On the Road and In Your Backyard

Good Morning All,

This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.

So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.

You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.

For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.

Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!

 

Today, pictures from valued commenter J R in WV.

I’ve talkedk about living in the woods and not being able to mow a lawn because of where we live. Also gardening is quite different in the forest than in a more typical home with lawn. So I though I would submit a few pictures from around our place. While I’m not on the road, most people have to go on the road to see the kind of terrain around our house.

We bought our farm in the late 1970s, and lived in a small jenny lind style farmhouse, 2 rooms down and 2 rooms up, with an add on in back for the itchen, utility room and bathroom. The jenny lind part was built in the late 1800s and I built the back kitchen/bath after we bought the place. After the first decade of fixing thing up at a little slower pace than they were decaying, we decided to build a new house. Away from the county road, which was very dusty, and unpaved.

The new house is in a cove, 800 feet behind the old house, sheltered by rocky walls on the West, North and East sides. Open to the south, sunrise is late and sunset is early, and we’re surrounded by forest. This means we’re limited in what we can plant to shade tolerant plants. Here’s what it looks like around the home stead.

Moss covered boulder with puppy

Taken on 2015-04-28

Right by our front steps in SW West .

This boulder is right beside the steps up to our house, and is mostly covered with moss, with a few ferns and wildflowers. Happy is a rescue from the Vet clinic we’ve been seeing for 30+ years, she was taken from a chain a 3 am and brought into the clinic that morning, about 10 years ago. She was withdrawn and shy when we brought her home, but now she runs the farm with our other rescue dog and the neighbor’s dogs.

Icey morning

Taken on 2008-12-13

Right outside our house, about noon.

Looking directly south on a very winter morning, this is the kind of day you really really need sunglasses to go outdoors.

Narrow Dark Hollow

Taken on 2008-04-06

About 100 yards south of our house, looking down into the gully eroded by the ephemeral stream that sometimes flows beside our house.

This is the hollow below the cove where we built our house. It opens up down below into the bottoms where the old farm house was, and where the farming happened. It’s so steep you can’t really stand on the sides, but if you’re really careful you can walk down the creek bed.

Wild Lady Slippers

My parents side yard, at 2600 feet elevation, on a high ridgetop overlooking the small city.

These are one of the more valued wild flowers of the Appalachian Mountains.=,, the wild Lady Slipper orchids. These were common below my parent’s house in Beckley when I was a child. When I got back from the Navy, they were gone. Then after 25 years, they were everywhere again.

Redbud in Bloom

Taken on 2014-05-06

This is the county road, going up a hill to our driveway. Some years the roadsides are covered by redbud and dogwood, and this was a good year.

Rock Bank with God of Winds

Taken on 2008-04-06

Just west and south of the house, maybe 80 yards from the front door.

This is a rock bank on the west side of the cove our house is in. If you look closely you can see a small sculpture of a God of Winds, just right of center.

Spray of Serviceberry Flowers

This tree is just above the farm road back to the house and shop from the county road.

The Serviceberry tree, most often pronounced Sarviceberry, is supposed to have named because by the time it blooms, in very early spring, the ground is thawed enough to bury those who died over the winter. I don’t know the date this picture was taken, it’s been moved from server to back up to server once too often, and lost some meta-data, but you can tell it’s early in the year as nothing else is the least bit green yet.

 

Thank you so much J R in WV, do send us more when you can.

 

Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.

 

One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email