wordless wednesday
Tag: summer
10 inches of rain!
Monday morning Tim was impressed to find 10 inches of rain in his gauge, from Tropical Storm Chantal. It was only a tropical depression when it got here Sunday afternoon, and there were no areal or flash flood warnings until after the storm was underway. Only then did the warnings start coming in. I lost count of how many times the warning alarms on my cell phone went off. Because we’re at a higher elevation and not in a flood zone we had no idea about what was unfolding in other parts of Carrboro and Orange County. But we knew it was raining hard here for a very long time.
Around noon we decided to drive up to Hillsborough to see what the Eno River looked like. The Riverwalk was closed because the river had flooded at least 19 feet above flood level and had damaged the wooden walkway. In these pictures it had receded some, but parts of the walkway were still under water. We met a public works employee who said they couldn’t open until the water receded, the damage was assessed, and repairs were made. She expects it to be closed for several weeks.
Then we drove down to Chapel Hill to check out Bolin Creek. Not sure how high the creek had gotten but after we left and drove alongside it I saw a picnic table slammed into the bank of the creek. And a plastic chair caught on a tree a little farther along.
Several people we talked to were comparing this storm damage to what Hurricane Fran left behind in September 1996, but we weren’t here for that, so I couldn’t say. We didn’t go into the part of Chapel Hill that flooded and apparently made the national news, but I do wonder about our grocery store down there. We’ll see on Thursday, senior discount day, and therefore our food shopping day. 
Today we’re under a heat advisory with heat index values ranging from 105°F to 109°F expected. We never lost power during the storm and I am so grateful to have air conditioning! We’re fine. But my heart goes out to those outside trying to clean up and repair damage after this storm.
bluebird bath at high noon
(he/she never did get a turn)
golden hours
The sun is rich
And gladly pays
In golden hours,
Silver days,
And long green weeks
That never end.
~ John Updike
(A Child’s Calendar, June)
the days are hot, hot
Everywhere, from sunup to sunup, the world is full of song. The days are hot, hot, and all the day long I listen to the bees lifting from flower to flower, to the watchful chipmunk sounding its chock chock chock alarm while the red-tailed hawk wheels, crying, high in the sky. I can’t see the songbirds in the dappled light of a thousand leafy branches, but I can hear them calling from the trees.
~ Margaret Renkl
(The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
wordless wednesday
four seasons photo hunt
Back in January of this year, Karma (Karma’s When I Feel Like It Blog) suggested a four seasons photo hunt. I decided to include four more “seasons,” taking photos on Groundhog Day, May Day, Lammas Day and Halloween, which fall between the solstices and equinoxes. I will come back and add the final picture to this post when we get to the winter solstice.
Courtyard Gardens
North Carolina Botanical Garden
as summer becomes a memory
I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.
~ Georgia O’Keeffe
(Letter to Russell Vernon Hunter, October 21, 1933)
It’s been a curious summer. Very little went as planned. As many of my readers know, I’ve long been trying to go through all the family history items we inherited after our grandparents’ houses on Cape Cod were sold. Before we moved to North Carolina I went through and discarded many of the things from their attics and closets, but still wound up transporting 14 boxes of stuff down here. My goal for this summer was to take advantage of being stuck inside to go through the boxes and organize all of it by family lines into my special acid-free notebooks.
Well, I only got through 4 boxes and am in the middle of the 5th! Each box is 12″x14″x18″ and is crammed full of pictures and paperwork! I’m still throwing a lot of things away, but I’m going through every piece of paper with a fine-tooth comb and in doing so have found many treasures. Reading every letter, every deed, every will, every newspaper clipping, every vital record and naturalization certificate. My notebooks are filling up fast. I’ve added a few more of them to the shelves. The pictures are being set aside to be sorted out after the paperwork is done.
I feel like a curator, managing this huge collection. I feel like I’m ‘being myself again’ after all. These summer days have been so enjoyable and a labor of love. I’m looking forward to sharing more of the stories about our ancestors that I’ve discovered, but am determined for now not to stop until finished. So this will be a year-round project going forward. There’s no way I’m willing to wait until next summer to start in again!
The pictures are going to be more difficult to deal with because, sadly, so many of them are unidentified. But the paperwork is fun to read. The above letter was written by a lawyer (?) to Tim’s 2nd-great-grandfather, Delorma Brown Hubbard, advising him about a search for a will in England. It was written in 1869.
The oldest piece of paper found so far was a hand-written ‘article of agreement’ between Tim’s 4th-great-grandfather and two of his sons, signed by him in 1837! It’s quite something to be holding a document that was in his ancestor’s hands 187 years ago.
I’m also in the process of taking my ancestor blog posts and turning them into stationary web pages. The growing list of pages can be found near the left bottom of my blog’s sidebar.
And so my work continues!
garden pictures, more seed tick misery
old man’s beard (?)
2004 NC Wildflower of the Year
2016 NC Wildflower of the Year
aka prairie aster, sneezewort aster, upland white aster, upland white goldenrod