No Way You're Gonna Believe This - an amazing Reunion story

his year TheReunion fun and family love was too much to be contained in a single day. It needed a whole weekend to soak up all the joy, the history, the story telling and the family. So on Sunday we gathered deep in the countryside between King & Queen County and Essex, at the quaint little fork in the road called Indian Neck. Cousin J had arranged for a horse and carriage tour of several family homes and home sites. 

Only a handful of us could make the Sunday rendezvous and some of them are decidedly camera shy. We met at a spot where all the cars could be parked and where the big horse trailer could be pulled up and unloaded. 

Max and Tim stood by like the pet baby darling cutie pies they knew they were, ready to give out horsey love. Cousin C got in the first pets




 










But TheQueen got the best horsey snogging.


The folks from Oakley Farm provided the transportation. Eric Oord has a collection of vehicles and some beautiful Percherons, a white pair and a dark one - black in the wintertime and brown with black manes beneath the summer sun. This carriage held all 9 of us comfortably and it's as spic and span as an Amish kitchen.

Driving at horse and buggy pace gives you an entirely different experience. BD and I love our auto-rambles throughout the Virginia backwoods but at this walking pace we could notice things, point out things and reminisce about things without ever missing anything. Oakley Farm is one of the old Pollard family homes (Cousin J) and of course Indian Neck is also the old Hutchinson family stomping grounds and since Pollards and Hutchinsons all married Hoskins - you know - it's FAMILY!!! 

I guess we can even claim the Oords as cousins now - LOL - if they'll have us. Got that Debbie?

We were blessed, too with an overcast sky the whole afternoon. Tiny misty raindrops sort of coated our bare arms once or twice but it was a blissful temperature all afternoon. Perfect to go down long country roads ...





past abandoned homes ...













alongside ponds filled with lily pads ...

You have to admit - this is summertime and the livin' is easy.










One beautiful old Hutchinson home, owned and loved by a favorite library patron was on our itinerary and we were invited to tour the magnificent yard full of the deep mystery of ancient cedars and enormous magnolias, the sighing sweetness of vine covered arbors and a lush green herb garden.

Dr. W and his late wife have been favorite library visitors for years. She was a great lover of history and an intrepid genealogy tracker. At one time she told me she'd bought the old store at Indian Neck and I told her our own connection with that store - how Cousin Eddy Hutchinson had let us keep all our things there when we first moved to the country, while we were still living in Pop's old WWII tent, before we even had our cabin in the woods.

The longer we chatted with Dr. W the more love and tenderness began to grow among all of us so that soon he was being swept up into cousinly hugs. Dr. W even whispered to me that it felt like having family around. He asked us if we would like to tour the oldest part of the house and we all said a resounding YES.

The oldest part has a tiny living room with the most quaint little fireplace in an angled wall, plastered white and smooth. There's a staircase tucked in one corner and a kitchen off the end, but along the side there is a tiny slender room that runs almost the length of the house. While everyone was peeking at the kitchen I stepped into that room and came face to face with ...

MYSELF!!

Yes! This is a painting my mother did of me when I was about 19. I was sure it was at Mama's house but when we broke that up and divvied up the paintings it wasn't among them. There was another enormous red painting of me that I have at TheCastle - but where this one was remained a mystery. But it's a mystery no more. Evidently this is one of the things that never got picked up from the store and when Cousin Eddy died and  Dr.W bought it, they (or more likely Mrs.W) decided they wanted to keep this. So - no wonder we felt like family. He'd been living with my portrait for 20 years.

I swear - ya just gotta love Virginia and all those family connections. 

Creativity Gone Walkabout

A whole month? I have never gone a whole month without posting here. I'm blaming it on my creativity. It has decided to meander off on some walkabout and left me high'n'dry all the month of June.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

But I have not been dead, you know - just ... um ... uncreative.

How I spent the Last Day of June

I have tried to be creative, but mostly I have been trying to wind up all things fiscal at work while wallowing in Michael Connelly novels at home. BD started reading him a year ago and in a rare alignment of literary stars, I began reading him this spring. We never read the same books unless we read them out loud, but this author was an exception. We're both laughing at each other and ourselves, as we succumb to the torpor addiction to a detailed, skilled, mystery writer.

Of course, June was was the last month of the fiscal year and though I believe I've tied up all the strings, I have a funny feeling that maybe I did not. It all seems too easy this year. Of course, there have been huge personnel changes this year, both in the library and in the county government - so maybe that's what's giving me that odd sensation. Or maybe I screwed up royally - a lowering thought for someone who's had her job as long as I've had mine. At least I know the changes are for the better, so I will just throw out my blessing hook and expect the best.

