Grateful

Meet Wrangler, my new grand-dog. 

He belongs to Charlie and Sam and he comes to romp on our lawn occasionally.

Sunday evening was one of those times.

He is a beauty, a weimaraner with a soulful stare and an appetite for Greek yogurt.

The local kids were all here and we ate several varieties of grilled pizza. 

It is the only way to cook pizza on a hot, summer's evening. 

The sky was all kinds of gorgeous.

Natalie and Jenny were bonding on the back lawn. 

Natalie whispers in Jenny's ear.

Wrangler loves to nap on Daddy's lap.

Silly old Nana woke him up with the camera flash.

Honestly, can't a dog take a nap in peace around here?

When I downloaded pictures to my computer, somebody had taken a few extras.

I love having our family together. 

It is rarely perfect, but it is heavenly.

In its own strange way.

Battling on

Well, I wasn't going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the rest of our trip to Virginia, but then I thought to myself, Self, this is your journal and you know you will forget unless you write about it. 

So here I is.

We landed in Norfolk and visited the Botanical Gardens the first day. The next morning, we drove up to Richmond, where we would spend the next three days. On the way to Richmond, we checked out the Naval Museum and Yorktown.

The Naval Museum in Norfolk was more interesting than I expected. It is contained in a larger building that houses Nauticus, a maritime science museum geared towards children. The Naval Museum is free; Nauticus is not.
The museum covers the history of the U.S. Navy from its inception in the early days of the Revolutionary War to the present. There are many actual relics of war...

...as well as models of battleships. The detail is quite excruciating. And if you're lucky, like me, you will keep bumping into a cute guy wearing a Coastguard hat!

As we walked around the museum, we had exchanged a few words with another couple. The lady told us that her grandfather made this cigar holder. He had served on the Battleship Wisconsin, which is berthed outside Nauticus.

And here it is. We were going to look around the ship but were accosted on the way in and told that we needed to pay the Nauticus entrance fee in order to board.

We declined.

But it is a grand ship. It is one of the largest and last battleships ever built by the U.S. Navy.

The biggest flag I have ever seen hangs in the foyer.

On to Yorktown, on the Chesapeake Bay, site of the last battle of the Revolutionary War. Here, General Lord Cornwallis surrendered to American (led by George Washington) and French (led by Comte de Rochambeau) forces on October 19th, 1781. There is an interesting account of the battle here. Washington pulled a sneaky trick on the British, but it is unlikely that he would have won the decisive battle if it were not for the French. I told Jeff he needs to be nicer to the French. 

Our walking tour guide was inspired and passionate. He added vivid details to the battle story so that even I was intrigued. We found that most of the guides are history majors who really know their topics.

We walked on the very ground that British troops sweated and fought upon in the fall of 1781. It is an eerie thing, imagining those men, so many years ago, fighting and dying upon the same redoubt that I lay down and rested on this humid day in June.

There is a visitor's centre in the park and it houses General Washington's tent. The photo is rubbish, but I felt rather reverent as I stood before the tent.

After visiting the Yorktown National Cemetery, where many of the photos in the last post were taken, we moseyed on over to the town. It was late afternoon and we were starving, so we found a modest little restaurant and filled our tummies. I will forbear from telling you about the almost-naked old guy who came into the restaurant for a soda and stood at the counter flexing his tanned muscles and then went outside and stood on the beach and posed some more. It was disturbing.

We hung around for a few hours because we saw some posters for a concert that was planned for the evening. A good time was had by all. Jeff and I even danced a bit. We shared a bench with a sweet older couple. The man scared me a little because his dyed mustache and eyebrows reminded me of fuzzy caterpillars.

Behold, the Cupid Shuffle.

A hip-hop line dance.

Yes, you read me right. It was hard to catch the hip-hop intonation as performed by the band, but hip-hop it was. I wondered why a few older African American ladies were doing a country line dance! That explains it.

We drove down to Jamestown from Richmond the next day. Jamestown, across the peninsula from Yorktown and a little bit north, sits on the James River. It is the site of the first permanent settlement of Europeans in America. We watched glass blowers at work and I bought a nice little condiment jar.

I'm a sucker for glass.

The settlers established a glass factory so that they could export glass to Europe, as there was a greater demand for glass than their existing factories could supply.

We were in the middle of a heat wave, but the sky was threatening.

Excavation continues at Jamestown, searching for information about those first settlers.

Jeff wanted to join the dig.

This fort is where Pocahontas played as a child and was later taken hostage during Anglo-American hostilities and held for ransom. Her father, Chief Powhatan, refused to comply with the demands of the English and Pocahontas remained in the fort. A year later, she reportedly had an opportunity to speak to her father and she rebuked him for valuing her "less than old swords, pieces and axes" and chose to remain with the English. She later converted to Christianity and married John Rolfe. Nancy Reagan is among her descendants.

Jeff noticed that the hands on her statue are shiny, unlike the rest of her oxidized body.

We, too, brushed her hand as we passed by.

The threatened storm hit with a vengeance as we started towards the exit, so we took shelter.

It was a doozy.

