The knockout rose–gift from my baby–has been blooming like a champion, setting new buds every few days even into December.

And it looks so pretty in the snow.

So do these hips on the Champney’s pink that drapes over the back deck.

And this lovely Bourbon, wearing its coat of fluffy white.

It’ll be warm tomorrow. The snow will be gone.

Wonder how long the roses will last?

For the last month of Saturdays I’ve been “working” the Charlottesville City Market.

Mmmmm, City Market…

Now, those of us who love Charlottesville have long known about the Charlottesville City Market. And what we know  surer than celery with our Buffalo wings is that the CCM is no longer the city’s best-kept secret. In high summer, it’s more like the ultimate see-and-be-scene. If you’re not there by 8 a.m., you’ll never make the circuit in under an hour. If you’re not there by 10, you can forget finding your favorite wild mushrooms, arugula or farm fresh eggs.

“Working” the market, now … that’s a bit of a fantasy for us avid see-and-be-City-Market-scenesters. But it’s also the perfect cover for those of us who are just … hanging out with our boyfriends.

Yes, gentle readers, I admit it–even though it may cost me my feminist membership card. My new Saturday “job” is motivated largely by my high school-esque desire … to hang out with my guy.

But hey, I have been useful, a value-added aspect of the proceedings. All these years in the city–and those few years on City Council–mean that people are always coming over to talk to me and some of those folks actually buy. They’ve absolutely been lapping up the eggs Marc has been selling as a favor to his good friend, Laura Dollard. In fact, that’s sort of my Saturday alter ego. When I’m at the market, at his side, I kind of morph into … “the egg lady.”

Don’t laugh. OK, you can actually stop rolling on the floor now. It’s great fun, and I’ve actually enjoyed telling Laura’s story.

I have, after all, spent a number of hours with Laura’s chickens. I’ve gotten to know the “pets,” Rocket and Henny Penny, who live in cat cages in the kitchen when they’re not out in the yard scratching in the dirt and eating bugs with their sisters. I mourned with Laura and Marc when a predator got into the barn and killed eight of the girls and wounded several others nearly to death. I was sobered when Laura–who has the kindest of hearts–showed the steel in her backbone by putting a chicken-killing dog down rather than allow it to kill again.

But I don’t think I fully understood the value of what Laura does, who she is, what Broomfield Farm represents, until I sold a dozen extra large eggs to a young man at City Market on Saturday.

I arrived late, around 11ish, and the day was bright but cold. It wasn’t even the City Market any longer–it was the Holiday Market, with mostly different vendors, selling wreaths and jewelry and hand-spun, hand-dyed yarns rather than jams and okra and  dahlias. The shorter days meant Laura’s rooster-less hens were producing fewer eggs, so there were only two dozen left when I assumed the position at Marc’s stand: one dozen extra large at $4 and one dozen double-extra-jumbo eggs at $5.50.

That’s when the young man showed up.

I gave him the prices and, automatically, started to apologize for the size of the eggs and the prices. These are the thing most people complain about, in my brief experience as the egg lady. “Gosh, that’s high,” someone will say, even though they’re looking at eggs graded as “colossal”–twice the size by weight of medium eggs. Or, “Lord, those eggs are big,” they’ll say–thinking, no doubt, of cholesterol or whether the cake will fall or who knows what.

But before I could even draw a breath to respond to what I imagined as his concerns, the kid just cut me off.

“i’ll take the extra large,” he said. I closed my mouth. He handed me four bills, and I handed the eggs over. There was a little bit of byplay while he figured out how to carry them safely in his backpack.Then, spontaneously, he started responding to what I had not quite said.

“Yeah, they’re a little more expensive than grocery store eggs. But it’s not a problem for me, not  when I think about the conditions on those factory farms.”

He kind of gave a little shudder that might have been theatrical, except for the seriousness in his eyes and the set to his youthful, bearded chin. “Yeah, I buy my eggs at the market because it’s just important to me to participate in this food chain.”

He looked around, his eyes taking in the vendors, but not smiling at all. “You know? It makes a big difference to me … that this is a food chain that’s not, that’s not cruel,” he said.

It stopped me cold for a hot second. My meet-and-greet-the-public smile faded, and I gave him my real smile. And then I said, “I know just what you mean.”

Because I did.