A wee bit of creativity displayed itself in the kitchen during June. I purchased two good sized pots of lavender this spring. While the brief strawberry season was in flush I managed to get a single batch of Strawberry/Lavender jam cooked up. This is a delicate flavor blend - neither lavender nor strawberry but something unique and heavenly. There is never enough S/L jam and I pot it up in tiny  jars so that I can share it. This particular batch did not set very  hard but it's jam. It doesn't have to be gooey and it set up enough to take it out of the syrup category. I wish I had 10 times this much.

 In the middle of the month BD had a chance to go sailing in NY. It coincided the first week of Summer Reading Club as well as Bess' Girls Camp. Cousin F is such a big girl now and Cousin A makes everything twice as much fun. The weather gods decided to bless us with Perfect Weather so there was lots of outdoor fun - horseback riding, canoeing and hiking - it's a rare week in June when every day is the right weather for doing stuff outdoors. Last year we nearly died in triple digit temperatures. This year was the reward.

I took the Friday of that week off and we went for a hike in the woods. Just down the home path and back by way of the rim path - not that far - but always beautiful. I took that same walk on Saturday only starting out on the rim path and coming back on the home path. When I got home I told BD how proud I was of him for fixing the bridge over the middle swamp last week - when the weather was so wicked-hot. He stared a moment and then said "I fixed that weeks ago".

"No Way" I argued - claiming that I'd just taken the girls down the home path last week and I would have noticed.  I see now that, though I did not notice, I did photograph it. A lowering senior moment here. Isn't this the most magical spot, though? Deep in the woods - like an emerald tunnel?

ThePrince had told me about a tree that had come down right on top of a tree that had come down several years ago. This is a spot where trees tend to blow down - perhaps some vortex builds in this southern stretch of the fields - and the fallen giants are all exposed to the north and north east winds. What I do know is that there can not be a tree down in the woods and TheQueen not itching to climb it. It turned out to be a bit harder to get up onto it than I thought but of course - triumph was inevitable.

Just in case you were wondering how Callie is doing - she is much improved. She still has a row of dimples along that femur where the screws were, but she has completely forgotten the cage and collar.  Here is a picture of her tormenting Jack on a walk. Whenever we reach this spot on the lane she always grabs his cheek and tries to pull him along. He has never snapped too hard at her even though she is digging sharp pointed teeth into his face. Evidently it's a dog thing.



Here they are in action:


 Last Friday evening there was a wine tasting in our local wine shop - She does these about twice a month on Friday evenings and they're like little parties. Afterwards there was a free bluegrass concert down the street at a riverside park. These are sponsored by our local main street organization and this is their second season. Last year I bought tickets for all of them and then never got to go to one - and gave my tickets away. It was fun to stroll down the street and listen to the music after sipping my wine (carefully calculated to fit within the days calories/points.)


And that's something I rarely discuss here at TheCastle - the calories/points/weight loss thing. You can't be an American Woman without having weight issues: weight loss, eating disorders, aging bodies, expanding girth, osteopenia  - you get the picture. I am no different from your typical (gasp 60 year old!!!) woman and have fought the good fight against Fat most of my adult life. It's just that I yammer on about it in a blog on a different website - Spark People dot com.

The weather turned hot almost as soon as the girls went home. Not killer hot, but in the low 90's. This week we are promised rain. Rain rain rain rain rain. I know some of my neighbors have had Enough Rain Already - but if I had to choose between enough rain and not enough - I'd take the rain every time. This is how green it is around here after the rainy month of June.

And so.  And so that's what's been going on at TheCastle. The year is half over. Time for the second half to begin. July July July July July

Wonderful Wedding Weekend

Way last January, our oldest friends dropped by with some important information. SAVE THIS DATE for their daughter's wedding, the first weekend in October. Not 2 months later we got news from beloved cousins to SAVE THIS DATE for their daughter's wedding, the first weekend in October. With deep reluctance, we let family trump friendship on Saturday but we made sure to spend Friday evening up at the farm (a different farm) with P&T and their brideful daughter, D and all their new (and old) family. Our hearts were so filled with long ago memories - T bringing P over to our house on his first date. Playing the music at their wedding 2 years later. T's dog Clancy going crazy at the spring, as we flipped gourdes of water over his head. P taking me to VaBeach during a hideously difficult period I had to plow through in the 80's. 

This is an old friendship - a sweet strength in my life. There was a softball game and there was fried chicken. There was a bonfire and there were oysters. This is, after all, Tidewater Virginia. And though we couldn't be at the wedding I've seen pictures. It was adorable and the bride was beautiful. Just the way it should be.

