Fragments From Floyd

They done did. And so we will have a very quiet if moist day at home--quieter than usual because a large tree is across the road a couple hundred yards down the road. VDOT will come take care of it eventually, but until then, it seems a pretty good reason not to go to Explore Park with a load of books this morning. There's that, and the fact that NOAA radio is saying that Roanoke streets and underpasses are flooded in many places. Our neighbor's rain guage has tallied more than 7 inches since Saturday--about the amount we were behind for the year, which is good except for the fact that a large percentage of it will end up carrying our topsoil into the Atlantic.

Meanwhile...

On Saturday, I got a call from a Boone Family member who had a lot of good information for us about the house. Turns out it is older than we thought, that it was indeed built with lumber harvested from and prepared on site, and that it was built by some crackerjack carpenters who wanted to demonstrate some new joinery techniques when they built it in 1862. He has some pages from a thorough genealogy book about the house and land and will stop by some time and let me scan it.

Just when I hung up talking to that gentleman, another long-ago valley resident (who had come by the week before with his sister--a champion promoter of the book, by the way!) pulled up into the drive way to tell me this: that he had read my piece in the paper on Multiflora rose a couple of weeks ago, and more importantly, that it had made him think twice about clearing out the rose invasion on his place across the county, and here's why: it seems that once he read my article that talked about natural controls for this invasive, he is seeing it in many of the roses on his place: witches broom, dying canes that he couldn't explain. I had no idea it was present in Floyd County! So, he asked should he clear the ones that are "infected" with the rose rosette disease or let them be. Let them be was my advice, and even cut canes from infected plants and "innoculate" those that were not yet infected since the organism spreads slowly unless helped along a bit. That was pretty cool!

Gee, seems strange to be posting to Fragments at this time of day. But while I'm here, let me point you (few interested folk) toward some recent changes on the book's website: 1) I've started an additional excerpts page that will ultimately have about 50 paragraph excerpts from Slow Road (plus a few more images); and 2) I've posted an extensive interview that will tell a bit more of the story behind the book (pdf downloadable document.) These kinds of things make easily retrievable files for those who (he said hopefully) want to review the book or do future interviews, as well as just chronicling the ongoing process of moving forward with the life cycle of this little project.