HAPPY NEW WEEK and HAPPY FULL MOON!
The full moon is Thursday, 17 October, in US and UK. It's a really close Supermoon.
The Covered Bridge Festival began yesterday in my area. Two million people from Indiana and across the country will visit at least one of the festival small towns to buy arts and crafts, enjoy country foods, take bus tours, and see the covered bridges. This weekend, we have weirdly warm weather and glorious sunshine, so our highways have bumper to bumper, slow-crawling traffic and there are crowds everywhere.
i intend to remain holed up at home until the festival is over on the 20th. I went to the doctor last week, and I took the opportunity to stock up on groceries. Yesterday. I walked to the convenience store on the highway and bought drinking water, so I'm all set to stay on my patch for the duration. I gave the groundhog a carrot today.
The festival is a badly needed boost for our rural economy, but I'll be glad when it's over.
Hugs and love to everyone!
Lindy - beautiful photos. Glad you had such nice weather. It is damp and gloomy here today so I imagine it is like that there too. OG - I hope you all got on OK with your jabs. As you know, I got mine on Sunday and was fine at the bowling party in the afternoon. However, I woke up yesterday all cold and shivery with my sinuses hurting. I think it was a reaction because I am fine today. I didn’t go to French but I got a few useful jobs done instead. I am sorry to hear about people’s family difficulties. We are only a small family but we are very lucky that we all live relatively close to one another and that we seem to enjoy each other’s company. This morning it was the turn of the French group to make the teas and coffees at a U3A Open meeting in town. It was very sociable and we seemed to manage OK. We made a good team. I had planned to bring all my potted geraniums into the conservatory this afternoon but it is far too damp and horrid for that job! What a shame. I will just have to sit and read a book!!!
LINDY love all your literary bits and bobs. I cannot imagine not having shelves of books or not being a member of a library. I love our librarians here so much I wrote to the Daily Mail about how great they were and the letter was published.
RUSTY You are so lucky to have a lovely family. We too have small families on either side and as you know I have an ongoing problem with my Brother. My OH has one Sister and they do talk on the phone (she lives near Oxford) but it is not the best of relationships.
Hi all, lovely to read all your news and see the pics re books and growing old. Also Lindy, the one of Black Rock Sands. Visited many moons ago when staying in the area. I have the one and only pic of my mum in a bathing costume there.
Diane - nice to have a country festival celebrating the covered bridges but understand you wanting to hunker down until finished. Hope it brings in rewards.
I received the other day pics of our former Methodist Chapel in Worsley and they have done a great job in transforming it , or part of it, into a community cafe.
You can see they've retained the balcony and opened the roof to show the rafters. Also the pulpit and organ are still in there. It really looks like a great renovation and hope I can visit it when next up there, probably Christmas now.
http://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/things-to-do/wildlife-webcams/loch-of-lowes/
RSPB Giving Nature a Home
Lynette - they have done a great job with the old chapel. I go to a cafe near the Pontcysyllte aqueduct where they have done the same thing. Because it is at a World Heritage site, they do very well.
I have been to town shopping!!! It’s awful out there. The roads are big puddles and the rain is heavy, I got drenched just walking from the car park to the charity shop. It’s market day but I didn’t linger. I have just had to change my socks and trousers!!!!! Stay safe everyone.
Rusty - I was just looking at the news and saw floods in Oswestry, which I think is somewhere near you? Looks horrible. We have bright sunshine and temperature around 20 degrees. Crazy weather! Although we are forecast thunder storms later ...
Morning all:
Lynette: The converted church looks lovely - if perhaps a bit echoey. I was struck by the pipes of that lovely old organ - maybe they could even host musical evenings there.... Christmas Carols? Chamber/Folk music? Maybe even Bach's Toccata ad Fugue in D Minor? :-))
Rusty: What is U3E?
Meanwhile, granddaughter and Ms D made quick trip to AZ over the weekend primarily for the penultimate visit to Ms. D's orthodontist (apparently a better option than going through all the rigamarole and expense of signing up with a new doc here in SB where everything is twice the cost). On a previous trip back there this summer, they visited the goat (Billy, what else?) who'd been taken in by a mainly equine horse rescue group when they moved back to CA. On that visit, they found out that the organization had hired a new manager who had completed neglected the smaller critters with the result that poor Billy was emaciated with full-body mange. On that visit, they scooped him up and moved him to a friend's ranch where those friends fed and shampooed him every day so he's back to full health. So a big surprise when she arrrived back from AZ on this trip with the goat in tow! She'd traded vehicles with a friend who had a truck; he'd built a crate for Billy, and now Billy is living happily ever after on the same ranch as their two horses. That first morning I took my daughter to her first riding lesson some 50 years ago, little did I know that subsequent generations would be carting critters large and small back and forth across the desert! Maybe I should've paid for art or piano lessons instead..... Still a bit late now.
Very odd weather here: It's like May Gray and June Gloom in October..... even the weather people are mystified.
Annette - Love the story of Billy, and hope he will, as you say, spend the rest of his life living happily ever after! Sounds like a wonderful place. My parents paid for me to have both piano and horse riding lessons as a child - and ballet. Now there was the problem - I was told very firmly around the age of ten that ballet and horse riding did not mix - apparently your legs have to do entirely different things - and I had to make a choice. I chose horses over ballet. Do I regret my choice? I don't think so - but I enjoy watching ballet and I can still remember the leg and arm positions!
Annette - U3A stands for University of the Third Age. It is a self help organisation. I believe it was started in France. Here we have area organisations where people with some kind of expertise offer to coordinate groups to pursue a certain interest. My French and Flora and Fauna groups are in the organisation. You can do things as diverse as philosophy and dining out!!! There are book groups, poetry groups, science groups, flower arranging. Art - all sorts.
Pat - I am about an hour from Oswestry further into North Wales. Mercifully, the rain now seems to have eased off.