Some Local Scenery

I meant to sneak out of the house this morning BEFORE the kids were awake so I could take a quiet walk with Maisy up on Jay Peak. The sun is coming in earlier and earlier and the floor boards get creakier and creakier with the predictable result that kids woke up and said they wanted to come too. Not that I don't like to have them along, of course, but when I am planning a real walk they tend to cramp my style. After about 20 minutes this morning on the lovely Jay golf course (they are still skiing at Jay but golf will be coming soon) the Understudy slipped into Goth-Tween mode and complained loudly that she was starving.

Amazing what the dark looks of an 11-year-old can do to bright mountain scenery...


So, the walk was short, but it had its rewards.




Hot chocolate in the cafeteria was restorative...


A Little More Snow...

And on Thursday, we had one of the Vermont versions of "April Showers". That would be snow showers. The snow was gone by 11 AM, but it looked nice for my return to the Recreation Path in Stowe. This is Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in Vermont, where they are also still skiing, at least for a bit longer.



It still looked a lot like Christmas, briefly.



I should really take a picture of the dusty dashboard of my car as that is the local scenery I see most often lately. Somehow, our lives have been contorted into a shape that has lately required me to drive at least 3 hours a day. (There are two, count 'em two, nag lights lit up now on the old dashboard - "Check Engine" and "Maintenance Required" - I was going to get some black tape and cover them up but I am getting really good at ignoring them. My carbon footprint must be like Godzilla's. Sorry about that. We're trying to make a new arrangement.)

I manage only because I can get out of the car and walk around periodically.

Finish This Sentence: What the World Needs Now Is ...

My usual answer, probably like yours, would be "bleach". Times being what they are, however, I guess I'll change that to "money".



Driving around Stowe the other day in a fog, with the snow tired and dirty, even dangerous, and all the news bad, I hopped out of the van to take these pictures. Not exactly subtle, I know, but something of the zeitgeist presented itself: the normally benign fields and mountains of Vermont transformed into an Orc-blasted landscape. (These are actually color shots...)



It's Sunday, however, just barely, as I am doing some insomniac blogging in the small hours after some time away. I have the headphones on and am listening to Paul Hillier & the Theater of Voices singing Arvo Part's "Summa". I have just heard it three times through. It suffices to remind a person of, well, many things beyond the cares of the day, or even the cares of the times.

I could not find Paul Hillier & Co. on Youtube - I paid my .99 for it at iTunes and it was, of course, well worth it. Here's a string version for your contemplation.

Not That You Asked, But Here's What I Did Today - Check Out the World's Coolest Teapot

Back to the Stowe Rec Path this AM. I know, I know, you've seen one path winding through the woods you've seen 'em all. Move on. Yawn. Sorry, by every time I get there for a walk I am struck again by how beautiful it is and snap, snap, snap. I must photograph it. I'll post these few and then we'll have a moratorium on bike path pictures for a bit.



This charming little edifice is one of the nice little surprises of the path. It's a memorial to somebody. I think I would prefer this to a tombstone for my own self when the time comes.



Onto each beautiful bike path a substation must fall.



Remember what I said about some of the local maple trees rushing into their fall colors? It was true.


It was not a work day for me today but in an uncharacteristic show of effort, I went to the office anyway. Mostly I went in to fill out a time sheet and an expense report but I also checked email and phone messages. Oh, and on the way out of town, it occurred to me that I had just time enough before it was time for my son's dental appointment to stop by my favorite antique store, M. Lewis of Waterbury.

Talk about Aladdin's Cave! "M" stands for Martha and she and I had a nice chat over my purchase of the most beautiful teacup in the world back in April. She wasn't there today; the store is usually manned (resist snide comment here) by her helper. While he was wrapping up my teapot and plate (coming up in just a moment) he told me that Martha's weakness, the one that eventually led her into the antiques trade and this store, was for teacups and teapots. I sensed she was a kindred soul...



This is just one of several tea cup displays in her shop. It's like a kind of pornography for me.



