This has been a quiet but oddly busy time for me. Ann Thoke came for a visit in late July when son Matt was departing on a 12 day outdoor adventure in the mountains all around us. It was Ann's first visit to Asheville and was kind of short but ridiculously busy. Those of you who have been here know how much there is to do and when really there were only a couple days, we really laid it on.

I have also been doing a bunch of things with Jean Anne Rogers and Judy Carver who are the women who manage my rentals. Judy was widowed last year and Jean Ann is married to a really nice guy named Jim who celebrated his 59th birthday last night. From time to time, along with some other friends of theirs, we have been playing a card game called Hand and Foot that is based on Canasta. I haven't played anything but Bridge since I was in high school and barely remembered Canasta from when my grandmother taught me to play when I was probably 9 or 10. This game though, is really fun. You play in teams and the play can become quite spiteful and vindictive. . .gobs of fun. Besides, these folks are all from here and have the best stories and jokes, not to mention that my grasp of North Carolina colloquialisms is improving.

One night we all got together with Judy's brother and sister-in-law who were visiting from Maine, and 3 other friends of Judy and Jean Ann's and all went on the Smoky Mountain Railroad's Gourmet Dinner train from Dillsboro to Whittier. It was a hoot. The food varied from a great appetizer to pretty bad cheesecake for dessert, and while some of the scenery is pretty great, you also pass rusting old trailers out in the woods with toothless banjo pickin' families that wave at you as the train goes by. It is a little strange. You even go by a dump that was recently purchased for a purported $3-million and is being cleaned up for residential development. It is odd to see old Western North Carolina and exploding development side by side.

Last night, at Jim's birthday party, several of their friends brought instruments and played and sang for a couple of hours after everyone had eaten. This was an amazing experience for me. This is a crowd of people with whom I never, in a million years, would have expected to be included, but it also was one of the best birthday parties I think I have ever attended. Besides the food, which several of the guests prepared and was sensational, sitting around afterwards and listening to these people perform was just fantastic. I have never been a fan of country or bluegrass music, and what these folks were playing was kind of a cross between those genres and rock but it was really wonderful. They are good singers and amazing string musicians. There is this one guy named Scotty who apparently is primarily a mandolin player in their band, but was playing both acoustical and electric guitar last night and was incredibly talented. He does very complex and dexterous string picking while the others are strumming and the effect is pretty powerful. I guess they all play together in a band that has a 2 month long gig at a bar in Marshall (about 30 minutes from Asheville) in September and October. I think a bunch of us are going to go watch them perform.

The biggest news is that I may be closing in on a house. I have just about given up on buying land and building from scratch. Property I like and can afford is too far from the center of town for me to feel connected with Asheville, and the lots I have found that are close enough and have great views are either hideously expensive or unbuildbable with the Hillside Development Ordinance. Anyway, a couple weeks ago I started to expand my hunt to include houses. I had hoped to find a read dump on a great lot that I could either gut or tear down, but what I found instead is a fairly strange multi-level 1968 vintage contemporary house. It has a lot of good things going for it but is terminally brown. Virtually every surface in the house that can be, is wood. Paneled walls and ceilings and hardwood floors are everywhere. The master bath is even paneled. What tile there is is mostly brown. I can't stand it.

On the good side, it is the right size for me, 6 minutes from downtown but about 800 feet higher up than where I am now so the temperature will be cooler. It's winter time view will be spectacular and summer views can probably be opened up a bit with some careful tree pruning are removal. It has slightly more than 8/10ths of an acre of land and a really lovely self-contained guest house that even has it's own laundry. Anyway, I am still investigating it and still looking at other places, but if I can't find anything significant wrong with it, I may make an offer.

The other biggy is that I have allowed myself to be nominated to the Planning and Zoning Commission. When I saw Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" it made me angry about the state of things in this country all over again, and in particular about environmental issues. I found myself feeling like I probably should do something active again and decided that this is, at least at this point in my life, probably the best use of my skills in terms of any public sector activities. Who knows, they may even appoint me.

Well, Abner and I are off to hike a stretch of the MTS trail with Spencer and Regie. I hope you are all well. We are.

On a hike with Matt Vande and Bear, we encountered masses of these butterfles all over the gravel roads in the area below Craggy Gardens leading to the village of Dillingham. They were extremely intent on whatever they were doing and wouldn't fly away for anything, including a moving car. My assumption was that this was egg laying but who really knows?
 

One of the locations of which I have grown quite fond for the days when it is a little too warm in Asheville is a place along the Blue Ridge Parkway called Craggy Gardens. It is about 15 miles Northeast of town and is often 15 degrees cooler at about 5,500 feet of elevation. This view is from one of the peaks in the area and you can see the Parkway itself snaking Northeast toward Virginia.
I was always told that anything that appears in the wild and is red is probably poisonous. I am guessing these mushrooms are. While on the same hike in Craggy Gardens when I found these, we saw a little toad sitting on top of a larger mushroom. I remembered that when I was little in Indiana, wild mushrooms were called toadstools. Now I know why.
Probably a day or so later, Abner and I went back to the Arboretum and found this Swallowtail either eagerly devouring something or laying eggs. Whichever it was, we certainly didn't prevent him/her from staying on task. It amazes me that these butterflies just sit there when you get this close with a camera.
And these are Turban Lilies that were abundant on a hike we took at Graveyard Fields about a week and a half ago. They range from pale orange to vivid red but always bloom facing downward with petals that curl up. Very pretty. 

Last year I told you about my growing fascination with the butterflies that proliferate in these hills, but I never got a good picture. I am trying to do a better job this year. This type seems quite common, particularly at higher altitudes, but I don't know what they are.
I have also recently discovered the pleasures of eating berries as I walk. These wild raspberries are all over the place and the wild blueberries are a whole different experience. They are smaller and sweeter than the steroidal ones you see in big plastic containers at the supermarket. I have taken to hiking with zip lock bags just in case. . .

In my neighborhood, in the woods just up the hill from my house, there is an old historic slave cemetary that dates from the early 1800s or possibly late 1700s. Many of the graves are so old that they are either unmarked or the headstones are so worn that you can barely make out what they say. These two, both of which are post civil war, are readable. It is a quiet, lovely interesting place.

Another walk in the same woods as the spider web seemed to feature reptiles. Toads and turtles were the sightings of the day. Abner completely missed the turtle who was sitting right in the middle of the trail, but the toad hopped around and Abner got his nose right down on top of him. I had to discourage any close contact as I could imagine him trying a taste.


I have no idea about these flowers. They were just there, all by themselves beside the trail. It amazes me what just seems to spontaneously appear in nature. 

I am a little embarrassed at the amount of time that has passed since I posted anything here, but I have been busy with many things in a quiet summer. Abner and I still go on our walks whenever the weather permits. If it gets hot and muggy we head up to higher altitude. These first 4 shots though are from Biltmore on days when it wasn't too bad. These bizarre water lily-type flowers that look like trays are quite amazing.

The angus cattle are quite fascinated by Abner and usually either watch us go by or saunter over to the fence to get a good look or touch noses with him. . .very cute. I have gotten to where I kind of like these critters. They don't seem particularly smart but are kind of sweet.
This spider web just amazed me. The day I found it in the woods on the estate, we stumbled across several others just like it. These are quite large and geometrically perfect. This one was about 2 feet across with it's owner exactly in the middle, waiting for lunch.