Good morning friends and family:
It’s been a quiet week in Mt. Holly, our home town, on the edge of the mountains. Especially, since we have not been here for the last ten days or so. Made a mid- summer hiatus visit back to the Ohio homestead, which was amazingly disorienting. The place looks great thanks to my now favorite child , and yard maestro, Marcus..and in some ways it was nice to be back in the ancestral home….but honestly it mostly sucked. It seemed like traffic jams everywhere we went, too many people, no mountains, and it did not smell good. And…since we are not living there- we had no phone, cable or internet. No big deal on the cable, the phones are a hassle since cell service is awful there…but the internet access-oh my…can you say DEPENDENCY? Had to make twice daily trips to Starbucks to use Wi-Fi, and sit with the coffee- dungeons and dragons type geeks (only joking if you are one of them ). And what is with the menu…can I get a small decaf please (what exactly is a Grande? And how come a tall is a small?). Overwhelming. Got to see our friends and kids which was nice, and Marcus and I did yeomen work on the property to get ready for fall, but the pace…hmmm, a bit different on the pace. So- on Sunday we headed back to snail land, and were so eager to get back –we drove straight for 13 hours (well we did have two diner stops to keep our Greek friends in business) and got back to the new homestead 10 pm Sunday night.
It is good to be back. It smells really nice, the cats were alive (though our beloved Tripod remains missing in action) and the yard was mowed (well, maybe more like scalped) from our young friends next door. Woke up on Monday morning to the birds and bullfrogs greeting us and looked out the bedroom window to see color in the tree (see picture). Fall is coming early it appears.
We immediately got back into Vermont mode by heading out to nearby quaint Shrewsbury to the Pierce General store/ Co-op to get lunch and maybe find something for dinner. It’s about six miles from here and after driving for about 45 minutes we stumbled on it- only to find that they were all out of lunch sandwiches. We bought whatever they had left and sat on the front porch in the sunshine and ate our lunch. It took us eight minutes to get home. We did stop on the way at the little bakery/ice cream shop on Route 103 that is in a woman’s house. She actually does have a soft serve machine (maple flavor today) in her kitchen. Another roadside attraction.
Thanks to Christine ‘s advice (she is our benefactor and former house occupant, Karin’s, daughter and our new e-mail buddy in Vegas)- we took our next door kid, Elizabeth on a walk to Belmont via the tracks (see picture). Nice walk but then we got more ambitious and hiked all the way up the hill (quite deceiving in grade) to the other side of Gates road and then to the end – past the town dump- to the logging road and back to our house. Another one of those lost afternoons that seems to happen here a lot.
So- the Pond…I have more or less given up on it – as you can see from photo- it seems to take revenge on me and come back with more algae and scum after I spend time on the raft straining it. I may go to Wal-Mart and see what the biggest strainer they have is. We have also talked to two local guys who say they will come in a rowboat and rake it out (Daryl and Daryl?). Karin’s beautiful gardens are beginning to fade with the colder weather, and we’re not sure if there is something we are supposed to do to make them keep growing…I guess maybe it is just what nature does (see photo). Maybe new things will grow soon?
We continue to feel like we have simply assumed Karin’s identity. We live in her house, we sleep on her bed with her sheets, we use her toilet paper and are still eating food she left behind (wondering where to get those sugar free chocolate coated cookies?). We find new treasures each day that she has left for us and we love her art and her crafts. She even left all her craft materials in the barn for Jenn to get started on, which she seems to be avoiding. And now- we have been taken in by Tante Helen and Haldor (Jenn thinks his name is Halidol) who are Karin’s in laws from Austria and Norway and live on the next road. We drink wine with them and get silly. The few people who visit us may think we have simply moved in and are keeping Karin in the basement.
Oh well- I like her identity and as my kids and I say after every family vacation together “it could be worse”.
Come up and visit—the leaves are coming and we are blocking of three weeks to chase them around the state. Hope all is well with everyone. Did you catch the season finale for True Blood? Wow….
Stu
