AC: Made in the Shade

This is the time of year that even in the mountains, the heat enters into the conversation along with the details of the last thunderstorm that hit one neighborhood but didn't shed a drop on the next.

Folks sometimes want to know if we have air conditioning here in the old house.

Heck no. We heat with wood. We cool with it, too.

Five large maples constitute our summer cooling. The largest is the one in the front yard off the porch; it still has the remains of two-by-four steps that once gave somebody's children access to the thick fork of branches that shelter the road.

Two maples are above Goose Creek along the road, blocking our southern windows both from the hottest part of the day and from a full view of the pasture, May til November.

The fourth maple is to our west, between the branch that runs beside the house and the driveway. We'd really suffer the late afternoon sun for a while before it dropped below the high horizon well before the rest of the county experienced the same some hours later.

The fifth maple, to the northwest beside the shed, is the only one we could lose and not be hotter for it.

This picture (larger image) of a single shaft of light, a tiny packet of solor photons, makes me appreciate how many more of these light-to-heat rays don't reach the house in the summer months, thanks to our solar-powered organic air-conditioning system of maple trees.

They'll have their work cut out for them today. And the floor fans and ceiling fans may see their first action before dark.

Persistance

From the pasture, looking back across the ribbon of creek below the road to the house, is an odd monument: steps to nowhere.

Unless I tell it, stories will be made up centuries hence as to what the original purpose of those steps was, way back in those primative times at the turn of the last millenium. The house will be gone; the concrete steps tipping into Goose Creek will persist, though they too will ultimately vanish, grit and grain at a time, eroding their way as all things finally do, to the ocean sediments. Ashes to ashes, concrete to dust.

It's not that much of a tale really, but it is true, a solid fact, so better than the lore that might grow to say that this aggregate of rock and concrete washed downstream in a flood, or perhaps there was a great explosion that hurled the steps from higher up the bank from that flat place where it looks as if there might have, at one time, have been a house. In fact, that seems certain. Someone with a metal detector many, many years ago found an embossed metal placard on that knoll that clearly stated "Here's Home".

Well, there was a time it was not our home. Yet. We had begun to make it so, but eight years ago today, in June of 1999, the work had only just begun. One of the first things that needed doing was to remove the broken-down front porch that was not the original. It had been rather poorly constructed since the house was built, and it covered the entire southern face of the house. The approach to the old porch was this solid mass of concrete, four steps fixed in a form. My suspicion is that this was a federal assistance work, since we had similar replacement steps installed at the first house we owned, and whatever federal agency held part of the mortgage wanted to update their investments with such things as PERMANENT entry steps.

But they had to go. So before I left for work, I was talking with the backhoe boys about what was to be done with the mass of artificial stone. They had brought a jackhammer for the purpose and planned to break up the chunk of rock, and would need to put the rubble somewhere.

"Might go down along the creek below that maple where the stream is cutting into the bank. I want to protect that tree; it's part of our air-conditioning" I told them.

When I returned home that afternoon, I was mortified to find that they had been able to get the whole lump into the bucket of the backhoe, and yup, they put it right where I wanted those busted-up chunks of rock to go. And there they sit to this day.

However, Goose Creek pulls away the ground from under the old steps as the level of the stream bed falls. At first, in their new place overlooking the creek, the surface of the steps was horizontal. I used to sit on them in the shade of the maple and watch the minnows play in the creek below. Now, they're pitched steeply toward the water, gravity being a patient force, pulling every mass inexorably toward the center of the earth.

One day, maybe in our lifetimes, after a summer hurricane, the whole five ton lump of rock will tumble upside-down into the creek. The smart thing then would be to have the same guys come with the same jack hammer and bust up the intact mass and push the pieces back into the creek bank. But you know, I'd almost be tempted to leave the thing intact. Think of the creative stories it would inspire!

A Poem for Father's Day

So here we are, the parental empty-nesters, sandwiched once more on the late spring calendar between Special Days for mothers and fathers. Our adult offspring (the term we substitute in recent years for the word "children" when describing our small but matured brood) live far away and it's easy to misplace even the memory of the satisfaction and anguish of having actively, presently, physically been someone's parent so long ago and far away.

Now I will readily confess that I have a curmudgeonly and cynical opinion of these parental "holidays" as being manufactured for the bottom line of the likes of Hallmark Cards and Russell Stover Candies.
But I will also admit that at times, to be remembered in the small way of a special phone call, a hand-written letter or a cross-country trip on these designated days of appreciation are, well, genuinely appreciated.

Saved, Remembered, Found: a father's day poem-a toast (and cleverly veiled roast) for Father's Day 2004, received from our son, Nathan, then a single scholar just moved to British Columbia, and today married and moving into their first owned home in Columbia, Missouri-still far too far away.

I thought I would share Nate's poem with you this Father's Day in the hopes that it might help you to recall: that seeming crisis in your relationship with your dad that looking back was so silly you can laugh about it now; the way you respected him but never got around to telling him because at the time, he rightfully thwarted your idiot dreams; the lessons he taught you by example, good and bad; and the pride you know he has when he hears from you, a grown or growing young man or woman who occasionally takes the time to say "thanks, dad."

Do consider using the short phrases of this "poem" as a model, and give a single page a single hour of your time, a gift to give your dad this year, while there's time. Chances are, he'll never forget it.

