I don't see as many balloons here as I used to on Barker Road. That was after all, just up the road from the Post Mills Airport, home of ballooners and gliders (soarers?) alike. However, the other evening Meg and I noticed this colorful balloon up North of us. I pulled out the camera and started shooting. It was the best example I've had yet of experiencing a total disregard for snapping way too many pictures - ah the joys of a big blank SD card!
After a bit I realized the balloon was coming almost directly towards me. This shot came just before he passed into the trees and landed two houses over from us. Though the descent didn't look planned, it apparently was as someone was waiting for him on the ground. In no time, they had the balloon packed up and were on their way.
I do miss the gliders I used to see at Barker Road. The planes would come almost directly over the house from the North, laboring to pull the glider up. Then some time later, if you scanned the sky, you'd see them silently soaring. Must be great fun.
Yes, this is no Photoshop trick, that's me and a real Radio City Music Hall Rockette! We took a tour of the Music Hall on our trip to NYC this past weekend, culminating in meeting a real Rockette! I don't look shell shocked do I?
We had a great weekend visiting New York, seeing many of the Kremzner cousins, and attending Meg's cousin Elizabeth's daughter Melissa's wedding.
A beautiful end to the day here in the Green Mountain State. On the way home, I saw the most amazing end of a rainbow I've ever seen; it was so intensely orange/red at the base but faded very quickly to nothing. Unfortunately, I got home too late to photograph it, but I was rewarded with this beauty later in the evening...
A rare picture of Nina where there is enough light on her dark little face. The beast from the pound had developed a big personality - and a soft side - as she's learned what it's like to be loved.
Today is my nephew Kevin's birthday and I wish him a great one!
I dug out a shot from April two years ago when Kevin visited Barker Road for the second of two memorable bonfires. With Marty, we burned not only the huge pile of debris that I'd collected over the previous months, but went foraging into the woods for anything on the ground or anything standing that could be knocked over without power tools and dragged back to the blaze. I distinctly remember Kevin coming up over the bank shouldering a log the size of an ancient coastal redwood. Marty and I looked at each other and relunctantly headed over the bank to try, in vain, to show up the youngster. Nobody got hurt anyway.
We had a great time that day Kevin and I hope you have even more fun today!
Yesterday, May 2nd, was my Nana's birthday. I believe it would have been her one hundreth birthday- though I need to check this - were she still alive. [Mom and Dad confirmed that it would have been her 101st birthday as she was born in 1904]
My memories of Nana begin when I was very young and we took a trip (or several?) on the airline from Chevy Chase to Colorado. Mostly, I remember flying on a plane and of hearing the sound of Nana and Grandad's various clocks calling out the time through the day and night. Later, I remember a trip to Escondido California to visit them. Avacados and a (nearly?) adopted cat dominate that memory. I also remember when they visited Chevy Chase - I thinkit was late summer - and I had a toy lawn mower that my Grandad helped me "start" and "run". Not too long after that Grandad passed away. It was the first time I'd experienced death in any personal way.
In the years after that, Nana would occasionally come to Maine, though I think it took some getting used to for her - she always was one more for Sun than for Cold! I distinctly remember her coming off an Air New England plane in Waterville on one of her early visits; she emerged very happy to be back on the ground and wondering what she had got herself into I think! Her visits were swaths of penuche, homemade pasta, and wondrous sticky buns all painted over a canvas of cribbage! Man, did we play cribbage! She taught me as best she could, and took no prisoners: if there were unclaimed points in my hand, she took them. I learned to take my time scanning my hand!
Lots of other memories including the surprise trip we all took to Fort Collins for her 90th birthday when we convened at the Holiday Inn. That was a very fun time which I think truly delighted Nana. My fondest memory of that trip was seeing Nana watch Rod play her piano in Nana's apartment.
Nana had a determination about her at all times. She always seemed clear on the right thing to do. She seemed always to press on through life to find or make better times; a reflection on her reaction to the various challenges that life dealt her along the way I would imagine. A reaction I always found fascinating and inspirational.
Nana always said she had no regrets in life. I have to say that I have at least one regret already which is that Nana and Meg never met. Their is a similar steel that runs through them, an appreciateion for cats and beauty, a sense of independence (stubborness?) that I think they both would have appreciated in the other. Alas, I did not make that happen and while Meg and I were in California, my Nana passed away. Rod, Kathy and I joined Mom and Dad in Fort Collins to say goodbye to her. We played some cribbage, we did not poke holes through Virginia Slims cigerettes, and we watched a beautiful butterfly fly over Nana's casket the day of the funeral.
Happy Birthday Nana! I think of you often.
A shot I took this morning on a quick walk around the field. The fog is laying in the Connecticut River Valley this morning and it looks like a bright sunny day. The forecast however speaks otherwise. Hopefully the day will hold together long enough for Marty's South Royalton boys to put a hurtin' on Thetford Academy at 4PM!