My grandparents had this same bit of needlework on the wall of their dining room for as long as they had a dining room. My mother and her twin sister bought it for them when they were little girls. I am tempted each time I go in the shop to buy it. I always think, well, that's pretty good, isn't it? Is more ambition than that necessary or even desirable? Dime store profundity. Sign me up. Except now that this is out of Woolworth's and in an antique store it costs 35 dollars. I'll make do with the picture...


And, at last, today's purchases. Yes, another plate. Didn't I ask someone to stop me before I bought another plate? Of course, none of you few dear readers was around to stay my grasp. This lovely old "flow brown" platter just called to me and I answered the call. I don't know if there is such a thing as "flow brown" but the blurring of the image makes me think it isn't transfer ware or that it is some particular flowy kind of transfer ware. It has a great horking crack in it to, which accounts for it's thirty dollar price tag (undamaged it would have been a lot more). I got them to knock three dollars off the price in combo with the teapot, which also got a three dollar discount off its 20 dollar price;




et enfin, the teapot. I defy anyone to say that this is not a super cool teapot that could have been owned by Gladys Peto (see the sidebar) or Buck Rogers or someone similarly fabulous and or fictional. It is English, no doubt dating from the 20s and 30s. It is crazed and stained and has a little scrape on the lid, but the shape, oh the shape. Watch out! It may take flight at any moment.



This teapot, maybe with a better picture, is going to have to find a place in the sidebar, it is just that wonderful.

Here, by way of a postscript, is a poor little picture of the Made in Japan bookends I picked up at that other little antique shop I wrote about recently. That place is basically a junk shop without pretensions to being anything else and the prices reflect that sensibility. These were, some of you may recall, 2 dollars.



And last, but not least, this is the book I have been reading, page by page, for the last several weeks. You know how I am about Handsome Books. Isn't this a beauty? It may have more detail about Alfred than we care to know (all those "Ethels", i.e., Ethelbald, Ethelred, Ethelbert, Ethelswith, Ethelthis, Ethelthat); but it is actually very well written by a lady Oxford scholar. It is ex at least two libraries; the Craftsbury Academy Library and the Bolton Public Library. I bought it at the book sale at the Stowe Library, though I don't think it was in their collection. Another 2 dollars well spent.

Back on the Bike Path - Oh So Vermonty!

I had an hour to myself this morning between kid drop-off and when I had to be to work, so back to my old favorite haunt, the Rec Path in upscale Stowe, Vermont. It was a particularly beautiful morning and Vermont scenery, not so cliche in person, demanded to be recorded by yours truly.



An entreprenuerial farmer whose cornfield borders the Path sets up this corn maze every year.

To lure passers-by into the maze he employs Junior and Brownie. (I don't know if those are their names, but they could be). As you can see, they are very fetching. I know the Smiths would not approve. I can't look at a scrubbed up little calf without hearing Morrissey intoning, "This Beautiful Creature Must Die" (I was in college in the 80s), but Junior and Brownie don't seem any the worse for wear for being a kind of living sign for a corn maze. I hope they have a future as milkers and not as burgers and handbags.



And meet Junior's mother, or possibly her aunt, or some other female relative or acquaintance, the charming "102" as per her necklace. Where can I get one of those? Every time my kids see a diet commercial these days they say, "Mommy why don't you try that?" That cow is like a sister to me.



My Dad grew up on a dairy farm and my aunts told me it meant rain when the cows laid down, but I think they were having me off. It was beautiful all day today. I think when cows lay down it means they are tired or lazy; or they are just crappy forecasters.



Ohh, and here's a salamander surprise!





The part of the path I like best is lined by trees on either side. It feels so continental somehow. Remember that '70s shopping-mall-poster-shop favorite of the French guy (i.e., guy with a beret) on the bicycle riding along with a loaf of French bread on the back of his bike? He's riding on a narrow road with a those skinny French poplars lining the route. Well, this reminds me of that, without the French guy or the poplars, or the bread.



I was dusted by Grandma here, though. I walk on the path for exercise, but I walk slowly, apparently. And this isn't just because I stopped to take a picture. She had been gaining on me steadily for quite awhile.