
Karen H and I each won a mug for placing in our age groups at the Fredericksburg Blue and Gray Half-Marathon. My 9:53 pace was better than several recent attempts at this distance.
Marty checks the dates of James Buchanan Duke, 1856-1925, before we enter the chapel to hear a wonderful performance of Handel’s Messiah. Thanks to Jan, who’s been in the choir many years, for our great seats right up at the front.
We had a few days at the beach in early August. We all rode bikes, we walked, some of us went running at sunrise, we sat on the beach, played in the sand, ate and drank. Wore plenty of sunblock and needed lots of insect repellant for the wildlife refuge. No sunburn or shipwrecks and nobody drowned. We also saw a big NASA rocket launched (see separate page). Various photographers. You can hover on the edge of a photo to a show description and pause the slideshow — then un-hover to resume the slideshow.
April 24th in the woods just behind the house, almost our only fringe tree, aka old man’s beard. (Only sometimes attacked by the Emerald Ash Borer. See https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/chionanthus-virginicus/.) We do have one other. They’re hard to identify without the blooms. A long shot six days later: