The last picture for this post is of a small section of the Biltmore Estate Equestrian Club's annual horse show. It goes on for about two weeks. There are hundreds of horses and thousands of people involved. I am not into horse shows because I really don't know what is good deportment for a horse. . .to me they just lope around gracefully and jump over the occasional invented obstacle. Nonetheless, it is hard not to watch them because they are so pretty. 

In spite of the lateness of the season, there are actually a few species of azaleas (I think) still blooming in the azalea garden. Most are gone, along with the rhododendrons and these positively elephantine things called large leaf magnolias. Next year I need to get a shot of them. They are so big you'd think they came from Chernobyl.
This is the border around the pattern beds and it is composed of two different colors of coleus. Positively amazing.
And this is what midsummer looks like in the pattern beds. I have gotten to know the guy who designs and maintains these all year with a crew. He is a trip and is obsessed with flowers. He also has an almost frightening knowledge of them.
This beauty is actually a squash blossom. The hint of yellow you see behind it is another type. I guess the blooms don't stay on for long but they sure are impressive. 

This very cool little toad (I guess. . .don't really know how toads differ from frogs, but he was pretty far from water, so I am going with toad) crossed the path right in front of Abner and me while we were walking in the woods the other day. I didn't even see him until he jumped. He actually looked a lot like a leaf.
This is a type of hydrangea that grows profusely around here. They are snow white and form almost perfect spherical clusters.
OK, this bug was a complete mystery to me but you couldn't miss him on the path so I got down pretty close to snap this picture. He was very slow moving and seemed pretty indifferent to us. I had to convince Abner to back off a little though. I could see him picking the thing up in his mouth to decide whether or not it was a treat.
As I have reported before, the geese at the lagoon are certainly in the family way. People who know about these things inform me that the percentage of goslings that have made it to the size you see in this picture is exceptionally high this year. Several of the couples still have 4 babies with them. Don't know what the predators are eating but it has been a good year for geese. 

This is some kind of very cool butterfly that I don't remember seeing last year. Not the best shot, but these critters don't stay in one place for very long.
This is what the grape arbor that runs down the middle of the walled garden at Biltmore looks like these days. The grapes are looking pretty healthy and now the squashes are starting to bloom.
Still another flower I really like but have no clue as to its identity.
And another view of the bass pond in the still of a summer morning. Ducks seem to have taken over from the geese, who had their babies here but seem to have moved to the lagoon to hang with the other geese.

 

It is Bastille Day, not that there is much significance for me, and around 3:00 this afternoon a thunderstorm blew into town. After watching from my office window for a while, I went downstairs, made myself a latte, and sat out on the front porch and enjoyed the downpour. Abner joined me for a bit, but soon became bored with the lack of action and went back inside. But as I sat out on my porch, with a light breeze and about 73 degrees temp, I began to, once again, realize how lucky I am these days. My front porch, for those of you who haven't seen it, is a large area, perhaps 12 by 15 feet, which is covered completely and is open on two sides. One faces the street and the two houses directly opposite mine, and one faces the garden to the side where, besides the abundant flowers courtesy of the people from whom I bought the place, there now are tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers growing surprisingly well due to the efforts of Jay Coble, my talented neighbor who decided to garden in my yard this summer. Of course, there is also the view of the construction of the new house for Steve and Karen Blair right next door, but since it is raining and there is lightning and thunder, there is no activity going on next door.

A bunny moved onto my property (or perhaps was born here) a couple months ago and he seems to have taken up residence in the back and side yards. He is pretty brazen and frequently doesn't bother to scamper off until you are within perhaps 10 feet of him. I think he is dining on some of the greenery in my yard but thus far has left the veggies alone. He also is getting bigger with each passing week. I watched him for a while in the rain while I was enjoying my coffee and he is looking quite healthy. I am pleased that he is growing as much as he appears to be since there are a half a zillion cats in the immediate vicinity of my house and when he was younger, he would have been easy prey for them. As he is now almost as big as several of the cats, I suspect he is less of a target. If he stays, I think I will name him. Nothing comes to mind yet, and of course, while I refer to him as "him", I truly am not certain of gender, so I could end up with something non-committal like "Pat" or else I may have to make an arbitrary decision if some name simply leaps out at me. It is fun being able to spend time sitting drinking coffee and listening to rain on the canvas awning and not having to feel like it is stealing time from something else I really should be doing.

And speaking of things I should be doing, yesterday I spent the afternoon reading the rest of the second of two books I have agreed to review for a publication called "Theatre Design and Technology". Both books are about the process of designing and building theaters, and if you think this subject matter would fail to make compelling reading, you are absolutely correct. The first one, a 140-page paperback called Building Better Theaters was as dry as dust. Thank God it was so short because otherwise I don't think I could have tolerated reading the whole thing. The amazing thing about this book is that there is absolutely not a shred of information in the first 80 of these pages that applies solely to the building of theaters (as opposed to every other building type). It certainly isn't clear that this author had any notion of the composition of his target audience. There is very little in the last 60 pages that would be germane for an architect who really was going to design a theater, and what technical information he does provide in that part of the book is probably too simple and basic for theatrical, acoustical, or lighting consultant to not know it already. Illustrations are small and only in black and white. . .some of them are so bad that you literally can't tell what you are looking at. Perhaps the most annoying thing of all is that there are countless grammatical errors in this tome that the editor failed to correct before sending it to the presses. Fortunately the second book is dramatically better. It is lavishly illustrated and well structured so it can be used as a reference book rather than forcing the reader to sit down and plow through the whole thing to get whatever information he needs from it. I think the biggest difference is that a different person wrote almost every chapter. Each one wrote only on a topic with which he or she is a recognized expert. The editor made the prose flow smoothly, as if there had been only one writer, but you definitely don't get the feeling you are reading something that represents only one, sometimes pissy and resentful viewpoint. Anyway, I now have to write a review of both and submit it by the 15th of August. I guess it isn't a good idea to be too acerbic in criticizing the weaker one, but I need to be negative enough to tell the readers of the magazine not to waste their money or time. I don't think this is going to be my new career, but it will be interesting to see how I do with this one.

