Sat 28 Oct 2017

Visiting Felix and his Parents in Mobile, Alabama

Posted by Bob under Family and Friends, Nature, Travel
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Heading South on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Mabry Mill

 

 

We spent our first night at the Little Switzerland Inn along the Parkway

  

    

  

   

Click here for more pictures of our trip down the Blue Ridge Parkway and on to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and then to honky-tonk Gatlinburg in Tennessee

Then on to Mobile Alabama, which impressed us as a very livable and attractive place.  Of course, it was Felix who really stole the show…

    

Click here for more pictures of our wonderful visit in Mobile with Felix, Nic and Alison, including a tour of Spring Hill College, where Nic is now an Assistant Professor of History

We also found time to take a day trip down to Dauphin Island in the Gulf, where we soaked up the sun and both marine and bird life…and found Pirates for lunch!

Click here for more Dauphin Island pictures

On our way home the next day, we stayed overnight in Athens, Georgia, to visit Holly’s longtime friend Inga at the University of Georgia.  A lovely evening.

We drove the rest of the way home the next day–for a total of about 2200 miles altogether.

 

 

 

Sun 15 Oct 2017

A Hike Into a Misty Past

Posted by Bob under Hiking/Sauntering, Our New Home
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Recently a friend and I hiked to a long-abandoned mountain farmstead in the heart of a national forest.  It was a foggy day, and the mist gave the site a mysterious and distant aura.  The outer buildings were all in a state of collapse, but the house still stood, filled with abandoned artifacts of a past way of life.

click here for more pictures

 

Fri 22 Sep 2017

Emergent Fall Colors on Four Fall Hikes

Posted by Bob under Appalachian Trail, Hiking/Sauntering, Nature
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In early October, our new friend Sue G. hiked with me from Crabtree Meadows to Spy Rock, looking for an alleged new trail which turned out not to be.  A lovely hike anyway.

   

Holly’s friend Cate and I hiked the old Hotel Trail in the George Washington National Forest in Amherst County, which loops around through abandoned  orchards and then first ascends Cold Mountain and then gradually descends across the inclined plateau with gorgeous views in all directions.  Early fall colors were in evidence.

  

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

click on images above for panorama views along the summit plateau

In late September, German visitor and hiking companion Hasse and I climbed both Spy Rock and Humpback Rocks in a single half day!

 

 

 

   

 

On a separate early fall hike, I joined a friend for 15 or so miles who was at the end of the day just 20 miles short of completing the entire Appalachian Trail (which is 2200 miles long)!  The forest colors and views were beautiful, but the highlight of the day was when we encountered a mother bear and her cub, who promptly scampered up a tree.  Mom kept a careful eye on us, but was not aggressive.

It was interesting to see my friend, who has hiked the AT in sections over several years, keep running into AT through hikers that he had met months earlier.

 

Tue 12 Sep 2017

St. Mary’s Wilderness Hike

Posted by Bob under Hiking/Sauntering, Nature
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Our neighbor and friend Sue and I recently hiked the St. Mary’s Falls Trail in the St. Mary’s Wilderness Area.  It is an absolutely beautiful trail, combining fascinating rock formations, late season flowers, lovely forest vegetation, great views, and gorgeous deep pools and falls along the way.  I’d been here several years earlier with my my son, Nic, who terrorized Alison and me with his repeated jumping off a ledge into the emerald pool below (bottom left photo).  (I was sure he was going to smash himself on the rocks, but fortunately that didn’t happen.)  Sue and I settled for a quiet lunch amidst this beautiful setting.

click here for more pictures of our hike along the St. Mary’s Trail

 

 

Mon 4 Sep 2017

Late Summer Trips and Visits

Posted by Bob under Family and Friends, Flower/Rock Gardens, Nature
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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.