I’ve seen what that food chain looks like. It looks like Rocket:

Rocket, the house chicken

I’ve sat at Laura’s kitchen table in sandals and gotten my toe pecked by that food chain, because Rocket wanted to make sure that my painted toe was not something good to eat. I’ve stood in Laura’s backyard gorging on juicy just-overripe peaches watching that food chain scramble for every morsel I dropped or tossed down. Who knew? Who knew that, in addition to bugs and grass and feed, chickens loved peaches? Or that they’d even beg for a bite of your ham sandwich? Who knew chickens had personality? I sure didn’t.

Behold Laura’s girls, chowing on a little squash with their feed …

… and scratching (there’s a reason they call it chicken scratch) in the dust

Free-range eggs are said to be a joke. I’ve found websites defending–seriously, defending–the practice of caging chickens and turkeys, cutting their beaks off so they won’t peck each other, and sending them to slaughter the moment their production falls off. (Check this one out, if you dare. It manages a creepy-crawlie intersection of biblical scripture, anti-organic food rant, and factual reference to nutritional studies.)

But I spent my summer vacation singing the Jets’ theme  from West Side Story to Rocket (”got a rocket in your pocket–keep cooly cool boy!”) while she gazed quizzically up at me with her golden chicken eyes hoping against hope that I’d spare her a bite of bread, so I know sure as celery that free range–at least in Albemarle County–is for real. And those sweet-and-sweaty wings from McGrady’s–well, I don’t feel the same way as I did about them back in the spring, when they were just cheap food to go with my basketball viewing.

(Warning here: I’m about to climb up on my political soapbox.)

Yeah, you do pay more for free-range eggs. But there are real differences between factory-farmed and organic local eggs. There are differences in grade. In the grocery store, you get, for the most part, medium, large, and jumbo. Laura sells pullet eggs (the equivalent of medium), and the sizes move up from there to large, extra large, jumbo, extra jumbo, double extra jumbo and colossal (which are roughly twice the weight of pullet eggs). Why so much larger? Partly because the chickens are large–Rhode Island Reds, a healthy-sized breed–who eat well and get lots of sunlight (which encourages hens to lay).

At left, jumbo from the grocery store; at right, double extra jumbo from Laura’s girls

But to a large degree, the eggs are big because Laura doesn’t slaughter her hens the minute they get older and their production starts to fall off. Older hens produce larger eggs, fewer in number, rather than more, smaller eggs. It’s a raw economic calculation on the factory farm that it’s cheaper to kill a chicken (and turn her into … say, buffalo wings) than to feed her once her laying capacity falls. Fact is, Laura doesn’t even slaughter her hens when they stop laying. They just hang out on the farm and live out their lovely chicken lives–scratching in the dirt and eating bugs and grass and (that increasingly expensive!) chicken feed.

Yeah, that grocery store egg is much cheaper–maybe as little as $1.99 for a dozen. But that grocery store egg is also older, possibly weeks older depending on the point of origin. The egg weighs less, because an air pocket forms between the egg and the shell as it ages. The egg is tougher, chewier because it’s less moist (that whole air pocket thing).

There’s also noticeable difference in the color of the yolk–the grocery store egg’s yolk is a pale yellow rather than the deep rich nearly orange color of the Albemarle County free range egg. That’s partly due to the difference in feed: factory farmed chickens eat a diet that’s mostly genetically modified, pesticide-doused grain and antibiotics rather than the mixed diet of organic corn, bugs, grass and the occasional fruit or bread treat that Laura’s chickens enjoy. And of course, there’s a big difference in nutrition. All eggs are high in choline, B-vitamins, and loads more stuff that’s good for you–but you don’t get that dose of pesticides and antibiotics and hormones with your free-range egg.

At left, grocery store; at right, one of Laura’s girls

I’ve been thinking about this all summer, particularly as I’ve spent more time in Albemarle County with people who live close to the land. Laura has 100 chickens rather than the thousands in cages it is one’s misery to behold (not to mention smell) on the factory farm. The kinds of economies of scale that are possible on those big operations are out of reach for her and the rest of the small farmers in our area. When a bag of feed goes from $8 to $14, it hurts–hurts all of them–and it shows up immediately in the price we pay at the City Market for those eggs or that meat. But one thing you can be assured of is that the chickens and pigs that are the source of all that City Market goodness were well fed and well treated. (And you don’t have to believe me: You can visit the farms and see with your own eyes).

So yeah, my participation in City Market started out being all about hanging out–hanging out with the boy, seeing the world from the vendors’ angle, running my mouth with my friends, that kind of thing. But what I realized on Saturday was that this endeavor has real meaning. We are all part of a food chain in Charlottesville, in Albemarle and the surrounding counties. And for those of us who sell or patronize the sellers at City Market, for those of us who grow our own, even if it’s just a tub of tomatoes on the deck, those few links in the chain we’re able to contribute? They have value, because they’re not cruel. I’ll always be grateful to that serious young man for reminding me of that.

