Bon Jour Mes Amis:
“Squash Gossip….Lettuce Be Kind….Turnip to Church”………………………………………………………………………………Sign at the Belmont Village Church
“Looking into the old well, I see my own face….then another behind it”…………………………………………………..W.S. Merwin
“If I could define enlightenment briefly, I would say it is the quiet acceptance of what is”………………………Wayne Dyer
“The white bush clovers
Drop the dewdrops
Frequently”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Autumn Haiku
Big doins’ in the mountains his week…and afar……….foliage hit PEAK in all its glory….and is now turning downward towards the inevitable stick season hereabouts…….we have continued to be inundated with rain (see the POND brimming with clean water)…and bounced around from summer like weather to lows in the high 20s at night….and the baby no name is very likely arriving this week one way or another…..but…I get ahead of myself, no?…….
Sunday last saw The Queen once again presiding over the last of Cider Daze, while yours truly piddled round the house on a rainy day, flushing toilets and ruining water to his heart’s content….when she eventually arrived home, we headed out to find some supper on the busiest weekend of the year in the mounts….eventually finding sustenance at little Sal’s red gravy Italian joint down the mountain in Wallingford…..where we joined every other local in the area trying to avoid the leaf pepper crush happening at the more urbane hot spots……
After days of rain and cold, Monday dawned weirdly hot and humid….back to shorts and flip flops, for a last gasp…………..
We took great mountain pride in the moment of the vote for the absurdly twisted Kavanaugh confirmation …when our man, Bernie, had his turn and hurtled out of his seat…. shouting “No” at the top of his lungs….fightin’ the fight…
Monday night we were treated to a surprise video chat with The Prodigal Son, as he rode the rails from Tokyo to Kyoto, adventuring in Japan for three weeks…we watched as the entirely non-English speaking train attendant repeatedly tried to collect the train ticket that Max did not have. He had tried to use his railway pass to get his ticket but the office was closed at the station,….so each time the ticket man approached, Max would wave some kind of paper and yell ”Office, Office”….which seemed to work- at least on that segment of a five train journey he was taking , due to scheduling morass…..
And….The Sox down the demon spawn Yankees…making the sports year complete for New Englanders……
Overnightus-interuptus….we had planned on a tentative two night fall foliage outing this week if no-name’s arrival had not called us to the heartland…but it kept raining, so we stayed home flushing toilets…until the sun came out on Wednesday….which eventually became a legendary 85 and sunny day….so we rose early and took off for parts unknown…bags packed for an overnight adventure…..twelve hours of driving around, three wonderful hikes, seven crossings of the Connecticut River, three meals and two thousand peek foliage photo ops later…we wound up back home at nine pm….which is reflective of most of our Vermont driving trips…usually involving our commitment to either all right turns or all left turns…which seems to have predictable results…..
We arrived home after averting potential life altering trauma , when Lucy disappeared on a very remote dirt lane in New Hampshire- at the site of the Bedel Bridge State Park (really just a boat access point currently).. The property is the site of the former Bedell Covered Bridge, that was the second-longest covered bridge in the United States until its destruction by wind in 1979. The bridge had been the brainchild of an industrious Mr. Bedell, who ran a ferry across the Connecticut River from NH to Vermont, until he came up with the idea of the bridge in the mid-1800s. The bridge was closed in 1956…but after twenty years of fund raising and six years of repairs, it reopened in 1979….only to be destroyed three months later (for good)….but…I certainly digress….so we are in the middle of nowhere with dark descending and chasing the suddenly missing Lucy through woods and cornfields for a half hour or more…..eventually we wandered towards where we had left the car, not knowing what else to do…only to come upon her exhausted and laying down next to the car….don’t know where she went , but she proceeded to sleep through our car ride home, while we had Indian food in Dartmouth and until the next morning…truly, disaster averted….
Saturday provided another in a long line of rainy mornings, and we embarked for town and chore day, starting with the weekly trip to the town dump…where the lecherous, walrus Dumpmaster pulled me aside to wink at Jenn and inquire as to how many nights I had stayed warm this week…I will say that the nature of this relationship has provided us with free garbage disposal for the last two years…..then off to Rutland, where we had the once in a lifetime experience of finding the Walmart shut down (water line break)…so picture Saturday morning at the only Walmart within three hours….and a line of desperate shoppers being turned way and staring longingly through the windows at the shiny merchandise inside….
Riddle of the week………if you ever read Tom Robbins’ seminal “Another Roadside Attraction”….there is a story in the novel that ends with the line “Rudolph the Red knows rain dear”….I won’t try and give you the back story context of this…but I always thought that Robbins had come up with that line and then wrote the whole novel around it….so(where is this going?)……this morning I wake up with my own novel- creating line going through my head over and over …..”Chat in Uber, Tutu”…………so, can you figure out the reference, what question this answers and how to make a whole book out of it?
This whole obsession came about when we were suddenly awakened by the shattering- of- silence boom of the Jamaicans showing up and firing up their generator next door…which faces our bedroom windew….….it is quite cold this morning but the sun is coming out and Lucy is staring fixedly out the front door window trying to figure out how she can escape down to access some goat…..and we are destined for a day of battling yard machines in preparation for our exodus in four weeks…and..…waiting got for the no name arrival call….will see what the coming week brings and possibly (or not) sending out the update missive next Sunday……until then…….Darling, je vous aime beaucoup, Je ne sais pas what to do.
Papi
