Morning peace, sweet visitors and pastoral scene

- Morning peace at the house by the river in western North Carolina.  The back porch temperature was a very cool 60 degrees, so I watched the morning news and had some coffee in one of the mountain pottery mugs my sister's late mother-in-law filled this home with. 

- And there were some very sweet visitors the first morning.  What a treat!  The young deer in the foreground had antlers just coming in.  He was alone for several minutes, drinking water, until his sister wandered out cautiously.  A lovely few minutes, until something spooked them and they retreated back into the forest.

- The cows grazing on the hillside looked so peaceful, that I turned around to snap this photo as I was leaving town.  I cropped out the pesky power lines to capture this pastoral scene.

Click to enlarge, if you can.  Friday - photos from my walk at the river walk park in Murphy, NC., where I got lost, but then found my way back to my car.  :)

Mountain morning, great big flower and peace

- I have a little hodgepodge of photos from my recent trip to my sister's mountain house hanging out on my desktop.  If you click to enlarge, you can see a lone fisherman there across the river at the edge of Mr. Martin's farm.  He turned up every morning, about the same time, and caught a few mountain trout each time, throwing the tiny ones back.  This photo makes me wish I was sitting there right now, with my coffee, new purple glasses (see box in post before last) and Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal, that a friend copied from a book for me.

- My sister calls the woman next door (that's a bit of her house here) "Miss Gail" - she was my sister's late mother-in-law's friend, both from Florida.  They used to come up in May and stay until October to celebrate the cooler air.  That's what Gail still does.  I loved this big flower in one of her flower beds.  It must be in the Morning Glory family, because it closes up in the afternoon.

- View from the road to the house, about a mile away from it.  That's someone's well-worn driveway path on the lower left and their fields below.  I titled this photo "Church and Fields."  If you click to enlarge, you can see the little church there, right in the middle.  Sigh - I feel more peaceful already. 

Favorite thing this week - a man I work with is taking the day off to take his ailing father fishing for the day.  It's his father's birthday.  He says he couldn't think of a better present. 

Home away from home, early morning peace and weekend reading

- This image of the river behind my sister's mountain vacation home is my desktop image on my computer at work.  When I am feeling stressed (which is all too often when I'm working), I look at this and can summon up the sound of the river and feel more peaceful.  I'll be looking at this scene by the end of the day today.  Car is packed - as soon as I leave work, I'm on my way. 

- Feeling a sense of nurture as I water my (now straggly) outdoor plants in the early morning hour.  I love this time when it's still dark out, no other sounds except the birds singing and the paper delivery lady making her rounds.

- Reading material for the weekend (other than a pile of magazines), Cop Town by Karin Slaughter (she is a friend) and Flannery O'Connor's prayer journal (she was a neighbor when I was a child growing up in Milledgeville, Georgia.)  Two southern writers who, I'm certain, would have liked each other.

I hope you have a weekend full of peace and good reading.  Have a great one!

- This was a collaborative effort.  I paused on the road to the river house (watching for cars coming behind me), while my sister took the photograph with my camera out of the car window.  I have edited it slightly.  Good job, us!  It rained most of the time we were in North Carolina, but we all like rain, so that was OK.  And it made for the most beautiful cloud patches on the mountaintops.  Click on the photo to enlarge and you'll see them.

- We found a little sunshine on Sunday morning at the Butternut Creek Festival at Meeks Park in Blairsville, Georgia.  It was sponsored by High Country Artisans, and everyone here was indeed an artisan.  This gentleman was operating a foot pedal to carve wood for canes and such. 

- We went to a lesser craft festival on Saturday (it shall not be named, it was so bad) and my sisters were lamenting that there were not even funnel cakes there.  But somewhere beyond that beautiful bridge there at the Butternut Creek festival, there was a scent of funnel cake in the air.  They sniffed and zeroed in on them.  They shared one while I had some some homemade peach ice cream.

Give me homemade ice cream any day!  :)  There might be a couple more photos in the offing for next week.  Meanwhile - I hope you have a delightful weekend, full of good things.

Optimism, winner and easy

- This sign in a mountain shop made me think of the hygienist at my dentist's office. She has similar signs in her workspace, including one that says, "Bring me the chocolate and no one gets hurt!" :)

- The emotion displayed by Iker Casillas, the goalkeeper and captain for Spain's World Cup team, as he talked about the win. I wasn't pulling for either team, but did enjoy watching when I could.

- Listening to a discussion of grandchildren before a meeting, one is a new grandmother and the other is seasoned and had an amusing story: her three-year-old grandson was a little over zealous in his excitement over handling the new baby. "Easy there!" they said, or "Easy, OK?" Later he came to her and said, "Shhhh, Grandma, Easy is sleeping."