Thursday Thirteen

13 images of deer for your fun and enjoyment!

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 254th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday for the 6th time.

Barn Burning

Saturday evening a thunderstorm rolled through. We went out to dinner, and as we made our way back home, we noticed smoke rising over near the farm where I grew up, and where my father and brother still live.

So we drove over.

One of the neighbors, who also is one of my husband's cousins, had lost a barn.

This was a pole barn that was about 10 years old.

It had about 400 rolls of hay stored inside.

The fire department was there, but the structure was gone when they arrived. They decided to soak the ground around the barn and let it burn.

Barns sometimes catch fire because they have hay in them that has been put up too wet or green. As green or wet hay dries, chemical changes cause heat, which eventually creates a fire. However, the owner said he had not put up hay for at least month, and since we'd just had a storm, lightning seemed the most plausible cause.

You just never know!


*For the first time ever, I have linked up with Barn Charm at the suggestion of one of my readers.*

Books: I Still Dream About You

I Still Dream About You
By Fannie Flagg
Copyright 2010
Read by the author

The author of Fried Green Tomatoes can still spin a good southern yarn.

She offers up some quirky characters in her latest book. Maggie Fortenberry is an aging former Ms. Alabama who has decided to kill herself.

This in and of itself is not funny, and I confess it made me more than a little uncomfortable. Maggie is very organized and she had thought out her plan for a long time before she decided to put things in motion.

But she keeps getting interrupted, and she has to stall her plans again and again.

Maggie's predicament is not amusing, and frankly I had a hard time feeling bad for this woman. She was lonely but she had a fairly nice life. She wanted to die more out of vanity and fear of growing old and wrinkled than because she was depressed.

Fortunately the author led us off into other relationships to take us away from the heaviness of the topic. Her other characters - Babs the evil real estate agent, Hazel, the midget with the business acumen of Warren Buffet, and Brenda, the African American who would be mayor of Birmingham, were enough to keep me listening.

Flagg also tossed in some Birmingham history that I think probably has some truth to it, though I don't know and would have to defer to the area historians on that to be sure.

I don't think this book stands up to some of Flagg's better works, but then it is hard to beat something that was ultimately nominated for an Academy Award, like Fried Green Tomatoes.

However, this is not a bad read, and if you're interested in old southern ladies, or just want a southern read, then you might want to give this one a try.

A New Look

At the end of May, I wrote about my 20-year-old bedspread and matching curtains, and how I would like a change.

This is what I had.

The set held up very well, a testament to the quality of the items as well as, I say somewhat immodestly, my efforts to take care of our things.

I looked but could not find a matching bedspread and curtain set that I liked.

So I ended up with a bedspread from Belk and curtains from JC Pennys.

The bedspread is actually a thin white quilt with some flowery design.

The curtains are a denim blue. There is a little white stitching in the curtains that doesn't show up in these photos. The stiching helps keep them from being boring. If the link above works, you can see the stitching in the JCP photo.

It is a different look for our bedroom. I imagine it will take a while to get used to it. But maybe not. Everything else is the same.

At least with the solid color I have more options as far as the bedspread, should I decide to change it. And I did not pay so much for these curtains that I expect to hang on to them for 20 years like I did the last set. Plus, being so dark, I think they will fade in a while.

Anyway, that's my redecorating.

Raindrops on Roses

After one of our recent thunderstorms, I noticed my roses were in full bloom. I slipped out and shot a few photos before the raindrops dried.

Unfortunately, I don't know the names of my roses. Most of them were gifts to me, and the names have been lost.

I think I shall call this one Helga, just because.

I shall name this one Atlas.

I dub thee Hermes, O Sweet Red Rose.

And I shall whisper out Aphrodite's Tears when I see you, O favored rose.

And you I will name First Born, because you are the blooms from the first rose I planted, over 20 years ago.

Goshen

Virginia is full of small communities that once were thriving areas. Botetourt County has a number of them - Lignite, Spec, Nace, Trinity, Woodland, Haymakertown, to name just a few. Most of the rural localities in this part of the state have these little population areas.

There is even a book called Lost Communities of Virginia, by Terri Fisher, et al, which documents this mostly Appalachian evolution.

Not far from the Goshen Pass, the town of Goshen is one of those communities. It was once a thriving resort and industrial community. Now it has about 400 residents.

There is still some local industry, though.

One large company makes wooden palettes.

We drove through the community while visiting Goshen Pass. Like many of these places, the fire department building was the newest and nicest municipal building. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture.

Most of Goshen that we passed through looked like the above, sort of forlorn and forgotten.

