Friday fun

Went out to dinner last night - here's my Yelp review of Fish & Co on the bottom floor of the Adelicia condominium. In short, subpar service, but great food, and I manage to turn it into a 5,000 word essay. Some things never change.

As promised, here's some fall pics of the yard Paul took yesterday after work. We need to cut the grass one last time - someone will probably get that honor shortly, preferably before the Vandy/Georgia game at 11:30. I plan to put on a pot of ranch stew and do nothing today. The house is still pretty clean from last week's vacation, so that's nice.

Front of the House...

A closer view of the front - the plants in back (behind the ivy) are begonias that need to go away. I just wish I could think of something to replant with back there. I enjoyed having them so close to the doorway this summer. I guess I just think "too cheerful" is a good thing.

A better view of the flowerboxes. Still haven't decided if I like the creeping jenny yet. I am hoping it will flesh out some more - right now, although it's grown a bit, it's still just kind of hanging awkwardly. Creeping Jenny, violas and pansies - I think the pansies are "wine and cheese" variety. I don't think a plant to "represent" our house has ever been so aptly named (for instance, I don't think "knockout roses" would be acceptable - but we do call Lana our "supertunia" sometimes) (I am such a dork)





And here's Charlotte! Or, Charlotte's sister. These spiders really make their home this time of year in the flowerboxes. They're not hurting anything, although a few weeks ago when I pulled out the petunias to make room for these new plantings I had Paul pull her web down first - I felt bad about it, but she was back the next day.

House Mountain

This past weekend, we went to Lexington, VA for Paul's 10th college reunion at Washington and Lee University. The area is beautiful, of course, but one mountain kind of dominates the scenery from Lexington, and that's House Mountain. We've been up to the saddle (Paul's hiked all the way with some friends), and the saddle alone was punishing enough - so I don't know why this time I let him talk me into the whole thing. It's about 3600' feet up, and I'm surprised we're still not sore.
Here's more information about the hike.


There's acreage (~27) for sale near the parking area of the mountain. For $375K, you can have lots of land and that view - of course, you'd have to build a place to live... but I can think of worse things.

The view from the saddle. What you don't see are the wild apple trees - and luckily, you don't see the absolute swarms of gnats either.

"You sure we're going to go all the way up THERE?"

The "balancing rock" along the top of the mountain. From here, we had to traipse along the ridge until we found the lookout points, and I don't even want to talk about how we fell - I mean FOUND - our way back to the trail. It was harrowing. No really. And without Paul, I would still be up there, probably mumbling to myself and living among the wildlife.


But make it we did!


...and there's the proof.

So often, small moments of reflection can occur to you in the most stressful of situations. This occurred to me fleetingly then, when I was so "over it" - but now that I have had time to remember being there and the moments that were just so beautiful, in amongst the selfishness and whining and just plain "UGH" that comes from a strenuous effort (like a 6 hour hike when you're more than slightly out of shape) - you later may say it was "worth it" - but why? It wasn't because of the workout, let me assure you! What did occur to me was a poem, of all things. It wasn't one I just knew, I was introduced to it by our amazing organist at St. Andrew's who set it to music for our post-communion anthem- it's from George Herbert, a Welsh Anglican priest from the 17th century and it's every bit as breathtaking as the views from the mountain.

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,

Made of a heart and cemented with tears;

Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;

No workman’s tool hath touch’d the same.

A HEART alone

Is such a stone,

As nothing but

Thy pow’r doth cut.

Wherefore each part

Of my hard heart

Meets in this frame

To praise thy name.

That if I chance to hold my peace,

These stones to praise thee may not cease.

Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,

And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

Grace perfects nature...

And these girls need all the extra they can get!

It's been a while since we've had a gratuitous greyhound shot, so here's once of Bugs being blessed at the St. Francis gathering a couple Sundays ago.

We don't have a comparably good one of Lana receiving a blessing, but here's a cute pic from that day.

Elle

We have become godparents to the most beautiful little girl, Elizabeth Anne, or "Elle". She is truly a blessing to all of us!

...yes, even a blessing to the Bukus.

"Tablescapes"

Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade Cooking is one of the most annoying people on earth. I've noticed an especially asinine term she's popularized is "tablescape." A rose by any other name... but I guess I'm just as guilty because I do like to take pictures of the table, once set, to show it off... that vase is the most wonderful thing. Right now it has dried mushroom stalks and artichokes along with other grasses and cattail-like things for a fall theme, and it looks great.

Kitchen Makeover

I'd long wanted to paint the kitchen. It was a really ugly yellow color and, being so small, just seemed so boring and sloppy. I loved this green - Paul initially thought it too dark, so stripes of it sat on the yellow wall for months while we half pondered, half procrastinated whether it would "go". Well, at the spring TACA fair I bought a great piece of stained glass for the window. It was really inspiring, and we decided to paint the kitchen that very weekend.