 

Mon 14 Aug 2017

Charlottesville Under Siege

Posted by Bob under Rants
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The scenes above are ones I could scarcely have imagined when I moved down here in the pre-Trump era.  Ostensibly to oppose Charlottesville’s plan to move the Robert E. Lee statue, located in the newly-named Emancipation Park, to a different site, a large and motley collection of “Alt-Right” partisans arrived on August 11th to make their intimidating presence known on the University of Virginia campus, and then to engage in large-scale thuggery the following day, along with running street battles with local counter-protesters.  In an act of domestic terrorism, one of their number deliberately drove his car into the crowd of counter-protestors, injuring many and killing Heather Heyer, age 32, whose courage and life was celebrated at a memorial service at the Paramount Theater the following week.  A truly tragic and ominous day.

Click here for an impressive video, Charlottesville: Race and Terror,  of that fateful day (not sure how long this link will work, but try…)

While the issue of the Robert E. Lee statue became obscured in the following outrage over President Trump’s reluctance to address this display of racial superiority and violence, and was mainly a pretext for a public display of racism and violence, I do feel that the issue of what to do with the monuments to the Confederacy remains an important one.  For me, the Mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, has laid out the case for change very powerfully in the speech linked below:

click here for Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s moving and impassioned speech

 

 

Thu 3 Aug 2017

Felix Visits En Route to New Home in Mobile, Alabama

Posted by Bob under Family and Friends, Our New Home, Travel
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Here are a few pictures from the one-night stopover of Felix and his parents.   (Click on picture to see larger image.)

 

 

  

  

   

   

 

Fri 28 Jul 2017

Flowers, Flowering Trees, and Shade Garden Plants

Posted by Bob under Flower/Rock Gardens, Our New Home
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The spring and early summer rains seemed to have produced an unusually healthy diversity of flowering plants and trees, along with plantings of annuals along our front path.  For the first time, significant flower beds were added to the vegetable garden, producing a nice array of new colors and forms.  We also added some statuary to the shade garden, along with some new plants.  A Hisbiscus (Rose of Sharon) finally produced multiple blooms eight years after being brought down from Cherry Hill, NJ.   Holly found lots to work with in putting together the lovely bouquets throughout our home.

click here for pictures of the flower and shade gardens

 

Mon 24 Jul 2017

Our 2017 Vegetable Garden

Posted by Bob under Farms and Food, Vegetable Garden
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We had a very wet spring, to which Holly and I attribute much of the success of our summer vegetable garden.  Varieties of greens (lettuce, arugula, swiss chard, broccoli rabe, kale)  flourished in the spring, and garlics, onions, several varieties of string beans, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, lima beans, basil, and tomatoes galore filled the garden in the summer, even if we’ve had to share the tomatoes with crows and rabbits (and maybe a groundhog).  Spaghetti squash, watermelon, and cantaloupe are in the works. I was more disciplined this year about succession planting, especially for beans, and that has kept us well supplied over time.  The one virtually total crop failure was snap peas, long my favorite and most prolific crop.  But this year almost none germinated, and only a handful of snap pea pods ever appeared.  I have spoken to several other growers who had a similar experience.  No one fully understands why this should be; it will be interesting to see what happens next year.  Overall, though, one of our best years in the garden.

click here for pictures of our 2017 vegetable garden

 

Sun 23 Jul 2017

Mt. Pleasant Hike with Sue and Mama Kate

Posted by Bob under Hiking/Sauntering
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Despite a heat spell with temperatures in the upper 90’s, our friend Sue and her dog Mama Kate accompanied me on a hike Mt. Pleasant, in the George Washington National Forest in Amherst County on July 19th.  The six-plus mile hike was made particularly interesting by the residue of last fall’s forest fire in the area.  Charred bark of tree trunks were surrounded by riotous new growth, showing how rapidly the forest regenerated itself.  The views from the eastern summit were spectacular.  Along with many other unusual wildflowers, our many sightings of the Sultan’s Cap Lily were a highlight of our trip.

 

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