Sunrise on Bear Island, Lake Winnipesaukee, NH
Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape
Sunrise on Bear Island, Lake Winnipesaukee, NH
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Copilot
Sadly, this is true for my copilot as well . . .
I was crawling through traffic behind a bumper sticker that read, “God is my Copilot.”
I looked over at Nut Breath, sitting in my copilot seat, and asked what he thought about this. He was far too busy with his personal hygiene to answer.
Bed and Chicken Dinners
During the early 20th century Fort Pelham Farm was a bed and breakfast of sorts as well as serving home cooked meals. This is a brochure that Olive had in her scrapbook and I thought I’d share it.
The brochure itself is small, maybe 3″ x 5″ on a textured yellow stock and gives quite a bit of information on a small space.
As I was reading it this morning I was thinking how nice it would be to have a view of the hopper from the house. It is completely grown in now so the only view we now have is trees. Although I have noticed that part of the view just down the road (when the leaves are off of the trees) includes the windmills in Savoy which I can’t say that I’m a fan of. So maybe it’s better that we have the trees that way I’m not angry that someone has invaded my space albeit from afar.
The back of the brochure probably fascinates me the most. “Modern electric power plant”? Need a little more research into that. Running water, modern bathroom? Hmmmm . . . Then there is the way the entire upstairs is set up. You have to be pretty comfortable with strangers to all be staying in the rooms upstairs. There is no hallway between any rooms so you need to walk through other peoples bedrooms to get anywhere near the stairways. I’m making an assumption that what is now the upstairs bathroom was once a bedroom. I do remember my father talking about a water holding tank in the attic over the ell which they used for water pressure. Their water was spring fed and there was a huge cistern in the cellar as well.
Then there are those dinners. We donated a sign for chicken dinners to the Rowe Historical Society a number of years back. I have photographs of what is now the living room set up for dining. It’s difficult for me to imagine cooking for a crowd in the kind of kitchen they were using at the time. And what kind of flock of chickens did they have? Must have been substantial unless they bought dressed hens somewhere else which I’m kind of doubting. I also looked up the value of $3.00 in 1900 just to get a little perspective. It amounted to $79.10. They were making fairly good money with their little endeavor – almost $400 per person per week. You just have to consider that it was a seasonal retreat for people.
The photo above is of the dining room. The floors and layout are still the same and I have to tell you that I wouldn’t mind having the rocking chair in the foreground.
I look at these photographs and am amazed at how little the house has changed. When we do something to it we try to keep within the character of the house. It’s really too beautifully built to mess with. We have returned to eating in that room, dividing it into different living spaces. It’s a wonderful place to entertain friends and family. Now I just need to figure out how to charge $26.27 for a creamed chicken dinner.
A Love Letter
I’ve been given time alone for Mother’s Day. Doesn’t sound like fun to many people but sometimes being alone can be quite an awesome treat.
I remembered these two photographs earlier this morning and wanted to share. They were taken in 1990 by a dear friend of mine. I think I had her take them for a Father’s Day gift. They are also two of just a handful of photographs taken of me with the girls over the years. I treasure them, they speak of the happiness that was ours all the time they were growing up.
They’ve turned into wonderful, brilliant, kind women. I’m more proud of them than anything else in my life.
On Mother’s Day children come together to celebrate the woman who brought them up. I’ve never had a real fondness for Mother’s Day only because I’ve always felt that my children were such a gift to me. For years they were my photographic muse. They grew up in costumes, in studios, at parks – always with a camera in front of them. The yearly Christmas card was what I strove for each year, anxiously waiting for the reviews.
I watched them go through their childhood, teenage and young adult years with joy and trepidation. We all know how hard life can be and you silently hope that your kids won’t ever go through some of the things you’ve been through. You try to guide them in a direction that will make them happy and content adults. You encourage each one of them in their interests, nurturing those little sparks.
I hear many of my younger friends with small children of their own now talk about the annoyances of day to day life and I remember it was hard balancing everything in your daily lives. I want you to know it’s all worth it, it may not seem so now, but it is.
So my children are now adults, I’ve been through the empty nest, I am growing in a different direction. My life is actually the accumulation of many smaller lives, I think we are all like that. I see mine as sort of a pie chart sectioned off, it’s not a whole yet but I can see each section as a different phase – who I was with, what I was doing. They are all in different colors. The biggest part of my pie chart at the moment is motherhood and it’s bright red. It stands out. It was the best thing ever.
So this mother’s day I’m not celebrating mothers, I’m celebrating children, my own. For without them this day would not exist.
Pay it Forward
All along the Mohawk Trail through the town of Charlemont someone planted daffodils years ago. It’s probably a 10 mile stretch of the road on the north side where there are clumps of various types of these flowers. I look forward to seeing them every year and am always sad to see them go.
