cleaning and priming 3 aluminum storm windows, then put the first coat of trim paint on the front door and front eves.  That used of 6 hours of labor, 4 of it from a ladder.  Then I put 2 half gallon plastic  orange juice containers mostly full of water in the freezer and made up 2 cheese & baloney sandwiches.  The Urchin & I are to meet up in Front Royal for their 2nd Annual Celtic Festival on Saturday & I’m bringing a cooler with plenty of cold water plus lunch.  Finished up the day by burning more of the white pine and then visiting with friends.

 

Eric Opening the Celtic Festival.

Saturday morning I finished making lunch for the day and then drove over to Front Royal for the Celtic Festival.  Had a bit of a problem finding it as there wasn’t any directional signage to the Festival site, but find it I did.  A little bit later the Urchin found it too, having had the same problem I did finding the Fest.  Even though it was uncomfortably hot, we had a great time.  The music was quite good, there was also various groups dancing, Clan booths, Celtic craft venders, various general vendors, decently priced food booths and even 2 guys with peregrine falcons giving talks on falconry.  

Linda sang mid-afternoon.

There was of course the obligatory pipe band parade.

One of the Peregrine Falcons

Eric, Linda, Urchin & I all had a grand time in spite of the heat.  The Urchin & I ended our day with fresh frozen custards at a local family run shop which makes their custard using local dairy products.  Then I drove home by the shortest way which also happens to be the scenic way.  Got home in time to take a nice cooling bath before the fireflies came out. 

Sunday was tie-up-loose-project-ends day.  The front door has been given 2 more coats of paint, various things have been put back where they belong around the house, the white pine trimmings are all gone, the laundry from the week is done, some minor sewing repair jobs got done and I still had time to go visit more of my friends.  It may be hot but life is good.

Stay-Cation #2 – Midway Through – 6/14-6/17

Well I’ve done it again, I’ve managed to arrange 7 days off of work in a row.  WooHoo !  Got home from work Monday, slept for 5 hours, got up and mowed my back yard, disposed of various little piles of brushwood and then settled down to a nice cup of java and a good mystery novel in my pleasant & delightful freshly mowed backyard.  Tuesday saw me mowing the front yard, deposited the clipping from said mowing on the woods path on the far side of the bridge over the creek, trimming brush away from the bridge, removing the jungle from the front garden, burning a fair amount of the white pine trimmings, doing the laundry and the dishes.  Wednesday was payday so there were various errands I needed to run.  While it was cooler than the previous 2 days it was also heavily overcast with short but heavy rain showers throughout the day.  I did get brush removed from the side-back yard and more trimming on the forsythia done.  The snow load over the winter had done a number on 3 of my 4 oldest bushes and they needed more substantial pruning than I had thought at first.  The rain really woke up the fireflies and the evening rising was the first really big one this year.  The damp seemed to make them hover within a yard of the ground for almost an hour before they dispersed to find the love of their life in the trees and bushes to the song of the evening frogs.  Thursday was an absolutely lovely day, cooler and with a cloudless deep blue sky.  After I did some more house chores I just sat in the back of my yard near the trees just chillin’.  The flagpole for my 1700’s camp got another coat of paint, the 8 pointed star on my 1812 wooden canteen got its final coat of paint and several letters were written.  After the wind quit in the late afternoon I burned more of the white pine trimmings so 2/3 to 3/4 of them are now just ashes.  Around 6pm the fireflies rose as thick as on Wednesday but without hovering near the yard as long.  The frogs weren’t quite as nosey either.

While doing payday errands and food shopping I ran into another once common item which has become hard to find – writing paper.   I don’t mean printer paper, typing paper, 3-hole notebook paper, steno pads, legal pads,etc., I mean plain white paper without lines for the purpose of writing a personal letter to one’s friends.  Writing paper used to be available in every grocery, Five & Dime and variety mart  in several sizes and various qualities.   Well no longer.  Not in Food Lion, Harris Teeter, Wal-Mart, the Dollar General or even Target.  Kroger had half a dozen 6x9 pads of writing paper one of which followed me home.  I guess letter writing is no longer a common skill.  Sad.

If It Ain’t Broke – Don’t Fix It !

So Wednesday I spent several hours positioning my 12 ft. ladder, climbing up the ladder, trimming a pine branch or two, climbing down the ladder,  repositioning the ladder, climbing back up the ladder, trimming another branch or two etc.  I’m a halfling, I don’t like heights.  So pine tree trimming is getting a rest even though I’m not quite done yet. 