---

A Father's Day Poem For Dad, 2004

For all the times you made me hold that damned ladder;

For all the times you said, "if you throw that tennis racquet again, we're going home," and I threw the tennis racquet again, and we went home;

For that time you wanted to go hiking in the Smokies, and I wanted to go to Amy Harris's pool party, and I pitched such a fit halfway to the Smokies that you turned the car around and drove us home at breakneck speeds, only to give in half an hour later after I pitched another fit, and we went to the Smokies, and had a nice time;

For beating me every time at every sport and every game, many years after I was sure I was better than you;

For the thirty-seven times you told me the name of the same green-metallic beetle, while each time I was thinking about some girl or some song I'd like to write, or some song I'd like to write about some girl, only half an hour later to see a green metallic beetle, and wonder what kind it was;

For the times you crushed between your fingers something sweet-smelling, or sharp-smelling, or minty-smelling, or putrid, and shoved it toward my nose, saying, "Nature snort;"

For all the arguments we've had about religion, and all the agreements we've had about politics;

For all the times we've called each other "smart-ass," audibly or otherwise;

For every time you should've made fun of me for the way I split wood, and the vast majority of times that you did;

For all those really stupid ideas I've had, which you vehemently opposed, until you knew I'd go through with them anyway, at which point you supported me;

For all those trips I've taken, and you've secretly worried about, even while you tried to project all your concerns for me onto "my mother;"

For teaching me to light the water heater-and to rake with full, efficient strokes, and curse at the weed-whacker, and spread the peanut-butter clean out to the crust;

For all the creative ways you punished me, with just enough consequence to sting, and just enough humor to tell stories about later;

For finding your craft, your voice, and a fulfilling sense of place--for living my aspiration and giving me a sense of belonging, even as odd as I feel to live vicariously through my father;

For all those times, all those lessons, all your friendship and love, this father's day I bought you an ice-cold bottle of beer,

Which I'm drinking now as I write you this poem,

All the while thinking, man, he would've enjoyed this.

Thanks, Dad. Love you. I'll spot you that beer sometime. -- Nate

Wake-up Call

If Thoreau is right, then Ann and I sorta slept through yesterday. We both almost missed our anniversary. Again.

She called at noon yesterday, 37 years later, having just remembered why June 11 should mean something to us. She said she'd bring pizza (when was the last time we had pizza since the kids left home?) and I should put the bottle of champagne somebody left here two or three New Year's Eves ago in the fridge.

Home from work, she lofted the flat pizza box high overhead as she walked up the gravel drive with the dog dancing circles around her on his hind legs.

We put two slices each in a tupperware container, grabbed two glasses (made by Colleen's son, our favorites) and the chilled bottle of bubbly and walked down the "New Road" to the two white-webbed chairs you saw from a winter picture during an ice storm. They've been waiting for us.

We pulled the chairs into the clearing. We watched the sun go down, listened to the night noises, shook our heads how long, how very long it's been. And started number 38.

Love of Country: The Local Reach of Patriotism

I have put up the first of two parts of an essay read at Chateau Morrisette Winery's Spoken Word Dinner of May 11. The topic was patriotism--not an area much visited at Fragments. Or isn't it?

...and so I asked myself--as I walked our forest path near home later that day--what then does it mean to be PATRIOTIC? Am I thankful for the blessings of my FATHERland, my country? Yes, no question, and the more so--I thought as I stepped from rock to rock across the creek--as I have come to discover what is sacred in this very COUNTRY-SIDE, as I gain a richer understanding of the specific geographies of my life, and know by heart the land within these boundaries of home.

My patriotism begins to grow from a physically-specific love and honor to a certain landscape--not from abstract feelings of national self-regard held within borders too vast to comprehend.

As I think was true for our forefathers-my love of Pater Land begins in thankfulness for the abundant providence of MATER Earth, this "gift of good land" that is our blessing and covenant.

I'll post part two at Nameless Creek tomorrow. Part One

Fred's Victory Garden. Or Not.

As I contemplate the gardening year ahead, what comes to mind is the vintage Wide-World-of-Sports opening action that showed us the disparate fates of two ski-jumpers. Their success and failure will live forever in some our chronologically-gifted minds. Remember?

One happy skier is airborne, leaning forward, building speed down the ramp, then buoyant and balanced, graceful and solid in his landing; the other, ill-fated, off-center and out of control, he careened over the side of the jump, wind-milling arse over teakettle in the agony of defeat.

It could go either way every gardening year, I acknowledge as I head out with my seeds, my hoe, and my hopes momentarily intact. Sadly, at the end of gardening year 2006, I was the second of those two jumpers-humiliated, humbled and broken. Sports fans gasped in horror. Ouch. That's gotta hurt.

I blamed myself, though I knew the garden's sad and sudden demise was surely due to matters beyond anything I could have done. Maybe it was the four inches of rain we had the week before Sudden Garden Death. Or, perhaps we were finally paying the chemical price for putting the garden in the only possible place it could go in our less-than-ideal rock-infested deep valley location: over the septic field. (I thought grass-and veggies-were supposed to grow greener there!) I had the soil tested for excess chlorine, considering this possibility.

The total garden wipeout was all the more heart-breaking because at the end of the gardening year of 2005, we had five walnuts cut from around the garden. We get little enough light in this deep holler, and the trees had grown tall and wide enough to cast a significant shadow. Also, you may know, their roots exude a toxin poisonous to competing plants-including those of the edible vegetable variety. (We bartered one large walnut trunk towards an oak desk, and burned the tops for firewood, even though I think walnut makes more ash than heat.)

The other tragic fact about our 2006 garden's utter failure was that we had made its success a kind of sink-or-swim test of our self-sufficiency: let's work as if we are totally dependent on summer's produce alone for the coming winter's food. I set the bar high, and didn't even get airborne. Test score: we would have starved.

Okay. Here's the full confession part of this dreary tale: we have seen the enemy and it are us. Well, it are me. Yep, single-handedly I wiped out our garden from sheer ignorance in my gardening zeal. Soil tests in March '07 showed the soil was NOT ACID ENOUGH! Somebody (gulp) must have put too much wood ash (walnut, actually) and leaves on the soil. Mea culpa. The big OOPS. I have followed the advice given to bring our little plot back to a healthy pH, and we'll hope for the best.

The best. Now just what does that mean, in local gardening terms? Is the best we can hope for to create the lushest, tastiest and most tempting Deer and Insect Salad Park on Goose Creek?

As my daughter would say: you want some cheese with that whine?

I admit it: I'm discouraged. We have rectified my toxic attempts at organic soil amendment. We have removed the shade trees to maximize our sunlight, and repaired the five-strand electrified fence.

