June 2019 at Greenfield Mountain Farm

Posted: February 19, 2020                                          Most Recent Posts
About: June 2019                                                            Back in Virginia
                                                                                         Last Days In Florida

Unfortunately for me, I have just discovered that I must have left my journal covering June-Mid September of 2019 at the farm when I got back on the road.  So I really do not have the information I need to write these catch up posts.

I have a few pictures but I am in such a fog, I really was not recording my life with
a camera.  I am very sorry about this because the blog was supposed to be my best record of those very very difficult months after David’s death.  But I don’t want to wait until I return to Virginia to get beyond this point.  So know that this is a very skimmed view.

JUNE 2019

Early in June I got a small power washing machine to try and clean up Winnona since I cannot find anyone in the city of Charlottesville or nearby who will wash and wax Winnona.   I got her reasonably clean though she really needs more attention to detail and I ran out of time for waxing which of course in not too very long made all my efforts at washing moot.   Not sure about the smile.  I didn’t have  much to smile about.

But then the first week-end in June, Carrie and Colin came to help with the house clean out.

I love this picture of them.

Finally about 20 years after leaving home, Carrie is cleaning out her childhood room.  I think she takes after her father in keeping “momentos”

Colin and I are hanging out on the kitchen floor having some toast.

Carrie relaxes at the piano.  Before she went to  law school, she was a very fine award winning musician on both piano and flute.  It was wonderful having the house full of her music while she was growing up.   Both her father and I missed it when she went off to college.

Our family of 3 loved games and we have a HUGE collection of them.  Whenever Carrie comes, we have always played one or two.

In addition to cleaning out the inside of the house, there was a lot of necessary work on the property that had been put off in order to allow us to keep constantly  traveling which is what David wanted to do.

In mid June, I used the money from a small life insurance policy that David had left to have some necessary tree and road work done.

There are really 3 trees that need work around the house and in the barnyard but on this day only two of them got attention.

The one behind the shed had been growing into the building for years.  Sentimental David didn’t want to cut it down because it was such a large and beautiful tree.  But over this winter, limbs had come down and put holes in the roof of the shed which also will have to be repaired.  The tree in question is shading the shed and undermining its foundation which can be seen in the picture above.

The young man who did the tree work was the nephew of the man who did the work on the driveway with his sons.  That’s usually how it works in the country.  It’s a family affair.

I wish I had pictures of “before”.  It was a huge tree as you can see from the base.

Such a shame to have to lose such a giant tree.  Breaks my heart but it was that or the building..

The tree work was done in one day, while the road work took many days.
This is just the start of the ditching and grading and then there was gravel.

 

The second tree is a pecan and needed to have dead and broken limbs taken out.  I had been working inside the house when the young man climbed up in the big tree and limbed it before taking it down.  I had no idea it could happen so fast.  He really knew what he was doing.   But when I found out, I stayed outside to watch how he did the second tree.  He sets up pulleys to pull himself up into the tree.

With the larger tree gone, the pecan to its left is more clearly visible. You can see the ropes he put on the limbs he was going to cut in order to make sure they would fall where he wanted them to.

He started with the lower limbs but the whole thing made me very nervous to watch.

Safe back on the ground I took this picture with all the gear he had all over himself.

While the tree work was finished in a day, the road work went on for many days.  It is a 3/4 of a mile drive back off of a small country road into this little hidden valley we live in.  

Out the upstairs master bedroom window this is the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and the farm road.

Also out that window was a family of Carolina Wrens one morning enjoying the porch rockers.

I spent many days of June clearing the fence line around the house so that it could eventually be repaired and painted.  I didn’t think to take a picture until I’d hauled off most of what I had cut.

A lot more work went on in June but I didn’t take pictures of much of it.  I didn’t think about it and was too busy.  But being forced to do the work did keep me putting one foot in front of the other.

These views toward the mountains from down on the ground.

At the end of June, Carrie sent me these pictures after we had been talking on the phone.  Apparently Celia was talking too on an old cell phone, not sure to whom.  Love the crossed legs while she’s “chatting”. 

This picture just brings a smile to my face.  Something apparently didn’t quite go her way.  What an expressive child she is.  It breaks my heart that her Papa will never get to see all these great expressions.