Wrapping Things Up in Virginia

October 17-31, 2026                                                Most Recent Posts:
Greenfield Mountain Farm                              October’s Early Days
Afton, Virginia                                         A Very Full Second Half of September

First off, I cannot believe I forgot to mention that Winnie the Pooh’s ONE HUNDREDTH birthday was on October 14.

I hope you celebrated it despite that oversight on my part.  We certainly did!  I also hope I look as good and spry at 100 as he does.  He of course will be coming with me when I leave to head south at the end of the month.

On Saturday the 17th Laurie and I met at our favorite pizza restaurant Dr. Ho’s which is closer to the farm than just about anything else.  We shared a large Kale Bacon and Mushroom pizza which was a short term special.  We’d never had it before.  It’s described as “garlicy curly kale, Virginia smoked bacon, wild mushrooms, roasted tomato, fontina, Gruyere and mozzarella cheeses”.   I like it very much.  I think Laurie preferred what we had last time though she said this was good.

I am moving along through The Chymical Wedding  by Lindsay Clarke which I read years ago and who knows why I decided to reread this 500+ page chunkster but I’m enjoying it and am surprised that I only remember it vaguely. 

I have several reading spots both inside and outside.  This poor picture is from my bedroom wicker rocker overlooking the pond.  Too chilly today to be sitting outside.

I always have a list of things I want to take care of when I’m back at the farm and somehow they seem to wait until the last two weeks I am there.  Such as the refrigerator gaskets.  My 20+ year old refrigerator is humming right along but running too much so I ordered new gaskets.  Couldn’t take a picture of myself installing them but here is the new freezer gasket just before installation after the old one was removed.  The picture will remind me that I didn’t have to pay someone else to do this.

That’s not the case with doing repairs and repainting to this old house, a job far too big for me.  It won’t be finished until after I’m gone but Shannon is busy repairing, scraping and painting.

When the person I’d hired to wash and wax the RV wasn’t able to do it at the last minute Shannon  rescued me again and with the help of one of the guys that works for him did that big job.  Getting Winnona washed and waxed at least once a year is a very very difficult thing for me.  I can’t take her to any place that uses pressure wash because of the age of her decal stripes and just in general.  It’s a headache every single year no matter where I am.

I did wash and wax the two cars I maintain at the farm.  My 2014 gray honda that replaced Ruby after the stupid woman plowed into me and totaled Ruby as well as David’s 1996 Honda Accord that I drive when I’m in Virginia because it runs like a top and is great to have “just in case”.   286,000 miles.  I wonder if the 2014 will make it that far is such great shape.  I didn’t take pic of the newer car mid wash/wax but here’s the old reliable.  Don’t get me started on how much better things were made 20 years ago……RV’s, Refrigerators, cars.

The morning the guys were working on washing and waxing Winnona, I noticed this stuff on my brand new kayak decal.  It looks like it was flung/splattered onto the decal and nothing I’ve tried to remove it has worked.  I have no idea what it is and I’m just so unhappy about it.  Anybody with any ideas of how to get this off, please let me know.  It is not raised up and I’m worried it has just stained the decal and I’ll never get it off.

During my last week in Virginia I had two doctor’s appointments.  Not a good time but that same week Laurie and I went to  Carter’s Mountain Orchard for lunch and apple cider donuts.  This is an annual excursion for us.

All sorts of fall goodies for sale, apples, pumpkins, cider, donuts and more.

There is food available and picnic tables overlooking the city of Charlottesville.

In addition to our donuts, Laurie bought a dozen and I a half dozen, we each had an ice cream donut sandwich.  SO much sugar in one dessert.

Back at the farm the moon was rising over the fall colors.

During  October I made a big dent in reading The Chymical Wedding but got so caught up in The Agatha Christie Cure which I just loved, that I didn’t quite finish wedding yet.   I’m a Christie fan, both Hercule and Miss Marple, so this unique biography/memoir was very interesting to me.   Have you ever read either of these books?   Tell me what you’ve been reading this fall.

After my final doctor’s appointment (thankfully),  I celebrated by taking myself out to First Watch for two of their “humungous” chocolate chip pancakes.  That is a regular sized plate.  Pancakes so big I brought half  home for breakfast on another day.  If you have a First Watch near you, give them a try if you can stand the terrible acoustics.  At least in the one near me.

A clear sign that it was time to head south was the frost I woke up to that last week-end of October.    Shannon came to continue work on the house and he was dressed in his heavily padded overalls.

My final sunset over the mountains wasn’t spectacular and I’m glad since that would have made it all the more difficult to leave.

But leave we did.  Here we are as we exit the valley down the farm lane for points south where I hope it is warmer but not TOO warm.  Aren’t they both shiny??

Heading on down the road.  The Blue Ridge Mountains are ahead of me here on the narrow road from the farm lane.  This road always gives me white knuckles when I see a car or worse a truck coming toward me.  It’s barely wide enough for 2 cars.  But the Blue Ridge will soon be behind me as I head East away from the mountains and south away from the dropping temperatures.

