Friends atop South Sugarloaf

Posted on October 24, 2008 by admin

Sandy, Gail, and Peter near Peter and Gail’s Sunderland, MA home.

Dahlia Bush

Posted on October 19, 2008 by admin

Roger has had no success with growing dahlias the way that the local dahlia society advocates. Their literature says that you nip the side branches to force one large bloom, and you should dig the bulb out each year. Well, Roger can’t stand nipping the branches off since this kills off something which is living, and he has had no success over wintering the bulbs, so he leaves them in the ground and hopes for the best. When nothing comes up the next year, he buys some more. This is an example of the terrible things which happen when you leave the bulb in the ground from last year and don’t nip off any of the side branches. This plant has been flowering since at least July 4, the date I took another picture of it…

Fair Hill Outing

Posted on October 18, 2008 by admin

Sandy invited me to join her for a tromp around Fair Hill while she hung streamers for the Mid-Atlantic Champs event in November since I won’t be able to attend the event.

And though I really didn’t want to make a two hour drive each way, the lure of a beautiful day in the woods, with a good friend, overcame the desire to snuggle back under the covers when the alarm hollered up the stairs.

It was a very interesting day. It turned out that there was a huge horse and dog event going on, so we met at a different parking lot, not that I navigated correctly to the initial meeting place. After deciding that I had to be back on the road by 2 PM, we got going from a further lot, and started visiting control locations. After only getting two sorted out in the first 45 minutes, I didn’t think we would get even halfway through the map. But, despite the fact that we didn’t run even one step, we made progress and ended up getting to most of the controls.

We even stopped for about 10 minutes to admire the horses running a steeple chase event across our desired route choice. It was an great day, and well worth the drive, especially since traffic was minimal save for a 5 minute slow down on the way home.

Sandy considers a location for a control…