And yet, with all the hours of tilling, stooping, bending, pulling, hoeing, watering and coddling in the months to come, we may still suffer the agony of defeat. Make that "the agony of the feet"-deer feet-tramping the Swiss Chard, mincing the smooth spaces where I would plant fall greens, tramping down the waist-high corn. Deer: rats on stilts. What's a gardener to do?

And I dream of the Fortress Garden. I see rat wire sunk two feet below the surface to keep out burrowing insectivores-moles and shrews-that would tunnel their way into the battlement. Twelve foot posts are buried three feet into the earth, cemented in place, to hold up a ratwire-reinforced nine-foot electrified fence. There is razor wire across the top. The entire structure is covered by a drape of fine-mesh Kevlar netting to keep out the crows that would maliciously pull up the new bean sprouts, the cruel Japanese and Potato Beetles that turn vegetable leaves to lace, and the menacing eye-seeking ear-buzzing gnats of July that make a gardener slap his head silly.

But daydreams end, and life goes on, powdery mildew and blossom rot notwithstanding. And as I stand here on the leafless plain of our future garden in early May, I look around and see the greens and golds, reds and yellows of all the blessings that can come from the tiny seeds in my bucket, still embryo-like in their packets full of promise and hope.

You know, I bet that the guy that ended up in a crumpled heap off the edge of the ski jump eventually got back up and tried again. And so, too, will we. I'll get back to you in September with the judges' scores.

Printed in "The Road Less Traveled" | Floyd Press | May 17, 2007

Child's Play

We were house-bound a good bit of the time in Dakota, but even so, we were able to do some "fun" things with Abby.

She'd never had much chance to jump rope, but her dad had a professional-quality rope (leather?) that was of course, too long for Abby, but worked very well with two people operating the controls (Granny Anny and the Dumpster).

With considerable practice, Abby learned to run in while the rope was high, and even jump and turn 'round a couple of times. She was quite proud, and so were we. And it burned off a little of that surplus of energy that six-year-olds need to vent (but ~60 year olds, not so much.) Here you can see she has pretty good hang-time--some good springs in those young legs!

We also worked a little on using the bow-and-arrow that had arrived earlier in the week from Goose Creek by mail. There's more coordination to such a simple thing than you'd think, until you break down all the steps that have to be learned in sequence to make it work.

She finally got to where she could get one of the suction-cup-tipped arrows pretty much across the downstairs room--another new skill under her belt.

However, those feathers (that were simply for looks, glued to one side of the shaft) were too much temptation for Maggie the cat, who promptly picked up an arrow in her mouth and ran off with it and ate the "bird" part of the arrow. Bad cat!

Ashes to Ashes, And One Failed Garden

I didn't think I was putting out too much woodstove ash on the garden last winter, but apparently, the story was told mid-summer when the garden suddenly up and failed. I mean it disappeared overnight after a period of heavy rain. I blamed the rain (though I couldn't explain why; our soil is sandy and doesn't get waterlogged like clay soil does.)

This March I had a soil test done by sending off a sample to Virginia Tech's soils department. We have seen the enemy, and it are us. Prescription for correcting what ails our vegetable garden (other than an excess of deer and moles): it is TOO basic! ACIDIFY!

Soils over the growing season tend to become more acidic due to leaching of basic ions, and the usual remedy is to add lime to "sweeten" the soil. But in our case, we are advised to add acidic ions. Apparently the combination of wood ash and raked leaves was too much of a good thing.

And believe me, it isn't easy to find agricultural acidifiers! Finally, after a good bit of shopping, I found AG sulfur (to acidify) and UREA (to add nitrogen only, there's an excess of P and K in the soil) and after some tedious calculating, I broadcast 1.7 pounds sulfur and a half cup urea for each 100 square foot of garden.

With the rains we've had this past week, those amendments have soaked deeply into the soil so that this next week, we can get serious about putting in our DEER SALAD PARK otherwise known herebouts and cynically as a vegetable garden.

Good Time Had by All

We had just enough chairs (thanks to Haven's Chapel Methodist for the loan!) and just enough parking places for the 40 or so that showed up for the First Ever Goose Creek ANNex House Concert Saturday night.

Performing, Mac and Jenny Traynham (Southern Mountain Melodies) on what was almost the date of the issue of their new CD (coming early next week!) In attendance, ambassadors from the New Roanoke Jug Band, Beggars Circus and the Hoorah Cloggers, as well as a cast of music listeners.

If you'd care to (and even though it does not do justice to the evening's music, here's a short clip of a number that recruited Jay on the washboard and Shay on the fiddle. (Towards the end, you can hear Tsuga barking forlornly, wanting to join the fun.)

Where Trees Have Faces

Next time granddaughter Abby comes to visit, there will be a surprise waiting for her on a new trail recently created through the Enchanted Woods. It is a trail made solely (well not solely) so that we can pass by this ancient cedar that Ann discovered on a steep hillside we never visited.

She became so fond of this tree she gave it a name (Isabella--why, you'd have to ask her; and she would likely say "it just looked like an Isabella). And she gave it ('scuse me, HER) a face.

So we'll pass on, Isabella's face will persist. And centuries hence, an entire folk explanation will spring up for the discovery of a woodlands race that worshipped trees on a steep hillside overlooking what one man long ago called Nameless Creek. What must they have been like, they'll wonder.

Creature Feature

So we've now had two full nights without a nibble. No creature was stirring, not even a mouse. What a profound relief to be free (for now) of things that go bump in the night. The scratching was so loud at times it even upset the dog, who would come stand in the dark at my side of the bed for reassurance.

But yesterday, we were all well rested. The dog was up to his usual antics for this time of year, what with the butterfly shadows zigging and zagging around the yard on a sunny afternoon.

But when I called him to come in, he balked. He'd come just so close to the house, then acted as if he was guarding something in the grass. And as I stepped closer to see, he picked up his kill du jour: a rather large, long-tailed mouse (species unk).

