Fall Colors, 2012

The Blizzard of Oz

When I was a little girl, my paternal grandparents took me to the Land of Oz and Tweetsie Railroad attractions in western North Carolina. I still have vivid memories of that trip, along with a very well read and tattered copy of Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, which my grandparents bought for me at the Land of Oz.

As it turns out, The Wizard of Oz is one of Ally's favorite movies. When I heard about the annual Autumn at Oz event held on the grounds of the old Land of Oz theme park, I knew I wanted to take Ally there to experience it, too. Like in the old theme park, the Autumn in Oz actors play the roles of Dorothy and her friends and they escort you along the yellow brick road to key scenes in the book. You meet up with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and vanquish the Wicked Witch of the West as you find your way home to Kansas.

So the first weekend of October we decided to take a short family trip down to Boone and Banner Elk, North Carolina. About a week before we left, the forecast for Banner Elk was sunny and mild, with temperatures in the 60s. Perfect! I had picked out a sweet blue and white outfit for Ally that she could wear with a pair of red glittery shoes for a great photo with Dorothy.

About three days before we left, the forecast had changed to sunny and cooler, with lower predicted temperatures. The event organizers sent out an email asking all the visitors to prepare for possibly cold weather. Um, okay, it would be too cold to wear the blue and white outfit but Ally could still wear those ruby red slippers.

The night before we left, the forecast had bottomed out to highs in the 40s with snow and sleet showers. The event organizers sent out another email reminding visitors that the event would take place as planned regardless of the weather, so please dress warmly. Well, carp. I immediately dug out an assortment of scarves, hats, gloves, and warm shoes. Banner Elk has an elevation of 3,701 feet, but Beech Mountain, the site of the actual event, has an elevation of 5,506 feet. We were going to freeze our Munchkins off.

We piled into the car Saturday morning with our cold weather gear and drove off to western North Carolina. In Boone we saw a car with what looked like an inch of snow on it. After lunch we drove up over to the little town of Beech Mountain. Snow flakes began swirling out of the sky. There were police officers in the road directing visitors to the entrance to the Autumn at Oz event. You know it's cold when the police officers have enough cold weather gear on them that you cannot even see part of their face.

We had tickets for the 2 to 4 pm time slot. We began driving up the road to the event around a quarter to 2 pm. It looked like we were driving up a back road into an old ski resort (which is exactly what it was), and then we came upon the line going into the event. All of the ticket holders for our time slot arrived at the same time and we crawled up the side of the mountain.

We had been driving up the mountain for about an hour when Ally woke up from her nap. She marveled at the snow sticking to the trees and ground outside her window and then informed us that she needed to go use the bathroom.

We didn't know how far we were from the entrance. There was no end to the line of cars in front of us (or behind us, for that matter). We didn't see any buildings for a long while, and then we only saw private residences. No bathrooms in sight, and there was really too much snow on the ground to contemplate peeing behind a tree. Then Ally announced, with an greater sense of urgency, that she had to go poop.

Desperate, we called the Beech Mountain Chamber of Commerce, the event coordinators, to ask if there was a bathroom nearby. They were exceedingly unhelpful and didn't even seem to realize that there was a major traffic jam trying to get into the event. Ally let out a whimper.

Nothing will instill panic in a parent like the thought of having a bathroom emergency. Since we were at a standstill, the line of cars having advanced only a couple of yards over the past ten minutes, Steve decided to take Ally and walk up to the entrance. In his haste to go find a bathroom he nearly left without a jacket, let alone gloves or anything else.

I got in the driver seat and waited. And waited. And waited. The line of cars continued to creep. About a half hour later I spoke to Steve on the phone. They had *just* gotten up to the top of the mountain and found a Port-o-potty. I would call them again when I got up there and parked the car.

Long story short, it was almost 4 pm before I was able to pull into a very small and very muddy field that served as the parking lot for the event. It took 2 hours to get to the top of the mountain! Thankfully Steve was able to take Ally into the event while they waited for me, so they had already met Dorothy, Auntie Em, and the Scarecrow.



Ally had even gotten to pet Toto.



Ally had been a trooper while waiting for me, but the weather had taken its toll. My poor child was wearing only a fleece windbreaker and a pair of tennis shoes in the middle of strong, gusty winds that kept spitting wet snow. I brought Steve and Ally their gloves, hats, and coats, but it was too late. Ally was cold and tired and ready to leave and go home about 15 minutes after I found them.

I had hoped for a fun-filled family outing but instead it was an absolute disaster. Thankfully Steve had the idea of ducking back into the event at the end of the yellow brick road so that Ally could have her picture taken with Dorothy and the others all together.


Right after that we headed straight back to the car and left. Really, it was our only option. It was getting late in the day, the event was closing down soon, and the weather wasn't improving as the sun started going down. Ally was upset and we were disappointed, but risking hypothermia simply wasn't worth it. So we drove down the mountain, had dinner at a barbeque restaurant, and then checked into our hotel in Boone.

The next morning Ally was very excited about having breakfast at the hotel's breakfast bar. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth trying to have a family vacation, or if we should just check into a local hotel for a night or two just so Ally can eat at the hotel's breakfast bar. At least we'll have vivid memories of our trip to the Blizzard of Oz.

Blah-vember

So it's the middle of November and everything seems to be dried up brown or dead gray outside. The trees are bare, the grass is brown, and everything else looks withered and hard hit by repeated frosts.