A couple weeks ago, the two women who manage my rentals here invited me to another social event. I had really enjoyed the dinner in which they had included me at Jeanne Ann's house a month or two ago so I accepted the invitation to go to Rodney and Diane's to play cards. Rodney is Jeanne Ann's nephew and he and Diane, Jeanne Ann and her husband Jim, and Judy Carver and her late husband had done many things as a group, among them, getting together for simple dinners and a few hours of cards. Since Judy became a widow last fall, the games had stopped, but one day when I was chatting with the two of them after picking up the rent check, they said they thought I would be a good replacement.

Well, two weeks ago we had our first card soiree and it certainly was fun. We all met at a hole in the wall restaurant in Weaverville (a tiny burg that is just North of Asheville and all of a 15 minute drive from my house) that they all like. Dinner was pretty basic, to say the least. I had chicken parts and a variety of dipping sauces. The dinners come with a positively ridiculous amount of French fries that no normal person could possibly get through, and all the ketchup, mustard, ranch dressing, bbq sauce, etc that you want. I also had a diet Coke and my total bill was less than $8. It isn't haute cuisine, and it certainly isn't health food, but it tasted great and was cheaper than dirt.

After dinner we drove the short distance to Rodney and Diane's house and convened in the dining area of their great room at a large rectangular table. The first order of business was seating. It seems that the tradition with this group is that the men form one team and the women another. Jeanne Ann informed me that the women generally whup the asses of the men in cards and that since I was new to the game, I shouldn't count on winning. Once seated, we began the elaborate process of shuffling the 6 decks of cards that they use for a game called "Hand and Foot" which is, it turns out, a variant on Canasta. I remember my Grandmother teaching me Canasta when I was about 10 or so and I probably hadn't played it since maybe age 11 or 12. I really didn't remember much of the game, but they patiently taught me and provided a printed cheat sheet.

We played a first hand that wasn't going to count on the scorecard just so I could get the hang of it, and the men won decisively. After that, Jeanne Ann said that I was on my own and that they take no prisoners. It turns out that it is a fun but rather simple game. For someone who is used to playing Bridge, which requires a lot of attention, this game is a cakewalk. The upshot of it being so easy to follow is that there tends to be a lot of conversation during the game. Now you have to appreciate that these folks are all native Carolinians and the conversations can get pretty colorful in a Southern sort of way. As the stories and remarks got wilder and more lewd, any sense of keeping things sedate for the new guy went out the window.

At this point, perhaps 2 hours into our game, Judy, having heard pretty much everyone at the table using some foul language, announces that now that the "F" word has been bandied about so generously, she has a joke to tell, and it went like this. Two ancient Southern Belles are sitting beside one another in rocking chairs on the front porch of the old folks home where they live. They have been friends from their youth and often reminisce about the old days. After chatting for a while, this one evening, one turns to the other and says, "Mildred, do you remember the minuet?" Mildred continues to rock languidly and says wistfully to her friend, "Oh honey, I can't even remember the min I fucked".

There were more stories and more jokes, and in the end, the men whupped the women by about 100 points (which is nothing). I had a really great time and am getting the biggest kick out of these 5 people. I have now been invited to join them for a gourmet dinner train ride through the Smoky Mountains along some very picturesque route early next month. Needless to say I am going. I will post a report.

I have booked a house on Ocracoke for Abner and me over the week of Thanksgiving. I have decided to make a real tour of it and drive the entire NC coast for a little less than two weeks. We will probably start in Wilmington, a small historic city on the Cape Fear River near its mouth and only about 40 miles from the South Carolina border. I can get there pretty easily the first day and intend to overnight there at least one or maybe two nights. Then I will drive up the coast to New Bern, another historic site, for a brief visit there and then take the Cedar Island Ferry out to Ocracoke. I have the house for a week and there is extra room in case any of you has a burning desire to spend Thanksgiving at the beach.

We will probably spend the whole next seven days on Ocracoke although we might do a side trip to Portsmouth Island to see the only ghost town on the Eastern Seaboard. It sounds interesting and is only 20 minutes by boat from Ocracoke. Then, on Sunday after Thanksgiving, we will head North to the end of the island, take a 45 minute ferry to Hatteras Island, and from there, spend the next 3 or 4 days exploring the Outer Banks and the shore of the mainland up to the Virginia border. I have been wanting to do this since I moved here but hadn't really found the correct time, but this plan puts me there in the off season but while the weather will probably still be in the mid-60s and there is very little rain. There will be a full report of this trip when I complete it.

Next Saturday Ann Thoke arrives with her son Matthew for a brief visit. Matthew leaves from Asheville for an outdoor adventure group trip with a bunch of other kids and Ann is taking a few extra days to hang out with me and see Asheville. I can hardly wait. As most of you know, Ann is one of my oldest and dearest of friends and she hasn't made it to Asheville since I moved here, so this should be a lot of fun.

Then, in September, I am going to California for 8 days. I will spend the weekend after Labor Day with a crowd of you at Winesong in Fort Bragg, and then will head to Sacramento for about 4 days that Sunday. This will be my first time back to CA since I moved and I am really looking forward to it. In 3 days, I will have been here for exactly a year and a half, and for the most part, it is all good. I guess no aspect of life is perfect, but considering what a leap this move was, it sure has been a positive experience so far. I miss you all, but I continue to enjoy this adventure. More later. I will also post some more pictures soon.