Author: Cabincrafted1

When we lived on the east coast of Virginia, it would take us 4 to 5 hours to get to the mountains for a hike.  Today it was a 20 minute ride for a 2 1/2-3 mile hike through a beautiful woods on a ridge.  The half way point offers the most primitive view with not a road, pole, or structure in sight.

War Spur Overlook

Overlook with pups

Hubby and pups on overlook

A stroll in the woods

We have hiked this trail at various seasons, but never before with the pups.  It is a beautiful, not difficult walk very close to our house and never crowded.  Today we were the only hikers.

As a kid, living in Lynnhaven, Princess Anne County, now part of Virginia Beach, I used to dread the Sunday at the end of the first full week of August as it marked the end of our family’s week at Shrine Mont and signalled that the summer was drawing to a close and school was soon to resume.

Six years ago, we moved to the mountains and found out that the schools here begin much earlier, mid August as opposed to the Tuesday after Labor Day that I was accustomed to in Virginia Beach.  As a teacher and then a school counselor, we returned a couple of weeks prior to the kids and that was true here in the western part of the state as well, thus returning the adults to school during the first week of August, while my family was at Shrine Mont.  After my first summer here, as I was in a 12 month job, I took a few days vacation time and went with them to return to the back to school chaos that only an educator can understand.

Tomorrow the students will return to school locally, but since we have had several consecutive mild winters, they may be losing their early start waiver from the state and will have to start after Labor Day next year.  If I was still working, I would have been back for two weeks, trying to fix broken schedules, registering new students, listening to student and parent pleas for a different teacher or different order  of classes, helping with or planning Back to School Night activities.  I didn’t even think about these things this year until a friend told me that Back to School Night was last week and another that she was back at work without us getting together this summer.

Do I miss it?  I can honestly say that I do not.  I have retired, twice.  The first time was as soon as I had obtained the magic combination of age and years working that the retirement system for the state mandates.  I was burned out from SOLs, the State mandated testing, can you believe they name them with something that produced that acronym?  As hubby was self employed, I was covering the family’s insurance and that was a good portion of my retirement, so I went to work, part time for an educational non-profit to keep us insured. After we started our home in the mountains, I went back into education as the department chair of the School Counseling office of a local high school to pay back into the retirement system for a few more years.  When hubby finally retired, I followed a few months later and though I do miss some of the people, I don’t miss the headaches of school opening days, standardized testing, student registration for the next year and school closing days.  I am blissfully happy to still be at home, enjoying my hubby, the pups, and the garden.

images from the 77th Annual Newport Agricultural Fair, the oldest Ag fair in the state of Virginia. This is our community and where we spent a good part of yesterday.

 This morning was pups to the vet morning, one to be weighed for heartworm meds, the other for shots, exam and weighin for heartworm meds.  This event was traumatic for one and the highlight of the day for the other.
 .  As we arrived and I had to literally drag the little shepherd pup from the back of the SUV, the beast bounded to the back for his leash.  Since Shadow was cowed, I walked her on up the ramp to enter and check her in to be nearly bowled over by Ranger who had pulled away from hubby, sans leash and loped in to the vets and straight to the back to say “Hello” to the staff with hubby chasing after him, leash in hand.
     At 7 months old, the beast weighed in at 122 lbs.  Once inside, Shadow settled, took her exam and shots calmly, and weighed only 38 lbs.  She will be 5 months next week.  We survived this visit, physically unharmed, but with a considerably lighter wallet, and I thought raising kids was expensive.
    After the morning vet, the pups got a walk on the Huckleberry Trail and home to chill out on the front porch, in the shade and under the fan.  Don’t they look traumatized?

Wednesday evening is my weekly knitting night with the gals and tonight also with two husbands. I haven’t been going this summer and realized tonight that it is a good midweek social break.  I enjoyed socializing and knitting with friends.  I have spent most of my crafting time this summer spinning at home.
As I was leaving for home, I was treated to another beautiful sunset.

Our week of storms has produced nightly flood warnings near creeks and sometimes the river and has filled the woods with mushrooms. This one looked like a dumbbell and was about 10″ tall.