Post trimming I went into C’ville to pick up some things, a sponge mop refill and sunscreen spray among them.  Sponge mop refills seem to have gone into exile.  I found butterfly mop refills, roller mop refills, super dupper kingsize mop refills, but no plain old ordinary sponge mop refills.  Screw mount, pin mount, slide bracket mount - doesn’t matter I’ve got all 3 kinds of sponge mop heads.  I finally found 2 LibMan mop refills at Harris Teeter & I bought them both.  Gee whiz world, the basic sponge mop is a good functional product.  I sure don’t want a fancy $25 mop that may or may not have refills available 6 months later. 

The sun screen was even harder to find.  I want the spray on sun screen that comes in a bottle with a Windex type spray head.  The stuff used to be available everywhere.  Now the manufacturer’s have gone to aerosol aluminum cans for their spray on products, which usually means the aerosol is used up before the sun screen.  Grrr.  I finally found 2 bottles of what I wanted at Food Lion hiding down on the bottom shelf behind the after tanning oil.  I bought both bottles.  

Thursday I kicked back a bit.  Put the stuff I got from my friends-who-are-moving-to-Florida away, did some basic house cleaning and painted my rendezvous lodge flagpole Prussian blue.  Mostly I sat in my backyard enjoying the great outdoors while I painted the flagpole.  Paws-in-Trouble came and inspected my paint job just to make sure I was doing it right.  As the afternoon slide into evening I watched the fireflies rise in the yard.  The lighting bugs that glow in a “J” pattern are now rising along with the 3 short dot pattern and 1 long stationary dash pattern.  The “J” pattern bugs are lawn, pasture and meadow critters.  They’re the most common around where I live.  The other two patterns are open woodlands critters.  They appear before the “J” bugs by about 3 weeks but are always rather modest in number. 

I’ve got 3 nights of work then a week off.  Various painting projects are about to have Round Tuits thrown at them !

Time Moves On – June 4-7

This is the new-to-me sundial that friends from the Great Valley gave me.  I spent Saturday with them, cleaning out their shed and generally helping them tie up various loose ends.  They’re  moving out of state, so our regular visits are about to end.  We have had excellent times together and I will miss them greatly, yet its time for them to sail in other waters.  May the wind always be at their back and all their moorages be calm.

I finished the yard mowing Friday and got more trimming on the driveway pines done Sunday, plus various routine household chores were accomplished.   Watched some DVD’s I borrowed from my Urchin too.  Not a bad weekend , just a sad one.

Loose Ends – June 1 & 2

 

Paws-in-Trouble coming down off the roof – note to self, always check roof before removing the ladder.

The 1st of the month is pay day and I also had a dentist appointment that morning.  Got the finances and teeth done, but my teeth ached too much for any other major work.  I did get Advantage on the pets, a follow up to the Capstar.  Sophia has been brushed out.  The camp canvas has been put away, the ‘vous clothes washed and stored, the wool blankets aired and put away, and the modern laundry done.  Late Tuesday night I installed the new AC unit in my bedroom window, so now its cool and dehumidified where I sleep.   Various other cleaning has been done, although the front lawn has yet to get mowed.  Oh well, 2 nights of work and then I can mow it.  All in all it has been a good week.  Hugs to all my friends.

Chipmunk helping me put away canvas.

Rendezvous at Belle Grove – May 28-31

The Shenandoah Longrifles sponsor 3 rendezvous a year at Belle Grove – over Memorial Day & Labor Day weekends plus a winter camp sometime during November.  We camp in the woods behind the event parking field, so there’s plenty of shade but with limited overhead clearance.

This is Buffalo Woman’s camp on the right & mine on the left

Of course some folks prefer a fancy camp

While others like it bare bones basic

 

But we all like it very laid back – particularly when its hot

Here’s Buffalo Woman – aka Jane in her summer finery

Of course it isn’t a real ‘Vous without some music

I’ve been known to do a bit of pickin’ & singin’ too

 

But mostly ‘Vous is about spending time with your friends

Doing nothing in particular

Two Colonial longhunters in camp

An Irish frontier family

It was hot but no rain from Friday morning until I left Monday morning.  No rain on the way home either, although I still had to lay my canvas out to dry.  It was still damp from the morning dew.

Finished off Monday by mowing my backyard, unloading the gear from my truck and giving Capstar to all the pets.  Hot weather equals fleas.  Ugh.