Odd, I thought. He catches lots of moles, and the cat (rest her soul) used to catch the much quicker and more nocturnal and secretive mice. But I don't think I've seen the dog catch a mouse before. It must have been sick. Uh-oh.

Do you suppose this was one or our poisoned evictees?

I lassoed the dog and drug him inside, and came back and bagged up the potentially warfarin-laden mouse carcass and put it out of harm's way. And we will have to be vigilant over the next few days for a repeat of this scary consequence of our purging the dancing mice from over our not-quite-sleeping heads.

And while in the dog-zone, we discovered last week that the dog had tape worms. And looking back, I have to wonder if this helps explain Tsuga's bizarre eating disorder that had him eating (and puking) walnut shells. Maybe this was just the wisdom of the species (along with eating grass) as a way to either 1) make himself throw up, or 2) cut/shred some tapes in the intestines from sharp edges of the odd stuff he'd eaten.

Of Mice and Men

Put your money on the mice. All night long, they're still frisky; I'm exhausted.

What to do? The warfarin is working. Manilow wasn't toxic enough. The snoring in the room didn't stop them, though all night along--those brief moments when I was sleeping--I dreamed of humpback whales.

SO what would an exterminator do--wrap up the entire house in a big baggy and fumigate?

Where do the mice-with-trackshoes live--only between certain floor joists, or fromt there, into the walls and on into the founation and up to the attic? I haven't put D-con those places yet, but am planning to.

I've heard of some high-frequency sound emitters that drive away vermin, but am guessing that's about 90% hype and 10% fact.

Admittedly, though the songbirds took a hit, we had no mouse problems when the cat was around. Maybe we can take up a floorboard and stick a tiny cat or two in there for a week, and see what happens. Nah, Ann won't let a cat inside.

Something's gotta give. Ideas welcomed.

The PitterPatter of (Uninvited) Little Feet

This will be the fourth night of biological warfare. So far, it's the mice, three, and me, zip. Although there seems to be some attrition--less scurrying, and slower.

I've never figured out why the mice who have made a home between our bedroom ceiling and the floor above are prone to RUN everywhere (in the pitch black darkness.) My only guess is that it is a time of high murine libido, what with spring and needing to get started on the first of several litters of the year. Eat, run and make babies. Just NIMBY. Or in my ceiling, more to the point.

So the first night, we tried the Barry Manilow torture. I set the radio upside-down on the floor above, and it did the trick, making our rodent boarders think there were humans just a floorboard away--until the station went off-air for a while about 2 a.m. and it was time to make whoopie til our alarm put an end to the debauchery around 4.

The next day, I ramped it up a notch, finding a half-inch drill bit and a bit of uncarpeted floor in Ann's closet upstairs. With a funnel, I introduced a spoonful of D-con into the hole, then pulled a plastic storage bin back over the hole, and waited til last night to test the results. And like I said, the running was slower, the whoopie was less ebullient, but there was scurrying nevertheless.

So today, another whallop of D-con in the floorboard hole, and we'll see what effect poisoning the well might have tonight. I'm getting impatient to exclude wildlife from the premises, and doing battle with the ladybird beetles daily for the past month has done nothing to improve my generosity toward alien invaders.

It's about bed time. Tomorrow is a work day. I need my rest. YOU HEAR THAT, Mickey?

The WHEREs We're From

Spring. A time of new beginnings. A time to take nourishment from our roots to our winter-resting branches and grow a little taller--no matter how old we are.

And for this purpose--to give you an idea of the soil you grow in--I've posted a link to the Where I'm From template permanently in the sidebar. This "meme" is still circulating to good effect out there in the online world. And closer to home, even wife Ann sat down and wrote her own version for her reunion. Here's mine.

Let me emphasize that my only role in this is to make available two things I didn't have any part of creating: 1) the original poem by George Ella Lyon (which you can find via a link on the template page) and 2) the poem template with blanks and prompts that guide you to create your own version of George Ella's original. I am simply the messenger.

I will see George Ella again this summer at Hindman at the Writers Workshop, and tell her once more how popular and poignant her work has been.

If you haven't sat still long enough to ponder what you'd put in the blanks of the template, what are you waiting for? Finished, it will be a gift to your family. And to yourself. Trust me, it's worth the time.

Nameless Creek Update

Goose Creek Back When ~ Parts One, Two and Three went up on Nameless Creek, Fred's lonely second blog, this week.

Thanks to all who contributed to my better knowledge of this area's history, place names, personalities and culture. (All images and most text donated by means of emails, scanned newspaper articles or other means--no small effort on the part of the contributors, so thanks again!)

Ann's Falls in February

Click image to enlarge

For those of you who have read Slow Road Home, this is Ann's Falls spoken of in the book.

For those of you who haven't read Slow Road Home, what are you waiting for!

SHE drug me up the hillside last week, insisting it would be worth my time. (But then, she'll say anything to entice me out for a walk.) But she was right. I have some other pix of the ropes we've tied between trees on the way up that enable us to get to the falls--a handhold necessary even when there hasn't been a winter storm and long, hard freeze.

It's some rugged terrain, but once we get there, we're always glad we made the effort.

Sadly, the falls are likely to become inaccessible one of these days. Several large (and of course, dead or dying) hemlocks at the rim of the falls will someday rot, and the tops, or the entire tree, will fall across the trail and the little trickle below. Then it will be decades before another photographer can get a clean view and appreciate the scene we were greeted with the other day.

Perhaps it's worthy of note and relevant to this prediction that the sinuous tree trunk lying across the near foreground of this image is that of an American Chestnut, another species that belonged in the southern forest--once--but succumbed to a blight.

An Uncommon Remembrance

From where I stood to take the picture of the store (posted yesterday) I could have reached behind me and touched this stone and bronze memorial. Placed by Clyne Angle's wife, Myrtle, I wonder each time we pass this marker about the generations that have walked, driven wagons, ridden horses, and navigated Model T's past the store that bears its last owner's name.