I saw a sign that advertised the free ferry to Scotland.

We took it.

Why not? I said.

We find ferry trips to be quite boring.

How about you?

Jeff was very disappointed to find himself still on American soil, but there you have it.

Scotland, VA.

We soldiered on to Surry (the spelling bothers me) and found an excellent restaurant that provided us with a taste of Southern cooking. 

Country ham, baked potato, and apple fritter for me.

What, you thought I would order broccoli when an apple fritter was offered?

Ha!

Jeff had country-fried chicken and hush-puppies. 

I think I am in love. Hush puppies and I get along really well.

The next day found us in the Civil War battlefields of Spotslyvania, Fredricksburg, and Chancellorville. The highlight for Jeff was finding a record of his ancestor, Thomas Ward Osborne, who fought in some of these battles and went on to become a state senator.

This is the site of the sunken road in Fredricksburg, a particularly bad battle for the north. The Confederates had a strong position behind this wall on the sunken road and on the hill behind it. Wave after wave of Union soldiers was sent up the slope on December 13th, 1862, only to be shot down. When the next morning dawned, about 8,000 men lay dead or grievously wounded in front of the wall.

Chancellorville.

We had an excellent tour guide, but, to be honest, my mind was mush by this point.

Let me just say that the cannons on this side of the field were firing against those little tiny cannons that you can see in the distance.

The second-bloodiest day of the Civil War took place here on May 3rd, 1863.

And I'm not even sure who won.

Another awesome tour guide.

So, here's what I think.

You should go visit these historical sites.

You should take every walking tour for which you have time.

You should take a hankie.

And you should not go during a heat wave.

Bivouac of the Dead

Over three days, we visited the Naval Museum in Norfolk, the settlement of Jamestown, and the battlefields of Yorktown, Spotsylvania, Chancellorville, and Fredricksburg. By Friday afternoon, my mind was awash in bloody statistics of men dead in battle. The numbers were overwhelming. Over 50,000 men dead at Gettysburg. Almost 30,000 at Fredricksburg. Over 8,500 American men died in British prisons in the Revolutionary War.

How can you even take in numbers like that? By the afternoon of the second day I was ready to declare that I couldn't take one more battle site tour. My heart hurt and I did not want to hear one more sad story.

Plus, Virginia was in the middle of a heat wave and I was tired of being hot and sweaty.

And then, on the third day, I reluctantly tagged along on some walking tours around the Civil War sites in the vicinity of Fredricksburg. When you are standing on the very field where tens of thousands of men died, it is impossible to remain hard of heart. If, I thought to myself, I cannot stand here and honour these men in my heart and shed a tear or two for the lives they didn't get to live, for what purpose did they die? It matters not for which side they fought. They all experienced the horror of battle, the cries of pain, the terror of a futile attack, the cold, the heat, the deprivation of war. 

And so, I drank it in.

I hid behind monuments and cried a little.

I took photographs like a woman possessed.

I listened to every word of the National Park tour guides, who were passionate about their subjects and brought the stories of the battles and the men who fought them to life. 

If you ever go back east and visit these sites, take the free walking tours. Trust me, you will be glad you did. 

And so, I paid homage to all of the men who have died in wars that were started by men in high places. And to those who came home but were irreparably damaged.

And to the families they left behind.

There is a poem that is found in Confederate cemeteries all over the South. It was written by a man named Theodore O'Hara to honour Kentuckians who died in the Mexican War of 1846, but has been used to remember the fallen on both sides of the Civil War. It is also quoted on the gateway to Arlington National Cemetery.

The muffled drum's sad roll has beat

The soldier's last tattoo;

No more on Life's parade shall meet

That brave and fallen few.

On fame's eternal camping ground

Their silent tents to spread,

And glory guards, with solemn round

The bivouac of the dead.

No rumor of the foe's advance

Now swells upon the wind;

Nor troubled thought at midnight haunts

Of loved ones left behind;

No vision of the marrow's strife

The warrior's dreams alarms;

No braying horn or screaming fife

At dawn shall call to arms.

Rest on embalmed and sainted dead!

Dear as the blood ye gave;

No impious footstep here shall tread

The herbage of your grave;

Nor shall your glory be forgot

While Fame her record keeps,

For honor points the hallowed spot

Where valor proudly sleeps.

Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone

In deathless song shall tell,

When many a vanquished ago has flown,

The story how ye fell.

Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,

Nor time's remorseless doom,

Can dim one ray of glory's light

That guilds your deathless tomb.

 From: "Bivouac of the Dead"

By Theodore O'Hara, 1847

In memory of 

JOHN TURNER

who departed this life

October the 13th

in the Year of our Lord

1781

Aged 30 years

Ah cruel ball so sudden to disarm

And tare my tender husband

from my Arms

How can I grieve too much

what time shall end

by Mourning for so good

so kind a friend

There is no end to the stories. 

The Garden of Eden is in Norfolk, Virginia

We arrived in Norfolk, Virginia on Wednesday, twenty-one hours after leaving home the day before. It was a long litany of waiting in airports and late flights. When we pulled out of the surprisingly lovely Norfolk International Airport in our rented Dodge Avenger, we were ready to navigate to our Airbnb host and collapse in a puddle of sweat and exhaustion.

