Shelburne Falls, MA

On Sunday, July 26th, Dolores Lawler and I took a ride to Shelburne Falls, MA. Our main objective was to attend a gathering of poets and writers for the purpose of reading our works. Our Google map told us it was about 70 miles and should take us an hour and twenty-three minutes. Our mileage was more like 63 miles and time was about one hour and ten minutes. Of course, going 80 mph for stretches at a time didn’t hurt. It was pleasant driving: cloudy, fairly light traffic and the blurred mountainous views were gorgeous.

We did a slow drive down Bridge St. and pulled into a parking space not far from the Iron Bridge. We were right in front of Café Martin and we took the time to check out their posted menu until all our moving parts were moving again.

The first order of business was to walk over the Flower Bridge. We chose to walk across the Deerfield River on the Iron Bridge first in order to take pictures of the Flower Bridge to the north. Below are all the beautiful flowers on the Flower Bridge.

Don't forget...each photo can be enlarged just by clicking on it.

The walk on the Flower Bridge was so beautiful, with so many flowers all in bloom. Haven’t a clue as to names of flowers (except cone flower and lily).

From there we went to look at the glacial potholes. Shelburne Falls has the river dammed up in such a way that these potholes are high and dry, while the river is shunted through further south. In some of the holes you can see the rock that created the hole…like a mortar and pestle due to the movement of the ancient glacier.

Along the way we took time to admire the architecture and the colors of the buildings. These folks are not afraid to use color! Dolores loved the old world feel of the town.

We pause on the way to the potholes and take pictures of each other. Dolores on left; me on the right.

Time to eat! We went back to Café Martin and I had a cup of kale soup, ½ BLT sandwich and a side of potato salad. The soup was delicious. The sandwich was only a half but it was big and delicious. The potato salad was good and it had an interesting zing to it. I thought maybe horseradish. The waitress thought it was from the Dijon mustard. Bingo! Dolores had a cup of chilled gazpacho soup and a glass of some kind of locally made mead and honey wine. She loved it. All in all our food was very delicious and we’d eat there again in a heartbeat!

Then it was off to Maureen Moore’s for the poets’ and writers’ salon. It was great having a new audience for our poetry and equally as great to hear poets we are not familiar with. There were a couple of writers there, one of whom (wish I could remember her name) had us in stitches. By 6:30 it was time to go. One final stop at Mocha Maya’s Coffee House: a cup of good strong coffee for the ride home.

Got home about 8 p.m. Just as Dolores was pulling out of the driveway it started thundering.

What a delirious day. Hopefully we’ll get to do it again next month.

"Poety is Music"

This poster tells it all. If you want to attend a good time with lots of clean fun, put this on your list for next year.

This is the historic railroad station with the bandstand and seating set up in front. These seats were about half full, with people constantly coming and going. However, across the street, behind where this photo was taken, the little hill was covered with people enjoying the show as well.

Hidden by a huge sign, a sales tent, and a tent housing the sound system master control panel IS the Collin's Diner.

Proof that I was there! The signs were done by school kids.

I received a poetry e-newsletter last week that listed an event in North Canaan for the evening of Saturday, July 18th. The event, “Poetry is Music” was to be held at Railroad Plaza beginning at 7 p.m. and it was FREE. When I saw that Ameen-Storm Abo-Hamzy would be reading his poetry and Joseph Firecrow, award winning Native American flutist was going to perform…well I had to be there.

The Collin’s Diner (where the “Poetry is Music” event was to take place) is located at Railroad Plaza and is a National Historic Landmark, as is the old railroad station. You may recall, a few years back vandals set the station on fire doing extensive damage. Repairs have been made and it looked like exterior painting is in progress.

In the meantime, I heard on the radio (WJMJ) that St. Joseph Church in Canaan was hosting a BBQ chicken dinner from 5 to 7 p.m. that same night. The last time I was in that corner of the state was in the mid-1950s after the Mad River flooded and almost wiped Winsted off the map. I was not familiar with the lay of the land and figured I’d get there early, find the church chicken dinner and attend the evening event.