I wonder, too, about legacies. The best most of us can hope for is a rank and file slab of granite far from where we spent our days. Here is a tribute in place, marking where the celebrated life was lived.

Click the image to read the inscription. How unpretentious and simple. How heartfelt.

What would your memorial say? And where would it be placed to show the center of your life's work and joy?

Note: Visit Nameless Creek (Fragments Annex) today for the first of several pieces on Roscoe Willis' Store on Goose Creek. This series is possible because of the kind contributions by several readers after yesterday's post on Floyd County history. link

Clyne Angle's Store

I feel certain that, while I'm not able to find anything on the web, there is plenty of information about Clyne Angle's Store at the Floyd County Historical Society.

Mrs. Angle still lives in the house across the road, there at the intersection of Shawsville Pike and Daniels Run, and there is a commemorative plaque to Mr. Angle embedded in a stone marker. I don't think I have any photos of it, but wish I did. It's text would shed some light on this image, and on the old Post Office (Floyd County's first, I think I remember) and a building that was active during the Civil War.

You can see the small, green sign in the window that locates the store in the community of SIMPSONS, now not much more than an intersection of two roads. This was once a thriving farming community. A steep mountain path, and later a motor road, was constructed by hand to allow mail delivery and commerce between Simpsons and the similarly active community down the mountain in Goose Creek.

That old road follows along the descending waters of Nameless Creek, and ends up at our barn. We walk it every day--another place in our valley that harbors "good ghosts" as I say.

I'd be interested if there are any readers who have knowledge, stories or recollections of Simpsons or Clyne Angles Store. Please offer comments or emails to share.

Let There Be Light

You can't know (well, some of you certainly can) how good it was to get the power back Friday night.

Sitting down the next morning with a cup of hot coffee to the bright, responsive monitor, keyboard, desk lamp; the whirr of the computer, the tick of the wood stove. Ah, life was good.

And to sweeten the return to the normalcy we've grown so dependent on, on our Saturday morning of restored power, a fleeting pink-orange sunrise.

So even though it was 10 degrees and I was only in robe and slippers, I rushed out with the tripod, fumbled with frozen fingers to set the mirror-lockup, exposure and focus, and clicked a few reminders of the times.

There's the stuff from the freezer in an ice chest on the back porch where it stayed frozen solid, no problems there. And the blue kerosene container. But the most meaningful feature of the photo to me is the tiny glow of the computer monitor you can see through the window.

Puppy Paranoia

The dog bounced up and down at the back door as if he wanted to jump through the window glass, absolutely frantic to get outside.

Well, if he'd heard another dog, then we certainly didn't want to let him out. We tried to distract him with a chunk of banana in his Kong, but he would not be consoled or diverted. Agitated and full of dread, he cowered around the edges of the room looking over his shoulder at an unseen menace, following Ann into the laundry room. Pressed into the angle between the washing machine and dryer, he hid his head in her robe.

"What in the world has gotten into the dog?" we both wondered out loud.

"Maybe he's sick and needs to do something outside we wouldn't be happy for him to do inside" I suggested, but we hoped he wouldn't bolt off down the road when we opened the back door for him, after another dog. Or a bear.

But no, it was more a matter of him avoiding inside than being attracted to something outside. He trod straight to the far side of the drive, up by the bank, and just sat there looking back toward the house, trembling.

After five minutes or so, he hadn't budged. So. It wasn't to puke or poop he wanted out so badly. I called him in. He refused. I threatened. He refused. How very odd. I gave up and left him peering fretfully at the back door as I closed it to get back to whatever it was I was doing at the computer.

An icon had apparently been flashing on the toolbar while we were in conversation in the kitchen and the dog in the front room in his usual position between the computer and wood stove. Instant message--not something that happens often around here. It was only about a week ago a GoogleTalk chat invitation came in, and the little BaBink! notification sound went off, and the dog...

So THAT'S it! There is something about that sound that makes him crazy. Now that I think about it, he acted nuts like this then, and I figured out it was the GoogleTalk sound. Doesn't seem very high pitched to me, and it certainly doesn't imitate another creature's growl or bark. But whatever it is, the dog loathes it, and when offered a chance to come back inside yesterday, he made a bee line for the pen, and put himself in Puppy Jail rather than come in.

Hmmmm. We tend to reward the good rather than punish the bad behavior, but heck, the avoidance of hearing a Ba-Bink! recording would be a powerful inticement to one certain dog I know to comply with commands. But nah. What will happen is that I'll keep my speakers turned off from now on lest we have a dog that needs psychological counceling twice a week.

I actually am thinking about "rewarding" him for tolerating such sounds, Pavlovian-style. I'll keep some kibble at the desk, just in case. Might work. I'll let you know.

Anybody else have a "dog sounds" story similar to this? Tell me Tsuga is not alone in his weirdness.

Study in Winter #2

My fingers are cold. The house cooled off quite a bit yesterday with neither of us here, and when I got home just before dark, the house was sullen and empty looking and somehow I knew we didn't have power back.

I quickly refilled the Aladdin lamp, built a fire in the wood stove, and promptly picked up the phone to call AEP and get the latest dismal projection. And just then there was a whirring noise behind me. I had to stop and think what I was hearing--the sound I've cast a pox on so many times in our otherwise quiet home--the refrigerator motor running again!

This great reawakening was short-lived, however, though I did my part by not rushing in and turning everything ON. But lots of folks must have. Power came. And it went. But several cycles later, about 7:00, it came on for good.

But there is such a thing as too much light. Dimness covers a multitude of sins: the mess the house has become in the absence of vacuum cleaner, adequate light, and with attention turned to more immediate survival matters is now all too apparent, even two hours before first light.

So when Ann (who got home from work at 1:00) wakes up, I can tell you that vacuum we missed so much will be in MY hands for a good bit of the later morning hours. I feel some serious honey-do catching up coming my way. But at least we can do it with POWER!