Not one hundred yards from the airport exit was a sign that said Norfolk Botanical Garden.

You know what we did.

We turned that car right around and parked it.

We entered the visitors' centre and paid our entry fee and picked the brain of the lady at the information counter. This was the first thing we saw!

We took the tram ride around the garden to check out the best places to visit after we had rested. We paid for a boat ride for later in the afternoon. 

And then we went to find our rented room.

After meeting the hippie host (he makes rain-water barrels and brews alcoholic concoctions) and showering and resting, we drove the two miles back to the gardens. I was armed with camera and baseball cap.

It was hot!

The gardens are just over this rise from the airport. You can climb the berm and sit and watch planes land and listen to pilots' chatter over a speaker.  

Question: Why does Jeff strike such dorky poses?

You can walk along the top of the berm that divides the dusty airfield from paradise. 

The tram driver said that there is a gate between the edge of the airfield and the gardens so that travelers with a few hours to kill can enter the gardens for a relaxing respite, free of charge. All in the name of beautifying Virginia.

Now, that is a nice concept, but the gaping hole in the logic is that we didn't see any evidence of that information in the airport. 

Norfolk has a thing about really ugly mermaids. They're all over the place, like the cows used to be in Portland, only not as pretty. In fact, kind of creepy. I had to threaten Jeff with dire things to get him to pose.

We slithered around the gardens and Jeff waited patiently while I photographed every lovely bloom that caught my eye. The temperature was 94 degrees and HUMID! 

I'm pretty sure this is the same flower that captivated me in Haiti.

This is called a honey rose and as I was snapping the photo, Jeff said There are bugs in there!

I hadn't even noticed, but sure enough, as we made a commotion, they flew away. I barely caught this one as it climbed out.

Baby pomegranate.

The boat ride took us down a river and around a lake that is created by a fresh spring. It supplies the water for the people of Norfolk and tastes mighty good.

This is for a certain piratey girl of my acquaintance.

There are a few houses around the lake. 

I would probably live in this one if someone gave it to me.

Or this one. It would do.

You could live in this one and we would be neighbours.

 ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ And our friends are all aboard,

Many more of them live next door.

And the band begins to play  ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬  ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬ 

A male eagle lives on the lake, along with four younger females. His mate was killed last year by a plane and he hasn't hooked up with another lady yet. We saw him several times and the last time he was flying off while being dive-bombed by several smaller birds.

Apparently, he gets no respect.

We saw several varieties of turtles, a blue heron, a water snake, and lots of whirligig bugs that made spirals in the water as they ran away from the boat. The boat ride was a relaxing, slightly cooler interlude in our day.

Then we walked several miles around the gardens, looking and sniffing and dripping perspiration.

They say anything will grow in Norfolk and I believe it.

I love mandevillas. I grew one a few years ago but it didn't survive the winter, of course.

Lilies of all kinds were everywhere.

I didn't notice the ant in this one until I edited it.

Angel statues scare me, but this one was nice.

I love the bud shape on mountain laurels.

Norfolk is very flat. This mound was built of excavated earth. We had been hearing the strains of an Irish flute as we neared the hill and we climbed the stairs to locate the source.

A man was sitting under a tree, playing his Irish flute just for the fun of it. It was quite beautiful and I treasured the melodious sound as we continued our explorations.

Crepe myrtles abound and I couldn't stop photographing their well-pruned shapes and smooth bark.

Australian tree ferns. Jeff wishes his looked like these.

We saw these corn stalks when we were on the boat and the same dragonfly was sitting on top. I thought maybe it was dead, but it was not.

Mmm. I do love passion flowers.

I was determined to visit the butterfly house, but when we arrived it was closed. I said a few choice sentences about people who closed butterfly houses before poor, tired, sweating tourists from Oregon could get there. Then I walked around the outside and was industriously trying to get a good shot of some of the butterflies through the netting...

...when I looked past the butterfly and saw my sneaky husband inside the building!

The back door was open, so in I sidled.

A few intrepid butterfly couples were making whoopee.

I took about fifty photos of these two.

What does that say about me?

We decided that the botanical garden is like heaven for bunnies. Unlimited food and no predators.

I told Jeff not to squint as I took this photo of him sitting under a great old magnolia tree.

This is a replica of the US Constitution.

The captain is at his table!

See? I am unreasonably fond of crepe myrtles.

Now these are good children!

I dragged an increasingly grumpy husband and footsore self to the hydrangea garden.

Let's face it. I might as well just succumb to the inevitable and call this a photoblog.

A phlog? Do you think that one will catch on? Or did someone already think of it?

The security person at the gate recommended Captain Groovy's Grill and Raw Bar for dinner (we take our recommendations where we can) so off we went.

I told Jeff he needed the Groovy Daddy burger.

Turns out he did.

Thank goodness I asked for the Cajun sauce on the side. Just a thin scraping on the baguette sizzled my senses.

The sun was setting as we drove to the house. 

We were asleep almost as soon as the sun.