For us, though, Saturday meant an early start to Bedford where COUSINS live and where another wedding was gearing up. This is the family of cousins whose little girls came every summer to Bess's Girls Camp - to play with my big girl art toys and swim down the red moon path. The bride was the great granddaughter of our precious Aunt Anna - the family matriarch who never abused her power but who also made her thoughts known to all, even if she didn't drive and lived 200 miles away. 

We are just one thread of this vastly woven plaid of a family - the Tidewater thread that glides under and around the Arkansas thread, the Tennessee thread, the South Carolina thread, and all the other Virginia threads - glimmering and winking our own colors to blend with the beautiful cloth that is family. 

The drive is one I've described a number of times - because it's one of my favorite pathways across the state. At least a quarter of the way is down Rt. 60, a long steel-blue ribbon of highway that shakes itself out over the rolling landscape of Piedmont VA, through Powhatan, Cumberland and Buckingham counties. We got to the motel in good time and ran straight into the bride's Uncle R, in the lobby watching the Arkansas/Auburn game. So yes. I took the clothes upstairs - a dress, a small overnight bag and a suit (I thought).

Only. It was not a suit. I had taken BD's suit coat to the cleaners that week, along with some summer things of mine that needed to be prepped for winter storage, but not the trousers. I packed the overnight case for us both but assumed someone else had gotten his own suit together. Teach me a lesson, right? There at the motel I discovered that while I could take the top half of my husband to a wedding, the bottom half was not going anywhere with me. Not in those ripped dirty jeans. 

"I'll just have to go as I am" was his first flippant effort to mask panic.

"Not with me you won't," was my reply.  "There's at least a Walmart in this little town - we can find you something that's at least clean"

So off to the tiny shopping center we went to discover a Goodwill store right next door. A very nice Goodwill store with a pair of size 38 grey suit trousers that were as close a match to his jacket as anybody could wish - certainly a closer match than anybody looking at us would notice. For $3.50. See? 

With that kind of luck I should have bought a lottery ticket! 

The wedding was just about the happiest, smiling-est, hugging-est wedding I've ever been to. I took lots of very fuzzy photos - the bride's were the worst - but I got some good snaps of huggin' cousins and while the rest of my pictures aren't worth displaying, they're sure fun for me to look at. 

Sunday dawned rainy, grey and cool and the low slung clouds hid the Peaks of Otter but the drive home was a delight. We puttered and poked and meandered down all sorts of back roads. I finally got to drive through Rustburg, county seat of Campbell Co. and for some reason, stuck in my mind as a place I wanted to visit. We drove down one long dirt road to cross the Appomattox River where it is barely 50 feet across, to find there was no bridge, only a ford - a ford in flood. We've done that before - unsuccessfully - another funny travel story for another post - so we backtracked and found our way to Rt 60 again. This time we stopped in Cumberland for potato wedges - definitely not on the diet plan, but delicious anyway. There was one more stop at Kroeger for the hard to find groceries and then we were picking up dogs and hurrying back to home comforts.

Monday was a holiday - one of autumn's many treats - a chance to swap out winter clothes for summer. We're promised 70 degrees tomorrow and 80 degree weather next week, so there is still a call for short sleeves, but the sandals are up in the attic and there are jackets and hats in the front hall. Before I could do that, though there was housecleaning werk werk werk to do. I really have to chase my menfolk out of the house when it's cleaning time and while I was vacuuming the living room I noticed a little puppy, looking all dark with mud, running around the back end of my car. I was pretty ticked to think they were back already and in no condition to come indoors when that little body turned sideways and I realized it was not a puppy. It was a FOX!

I made a dash for the camera but it was already trotting around to the side of the house. It could tell I was looking at it, too, so when I dashed through to the den I made sure I was far enough back that it couldn't see me through the French doors. It's tail is as long as the rest of its body! I know we had a mother fox who raised a litter down the north edge of the big field and I'm guessing this was she.

   

She found something to eat and started chewing when the battery died on the camera. 

Speaking of something good to eat - I made a batch of vegetarian chili from a recipe in the Nov/Dec issue of Cooks Illustrated. I have loved every dish I've ever made from their recipes so I was hoping this one would satisfy BD's chili lust. I think it was a delicious recipe and it made something like 4.5 quarts of chili - but it was a fiddly tedious recipe and Himself was not impressed. I can get that reaction by dumping onions, canned beans and TVP in a pot and leaving it overnight. If you are seeking the perfect Texas Chili from some little hole-in-the-wall in Washington D.C. that shut down in 1971, you will be disappointed but if you just want a really delicious vegan chili, you'll love this. As for this cook, with this picky eater? She won't make it again.  In fact she won't try to satisfy someone's chili lust ever again. She will Let Him Eat Meat.