And, although I grumbled about a possible AEP conspiracy and general ineptitude in our little sufferings, my hat's off to those men who worked in icy, bitter, windy cold to restore power to "5000 households" in Floyd County alone. We appreciate your sacrifice and efforts on our behalf!

Ice Embryos: Where Snowmen are Born

It was no secret that she was as much interested in getting the husband out for a walk as in getting the photographer to the scene of a potential winter image. The physical investment would no doubt be greater than the photographic reward: her sighting of "weird" ice formations happened to be at the base of Ann's Falls--a "trail" supplemented in two places with ropes to make it under the best of conditions both possible and somewhat safe.

Covered by an inch of sleet, my Muck Boots might as well have been snowboards--a fact that became more evident on our way DOWN this same trail after snagging a few shots.

But she was right: these were odd little hummocks of clarified ice, more or less regularly spaced in the splash zone of our little hidden waterfall.

Two years ago (or was it three?) she discovered the falls and "improved" the trail to them. It is still a special place. But I'll be darned, it's a sure thing that if she hadn't drug me up there under the pretense of a potential photograph, I'd have been content to let this snowman nursery come and go unseen.

Digging the Same Hole Deeper

I quoted an oriental-seeming proverb in Slow Road Home (or made it up, I can't remember which) that "wise man finding no treasure, does not keep digging in the same hole." Well, yes. And No.

In this place and time--Goose Creek, here, today, is treasure--of the senses, of personal meaning and belonging; treasure of comfort and beauty, and treasure in the riches of being able to share it with others through words and pictures. I haven't tired yet of writing about it, or in sharing the minutiae of day by day changes and discoveries in pictures of the same old barn, creeks, valley and woods. I seem inclined to keep on digging.

So any skills or tools I can acquire that help me go deeper in this same small place are welcomed and I hope will be put to good use with the light and time I'm given here.

One such tool, I read about a couple of years ago--an experimental technology that would take many photographs--not just three to five horizons side by side--and stitch them together seamlessly. That program, developed by a couple of young guys from UBC is called Autostitch, and it has recently been released in demo mode for free! Well hot dang Skippy! Often, a single shot of a scene through the lens of a camera is like viewing the Grand Canyon through a soda straw while the eye takes in so much more of the vista. Patching a dozen shots into one: there's got to be a time and place when this is just what's needed to best share the experience of being and seeing.

I only had about 30 minutes of light from the time I downloaded the Autostitch panorama software until full shadow, and ran outside with the camera to take six shots; three at the level of the road and house, and three up above of the treetops and forest above the house. This is the product--low res, not wonderful composition, but amazingly seamless and hands-free stitching. Tweaks are possible, and somewhat higher-resolutions as well. But for me, with most of my "finished products" going to the web and not to photopaper, this will be a great tool to help find more treasure in this deep valley.

You can read more about it here.

Addendum: I'm slipping. Missed a perfect opportunity for double entendre/word play by not calling this post "Digging the Same Whole Deeper". Shucks.

Underfoot Dog

"Will want to be involved in all family activities" is the way Labs were described to us when we researched the possibility of getting our first one back in the early eighties. Oh how terribly right that species description was.

Sometimes, the togetherness is inspired by the hope of a dropped crumb or offered morsel from the kitchen counter (favorites: broccoli "trunks", cabbage wedges and plain old dry dog biscuits). But more often than not, these dogs just must be whereever you are. And doing whatever it is that you are doing.

Yesterday, on a cold, blustery, not-so-good-for-photography kind of day, I worked for a while on the woodpile near the house, bringing armloads to store in the woodring and box on the back porch. The dog matched me one for one, each of my trips resulting in another odd piece that he selected for his own wood pile in the grass by the walkway.

At the end of the day, I had an armload of Tsuga-wood--smaller pieces, mostly (but he sometimes selects uncut lengths six or more feet long!) for the small stove in the family room.

If I could just teach him how to use that chain saw...

Un-Seasonal

This picture featuring frosty pasture grasses against the barn is from a couple of weeks ago when we had a run of cold mornings--unlike the balmy ones we've had the past few. We could comfortably have worn shorts while working outside yesterday. We threw a few sticks of wood in the woodstove before noon on Friday, and didn't crank it up again til this morning (and for my money, we don't need it now, but...)

If pictures of ice on the creek was my hope for winter photography, I think I am going to be disappointed. The jonquils are coming up, so maybe I can look forward to wildflower photography in February this year?

January thaw? There's nothing to un-freeze. Found a tick on the dog yesterday--cold blooded creatures quite active in mid-winter bodes ill for spring and summer vermin.

And yet, I'll have to say that freedom from icy travel has made our coming and going far more casual than it usually is this time of year. Still, I'd kinda like to have winter this trip around the sun.

But it's not your father's planet, Bucko, and those old expectations may just be a thing of the past. Could be, the frost and wood heat in January will be the exception, balmy shirt-sleeve weather and a sheet for cover at night the rule.

Keeping Watch

I was lost in thought, my hands occupied with gathering the wood I'd just cut for kindling at the top of the drive. The sun was warm, the earth smelled of spring on a January day, altogether a very peaceful and satisfying time on a country afternoon.

And I happened to glance down toward the pasture and found that the dog, too, was lost in revery, even as he surveyed the pasture along Nameless Creek for marauding ground hogs, squirrels or the odd mid-day deer.

I ran inside for the camera, and walked back out nonchalantly, knowing that if Tsuga had any idea he was my intended subject, he would immediately be at my feet, wagging his tail, thinking I wanted to be close. No, my lens focal length is not that short, fella. Go back and sit down facing south, and look casual.

I did have to reposition him (which amazingly he allowed) although I didn't capture fully the wistfulness and tranquility I first saw, with him sitting there, on guard, in command, and fully at rest and lost in his puppy-thoughts.

Close to Home

"There is nothing ordinary" I said in the author's note to the book. And yet, I realize I've let our close-at-hand human habitat become just that: nothing but the background canvas on which the more immediate and seemingly-relevant events (most of them indoors and by way of a computer monitor) take place.