Two lengthy service calls and several hours later, hubby has Direct TV and a decent picture for his TV. Our local provider is a cooperative and as this is a poor county, the equipment is fairly low end, so the cable picture is not a good quality.  We have joined the satellite receiver in the yard crew that is the mainstay of country living, at least they aren’t still huge dishes mounted literally in the yard

Mowing was finally done around the house between weekend storms.  This weekend was Steppin’ Out, a huge street festival in Blacksburg with food, music, and crafts. We got a couple of gifts to stash for birthdays or Christmas on Friday when it was steamy hot before the first storm hit. Yesterday during one of the storms, I dashed between mostly hunkered down vendors to get to the farmer’s market for bread, cheese, and a few, produce items not growing in our garden.  The meat vendors weren’t there.

Last evening, between storms we took the pups to the Huckleberry trail for a walk.  Shadow has done well on these walks until last night and she was skittish, dragging, pulling, and dancing, especially when two skateboarders passed us from behind and again when they returned.  We were hoping she was getting over her fearfulness.  She starts puppy training classes today, mostly for the socialization in a strange location.  She won’t take training treats from us except in the house or car and training is easy here but I don’t expect much from the class except helping her to get over being fearful.

Kelly and Rich’s wedding 8/13/2010.  Today my cousins, brother, and Dad will begin their vacation at the site of many wonderful memories.  Have fun, maybe next year.

Two pups entertained with chunks of beef femur stuffed with treats and peanut butter.

The linen closet, finally!

This weeks flower share was full of zinneas and sunflowers.

The zinneas faded in a day or two and were replaced by cone flowers, brown eyed susans, and daisies from around the house.

 Today no fog, but the heat haze potends a wicked day.

    This is a lazy sort of day, sitting on the front porch with the remnants of a single cup of coffee, left over from yesterday and rewarmed, not my favorite, but not wanting to waste it.  I used to save it for iced coffee, but only when the brew is decaf so I can actually sleep at night.  This pound is high test.

I never tire of this view.

     The pups are chasing each other around the yard that again needs to be mowed.  Many of the farmers here are cutting a second mowing of hay already.  Last night in the relative cool before dark, I attacked the garden and compost area with the weedwacker and can now at least walk the paths and see the beds.  I still need to weed the beds and get some fall plantings in along with cover crops for the beds that are done for the season.  The tomatoes are producing copious quantities, some being frozen whole, some cooked into pasta sauce while there is fresh basil and oregano and homegrown onions and it too is being frozen.  There are enough jalapenos to can a few and make fresh salsa for snacking and saucing.

     As I have previously blogged, we live on 30 acres in the midst of hayfields and pastures. When we returned from Florida, I found evidence that one or more of the little four legged mousey critters had gotten by the cats and sneaked inside, so the traps had to be pulled out and set.  The first night we caught a large field mouse, last night a much smaller one managed to get only a leg caught and caused so much ruckus, that hubby woke me to help him figure out what the racket was and where it was coming from.  I guess the traps will have to stay out for a while longer as they never come in one or two.  It is a bit more challenging finding places to put the traps that the pups can’t get into.

     Another swift built a nest under the eaves of the garage on the south side of the house.  This has provided me with some amusement as they dive bomb the pups when they are in the back.  They usually attack from behind, swooping down as close as they can come to the dog’s back or head, causing a confused start by the pup.  It has interrupted their daily business more than once.  Interestingly, they are learning and tend to move farther from the house now to avoid the mystery attacks.

     Our basement contractor returned over the weekend and he and a helper pulled up both the leading and end edges of the bamboo flooring that they had installed that had buckled so badly that we did not  want to walk on it.  It has been trimmed to leave, hopefully sufficient expansion space to prevent it from happening again.  It has been down all summer and should have expanded as much as it can.  This also necessitated putting a dehumifier down there to try to remove some of the moisture, and requiring 2 or 3 emptyings of its bucket daily.  It is a basement with most of 3 walls underground, even though the remaining wall is south facing and exposed.  This problem has forced us to use our A/C consistently for most of the summer, which we haven’t done since moving here 6 years ago.  I have very mixed feelings about that as I love the sounds of the birds and bugs that are a benefit of peaceful mountain living.
    
    The second project that son did when he was here was to cut the stringers and shelf boards for me to finally install shelving in the linen closet nook in the downstairs bathroom.  The installation was completed over the weekend and all of the spare linens finally have a home, not in dresser drawers.

    Summer goes on, hot and humid, though the temperatures have returned to seasonal hot, not the upper 90’s of June and the mountain nights are blissfully cool.

The beauty of our mountain space.

 The summer flowers, this seems to be the yellow month.

The ability of one son to take his Mom’s idea, design and build the structure often using leftover material from the house construction.  This is the new root cellar storage unit.