Nelson County Rocks

    

  

  

Cally and Jake’s Wedding Celebration in Maryland

A delightful (and definitely unconventional) forest fantasy wedding celebration in John and Calista’s back yard, which combined beautiful landscaping with multiple tents and canopies and many surprises.  Fairly heavy rain, while inconvenient, contributed to the deep forest feeling and failed to dampen spirits or costumes.  Holly and I stayed for two nights in nearby Rockville.  Note: the somewhat blurry pictures are from my camera, which unfortunately had a bad setting.  More pictures may follow.

Note: Cally and Jake are adding more pictures as they receive them at http://deppen-neely.tumblr.com/

   

 

 

   

Feasting and Sunbathing on Delaware’s Eastern Shore

A lovely visit to Holly’s long-time friends, Robert and Barb.  We feasted on seafood for three days and enjoyed good company and perfect weather at the beach.  Stopped at a street side restaurant in Mananas on the way home.

    

A Visit from my Sister

Eleanor came down by train for a short but fun visit, with a jaunt along the Blue Ridge Parkway and a meals out together at Hamilton’s and Devils Backbone Brewery.  And good wine and conversation.

Another trip up Humpback Rocks, this time with Dan Moler.  A beautiful day!  On a hike there two weeks earlier, Sue Rucker and I got to watch a bear calmly foraging.

Looking at the view to the east from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Having a tree in our front yard taken down (it was shedding large limbs onto the street) revealed multiple snakes living in the hollowed out trunk and limbs.  It also enhanced the view from our living room window quite spectacularly.

Back in the vegetable garden, the two types of garlic I grew this year, Inchellium Red and Music, were pulled and laid out to cure in mid-June.  42 bulbs total.

 

By the beginning of July, our many varieties of lettuce were beginning to bolt, but we’d been regularly harvesting kale, chard, arugula, and other greens for some time, along with a first crop of wax beans, cucumbers, zucchini (enough for six loaves of zucchini bread so far), yellow squash, and a few ripe tomatoes and peppers.

It’s been an unusually wet spring, but with enough sun to make flowering plants very happy, it seems.  And several different hikes this month have offered varying vistas and plant varieties.  Early in the month, Holly’s sister-in-law Lonni (and her two dogs) and I hiked along the Appalachian Trail a ways up The Priest, and found, as we had hoped, Mountain Laurel in bloom.  (As always on this blog, click on individual pictures for a larger image.)

Shortly afterwards, I hiked the Fortune Cove trail on the other side of the county with a new friend, Jim, where beautiful stands of mountain laurel were likewise in bloom.

With almost perfect timing in the third week of May, our friend Sue and I hiked up Spy Rock, with  great views and with a quite extraordinary abundance of wildflowers along the trailside on the way up.

Click here for pictures of some of the wildflowers along the trail

At the foot of the rock dome, the Flaming Azalea were spectacular, with Rhododendron just beginning to bloom:

As always, the challenge of climbing Spy Rock was rewarded with fabulous vistas.

 

Upgrading, Clearing Out, and Selling Holly’s House at Lake Monticello

 

This process dominated our lives between March and May.  We benefited from help from John and from our lawn cutter and friend, Joe, who donated his truck and labor to help us move the larger items.  The good news at the end was 1) that the house sold quickly once it was put on the market; and 2) Holly and her belongings are now fully ensconced in our mutual home in Roseland, Nelson County.  We’re relieved, happy, and loving life.

Exploring Crozet Tunnel

This railway tunnel, which was constructed at great financial and human cost, opened in 1858 and was the longest tunnel in the United States at that time.  After years of decay and vandalism, it is being reconstructed as a Rail to Trail Project.  We were lucky to be able to join a “Hops and Headlamps” occasion to explore the first 4/5 of a mile the dark and yet-to-be lightened tunnel.  The various tour groups collected and were transported from and back to the various participating Nelson County breweries and wineries.  A fascinating and sobering experience–and a nice day off from moving.

Crabtree Falls after a Wet Spring

I hiked this long-favored trail while Holly was away at a knitting retreat. The high water made for many new and unique vistas.

 

A largely snowless winter and a surprisingly warm February merged into an abundantly colorful March and April. As usual, sugar snap peas were the first crop to be planted, beginning on March 9th.  By the end of the first week of April, the annual spectacular display of the weeping cherry and crabapple trees was past its prime.  But then came our Rosebuds, planted way back in 2010 and finally blossoming fully for the first time this April!  And shortly afterwards, Virginia Bluebells and our Dogwood.

We’ve only had one significant snowstorm so far this winter, but our street view remains uniquely magnificent each day.

   

In early October, our friend Sue Rucker and I took my favorite hike in the area: up Spy Rock, with its incredible 360 degree view.  I never tire of this amazing place, and it always saddens me how the great majority of Appalachian Trail through-hikers choose to bypass this brief side trip, apparently obsessed with logging as many miles as possible on a given day.  Since it was fall, the majority of through-hikers were coming from the north, having begun their end-to-end trek on Mt. Katahdin in Maine.  We had a pleasant conversation with one hiker who took the trouble to climb the rocky knob, but the rest that morning were nowhere to be seen.  The view, as always, was spectacular.

      

In mid-October, my friend Bob Abbott and I climbed Old Rag Mountain, an “eastern outpost” of the Blue Ridge.  I had climbed it years ago on a quite lengthy day-hike from the  Blue Ridge Parkway and back.  Our climb, though shorter, was surprisingly demanding, with a variety of deep crevasses, narrow rock passageways, and a variety of other challenges unique to this impressive peak.  It had its challenging moments, but Bob and I had a great time and completed the nine mile circuit that leads up and over the summit and then down the other side.  The weather was perfect and the views breathtaking.

For more pictures of our hike, click here

 

Winter this year was relatively mild overall, although the temperature did get down to 4 degrees on one occasion.  I had to dig out our driveway on three occasions, but no snowstorms of particular note.  As the middle picture above suggests, our wood stove helped keep things warm and cozy inside.

   

   

Mid-March brought a visit from Lonni and Lyara and a hike up Crabtree Falls.

And April brought the most spectacular display of spring color I’ve ever seen:

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

To celebrate the complete cure of Holly’s hepatitis-c, which she has battled for twenty five years, Holly and I took a two-week Caribbean cruise between January 2nd and 14th.  It was on the Celebrity Summit, partly chosen because it is an older ship that still looks like one, but also because Celebrity has a reputation for particularly fine food, which it definitely lived up to.  Over the two weeks, we visited ten different Southern Caribbean islands.  And along the way we became engaged!  (And Holly, temporarily at least, got dreadlocks!)

In such beautiful settings, we couldn’t resist taking lots of pictures, which I’ve culled and organized mostly island by island.  Click on the links to see pages of relevant pictures (which in turn can be clicked on to see a larger image).

Old San Juan pictures (our departure point and final destination

Tortola (British Virgin Islands): gorgeous mountains and sea

Dominica: rain forests, waterfalls, raging rivers, terrible roads

Martinique: France in the Caribbean, historic buildings, a fabulous botanical garden

St. Kitts: touring the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts , climbing a Volcano, Brimstone Hill Fortress,

Barbados: remnants of sugar barons and slavery, a tour along two coasts

St. Lucia: the famous Pitons, spectacular scenery where the mountains meet the oceans, an excellent nature walk

Antigua: an ecotour via boat: outlying islands, rock formations, vegetation and wild life, swimming and snorkeling

St. Maarten: Dutch and French influences, a nice cafe, strolling and shopping

Days and Nights at Sea on the Celebrity Summit