Columbus Day yesterday, a Monday holiday for the federal government and a few lucky others. We pulled out the tomato plants, pruned the forsythia, and grubbed up three or four heavy bagfuls of wild mushrooms from the new patio garden. Sandy made pumpkin muffins from the new church cookbook, but they’re not lasting well.
Nature
A detour on the trip to Lynchburg
Stopped here Friday afternoon about 7 miles north of Lovingston hoping to get a few quick snaps of the slabs I’d hoped to find in the Dameron Family Graveyard (on behalf of Findagrave.com.) But as I couldn’t find it, I will have to pass that assignment on to somebody else with time and energy to identify the location of the cemetery.
Autumnal Equinox
Near Thurmont, Maryland
View today from the Shamrock Restaurant, on Route 15 between Thurmont and Gettysburg, a good place to stop for lunch between Stafford and Harrisburg. Draught Guinness on tap.
Warrenton, Virginia
Summertime
Clematis, by the front door
Note of May 4th: I took several shots of the clematis over several days, using the trial-and-error method of learning how to use my digital SLR camera. In the picture below, I manipulated some raw file settings in a photo editing program called Darktable, trying to improve one of those pictures.
Another shot taken about the same time (added 6/19/2012):
Mayapple
We have many mayapple plants now, but this is the only one we’ve seen with a flower so far. It’s on the path by our back fence, close to where I remember seeing a flower and subsequently a fruit photographed last year. Reference: Wikipedia
Our fringe tree is in bloom
This is Chionanthus virginicus, our only one, wild, in the woods, and at the back of Sandy’s woodland garden. I last commented on it back in 2008, and wasn’t able then to do any better showing the whole tree.
See the Wikipedia reference, where I’m delighted to see it’s also known as Old Man’s Beard. Ours blooms every spring, but we’ve never noticed the autumn fruit shown on Wikipedia.
From the top of the X
From the top of the X in the oats field after supper Friday night, 6:40pm, 13 April 2012. We could no longer identify the spire of Hills Church due to tree growth. But we did hear its bells ringing on Sunday. Hills Church is 0.9 miles almost due west of that spot, but we’d probably have to scramble up a tree to see it now.