Daffodils also grow in what seems to be random places. You drive by what may once have been someone’s home, now gone and there are daffodils blossoming on what may have once been their front yard. I find the resiliency of these flowers amazing. Not only do they come back year after year they multiply. A few turn into hundreds.
This is one of the things I’ve learned about gardening over the years – it’s slow. Whenever you are planting perennials, shrubs or trees you always have to think years down the road. Don’t plant things too close together or you will end up digging them up. Take into consideration the spread of some plants before you plant them. I have echinacea that takes up a good part of a garden now, that was the intent. It has other things growing with it but I love that sea of pink in the summer.
Bill thinks the idea of planting new maple trees in the front yard of the house as pointless because we won’t live to enjoy the shade. I say plant them now so my grandchildren will have beautiful trees shading the front of the house in the summer like they did when I was a child.
Perennial gardens are gifts to future generations in my opinion. Some of the gardens I have in Rowe were planted by my mother, most of the plants cames from her friends and aquaintances. She planted them for herself and to beautify the property but as a gardener you know that she probably knew that the garden would go on long after she was gone. I love being able to go through my flower gardens and know where the peony came from or the dark purple iris. They came from people I loved dearly that are no longer with us. I love my gardens because I remember a day spent with Bill or my sister sweating with a shovel or moving stones. Year after year I will walk down the stone path and see how my flowers are filling in. A few years from now I won’t have to worry about the weeds because the perennials will have taken over. A few years after that I will be dividing things up and giving them away – to people I care about. It’s all about paying it forward.
The Debate Over the Ethics of Photo Restoration
Wonderful blog post on photo restoration. A must read for anyone interested in their family legacy of photography.
New View
I took a walk yesterday out through the woodlot. It’s been dry this spring so I was able to get to it without the use of waders. This is the second year we haven’t had beavers on the property although their handywork is ever present. Without them there their ponds get a little smaller, their paths are beginning to grow in. They had a pretty extensive network that is now being slowly reabsorbed into the earth.
I walked along one of the boundary walls so I could see how extensive this pond was. I could only see the marsh reeds from the house and once the leaves are on the trees the only notion you have that it’s there are the birds. Different birds live around these little ponds, that’s why I love having them here. I had thought I could see a beaver house from the other side of this pond but as I discovered in my little hike there wasn’t one. This must have just been another one of their engineering projects while they lived in the pond behind Hoover Damn.
The best part about this little hike was the view – I’ve never seen the house from this vantage point. Timing is everything, once the leaves come out there really won’t be a view of the buildings, at least not this clear a one. So what started out as a walk in the woods on a glorious spring day had the added benefits of a beautiful new photograph, a renewed sense of well being and 2 really muddy dogs.
Retreat
I’ve been in Rowe for the past few days, needed a retreat of sorts. The weather is beyond beautiful and there is so much that I wanted to get done. What I’ve found is that I’ve been most distracted by the quiet – in a good way. The lack of activity all around you helps to bring you back to yourself, it helps to restore your soul. Very few cars go by, very few planes fly over, there aren’t any people that I run into that I don’t already know. My shelves are stocked if I want to make myself something to eat. There is no schedule. The only thing you really have time to do is think. It’s as if your entire day is spent in meditation. It’s a good thing.
Sophie likes to spend her day on the pillows on the sofa. As you can see she has no trouble relaxing at all.
Counting Seedlings
Our yard has 6 very large maple trees in it, all varieties. Each spring I do battle with the seedlings that emerge from the ground. I have a large perennial garden in that yard that is an oasis for these little saplings. It doesn’t matter how much I rake the seeds out these are always popping up in the spring. Right now they are the bane of my existence.
I have a bit of an OCD with counting and a few years ago I turned pulling these up into a counting thing. Every morning when I take the dogs out I go into that garden and pull up no fewer than 25 of theses little trees. They are only about 4″ tall and are surprisingly difficult to pull out of the ground. Honestly it’ll probably take a couple of weeks to get them all out of the garden at that rate. The consequences of not pulling them up now manifest themselves fully by fall when I have to go out with my shears and cut them to the ground because they’ve grown up in the center of my phlox unnoticed.
Counting my way through this garden every morning also gives me the opportunity to visit the plants that are coming up now (and the weeds). I visit and revisit certain spots to see who made it through the winter or where they’ve moved from last season. It’s a getting to know you thing every spring. I guess if it wasn’t for pulling those saplings I could potentially visit an unfamiliar garden come June.
Earth Day Every Day: an Ode to Nature
I couldn’t have said this any better myself.
Fort Pelham Farm 