Red gorget

Male hummingbird, front porch, June 2008. Photo courtesy of Donna.

Not with a bang (surely a good thing), but with a whimper

And so our excellent adventure comes to an end, in a backyard of suburbia.

Have a great weekend!

Up, up, and away...

Dude, there's my car!

High. Tension.


Hey! Hay!


Group shot.

Cows.

Chester County.

Say goodnight (even though it's morning)

Gracie on Gracie: That's Gracie the dog, foreground; her namesake, Gracie the balloon, background.

Inside the belly of the beast

Inside Gracie, balloon festival, Chester County, Saturday.

Hard to believe...

Hard to believe that this...

coupled with this...


would equal one of these...

and convey us over the magnificent farmland of Chester county, affording views such as this, ...


but it did.

Back the creek (as the old timers used to say)

The Wissahickon, near Glen Fern, Sunday afternoon, June 15.
Sorry -- couldn't resist a second photo.

Have a great weekend! See you Monday.

Livezey House (Glen Fern)

Livezey House, Sunday afternoon, June 15, 2008.

Directly across the creek, on the east bank, are the ruined walls of the "Great" or Livezey Mill, built in 1717 by Thomas Shoemaker, and for a long time the largest grist mill in the colony. It was sold to Thomas Livezey October 10, 1749. Sometimes hid in its little glen, but usually visible from the drive, is the Livezey House, built in 1696, now the picturesque home of the Valley Green Canoe Club. The kitchen in this house is believed to date to 1683.
-- The Wissahickon Valley Within the City of Philadelphia, Francis Burke Brandt, 1927

Ruins of the Livezey Mill, Sunday afternoon.

Daylily

Daylily, Glen Fern, Sunday afternoon..

Caught red headed

So, did you ever have one of those Sunday afternoons where you're sitting on the front porch drinking a glass of wine and having a conversation with your girlfriend and after a while you begin to notice this persistent banging noise, except that you don't really notice it because you are after all drinking a glass of wine and having a conversation and there are all the other background noises you'd expect on a hot afternoon in more or less the middle of June like kids playing up and down the sidewalk and neighbors fiddling with their motor cycles in the alley, etc., except that this noise is really persistent so that finally you just have to ask "what the hell is that?" and you look over at the porch next to yours, which is generally a much cleaner, quieter and more civilized porch than yours, and you see this guy wreaking havoc and perpetrating all kinds of nasty property damage on your neighbor's nice white fence as if it is the most natural and appropriate thing in the whole wide world to do, which come to think of it, from his point of view, it is? Well I did.

Companions

Spring house, giant sycamore, at Glen Fern (Livezey House).

The half of the big trees of the Wissahickon Hills are those that stand about the houses, or the sites of the houses, of the millers. All the houses are gone now save two, Glen Fern, the Livezey house; and the Monastery, built by the Gorgases and long lived in by the Kitchens. The Rittenhouse house, the home of the paper-makers, is still standing on Paper Mill Run, a tributary of the Wissahickon, and less than half a mile from the creek. Some of the mils on the creek, and their accompanying homes, were built as early as two hundred years ago. Some few of the trees that still stand are apparently as old as the houses they were left to shadow, or planted to shadow.
-- The Wissahickon Hills, Cornelius Weygandt, 1930

I don't know if this is one of the trees Professor Weygandt mentions in his book from 78 years ago, but isn't it nice to think so?

Wissahickon Class of 2008

That's Erin. She won't stop crying.

I told her she had to stop crying so now she's laughing and crying at the same time. And rubbing her eye.

Much better! Erin and her mom.

Well done, Erin. I couldn't be more proud of you. And congratulations to the Class of 2008 from the Class of 1980! Let's hope we've left enough for you to work with.

Somewhere between Valle Cruxis and Banner Elk

The charms of our stay in North Carolina were to be found in the broad view...
and in the narrow.

Last year

I hope Wayfaring Wanderer (and also here) will forgive me for encroaching on her territory for a day or two, but with all the heat and humidity of the last week I can't help but think back to a year ago when we rented this cabin for a week in the mountains of North Carolina. While down in the valley it might have gotten hot, the evenings up on top of the mountain were always cool and the air was always light. Every afternoon, just for good measure, a gentle thunderstorm would pass over to freshen things up.

The good ol' days

The Wissahickon Creek, back in early spring, on a day in which the mercury wasn't expected to reach 99.

Gimme Swelter

There's Alex, son of my girlfriend, earring buddy (despite the disapproval of his mother) , guitar hero, tuning his ax before the show at the School of Rock best in show concert out in the middle of nowhere on a hot hot afternoon in the middle of New Jersey.
"War, Children, it's just a shout away... "
How Rock and Roll can it be if your mother is there to give you thumbs up, but Alex pulled it off. As did all the other kids that day. A great show!

Later that evening...

Walnut Lane Bridge, late April.

Have a great weekend!

Evening ride

Forbidden Drive, late April.

Forgotten beauty

The ruins of this fountain, which must have been beautiful when it was whole, emerge every winter when the undergrowth recedes. You will find it along Forbidden Drive near Lincoln Drive. By mid spring is has disappeared again.

Borough's burros

Burros, Roxborough, Saul High School, Sunday afternoon.
Jenny is nice but Jack is an ass.

Horse play

Walter B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences, which borders on the western side of the Wissahickon gorge, Sunday afternoon.

It is the job of these animals to stand along Ridge Avenue and cause motorists, especially if they have children or photo blogs, to pull over and take pictures.

As you can see, they are out standing in their field.