So chew on that with your morning omelet. And I’ll see you in this space soon.

Trifle, the fierce beagle who watches over the chicks

In the nearly six months that I’ve been dating “farm boy”–also known as “Marc”–my friends have come to realize that the whole “farm boy” appellation has been, basically, one of my little jokes. (Actually, a tall joke–the boy’s at least six-four.) Marc is, more properly speaking, a horticulturist (I get corrected when I say “horticulturalist.” Apparently that’s what you call it in the  British Isles–in A-MUR-ca, we lose the “al”).

So anyway, baby boy has been running–and repping–large nurseries for the last decade-and-a-half: a commercial nursery with 17 farms in two counties and relationships from central Virginia to the Washington-Baltimore area, then later an educational foundation where he produced 600 varieties of heirloom plants for display and collection purposes and for retail sales. And then there’s that whole garden renovation and design business of his–and the trees and shrubs and perennials he grows on his own land to supply it…

I say all this not to present my beloved’s bona fides–but because, knowing all this, seeing it all in action, with the trucks and the crew and the whole Charlottesville City Market gig–it should come as no surprise to me that my house is turning into … well, an impromptu propagation lab. But it kind of has surprised me … very pleasantly, I might add.

It all started quite innocently enough, back when it was still warm. Marc and I were sipping wine on the deck, talking roses (I just love it when he talks dirty to me). I was moaning about the fact that I’d planted my favorite rose–Rosa chinensis “Mutabilis,” aka “The Confederate Rose”–at my mama’s, where it was blooming prolifically in a riot of blush to deep pink to coral while in mine there were only a bunch of boring Noisettes and Bourbons. (Yes, I was whining, rose lovers–we know Noisettes and Bourbons are not shabby at all). Whereupon, he bounded off the deck and took a whack at one of my hydrangeas to demonstrate how easily we could make rose babies.

Well, not a whack precisely… He started with a simple garden staple.

And then he dug a groove beneath the hydrangea with what happened to be handy–a stray picket from my fence. He selected a branch from the hydrangea, one with a fork …

Stripped off the leaves, scored the stem with his thumb, stapled it in, and covered it with soil…

All to demonstrate how easy it is to make more of your favorite plants. Come spring, I’ll have baby hydrangeas (Hydrangea macrophylla “Endless Summer,” to be precise) that will be ready for potting or planting in my yard. And I’ll save that that 25 smackeroos I’d otherwise spend for each plant at the local garden center. (Hmmm… was that when I knew it was love?)

That was how it started … and I should have known it was just the start. But now that gardening season is nearly done and pruning season is about to begin, little projects are starting to, well, sprout around the house. For instance, I came home from church on Sunday to discover that Marc had cleaned the kitchen (yes, there is a goddess!) and started puttering around with what was handy: a schefflera that had miraculously survived the plant holocaust that was my dissertation and a couple of geraniums–one with a lovely variegated leaf–that were left over from his summer stock.

This is the pretty little thing I found on my counter.

Here’s a nice closeup.

Basically, what he’d done was filled a small clay pot with river pebbles and nested it inside a larger pot filled with a nice potting mix. I don’t know if you can see in the pix, but the soil in the larger pot comes nearly to the lip of the smaller pot. (The stakes are provided by a piece of bamboo cut to roughly 12-inch lengths and spaced around the rim.)

Next, he took sections of the plants–trimmed of their extra branchings with the leaves cut back, too–and inserted them into the soil. This is another method for turning one plant into six, and I’m sure it has a name–probably a Latin one.

The only tools he used were the most basic ones: his trusty pruning shears and a pair of scissors. I’m sure you’ve got those around the house, too.

Next, he labeled the babies and gave them a good misting, followed by a good drenching: pouring lots of water on the pebbles and draining it off, twice.

The last stage of the operation was supplied by my good friends from Southern States. Namely, a plastic bag that had lately held cat food. This is what our kitchen counter “greenhouse” ended up looking like.

This greenhouse doesn’t require much in the way of sun or anything in the way of attention. We’re, in fact, going to forget about it for a while. And when there’s something new to see, I’ll post it in this space.

… I’m beginning to think I’m dating The Green Man.

Hey, as we used to say in the 60s, I can dig it!