Not my favorite time of the year. But October, oh October was beautiful this year...

If you're looking for me this week, I'll be under the covers trying to deal with the time change, lack of light, and the otherwise blahness of November.

On a Clear Day

On a clear day you can see forever. (Grandfather Mountain, NC)

End of Summer

It's that time of the year. We've crested over the summer hump and the heat has finally broken to where it even gets cool enough at night that we pull the quilt back up around midnight. The goldfinches are eating the seed heads of the coneflowers, chicory, and my scattered, mouse-planted sunflowers. We have a glut of tomatoes and there are baby pumpkins on the vines. School buses are back on the roads and over on campus there's the countdown towards the first football game. I'm ready for fall!

Calaveras de azúcar

Calaveras de azúcar is the name of my latest quilt. It's Spanish for "sugar skulls" and refers to the molded sugar confections made for the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Some people mistake the Day of the Dead as the Mexican version of Halloween, but they're not the same holiday. Day of the Dead is more about honoring the memories of our ancestors and celebrating their lives. The souls of the dead are invited to return and visit the living, to share favorite foods and drink together. It's a communion between the departed and the living and an acknowledgement that the departed are still with us in one way or another. I particularly like the concept that death is not something to be feared, but rather just another stage of life than we all go through.

The backing of this quilt has a Dia de los Muertos motif on it. I've always liked Mexican folk art so I was thrilled to find this fabric in the clearance section of my local fabric store earlier this fall.

Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) was a Mexican illustrator who drew both humorous and satirical images of skeletons dressed in clothes and going about ordinary lives. His art has become part of the iconic images of Mexican artwork and is the inspiration for the fabric I used as the backing on this quilt.

I used a disappearing nine patch pattern for the front of the quilt. This is a neat method to quickly make a more complicated pattern from an easy to assemble nine patch block. Rachel Griffith of "p.s. i quilt" has a nice tutorial that shows you how to make this pattern. I included bright blues, greens, oranges, purples and pinks, along with some black and white patterns, to match the backing fabric. I couldn't find any yellows that were bright enough to include in this quilt, although they would have fit nicely.

I quilted this piece using bright orange thread in meandering, wavy lines. The batting is another flannel sheet and the binding is made of the same black and white dotted fabric seen here.

This isn't a large quilt. It measures about four foot square, a good size for covering a lap or displaying on the back of a chair for some folk art.

Wordless Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010

Nearly Wordless Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010

Maple seedlings

Purple asters

Shagbark hickory

Dogwood

Virginia creeper

One of the white oaks...maybe overcup oak?

Wild grape(?)

Plum Creek, October 2010

One of the things that attracted us to our new house is the view off the back deck. Our house is situated on the top of a hill with wide views of the Plum Creek valley (just a hollow, really, or make that a holler if you're from around here) behind us.

The trees have been gorgeous this fall. There are beeches, oaks, pines, yellow buckeyes, sumacs, and a few maples spread over the hills. Golds, russets, dark greens, yellows, and a smattering of reds. Alas, we're to get some gusty winds today and tomorrow, so much of this color will be stripped from the trees by the weekend. Beauty never lasts forever.

Labor Day 2010

It's been unexpectedly chilly at night for the past couple of nights. Mornings around 7:30 am have been no more than 48-50 degrees, requiring at least a fleece or a light jacket for coffee on the porch.

Ally decided to join me on the back deck this morning. Notice the tres chic ensemble she's wearing....a red LL Bean rain jacket over last year's Halloween pajamas and with a pair of white deck boots.

Yes, I said deck boots. They may look like rain boots but they are assuredly not rain boots. Those are the type of boots worn by fishermen (and women and kids) in Poquoson. They're white, to avoid marking up the boat decks, and they're referred to as "Poquoson bedroom slippers."

Oscar joined us a few minutes later to give Ally a big kiss. Not a bad way to start off the holiday.

Change of the Seasons

It's the end of August and things are starting to change. Sunrise comes later and sunset comes earlier than just a month ago. The long, oppressive humidity of this summer has broken and you can go outside without feeling like you're drowning in the air. Our daytime temperatures might spike into the upper 80s and low 90s, but it drops down into the upper 50s and lower 60s at night, enough to make you grab the extra blanket on the bed come midnight. We've opened up the windows again to let fresh air into the house and it's good to hear the birds and bugs outside again.

Well, to a certain point. We have a lot more bugs here at the new house, surrounded as we are by pasture and trees, and they're fairly loud. The cicadas have finally stopped their incessant yelling, but there are a myriad of crickets, tree crickets, katydids, and their kin. And they all have something to say, day and night. Most of it's along the lines of, "Hey, baby? Wanna get together?" There's not much point in being subtle in late summer if you're a bug.

In the next month many of these insects will die off and things will be much quieter around here. Already they're dying by the bucket load. I can say that authoritatively as an entomologist, but really I'm just basing it on the number of dead bodies I find on the front porch each morning. Sometimes the bodies are intact, as if they just collapsed and died there, while others are shriveled and empty or have clearly been chewed on by someone else. Clearly there's a lot going on our front porch long after we've gone to bed for the night.

But aside from the changes in temperature, hours of available light, and entomological activity, there are other signs that the seasons are turning. Every couple of days I notice a few more yellowed leaves, and some have begun to turn orangey-red. Fall is my favorite season and I think it's going to be right on time.