My friend, Barbara, went with me and we not only had a wonderful time, we hit the jackpot. The entire town of North Canaan was celebrating Railroad Days. There was a huge arts and crafts show, over 100 antique cars on display, a parade, the “Poetry is Music” event and fireworks, and, the St. Joseph chicken dinner was smack in the middle of it all. The Gods were smiling on us…I even found a parking space (nose in) right in front of the parking lot next to Collin’s Diner. We were able to watch and listen from the comfort of my car and regulate the blast from the band by rolling up the windows. We left at 10 p.m. and the town was just getting started. Route 44 is North Canaan’s Main Street. Can you imagine shutting down this heavily traveled route for over a half hour for fireworks? The town did just that. Folks were standing and sitting in the middle of Route 44 enjoying every burst and blast. This town knows how to party!

Joseph Firecrow was excellent, of course. And there was the belly dancer (Kate). North Canaan seems to have raised children with no inhibitions and there were several young girls trying to do what Kate was doing. Very cute!

There was one 3-4 year old girl...cute as a button...who had lots of rhythm and danced while the Steve Dunn band was playing. Then she danced to Joseph Firecrow’s flute and drum. She had the steps and rhythm perfect for that, too. Amazing child. I asked her mother where the little one gets her rhythm. The mother shrugged and said, “Darned if we can figure it out!”

Ameen didn’t do many poems, which was too bad. I had hoped he’d read at least as long as the other performers performed. He is the one who has been producing the “Poetry is Music” event for 14 years! Ameen is an amazing guy.

The drive was 1 1/2 hours over a beautiful scenic route...we went the back roads through Granby. However, we came home straight down Route 44 to North Main St in West Hartford, then out through Bloomfield, Windsor, etc., and finally East Windsor and South Windsor.

All in all, a great night. Barbara and I are going to keep this event on our radar and make sure we go next year and get there early so we can take in everything that’s going on. I heard that this was the last year for fireworks, but I’m not sure if that is true. Even without fireworks, this is a great family day in the Litchfield hills.

Yes! It's A Honda!

This is the power behind the wash. Nifty machine. Kathy uses it all the time on her deck. Just add it to our family of Honda's.

As you can see, Kathy is hard at work. You can also see the difference in the before and after power washing. Hopefully, if you have a deck, it doesn't look this bad.

Because the house is going to go on the market, it needs to be power washed. What a difference it makes. You don’t realize how dirty the exterior is until you start hosing it down. Well I wouldn’t call power washing “hosing.” As you can see on the deck…good grief!

I’m grateful to Kathy for doing this huge job for me. Saving me lots of money. Yet, on the other hand, I feel bad that she is using two half days of her vacation week. I’ll have to make it up to her somehow.

I always thought it was just aging, weathering. It’s CRUD! The same thing happened to the cement steps in the front. Unfortunately the former owner painted the cement and now I’m left with half peeled ugly. Nothing I can do about it.

The power wash is probably the last of the big jobs. This coming weekend Andy and Paul will tackle the edges of the lawn with the trimmer, hopefully replace the seals on the bottoms of the garage doors, put up a new smoke detector upstairs and…well, at the moment I can’t think of anything else I need them to do for me.

The rest is inside work, such as, packing up all the framed pictures, sorting through the kitchen and deciding what I want to keep and what I will put in the tag sale. Of course, I need to finish the windows and window frames including the doors. The windows I already did will have to be wiped down again because the power washing left a lot of spots. I’m not sure I will be able to do the outside of the inside windows, but we’ll see.

I hope my next place has tilt-in windows!

Making Progress

On Saturday, Andy came over and we got to work. I had already started trimming the bushes along the driveway…just the sides…I can’t reach the tops very well any more. Andy finished the bushes while I concentrated on yanking the dead grass out of the cracks in the driveway. Every time I yanked a good clump I would disturb an ant colony. Then I had to be careful because they would be all over me in a flash.

With the driveway as done as I was going to do for one day and the bushes were finished, Andy and I tackled the heavy wooden posts (for lack of a better name) that were nailed in a double layer along where the former owner had built up beds. They were placed on the ground 30 years ago and when we started pulling them out we found they were rotten and loaded with slugs. Disgusting. We threw them on the pile of rotting firewood in the woods where they can finish rotting.

Kathy came over today to power wash the house but there was a problem with the washer. The problem is fixed now, so she will try again this coming week.