This week I realized that I have had no vacation this summer–it’s been work, work, work, except for the times I’ve carved out to play on this blog. And while I like work, and lord knows I need to work–hard and fast–to complete this project, I also needed … a change of pace.

That’s how I found myself braking for butterflies on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Rockfish Gap Overlook off the Blue Ridge Parkway

Now you may find this hard to believe, but though I live less than 20 minutes from the entrance to the Blue Ridge Parkway/Shenandoah National Park, I’ve visited precisely once in the fourteen years I’ve lived here. Earlier this week, I had to go “over the mountain” — as we say when we cross Afton Mountain into the Shenandoah River Valley — on business. I wrapped that up by ten, so instead of coming straight home on the interstate, I took the dogleg onto the parkway and drove … for hours.

Homestead with chicken coop in the backdrop

Now I’m familiar with the work of Chuck and Nan Perdue, folklorists at the University of Virginia, so I knew that thousands of families had been moved off their lands to create the parkway and the park. But it never clicked until I found this cabin, part of a farm “exhibit” near Humpback Rocks that included a tiny garden, a chicken coop that was more like a palace, a root cellar, a springhouse, and a cow byre.

These, mind you, are real buildings assembled from farms from which the owners had been displaced. Beautifully crafted–they were built to last–and meticulously maintained by the National Park Service, the buildings allow visitors to the park to experience selected sights of farm life without any of the sounds or smells. No sweaty humans with funny accents and guns to chase off the unwelcome visitor. No animals except for a single, exceedingly fat hen. The only sounds were the voice of the costumed interpreter, bird song, and the buzzing of insects.

Pipevine swallowtail in ecstatic communion with coneflowers

I stood in deep woods looking at the springhouse, the care with which it had been built from stone, wood, and mud mortar, and my body, which had been vibrating with fear and anxiety for weeks, began to relax. I stood marveling at the temperature–it was at least 10 degrees cooler than the city. I daydreamed amid massive flowering wands of black cohosh, drifts and drifts of them, with Humpback Rocks looming above … and gradually the shattering cacophony of bird voices began to resolve into individual songs: the fluting of wood thrushes, the peter-peter-peter of tufted titmice, the wicka-wicka-wicka of flickers.

My only companions were the insects: The forest was simply alive with insects. The occasional hornet. Bees and beetles aplenty. But especially (marvellously) butterflies. Thousands of them. Spotted. Tiger-striped. Giant and swallowtailed. Tiny as my thumbnail and silvery white… Lazily fanning their wings as they fed on the coneflowers and zinnias that surrounded the farmhouse. Dancing by the dozens in ecstatic spiral flights at the side of the road.

I bought a souvenir at the National Parks gift shop and hit the road after about an hour of that, but found my reverence for the butterflies lingering. I slowed my car when they launched themselves across the tiny ribbon of asphalt ahead of me. When I saw a huge swallowtail just chilling in the middle of my lane, I actually stopped the car , backed up, and drove slowly around it…

By this time hours had passed, and I was starved. So I exited the Parkway at VA 646–which, going east, leads to the ski-and-spa resort at Wintergreen and, heading west, leads to Sherando Lake, a swimming-camping-fishing complex around a beautiful spring-fed lake that, even though it was built by the CCC during the Depression, remains something of a secret.

“Beautiful people” or “regular people”? Four-star restaurant and spectacular views or fried chicken (if I was lucky) at the gas station up the road from the lake?

Royal Oaks Country Store in Love, VA

As it turned out, it was neither. I ended up in a country store in Love, Virginia. I chatted with the young man behind the counter about his garden–and the three dozens squash and cucumbers it was pumping out daily. “I’m so sick of squash–squash casserole, squash with butter and onions, squash any kinda way you could think of–I just told my wife to start giving it away,” he chuckled.

I couldn’t resist ordering a “Love Sub” and, while he made it, I browsed among the Appalachian kitsch in his gift shop: homemade soaps and jams and jellies, alternating with arrows fletched with fake hawk feathers and Indian maiden statuettes with angel wings.

Then, loaded down with the sandwich, chips, soft drinks, and water, I headed to Sherando Lake.

Bathers on the beach at Sherando Lake.

There were fewer than a hundred people there. If I’d had my bathing suit, it would have been the perfect day….

A few days ago, Sam, one of two special men in my life disappeared for a full 24 hours. He didn’t come home, wasn’t seen in any of his usual haunts, missed his breakfast and his dinner.

That was the factor that sent my doting Southern mama genes into panic mode. Because Sam–short for Sambuca–is a feral cat rescue. I don’t know how much you know about feral cats, but missing meals is not something they do.