My GF and I are working on watercolor Christmas cards and are sending each other photos of our efforts, if not every day, at least on a regular basis. Here are two examples from the drawing board. 

 

And that's what's been going on at TheCastle this first week of October.

A Perfect Winter Get-Away - picture laden

Saturday morning we got up, packed up, bundled up and drove to Chincoteague Island to visit COUSINS! Beloved cousins we haven't seen in so many years it was becoming too many years. Chincoteague is at the north end of the Virginia part of the Eastern Shore and it's about the same miles of driving if we take the Bay Bridge at Annapolis or the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel. Being good Virginians, we took the southern route across the CBBT. It's more expensive but there's less congested traffic.

Here we are, saying goodbye to VaBeach.

There were 11 ships anchored off shore - they look empty to me.





Only one intrepid pleasure boater was out on the cold waters of the bay on Saturday - if you look at the horizon you can see one of the bridge spans connecting the tunnels.

Here is the last span of the bridge - taking you on to Fisherman's Island and then onto the Eastern Shore.



The drive goes up and up and up nawth through the cutest little teensy weensy towns, often no more than 25 or 30 houses: Kiptopeake, Cedar Grove, Fairview, Matchipongo, Birdnest. Then there's the much bigger Exmore, as big as my little town of Tappahannock. You drive through Painter, Malfa, Onley, and if you take the 13 business route, you can go through Accomac where the public library is, through Nelsonia, Mappeville, Temperanceville to Oak Hall where Hwy 175 turns east and takes you through Wallops Station and onto Chincoteague - home of Misty, of Chincoteague.

Hello Chincoteague!!


I love these eastern barrier islands that run up and down the east coast. The accents, the crowded architecture, the quaint sea themes. Last summer we savored the delights of Tangier. I grew up spending my summer vacation on Ocracoke Island, NC. They all share the same atmosphere. There's nothing of the expensive new slickness about these places. They're all just too close to the water and too close to their fishing origins.


Plenty of businesses were open, including the bookstore - where BD sold some of his John Smith in the Chesapeake books but also some of his poetry.


Wanna guess why this is called Church Street? Yup. I'd just passed 2 other churches before I thought to snap this photo.

Here is where we were headed - the vacation home of realio trulio favorite cousins. They've been coming here for years in the summer time but now they're discovering the joys of the marshy wilds in winter.

These are the views from their front porch. Islands, Bridges, Lighthouses. Oh. Yes. and now and then, the wild ponies. 

We were too busy talking - catching up after several years of only making phone contact - to do anything else on Saturday. It was just talk talk talk ... and sip wine and eat fried oysters ... and talk talk talk. But on Sunday morning we headed off to explore Assateague - where the ponies come from. It's also where the ocean brings up marvelous shells all winter long for those intrepid enough to seek them out. And oh... it's where there are birds and trees and booming crashing surf and all that is what I love about the Atlantic coast.


This really is a bird lover's paradise. The small birds like kingfishers and shoveler ducks were too fast for me to catch - or too far away. But these larger ones made perfect models for wildlife calendars.

Here is a huge flock of snow geese, coming in for a landing - doesn't this picture make you wish you could fly?

Herons live in my marshes too, but that's no reason not to admire these guys.

This fellow really displayed his colors for me and never did fly away. Obviously he's an extrovert and likes having his picture taken.




Can't exactly call this bunch wild life - but we made a little flock. And of course, here's proof of the ocean! And yes. I did take my shoes off and splash out into the surf - where my feet burned like fire for the space of two waves, before I dashed back, shrieking, to dust them off and don my shoes again.

Cousin C and I agree - we have the absolutely world's best husbands!

Of course - it's PONIES that this place is really famous for. At least, I could never think of Chincoteague or Assateague without thinking of the wild ponies. A portion of them are herded up around 4th of July and auctioned off to raise money for the fire department. It's been going on now, for 85 years. They're so wide because they eat such a salty diet. I wonder if those North Ronaldsay sheep are bloated in the same way.

When we were near the end of our walk, we came upon these three. They seem to have gotten out of their regular territory and were heading back to the herd - which we could see way off in the distance. This funny guy stood for the longest time, just pondering - while the people in the car seemed delighted to observe. Unlike the jerk who drove along a few minutes later and crowded the others out of the road.

But the day wore on - it was one o'clock before we got back to clams and shrimp for lunch. Yum. and then it was time to retrace our steps, back down the Eastern Shore, across to VaBeach. Here is the view, crossing the bay into the setting sun.

And then we were back home, to our dogs and our marshes and our wild birds. But we're still sighing and thinking about the next trip out to that lovely island and those lovely cousins. A perfect winter get-a-way.

P.S. I believe you can click on these pictures to make them bigger.