One of my New Year's goals is to reverse this relative numbness and indifference to those fragments of ordinary life here that, four years ago, became new to me because they were new to you, the readers of this blog. Of course, that readership has been replaced by fresh batches of visitors several times over, and so I hope to recover a sense of newness in this new year, see the familiar through new eyes as if waking from a long sleep. And I'll take the risk of showing or telling you something I've shown or told before.

Here's an example: in all my archives of images, until yesterday, I had never taken one from just off the back porch facing the pasture, the barn and the valley of Nameless Creek. I guess I just thought since it was not ten feet from the house, it wasn't image-worthy. It is the view we see when we put the dog's bowl out on the back porch in the mornings.

And yet, it is the still-life tableau before us far more often than quick glimpses of the back reaches of the creek in the gorge at the far end of our property. This is a look out our window, so to speak--the beauty we can touch with our eyes. This is the light that comes to us in early January facing south as the sun rises over a frosty field while we are still in our slippers.

There is the barn--again, and I will stop apologizing for showing you yet another image of it. And the little bridge over the branch flows under the bridge, still babbling with the rains of New Year's Day. You can see the mailbox--the one near the right margin of the cover of the book, and the maple tree, also on the book cover and seen again up closer, backlit on the blog a few days back. The road and creek pass just front and back of the tree.

And look: the tiny HeresHome sign that faces the road. I remember what a wonderful day it was in November, 1999, to plant that aluminum "flag" and claim this place for our family. And--I didn't know it then--to share our ordinary with readers and viewers all over the world.

Morning Comes to Nameless Creek

Nameless Creek and the "New Road"--the old horse-traveled postal road--converge about a quarter mile south of the house. They travel side by side, the road often high above the little stream that plunges and riffles its music audibly below. In this image, the roadbed forms the boundary between light and shadow.

Here, the rocky fingers of old mountains form a ravine of rhododendron and jumbled boulders, a secluded and special place for us. This far corner of this piece of earth is what won my heart, back this time of year in 1999. Yes, I thought when we first found this "fortress of solitude", this might be the place after all, it whispered to me. Someday, you will come here often in early mornings. Someday, you and Ann will spend an hour late in the evening just watching the day become night. Here, night is becoming day. Morning comes slowly to this deep cleft in the hills.

The pine tree beside the lawn chairs--that we could never bring ourselves to put back in the barn--was only head high when we saw it there on our first walk down this way. Things are different now. And things there are just the way they've been since the first settlers found this valley in the early 1800s. The seclusion and peace is unchanged since both Confederate and Union deserters took refuge in this wonderfully-forsaken place. It is the same as yesterday, even on days we don't go there.

The Christmas ferns grow ever-green along the banks. The squirrels chatter from the tops of White Pines, shedding fragments of their morning meal like crumbs from the table. The creek sings whether we are there to listen or not.

And so this is more to me than just a picture of two chairs lost in the woods. These are my woods, and by the possessive I mean so much more than legal ownership. This place has been ours to become part of. It has grown into us. I feel it most here in this spot, a quarter mile from the house, and in the very heart of home.

January Maple

Behind the storm, the sun broke out--a good omen, I thought, for New Years Day. I set out with the camera, and didn't make it any farther than the end of the driveway when the lighting stopped me in my tracks. It is a scene I've seen so many times before, but it never fails to dazzle me. That is good--to not take for granted anything that ever has the power to create awe and joy.

Trite as it seems to say it, I hope to see this place again, for the first time, every day this year. Some of that will end up in pictures--very ordinary images of very ordinary places and scenes--sometimes with the words they evoke, sometimes alone. (Many, like this one, will go to a larger image if you click on it.)

First Day of School

A very nice new year's dinner, good friends, good music, an early evening. We had another event to attend, but drove in that direction after leaving Oddfellas in a driving rain, and decided we didn't want to get soaked and muddy getting to our neighbor's place, though it would have been nice to see folks we have missed over the holidays.

Thanks, Doug, for taking this picture of Ann and me last night, and I have uploaded it to FFF this morning just to add fodder to your contention that some blogs exist for some bloggers only to show their mugs to the world.

That said, I'll refrain from showing the picture of Doug and lovely wife in which he seems to be saying "I'll break your fingers if you take that picture." I know he'd break 'em if I posted it.

So. The odometer has rolled over as we slept. And there is a first-day-of-school feel to the first day of a new year. I have my pencils sharpened. My notebooks are fresh and full of clean, white paper. I've labeled all my subject tabs, and have my schedule laid out.

Now, I need to get to my classes.

I. Field Notes from Nameless Creek: a nature journal complete with photographs, eventually a book

II. A book, also with full color images, about a locally prominent mountain (tentative)

III. Whatever becomes of Fragments from Floyd, TBA on a daily and ongoing basis

IV. Collaboration with another blogger in which he writes, I provide the images. Details to follow.

V. Continuing twice-monthly Floyd Press column

VI. Magazine article or two (under construction)

VII. Empty class periods are open, to be filled in as the opportunity arises

Oh yeah. I have my real job, too. And the wood to be cut for next year, the garden that will need vast retooling, planting and tending; and the usual assortment of home-moaner's tasks that will arise from time to time.

So, life is full already, this early into 2007, and we are thankful for 2006, for friends, our health, our family, and a renewed sense of hope and purpose in the year to come. Hope your year is pleasantly challenging, then rewarding for those goods things that come from good work.

Like Momma Like Daughter

Somewhere up in the Very Back Room, in a cardboard box full of faded leatherette albums filled with yellowed acetate sheets of pale Instamatic images from the Pleistocene era of our marriage and family life, is a picture of our eldest--then about a year old--gnawing a turkey bone. She is sitting in a high chair in the midst of our little apartment on Southside, Birmingham (La Clair Vista it was called, and the vista was anything but La Clair in the smoggy days before the Clean Air Act.) All around our young daughter was the chaos of Childcare By Husband, the flotsam of apartment life for which there is no storage, no hiding, no pretending--though, granted, it could have been more organized.