Sam, right, and Tiger sharing a mug of water.
I’d last seen Sam about 8 o’clock the evening before. He and his brother Tiger–both born under my porch and tamed only gradually over a long, painstaking period of months–had eaten a dinner of their favorite canned food (Harris Teeter brand–go figure), then glided out into the garden: Sam to sprawl on the warm soil; Tiger to hide under the tomato plants and lie in wait for an unwary bird to fly too close. It all looked as normal as normal could be. I smiled to myself and closed the back door.

The next morning, I’d opened the door at the usual time–6:30. Tiger bounded out of the sunflower bed before I even had time to draw breath to call. But there was no Sam–not at 6:30, not at nine or noon or three in the afternoon, and not at dinner time. He didn’t respond to calls, to the sound of an opening can, or to persistent tapping on said can with a spoon.

And I was deeply, heart-stabbingly worried.

Being in the feral cat rescue business means dealing with beings who live dangerous, precarious lives–disease, hunger, indifferent cars, passionately interested dogs, and rock-shying humans are only a few of the dangers they face. But like more than a few humans I could name, feral cats tend to think their risky lives are just fine, thank you very much. They’re not typically interested in your desire to help–though canned food is high treat and a brush is something they can come to look forward to with positive relish.

Gaining their trust is a slooow process. There are some real hurdles to overcome: things like confinement in cat carriers, visits to the vet, the occasional bath when they’ve gotten into something particularly nasty. And there is the constant gnawing worry they can cause you. Because there’s nothing safe about loving a semi-wild animal. It may grow to love you, but it will never belong to you.

Nine feral cats and kittens moved through my life in roughly an 18-month period. I trapped them, got them spayed and neutered at the SPCA, hand-tamed almost all of them. I watched three of them die, and performed the heartbreaking duty of digging a grave for the kitten who had been my favorite–flattened by a speeding neighbor (the bitch–she never even apologized). I found homes for two of the cats, watched two of them find homes for themselves(!).

But of all of them–Midnight, Tweety, Tink, Lucky, Darla, the two mama cats, and Tiger–it was Sam who had given me the most sleepless nights.

While oddly self-sufficient, he was also incredibly needy.

Nearly starved to death when his mother weaned him–just couldn’t make the adjustment to the dry food. I watched him grow weaker and weaker–until I couldn’t stand it, started experimenting with various combinations of kibble, broth, and milk until I finally stumbled on something he could hold down…

Sam before he was weaned.

He went from being adorable at three weeks to the skinniest, ugliest, funniest looking kitten in his litter at three months. When I trapped him and dropped him off at the SPCA for what would be a monthlong stay (I had to go to Europe and he needed to be neutered) I didn’t recognize the cat who awaited me on my return. His glossy adult coat had grown in and he was quite handsome–if still painfully skinny…

At six months, he’d started to fill out, his appearance and skittishness seemed to be improving daily. And then he took a swan dive off the roof and snapped his femur cleanly in half. He got a screw in his thigh that year–and my family got homemade cookies for Christmas…

All these memories were going through my mind as I closed the door to my house at 5:30 p.m. and headed out to a meeting at church. I had a serious purpose–helping to pick an interim pastor–but I was finding it hard to concentrate.

So instead of running up the stairs to the library, I made a u-turn into the sanctuary instead. I knelt down at the altar–not sure at first sure what to say. But the words just started pouring out. Prayers that Sam would be safe whether or not he returned to me. Prayers that he would find a loving home if he did not. Prayers that he would return home–but only if my home were indeed a place where his little cat spirit was intended to dwell. Because somewhere, dimly, I was groping to a realization, no, a certainty, that however much I loved him, Sam was not … in fact, my possession… that he could come to harm or simply choose to live elsewhere, and there was not a single thing I could do about it… but pray that he would be all right.

So you know what I’m going to say next, don’t you?

Sam came home.

As I drove down to the end of my dead end street, made the Y-turn, and pulled slowly in front of my house, he slipped from behind the neighbor’s hedge, sat in front of the gate, and calmly curled his tail around his feet.

“Where have you been!” was my scolding greeting, though I was so happy tears were pricking my eyelids. “You scared me half to death!”

He blinked his great gold-green eyes in reply, as if to say, “Such a fuss! Calm yourself, kiddo.”

But he also dashed pretty quickly through the picket fence to the front porch when I opened the gate, made a beeline for the kitchen when I opened the front door, and tucked into his Harris Teeter canned food with a voracious appetite.