This water tower has an interesting character, though, and I was taken by it. Even with the graffiti.

The state apparently restored this bridge. I found a youtube video about it. You can watch the promo for the video here: it has some interesting footage of the town as it was developing. The bridge was originally built in 1890 and it was restored by the state in 2001.

Thursday Thirteen

Do you ever wonder how much things change? Consider these headlines, ripped from the pages of a local newspaper.

1. Local Farm Records Show High Seed Cost
2. Work Goes Forward on Triton Plant
3. Make Virginia Stronger Aim of Home Economists and Nutritionists Joint Meeting
4. Town Council Considers Water Supply
5. Coal Mine Project Abandoned
6. Help in the Fight on Infantile Paralysis
7. Schools Face Shortened Term
8. Flu Receding
9. County Banks Paid Dividends and Added to Reserves: Local Bank Had Good Year
10. Eagle Rock Farmers Hear Talk on Farm Water Systems
11. Schools in this Area Closed by Quarantine
12. Earl Wilcher is First Draftee from Botetourt
13. Botetourt Goes for Roosevelt and Woodrum

That last might clue you in on the year. I took these headlines from November 7, 1940 (#13 in my list) through February 20, 1941 (#1 on my list).

While I was looking for headlines, though, these little proganda cartoons caught my eye. They are from the same front pages during the same time frame:

In 1940 and 1941, war was taking place in Europe. When these headlines were written, we were still almost a year away from entering World War II, which we did in December, 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Looks to me like we forgot to change the propoganda when the war ended.

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 253rd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Wordless Wednesday

An old hayrake located at the Cyrus McCormick Historic Site in Steeles Tavern, VA

Linking up with Wordless Wednesday for the 5th time.

Alpine Hideaway

Earlier this month we took a couple of days and went to the Shenandoah Valley. Sometimes you just need a break, you know?

We stayed in a romantic little cabin getaway in Steeles Tavern called Alpine Hideaway. It is part of the new Steeles Tavern B&B that just opened up.

The cabins were not new but they were very clean. I always appreciate "very clean" when I stay somewhere.

This was the kitchen.

This was the living area. It had a hidden TV set and gas logs in the fireplace. Of course it was too hot to use the fireplace.

This was the king-sized bed.

This was the jacuzzi bathtub and shower. It was a little hard for me to get into as I am quite short, but it was nice.

There was also a hot tub on the rear deck. The facility was off US 11, but far enough off the road that the road noises were not a problem. Apparently there is a train track in the distance as I heard the train whistle once but I did not hear the clack of wheels on the track.

The place was very nice, if a little more expensive than we are used to. However, we have a hard time finding places to stay. Most B&Bs and cabins like this allow pets and/or smoking, and with my asthma that is a big problem. In fact, it has become hard to find a hotel to stay at. I think we're down to the Hamilton Inns because everything else allows pets.

This place does not allow pets, children, or smoking (except on the back deck) in the cabins, so this was my kind of overnighter.

The only problem I had with the cabin was the laundry, which I think had been washed in Tide. Tide sets off my asthma. The innkeeper told me in an email that she was going to switch back to doing the laundry in-house where she has better control over things like the laundry soap. Apparently she was trying out a laundry service while we were there. If she does that, the place is perfect for asthma sufferers and others with allergy issues.

But I would check with her first if that is an issue for you.

For some reason I did not take a picture of the exterior of the cabin. But it was quite picturesque.

Books: The Road To Grace

The Road to Grace
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright 2012
Read by the author
Unabridged

This is the third (and I thought final but from the reviews on Amazon I guess not) book in Evans' trilogy about walking. The first, The Walk, was pretty good. The second, Miles to Go, was okay.

And then we come to this book.

This really shouldn't have been a third book. Honestly, these are all very short and I think it would have been better to have written a single larger book. But he did not and now we're stuck with these three books.

These books are about Alan, who lost his wife in the first book. After she died, he despaired and set out to walk from Seattle to Key West, Florida.

Along the way he meets a lot of people and sees a lot of stuff. In this last book, he is in Hannibal, Missouri, when the story ends.

This third book, unfortunately, falls short. The author obviously ran out of things to have happen to the character, and resorted to telling histories of the many towns that Alan walks through. While I enjoyed these little bits of Americana, and trusted the author enough to think that at least most of it was researched on Wikipedia if nothing else, the loss of character and forward momentum made for pretty dull listening after a time.

I wasn't looking for a travelogue, after all, but a story. I was interested in what happened to Alan. Or at least I was.

This is the second Evans book that I have not been overly thrilled about. I am glad he is one of the authors I listen to in the car and not one I intentionally spend time with.