August was a Great Month but HOT

August 2025                                                                       Most Recent Posts:
Greenfield Mountain Farm                              The Only Good Thing About July
Afton, Virginia                                                Back at the Farm Via Dixie Caverns

Early in July, I took a week-end trip to visit Carrie while Matthew and both the kids were in North Carolina.  I can’t actually remember the last time it was just the two of us.

What a great time we had.

We went hiking at her favorite local park, Oregon Ridge.  It really is an amazing place.  The park was an active iron-ore and marble mining operation during the mid-19th century.  What a great reclamation.  Oregon Ridge Park is a 1043-acre park  mostly forested and purchased in 1969.

The Nature Center offers both educational and recreational programs to promote a better appreciation for the environment.

We visited the wildflower garden and read some of the comments of other visitors

In the heat I was amazed anything was blooming but the butterflies definitely liked this Echinacea.

Paths lead everywhere.  It is very easy to spend an entire day here.

The sign says Welcome to the Eastern Deciduous Forest.  One of my very favorite habitats and where I have lived my entire life.   I love trees!   There are 50 different oak types alone in the Eastern Deciduous Forest though not all of them are right here.

It’s always surprising to come upon these painted tree trunks.  The first time I saw them my response was very mixed  they were fun but  I was concerned about the health of the tree and in my mind this seemed like defacement.

I did some research and found this Baltimore County Commission on Environmental Quality Report which in essence says yes permission was given by the Director of the Baltimore County Recreation and Parks Department to do this as a fund raiser 2017 but defacing living trees is and was then  illegal.  The decision to override this regulation was made with no record of public notice or input, and without documentation or advice from  forestry or environmental education experts.   In essence this was illegal and folks were unhappy.  I wonder if the Director who made this decision lost his job.

While they are fun to see the report cites “damage to the health of the trees—especially the ability to breathe through the bark; damage to other tree-dependent species, including lichens, mosses, invertebrates, and birds; interference with programming in environmental education at the Park; interference with the positive psychological and emotional effects of spending time in natural parks; unintended lessons about vandalism in parks and the implication that painting trees or other living features is acceptable; negative effects on the County’s reputation as a responsible steward of its forests and park”

I’d say they pretty much covered it and made it clear no repainting or repair the paint as colors fade.  Though these colors looked pretty bright to me and the report is from 2018, the year after the painting was done.   Is it being enforced?  We were smiling before we knew all this.

But then we came upon something to really smile about.  Assuming this is a black snake, my favorite kind.  He’s so long I couldn’t get him all in the picture.

After our hiking we went to Don Tigre Mexican Restaurant for burritos and margaritas.

The following day, in the quiet of the house, we played games,  watched a couple of games of women’s basketball – complete with popcorn of course.   These were things our family always did together.

Of course if it’s left over burritos and  popcorn for dinner then it should be ice cream, well Italian ice,  for dessert.  The things you can do when you don’t have to be a role model.

We also spent some time in the hot tub.  Ahhhhhhhh

Unfortunately the next day,  I had to do the drive back home around DC and Carrie had to go back to work.  A let down in both cases.   But so thankful for this time together, just us.

The following week, Pam Sprouse, a blog commenter when I’m traveling, met me for lunch at Stix.  It was great to get caught up with her.

I forgot to mention that when I visited Carrie, on the various types of games day, we went to First Watch for breakfast.  I got the regular eggs and potatoes but Carrie got their giant pancake which was as big as a dinner plate.  I was wishing I’d gotten that so when I got back I found that Charlottesville now has a First Watch and  a week for so later I had my own giant pancake.  I’d taken a few bites here but I don’t think it was quite as large as hers.   Still, yum!

The farm is in Nelson County Virginia and there is a Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning not too far from me. 

Complete with live fiddle and banjo.

This is where I do most of my shopping if I can keep myself away from the folks with baked goods.

Laurie and I went to Richmond to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibit entitled Frida Kahlo:Beyond the Myth.    Kahlo is a painter known for her tragic accident, many self portraits, bold vibrant colors in work and her traditional dress as well as  being the wife of renown muralist Diego Rivera.  