“Humph! Well, I guess they weren’t feeding you wherever it was you were,” I muttered.

A few hours later, though, he gave me his nightly signal: he walked over, rubbed against my legs, made sure I was looking at him, then sat by the door. He was ready to go outside for the evening.

“Sure you haven’t had enough adventures for one day?” I said, hoping against hope. He cocked his head consideringly, then meowed and turned his gaze on the door. Clearly the answer was no.

I hesitated, but only for a moment. Sighing, I got up, opened the door, and watched Sambuca glide silently into the long blue shadows under the daylilies and disappear…

… because when you love something, you have to set it free. Especially if it’s a feral cat.

Sambuca, spiritual teacher.

This morning, I took a walk along the Rivanna River. It’s the first time I’ve walked the area since the Woolen Mills dam was demolished last August, and the changes seemed quite dramatic.

Now mind you, it’s been some years since I walked the Riverview. Time was — when I lived near the river, in the section of town called the “Woolen Mills,” after the mill founded there in 1841 — I walked that trail every day, winter or summer, whether the weather was dry and fine or ice and snow. My daily companion on those expeditions was Jade, a lab-collie mix with a pure white coat, root beer eyes, a pink mottled nose, and the best disposition of any animal it has ever been my pleasure to share my life with. If an animal can, in fact, be a spirit guide, then she was surely mine … But Jade died in 2002 after a short bitter fight with liver cancer–and I’ve barely set foot on that trail or even in the park that’s the entrance to it since…

But today, I promised a friend who runs a community service agency — QCC, the Quality Community Council — that I would join the ladies taking part in one of her weekly health walks. There were about a dozen of us–some elderly, some disabled, a mother with a toddler, one woman in full walkers’ regalia including an iPod armband. We got a brief pep talk from Susan Pleiss, a volunteer wrangler extraordinaire who does amazing work with parks and gardens and transportation and the poor, and Chris Jensic, the city planner who works with the trails system. Then we all set off in a big crush… but in short order I found myself … all by myself.

I got left behind rather quickly because I had to stop to look at the river. It had been many years since I’d taken a good long look at it, and I noticed the changes wrought by the destruction of the dam immediately. From a deep, sluggish, mossy green snail, the river had turned shallow, wide, clear, quick-moving as a coachwhip snake over rocks that I had never even known were there.

The deep shade cover made the walk blessedly cool, so I walked a bit slower (and, as it happened, a lot farther) than everyone else. I took the time to listen to Susan and Chris bemoaning the colonies of invasive Japanese bindweed that were overtaking the riverbanks (one was literally as tall as a house). I watched bees pollinating chest high stands of milkweed. I stopped to pick mulberries from a tree at the side of the path and exchanged a few laughs with a guy on a mountain bike who stopped and pulled down the branches so I could reach them, then fed handfuls to his daughter.

Cardinals and grackles and catbirds were calling, and there was a memory around every bend. There was where Jade got into a fight with that mean-ass Dalmation. There was where she’d launch herself after sticks until my arm was heavy and aching and her tongue lolled almost to the ground. There was where I scattered her ashes…

But there was much that was new, too. The city has widened and resurfaced the path so that it’s more like a ped-bike superhighway than the little goat track we used to scramble up and over. The deepest, darkest, shadiest portion of the trail–the section where Riverview Cemetery looms 100 feet on a sheer bluff overhead–is now dappled with sunlight because the city permitted a luxury development that decimated the enormous trees that used to block the light. And the trail just keeps going now instead of ending at the city limits.

This requires some explanation: The city and the county actually got together (this may sound strange to folks from other states, but in Virginia, they’re separate and often competing entities) and connected their trails. So now, instead of just ending at U.S. 250, at the city-county line in effect, the trail winds under the Free Bridge, and continues along the river through Darden Towe Park to end in Pen Park, on the far north end of town. … Now I don’t know about you, but to me, the thought of walking through woods in a complete circuit around the east side of town from the southern limit of the city to the northern– that’s cool. I can’t wait to try it.

So I’ll return to Riverview. In addition to the scary, ropy vines of poison ivy — thick as my arm — climbing the sycamores beside the trail, I saw Queen Anne’s Lace and wild yarrow. And the milkweed is just starting to mature. The umbels, though as big as my fist, are just starting to turn a rich coral color. Soon they’ll start attracting monarch butterflies. I want to be there to see that. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to get a picture.

(P.S. Apologies for not posting any pictures with this. I didn’t have my camera today, but I’ll be going back soon!)