October’s Early Days

October 1-16, 2026                                                      Most Recent Posts:
Greenfield Mountain Farm                    A Very Full Second Half of September
Afton, Virginia                                                      September in Virginia

Fall seems like when I always have annual visits and not so annual like the laser surgery I had done on my eye on the first of October to clear up some film that had come several years after my cataract surgery.  It went fine and my vision is clearer.  An in and out procedure.  Amazing.

A more fun activity was finishing up my Dolly Parton movie trio with The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  Burt Reynolds was good, Dolly was great!

Saturdays are the Nelson County Farmer’s Market.  The highlight this week for me was the amazing mushrooms.  Do you have a farmer's market you like to go to?

The music is always fun and the straw on the ground gives it a real country feel but then this is the country.

The mushroom man.  Look at that variety.

Delicious home made artisan breads

One of several vegetable stands

There are two Mennonite families who sell wonderful baked goods.

The deer are getting quite brazen coming into the yard.  First there was one.

Then there were two.

Then there were 4.   Why?  The acres of fields and woods aren’t enough? 

One afternoon I went over to help my friend Mary put together an Adirondack chair that she had ordered.  Of course the instructions were done in China or somewhere and the parts in the bag labeled J weren’t the ones that were supposed to go in holes K & L like the directions said.   Despite the frustration.  We managed to do it but it took over twice as long as they said it would.  They claimed one person could do it.   There is no way.

Many foggy mornings these first two weeks of October.  I love foggy mornings. They make me feel wrapped in close, held tight in a mysterious setting.  As long that is that I don’t have to drive.

Fog also makes great silhouettes.  Several varieties of woodpeckers were in the trees in the yard.

I do yoga every morning and on several occasions it was warm enough that I was able to do it outside.  This day I was on the second story porch off the master bedroom.   So much better than being inside but yoga when there is a chill in the air is not for me.  My joints and muscles don’t cooperate as well

   another of my bad selfies but I liked the blurry look

If you have to go have a blood draw, don’t you think you should reward yourself with giant pancakes?   I think the menu describes them has humungous.  I don’t think I’d go that far but they are a plateful.  Sorry I didn’t get the picture before they were not so giant.   These were at First Watch.  I usually make chocolate chip or blueberry pancakes which were on the this menu but so was something called pecan carrot cake.  So I tried those.

They did fill the plate when they came. 
But I think I’ll stick with the old standards.

I try to walk or hike 3 to 5 or more miles a day.   I don’t take pictures of every hike.    You can see evidence of fall color and of the tall trees having already lost their leaves.

Shannon Wilber is the man who helps me keep the farm.  This year the entire thing is getting painted.  But he is having a terrible time getting help that will show up and do a good day’s work.

One day he drafted his aunt and his mother.

His most reliable worker is Vinny who has agreed to wash and wax Winnona this year.   It has proved to be nearly impossible to find any way to get it washed and waxed now that David and I cannot do it in sections together.

I can’t use pressure wash because of the decals, so no drive ins are possible.  State and National Parks and most private campgrounds won’t allow it even if I could find someone to do it on the road.  I’d rather not have to drive it somewhere since getting to the farm down the narrow curving country road is a white knuckle experience not to be done except when I’m coming and going for long periods of time.   It’s just impossible.  THANK YOU Vinny.

 

One of my favorite things to do on chilly mornings or evenings is have a cup of hot chocolate and read.  Books I finished in the first 2 weeks of October were Canticle by Janet Rich Edwards which I learned a lot from about the 13th Century and the Beguines and Anchorites.  The book juggles big religious and social ideas.  I think it deserved a lot more notice than the long list for the Carol Shields Prize.

On the other hand,  The Book of Records was one of President Obama’s best books of 2025 and I NDF’d it after 60 of 349 pages.  Perhaps it was just the wrong book at the wrong time.  I just wasn’t interested.

I reread Practical Magic thinking I would read the entire series so I could see the movies.  

I listened to This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History written and read by the historian Beverly Gage.  It was written for the 250th birthday of America and in it she visits 13 locations and 13 pivotal historical moments in American History. It was excellent and I would also recommend it.  She wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of J. Edgar Hoover that I want to read to find out how that man had so much power for so long.  

The last book I read during this time was Claudia Pineiro’s Cathedrals which was really excellent.  It’s not the type of book I normally would read as it is a very unusual crime novel.   In 6 chapters, 6 members of the family and friends of the girl who died narrate.  The story is masterfully told and tackles faith, difficult family relationships, the complicity of religion and societal perception.   I liked it even better than  her previous novel Elana Knows which I read last month. 

Let me know what you’ve been reading and doing.  I need some new books on my TBR.  Let me know also if you are not a fan of these book talks in the blog.

Next post will be about my last two weeks in Virginia before heading south.  How can it be nearly that time already.