Art's surprise party

Shenandoah River

We went canoeing on the Shenandoah River this weekend with Mark, Elaine, Lynette, and Dave, and Aster the greyhound. We saw minks in three different places, a family of four young otters and their mom, and several green, night, and great blue herons. There was a bald eagle that flew past our campsite repeatedly, and a beaver that swam by a couple times. A little further down the river we saw two juvenile bald eagles. Pretty amazing for a river that sees a lot of traffic from drunk college students in innertubes.

Lynette and Dave went birding early one morning and stumbled upon an archaeological dig down a path and across a cow pasture from our campsite. We spent a few hours helping dig, and Mark found a point! At the end of the day we were issued our Passports in Time.

However, our camera batteries ran out a few hours into the trip, so you'll have to take our word for it.

The Garden

Our garden is lush and green. We've just about finished the peas, we've got green beans coming out of our ears, a nice little supply of beets and broccoli, and there are several rows of green tomatoes making us dream of gazpacho to come in August.

It's a far cry from the weed patch we inherited in March, or for that matter, from just six weeks ago when we took this picture:


Here's last weekend's harvest:

Canada Lily

On the way home from Dolly Sods we stopped by Thompson Wildlife Management Area to see the Canada lilies in bloom. They're quite rare and just gorgeous.

Dolly Sods

This was our third fourth-of-July trip to Dolly Sods in Monongahela National Forest, but the first when the mountain laurels were so spectacularly in bloom.

We spent a full day wading up Red Creek, playing in waterfalls and watching the layers of rock change as we went upstream.







Matt had steamed crawfish for dinner.

The next day, back up on the Dolly Sods plateau, from far across a field, Matt spotted a flame azalea. We sat down in the hay-scented ferns to appreciate it.