Happy Mud season to all:
Well, it’s been a muddy, rainy, cold week here in the mountains. Yesterday had a high of 40 and it snowed. In Vermont, we like to say that May comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb (so, just a little behind the rest of the world on this one). In between rain, mud and cold, we’ve had some glorious spring days, and when we went down to New York last week, we saw the greening of Vermont happening before our very eyes …though not this far north yet. Mud season is taken so seriously here that many of the restaurants in Ludlow close down for the month, and people seem to hide in their abodes- I guess life will resume in June
Since the sun came out and it heated up for there days last week, we got out and about. Did our first hike of the spring- a 3-4 miler at the Townshend Dam…which is right up the road from the Damm diner
(get it?). The park was closed but we exercised our rights as foreigners , who don’t really read English well, to bypass the “CLOSED” sign and head up the trail. Aside from the preponderance of the hated black flies (see Jenn’s faux babushka to ward them off), it was a great hike, with a million dollar view at the peak. Once we got down, we headed to Londonderry to Mike and Tammy’s (24 flavors of sot serve) to have our fist Maple Creamee of the season. Lucy love Maple Creamees…almost as much as she loves shopping at the Vermont Country Store. They were having a mud season sale for locals only (that’s us!) so we stopped by. I believe Jenn is still there inspecting bedding opportunities. They like dogs there and Lucy loves the place because they have a zillion food samples that people drop/drip on the floor, and she is a GREAT cleaner for them.
On Thursday last week, we drove down to the Woodstock , NY area for the night to visit cousins Sherry and Joel. They are getting ready to move back to the city in June and we went down to get some stuff they would like to get rid of. This included a giant exercise machine, which turned out to be the size on my living room. Jenn and I spent 3 ½ hours taking it apart, including multiple pulley systems. We managed to get it into the Subaru, weighing the car down at least 4 inches in the rear, and get it home. It is now in a pile in the barn (see the pix), under the rather ambitious/absurd assumption, that we will be able to figure out how to re-assemble it. You all should check I on us while we take this one- to see if we are both still breathing after days of working on this together. We hit a nice diner on the way down, in Catskill, NY…right next to the famous Hoe- Bowl”. We also had a good visit with the cousins, whose house is like one big yard sale.
We got home Friday late afternoon and unloaded the machine in the pouring rain (again!) and headed down to Ludlow for Chinese. On the way back we stopped in awe, to see this majestic red sky on the mountaintop over our house (see photos that do not do it justice). Saturday turned out to be sunny again, so we went into town to the Farmers market in Rutland, which is now outside again, in the Walmart parking lot (what a juxtaposition!) and then headed to West Rutland for community wide garage sale. Lucy made many friends, we bought a bunch of shit, we ate our all-time favorite Ramunto’s Pizza and got home just before it started raining again.
Such is life in the mountains in the spring.
Be well and stay in touch.
Stu/DA/Cuz/Uncle/Ferlin’/Chuck/Skippy