It seems I do inside stuff during the week and outside stuff on the weekends. Little by little it gets things done.

What a Crazy Night

The whole day yesterday, in fact, was totally crazy. First we had severe thunder storms all over the place morning, noon and, especially last night. While the night storms were going full blast, we had another drama playing out. You may have seen on TV the news of the hostage situation in South Windsor. That was going on two streets south of where I live. I did hear the explosions but was unable to see the fire. I am surrounded by so many trees I couldn’t see anything…not even a glow in the sky. Then…

I heard what sounded like someone running into the side of my house. You know, like a human person...body. At the same time I heard a car take off from the stop sign squealing the tires. Now I’m sure that what I heard was a body being dumped (thrown?) up against my house gangland style (I watch way too many CSI programs!). There is nothing in the world that will make me go out there to look. Thought about calling the police, but they were all busy you-know-where.

You’ll have to go online to see the hostage video and story, but you can see what did fall on my house during the storm. It was a relief to see it was only that huge limb and didn’t do any damage to the house. It did squash a bed of peonies, but they will survive. My peonies don’t bloom anymore because they don’t get enough sun. I’m having all of them dug up and I’m giving them away. Sorry, they are all spoken for.

Fallen limb. No, it is not holding up the house! ☺

Fallen Limb. This is where it stopped.

That is where the limb fell from. That’s pretty high up. It was already hanging from a previous storm, and I was going to ask Paul and Andy to get it down this coming Saturday. Now Andy will have to come over tonight with the chain saw. At least no one got hurt and it looks like it didn’t damage the house any.

New Perch. This fell during one of the storms...landed broken end first and stood up like it was planted. The birds love having a new perch. Look at the clothes line between the feeder and the tree. See how it's twisted? (click on picture to enlarge) That tells me the raccoons came last night and sat up there trying to figure out how to get down that skinny rope in order to dismantle the feeder. Since I moved the feeder away from the tree, I haven't had any more raccoon problems. (I hope I didn't speak too soon)

Sad Peony: This is the only peony that bloomed this year. It must have leaned over enough to get some sun.

Time Schedule Changes

I was feeling so stressed by my original time line goals. I have moved the tag sale to the end of August and the For Sale sign going up September 1st. That gives me more time to get things done.

So far half the upstairs is "done". That leaves the kitchen, dining room and living room. The kitchen will be hard because there is so much that needs to be decided on...does it stay or go to the tag sale. Of course there will be stuff to toss.

Currently the dining room is filled with the tag sale items. There's no room in the garage and I absolutely refuse to leave Hissy outside until it's absolutely necessary! For those of you who don't know, Hissy is my Honda Fit Sport. I LOVE THAT CAR! She's my Hissy Fit!

Moving On

Bike Riding Report
Back in the early spring I stated I planned to build up my riding distance to 30 to 35 miles a day for consecutive days. I also hinted that it looked good on paper, but would I really do it.

I have not been on my bike in the last month. Weather is worse than lousy. We have had rain almost every day. In addition my mother has been in the hospital again for a short stay, AND I am getting this house ready to sell. Am I busy?

For Sale
Once the poetry festival was over I really cracked down on the issue of selling the house. I have 3 rooms and two bathrooms completely cleaned. My goal is to have everything done and the tag sale on the 25th and 26th of this month. Then, once all the junk is gone, I will have the carpets cleaned professionally and the For Sale sign will go up on or before August 1st.

Post Festival Notes

I know I promised to put pictures up from the Riverwood Poetry Festival, but I'm not going to have time for a while. If you really want to see some good pix, go to www.riverwoodpoetry.org and find the link to the gallery of photos.

My mother had been in the hospital again and is now back in the nursing home. In addition, I am working like a little beaver trying to get the house ready to put on the market. I have set two goals: 1) have tag sale the weekend of July 25/26 and, 2) put the house on the market by August 1st.

There's a lot to do, but my kids have offered to do some of the bigger jobs. I am very grateful to them. Of course payback will be a big party once I settle in my next (and final?) digs! I hate moving. It's a lot of work to move out; then a lot of work to move in. Plus, something always gets lost in the move.

Wish me luck.