And seeing young Abby attaching the turkey leg on Tuesday brought back those memories, and later ones of her momma's eating habits later in life--the slurping of spaghetti in particular--that became issues of eating etiquette of a similar kind to "don't cram food into your mouth with your fist".

And for this, a twenty-something-year-old Abby will berate me, much as her mother does for the picture that hangs on our wall showing her at three, sitting on the front steps of our Wytheville home in town, her index finger imbedded to the middle knuckle in her left nostril.

But hey--what are daddies (or grand daddies with cameras) for anyway?

The Other Side of Christmas '06

Too fast. They've come and gone, and 95% of the things I thought we'd do and talk about didn't happen. But 5% did, and I'm thankful to have had the time together, gathered as we were from too-far-flung homes. Maybe it's going to be that way for the long haul. Maybe some day they'll live closer. It was a merry Christmas, and I'm just now rounding up my little pile of booty from our Tuesday night unwrapping. Let's see...

IN the way of reading matter, what does this say about moi:

First, sitting on my desk is America (the Book) / Teachers Edition: a Citizens Guide to Democracy Inaction--by Jon Stuart (with foreword by Thomas Jefferson.) Lacking TV, the Daily Show is our source of news via the web, in three minute snippets, usually a week old. I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Ooow! I just discovered it has a centerfold!

And 2) Uncle John's Tremendous Bathroom Reader--the latest in a long line of annual Procelain Library editions from the wife-side kin, and to date, read cover to cover in just about exactly a year--in said library. The first year they gifted me in this way, Ann recoiled as I unwrapped it, shocked that her sister would give a gift of 350 pages of bathroom humor. Which these books are not. But I'm a little concerned if this weighty tome is predictive of my plumbing needs for the year ahead: this volume is 750 pages long! (Eat more prunes.)

And in wearing attire, of course I got my traditional underwear: a pack of wife-beaters. From the wife. And from the daughter, who apparently reads Fragments from time to time, a t-shirt with an inscription she gleaned from the blog. I promise a picture soon with me wearing it, and also holding the wooden placard (along the same subject line) that I will put above my desk.

Deeper into the little stash, another tradition: my bottle of Gentleman Jack (Daniels) that will predictably last me until next Thanksgiving, mostly due to the fact that we can never remember to buy COKE (which I otherwise don't drink) and my failing to develope a taste for Dr. Pepper as a mixer.

Oh, you'll be happy to know (those of you who knew and loved (or loathed) it when I posted a blog post about it the week after Christmas that each segment of the family--including us--received a framed 5 x 7 copy of my photograph of the Peach Butt--a fun family memory. Now what other family can claim to have given images of fruit cleavage for Christmas, huh?

The Ghost of Parties Past

Yes, the Goose Creek Christmas Gathering was going to be a big deal. But how big, and how to deal with the enormity of the event looked very different through eyes from Venus versus those from Mars. If men ruled the world of social events (and they don't) these occasions would be much more come-as-we-are affairs. Preparation would start, oh, a day or two beforehand, not a month. It would be a disaster.

And yet, every year, the disparate approaches to such self-inflicted and pleasant tasks as planning a big gathering at the house brings out those differences between host and hostess. I started thinking about just what those different world views looked like, but didn't make it very far. Even so (to be amended over time and as a basis for negotiating future Grand Gatherings) here's the list so far. Maybe you have a similar dichotomy at your house and have lived through to The Other Side--which, I am both happy and a bit sad to report, is where we are this morning. The morning after.

And looking back, heck, I hate to admit, she was probably right all along.

Social Planning from Venus:

• Everything is urgent


• Everything that can be done should be done (this one, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers)


• If 5 is enough, we can't do less than 8 (relative units of effort or substance applicable just about anything imaginable)


• Our purpose is to offer all these people a good time; we, as host and hostess, were not meant to share in it


• Assume responsibility for everything


• Any omissions or shortcomings represent self-esteem demerits; demerits are conferred only by the female members of couples visiting.


• Corollary to above: All other women in attendance have much higher standards than we do, and would be appalled to learn we sometimes live with ladybugs, dog hair, cob webs or dust bunnies.


• Corollary to above: of all husbands, darn the luck, yours is the slobbiest


• Everybody coming to our house will be dangerously malnourished and there probably won't be enough food, no matter how many casseroles, stuffed pizzas or deserts are provided by the hostess

Social Planning from Mars:

• Everything on the to-do list for a time may be important; very little will ever be urgent


• Things omitted will probably only be noticed by us


• Nobody is keeping score


• Things omitted or errors made make the wife no less a good hostess than if every last detail was remembered. And they were probably due to forgetfulness or indifference on the part of the husband, after all.


• Delegate to others; they are happy to help


• We are host and hostess, not staff. These are our friends, not our employers. Enjoy!


• Corollary to the above: the party succeeds to the degree to which we take an opportunity to listen to each of our guests and make them feel welcome, not fill their plates and cups


• I doubt anybody is going to open up the closets in our bedroom. Rearranging one's clothes by color to pass inspection is overkill.
  

The dog is slurping around behind me now, patrolling the carpets for invisble spots of crab dip (that will become visible after the sun comes up.)

We discovered just a few minutes ago that nobody found the cooler with the beer. (Oh well. I'll have to deal with that one one elbow-flexion at a time over the next month. Help me, anyone?)

I'm learning people were here that I never even saw.

Ann is looking for a place to store the new punch bowl she purchased for the occasion; it's big enough for a family of cats. What was she thinking!

Upstairs in the Red Room, the kids last night tied the helium balloons onto the Fisher Price Farm family, and thus tethered, they sway in the dark in the rising heat of the woodstove.

If you take the sum total of good times, new friendships, pleasant conversations and feelings of conviviality on one side of the scales, and the total effort, angst and preparation (and inter-planetary wrangling about the details) on the other, I don't think there's any question which way the balance would tip. Even so, I think maybe, if we do this again next year, she and I might want to do less and mingle more. But then, I'm only an elf.