Colonial Williamsburg II

It's curious, how easily you can be transported to another time and place. Walking around Williamsburg, it's easy to develop romantic notions about what it must have been like to stop at the bakery for good bread, the stationers for writing paper, the butcher for a fine cut of beef for dinner, and the cobbler to order a new pair of shoes. I suppose if I didn't know about Zappos and Amazon, it might be easier to sustain that romance. But still, visiting with the tailor in the milliner's shop was a rather convincing argument. His spot-on accent, attire and manners, showing me every garment he'd sewn by hand couldn't have been a more perfect picture of life in 1760.  And frankly, I was eyeing his cut-away coat for myself.

Colonial Williamsburg

I visited Colonial Williamsburg over a long weekend. It was remarkable. I will share a few things about it over the next few days, but only want to say right now that what we have come to know as our country was, for quite a long time, not yet a country. It was an idea, a thing in the making based on some radical ideas. Ideas that people were willing to fight and die for, that freedom is never free.

Crystalised - XX

You know, I may have posted this one before, but it feels right today. I like the slow, steady tempo and the soft voices.

Happy weekend!

Ice

One of my favorite things about winter is ice. I get mesmerized by the filigree designs on windows, the icicles that hang from rocks cliffs, and the way streams form a layer of glass over moving water. It's all rather pretty, isn't it?

The Kooks - Junk Of The Heart

Winter has finally arrived in Central Ohio. And I drive a little car that likes to do fishtails all over the place. I'm glad when I don't have a passenger, I would have to have them pretend they are on a amusement park ride, throw their arms in the air and scream the whole ride. Hmm, they might be doing that anyway. Happy weekend!

Not Mushrooms

Have you ever noticed that when you're looking for one thing in particular, you fail to see everything else entirely? Things maybe you should see? Well, this past weekend I worked hard at seeing. Everything. And I was richly rewarded with winter flowers, and grass caught in ice, and roots tangled in the earth, and bubbles in the water's surface. Good things.

More Mushrooms

Whenever I sit down to download pictures of mushrooms, I have my guide right next to. "This time," I tell myself, "I'm going to identify each and every one of them. If it kills me." I flip through the polypores. I scour the earth tongues and the inky caps and the jelly fungi. I think I've identified one, then see that it can be found in Central Ohio in March, not January. I consult the Ohio Mushroom Society. I take a break to get some almonds. How can I be all out of almonds? Okay, I consult the Audubon Society online guide. Nothing? Then I visit the online resource at OSU. And then I pull out all my hair. There are 2,000 species of mushrooms in Ohio? Seriously? I go back to one picture, satisfied that I know what a Turkey Tail looks like.

Alison Krause - I'll Fly Away

I may have posted this song before, but I was listening to it today and it just made me really happy.

Enjoy, and happy weekend!

Mushrooms

Here are a few shots of some neat mushrooms I found on an excursion this weekend. Since I'm still a neophyte in identifying them, and want to call everything I see a Turkey Tail or False Turkey Tail, I'm going to refrain from telling you what you're looking at. Perhaps you can tell me?