Nelson County Rocks

In early June we spent a four-day weekend with Dave, Sue, Paityn and Cody on their horse farm.  We had a great time. Moni has organized our pictures into the three categories illustrated above: grandkids, horse farm, and deppen family history.  Click on the relevant picture for each.

We’ve been blessed, as they say around here, with four wonderful family visits recently.  Nic and Alison came out for Mother’s Day and made Monika a great crepe breakfast.

Shortly afterwards, Tim and Megan made a weekend visit; we toured water-powered Woodson Mill in nearby Lowesville, as well as several houses on the Nelson County Historical Society’s annual tour.  The stone-ground grits from there are really good!

Later in May, Jim and Arlene spent four days in the area with us, including stops at the AT suspension bridge and Crabtree Falls, a ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and a trip to Appomattox.  And of course lots of nostalgic reminiscing and catching up.

And at the beginning of June, John came down for a quick visit with Cally and Sylvia, partly in anticipation of their upcoming family trip to Germany.  Three earlybirds got to climb Spy Rock in the morning; the rhododendron and flaming azalea were in bloom!

click here for more pictures of their visit

 

I think our chickens enjoy my sister Eleanor’s visits as much as we do.  Incredible TLC from NYC, including twice-daily poop removal service–our Chicken Hilton really lives up to its name when Eleanor is here!  It’s been really fun watching them together on this recent visit.  We mostly stayed close to home, but did take some local walks, including a visit to the Appalachian Trail suspension bridge over the Tye River.

 

 

 

We had a lovely Easter with Nic and Alison.  Then, with a buffet full of cards expressing the quite extraordinary love and caring of friends and family, we headed up to Johns Hopkins University Hospital for follow-up appointments with Monika’s surgeon and oncologist.  A friend convinced us to break up the trip with a romantic interlude, and we did that at the Mimslyn Inn in Luray, a quite elegant old-style hotel which provided a nice break and raised our spirits.

 

The news at Johns Hopkins was encouraging.  We spent one night with Tim and Megan, who had a pretty full house with Megan’s sister Sharon, her husband Ben, and their two delightful children, Evie and Nora.

 

We stayed with John and family on the way back (but failed to take pictures.)

click on image above for a larger one

Since Monika’s diagnosis of kidney cancer in January, our life has been something of a treadmill of medical tests and doctor appointments, culminating in a ten-day stay in Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where Monika had her left kidney and the tumor on it removed.  Before, during, and after, we’ve both been greatly moved by the outpouring of support in the form of cards, emails, prayers, best wishes, and good vibes.  A particularly special one was the poem above by our dear friend and former colleague at Rutgers, Rafey Habib.  I’ve used a picture Monika took of the Blue Ridge mountains she loves so much as a backdrop to Rafey’s poem.  We both find it profoundly moving.

We had a delightful Christmas with Tim, Megan, Nic, and Alison.  Tim and Megan helped bring us into the modern technological era by helping us install a flatscreen TV, to replace the old-fashioned 14 inch screen Monika once fished out of a dumpster!  Alison won the Godiva chocolate prize for reaching the 11 card straight in Recipe (evoking memories of 94-year old Virginia Page, currently in the hospital, who taught us the game).  Nic added to our woodpile and shows promise as a knitter, and Tim presented us with a wonderful illustrated narrative of the hike five of us took last summer in the White Mountains.  And of course, food as always kept us together around the table…

New Year’s Postscript: The Xmas aftermath turned out to be less merry.  Although he didn’t realize it at the time, Bob came down with the flu on Christmas Eve, and that flu spread first to Monika and then to Nic, Tim, and Megan.  Only Alison (already exposed at school to just about every malady known to humans) remained immune.  By New Year’s, everyone was on the mend in varying degrees.

 

We were a cozy group of four for Thanksgiving.  Tim and Megan joined me in climbing up to Humpback Rocks in the morning, their first time there.  Lots of fellow hikers, but the rocks and the views are always spectacular.

Two weeks later, we headed up to Pennsylvania to celebrate our grand-daughter Paityn’s birthday with Dave, Sue and brother Cody.  John came up from Maryland as well.  Both kids were adorable, and it was great to have an extended period of time with them and their parents, since we don’t travel much these days.

 

   

We stopped off in Maryland on the way back to see Sylvia (now a high school senior and recently accepted by Harvard!) perform in the Montgomery County Youth Orchestra concert.  Tim and Megan joined us.  Below: a picture of Sylvia from afar, and family spectators.

 

   
(If you click on the images for larger ones, you can make out the skunk.)

The AT hike in my previous post occurred during archery hunting season, which I’m basically ok with (using a simple economic analysis, I assume that because arrows cost much more than bullets, archers will be more careful about their targets than gun users).  But gun hunting season is now beginning in earnest, and I make it a practice to stay out of the woods during that period.  I don’t particularly like it, but hunting is definitely part of the local culture and fortunately nearby Shenandoah National Park, where hunting is banned, is a safe alternative.

The pictures above actually tell a different story.  Our two neighbors down the hill phoned us one Sunday morning in June and said that a rabid skunk was heading up our way and they were following it with a rifle.  I went out back and found that the skunk had entered our outer chicken run.  However it fairly quickly left it and started into our woods.  Our neighbor Frank started shooting at it, but the skunk quite nonchalantly managed to escape the bullets popping around it.  It ambled down toward the road, where Derek succeeded in killing it.  Just as it was hit, the skunk let out its tell-tale smell, which sent us all running!

Now the fact the skunk seemed so unconcerned about the bullets flying around it seemed to confirm the diagnosis of rabies, and that may have been so.  However, another local friend who knows a lot about these things says that skunks, knowingly armed with their highly effective stink, don’t frighten easily, and so it’s possible that it was simply exhibiting the self-assured nonchalance of the species.  (The frequency of run-over skunks on the road might suggest the downside of that self-assurance.)  Either way, it stinks!

Reminder: all pictures on this blog may be clicked on for a larger one

Biking the Blue Ridge Railway trail along the Piney and Tye Rivers

Meeting my former Harvard roommate Joe Persky (and his son Dan)
at Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park

 

Hiking along the James River Heritage Trail from Lynchburg across Percival Island and over to the Amherst County side of the river and back.

Revisiting outlooks over Rockfish Valley along Blue Ridge Parkway and I-64 that helped convince us to move here.

 

 

Above: John and family posing, eating, walking, reading, and (Calista) feeding crickets to the chickens during a visit in early August.

Above: Eleanor loving our chickens!

 

Above: Rafey Habib and family at Crabtree Falls and at Saunders during peach season.