I’m very glad I read her biography before coming since her life was complex and her art completely intertwined with it.  In many ways, she was larger than life and had you read her story as a novel you’d say it’s too far fetched.

Notice the size of the sign to the right.  The giant wall sized photographs were quite arresting like Frida herself.   Frida was born in 1907 and was 23 years younger than Georgia O’Keeffe who was 23 years younger than Alfred Stiglitz.  I found this interesting.

Like O’Keeffe Kahlo was also married to a famous artist.  Kahlo and O’Keeffe met at Diego Rivera's retrospective exhibit at the MOMA in December 1931 and exchanged letters until Frida’s death in 1954 at the age of 47.

This picture of the Kahlo family below shows Frida even as a young woman to be  an independent dresser on the far left in the suit.

Many of Frida Kahlo’s most famous works were self portraits.  This one was the first painted at age 19 the year after a near fatal accent which affected the rest of her life and led to her early death at age 47.  

This is a pencil drawing she did of the bus accident on September 17, 1925 which irrevocably altered her life.  Doctors did not expect her to survive her extensive injuries – a fractured spine, broken ribs and collarbone, dislocated shoulder, crushed right foot and multiple fractures in her right leg.

This is one of my favorite photographs of Frida done by Imogen Cunningham in 1931. 

This sketch is of the portrait of Luther Burbank painted by Kahlo as a tribute to him after meeting him in Burbank California in 1931.   The portrait reflects his philosophy of being one with nature.   I wish the actual oil painting had been part of this exhibit.

This 1944 painting of a blended Frida and Diego is oil on masonite with an original painted shell frame.   He is smiling.  Her face is sad and they are bound together by what appears to be a dead vine.   Their marriage was a stormy one.  They had separated and reconciled several times, divorced in 1939 and remarried the following year.

I was sorry that this copy of the painting The Two Fridas was in black and white but found the insertion of a third Kahlo very interesting.  I’ve borrowed a copy of the original color work as she painted it from the internet.  It is her largest painting at 68” x 68”, almost life size.  This black and white is of course much larger than life.

Among the many interpretations of this painting is that it represents the two sides of Kahlo.  Her Paternal European heritage and her maternal Mexican heritage.
One heart is “broken” and one is not.

Dorothy Hale, a failing actress jumped from the 16th window of her apartment in Manhattan in 1938.  Writer and politician Clare Booth Luce commissioned Kahlo to do a portrait of remembrance ( a recuerdo) for Hale’s mother.  Kahlo depicted Hale’s final act and Luce was so shocked by the painting she had to be persuaded not to destroy it.

Kahlo titled this oil and collage on masonite painting My Dress Hangs There.  I spent a fair amount of time looking closely at it and wondering what she was thinking about the United States when she did this work. 

The museum itself is a very lovely and relaxing place with the installation beautifully hung.   It includes video footage of Rivera and Kahlo which was very interesting to watch.

There were several portraits of Kahlo by the photographer Nicholas Murray on display.  This one is from 1939 when she was 32 years old.

Frida on White Bench also by Murray is from 1939.   The museum recreated the setting so that visitors could sit on the bench and have their pictures taken. 

Although much of her work was surrealist in nature she did a number of still lifes but very few flowers.  This is titled Magnolias though there is an open blossom of a prickly pear cactus in the center.

Frida did 55 self portraits out of 145 total paintings she created in her life time.
When asked why she did so many she is quoted as saying “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know the best.”

The exhibit concluded with a room for doing your own self portrait.

Today’s were displayed on bulletin boards.

Selected ones from previous days were in notebooks on a coffee table in front of a sofa so you could sit and look though them. 

I was amazed at what people were able to do. 

Looking at Frida’s studio made me think of the spare immaculate space in which O’Keeffe did her work.   I found the similarities and differences between these two famous women artists extremely interesting.

For the rest of the month, the heat continued from the upper 80’s to the upper 90’s.  Too hot to be outside doing any hiking after 6 or 7 am in the morning  in this wonderful spot.   So I enjoy my views from the upstairs window looking out over the porch.  

It looks so beautiful but step outside and you will wilt.  Even the grass is struggling in the yard and in the fields.  I wondered again what am I doing here for the summer??