The pot rack was my birthday gift, to show off the copper pots that was my Christmas gift the first year we dated - now 8 years ago. It's also very functional, as you can tell, and frees up a lot of cabinet space in our otherwise tiny kitchen.

The windowsill got this awesome pewter Christus Rex (Laurel folks - I got it at Quinn Pharmacy), and a flower from the hydrangeas throughout their blooming season. This one was especially beautiful.

Various yard shots

Some herbs and petunias (you'll see more of those shortly)... behind you can see some of the great jasmine Danya gave me.

Some more jasmine, a foxglove, and some other things that were later repotted. That area's not as great for growing as I thought. The jasmine remains, but I think I'll do something different next year.
These are almost like before and after shots of the windowbox. They got even more enormous after this, too. The best petunias I've found are Supertunias by Proven Winners - almost everything PW does is amazing. The Swedish Ivy, according to our Aunt, will overwinter nicely inside. I've still got a ton in pots on the back porch, so it may be worth a try. Now, there are pansies, violas and creeping jenny in the boxes for the fall and winter. Pictures of those will appear soon enough, I'm sure.

My birthday

Grandfather got very sick and I came back to Laurel first of June, so I was there at my birthday. Tammy orchestrated a beautiful birthday cake, which I enjoyed and brought back to Paul, which he, too, enjoyed...

And the morning of my birthday, the Sunday I came back to Nashville, I had my "other" birthday cakes... If your family doesn't have a red plate, you don't know what you're missing! Makes a great gift, too! They even have coffee mugs!

Ft. Deposit, AL - "Kirkville"

We accompanied my parents to the beach in May - the same weekend as the major flood hit Nashville and just after the oil spill in the Gulf. Fortunately, we had no damage. On our way back from Gulf Shores, I'd done some research in my family's genealogy record and realized we'd be passing right through Fort Deposit, AL - my family's ancestral place, at least here in the US. I won't bore you with the details, but something like my 5th, 4th, and 2nd great-grandfathers from my Mother's side are all here. We found the church and its little cemetery and began to explore, when an elderly couple arrived. It was the day after Decoration Day, and she was cleaning up the flowers and such from the graves from the previous day. As fate would have it, the man was the de facto area historian and knew a whole lot about my family! We followed him around the area for a good while retracing their steps. It was a great time, and I am so grateful to have done it and to have been able to do it due to the diligent research of a distant cousin several years ago which culminated in our genealogy book, The Descendants of Valentine Kirkpatrick (my sixth great grandfather!)

Little Sandy Ridge Presbyterian Church - our family played a role in the establishment of this congregation and very distant relatives are apparently still active!

A great-grand, with a newer headstone, it seems! And he was a postman! Apparently, too, a relative made it to the major leagues in baseball.

Another great or grand... wow, I really should have done this sooner so it would be fresh on my mind! Gotta go back to the book at some point, I guess...

Along the highway - apparently there once was acres of hardwood known as the "Junie Kirkpatrick Woods" that he would harvest and sell - very well known in the area.

Finally, the man took us to a place where an old homestead once was - my family's place! And all that is left is this sign commemorating the area - "I Make Sure" was something of a family motto. I really don't have the smart aleck comment you'd think I would to follow that up with.

George

I guess this is around their birthday. Don't have any really good ones of Mary Sims or Annie recently - I'll refer you to their blog for better pics of the three of them. And of course, more to follow!

Southland

Back in April a friend and I visited Southland track in West Memphis, AR to pick up some dogs for the adoption group. While I wasn't just disgusted by what I saw - it's kind of expected, I guess - It did make me realize just how many of these dogs are available to be rescued and what an impact good adopters and foster families can have. From what I understand, these kennels aren't really bad at all. It was a bit sobering to know that we routinely give Bugs and Lana such high quality food and then realize "not for human consumption" is on every bag of (raw) food given to these dogs. That day we brought back three dogs - all have found homes - but so many more remain.


Here's the kennel. You could probably have 50-60 dogs in the building at any given time - it's kind of labyrinthine once you get in there, even though they just look like trailers with roofs from outside.

Here's the hauler they use to get the dogs from their kennels to the track. They race maybe a couple times a week - they run hard for about 2 minutes, and then it's over - which is why they are notoriously lazy and sleep all the time and don't need much exercise!

Here's the first thing I saw upon pulling up. That's their turnout for several times a day. A far cry from your yard, no matter how small or unaccommodating you think it may be!


ADOPT A GREYHOUND or DONATE TO THE CAUSE

New Blog Fail

So... the migration to the pauldowney.net site isn't quite as successful as it one day will be - as evidenced by the fact there have been no posts since May. I'm about to undertake a mad blogpost roundup of stuff that's happened since May. I'll largely be going off the photo library, so if something happened and there were no pics - then it may not get a mention :) Sorry!



It'll be interesting to again try to maintain a blog. Maybe I'll make it a more active presence now instead of averaging six months per blog post :)