I’ve had a busy few days and am now in introvert recharge mode.

Friday through Sunday was the church and choir retreat. We go to this retreat center in the mountains that used to be a Victorian spa town. There are these huge old hotel buildings that look like something out of Somewhere in Time, plus little cottages. When the spa went out of business early in the 20th century, the Episcopal church bought it and has been adding on to it. We had three days of huge meals together in the dining hall, choir rehearsals, hiking, a church service in the outdoor church (I think it’s now officially designated as a cathedral shrine), and the Saturday-night entertainment was an 80s dance party. Though there were a few of us older folks who remember the 80s, it was the teenagers and college kids who were really into it. They knew all the words to all the songs. It was a teenager who was DJing, using music from his phone. That would have been like my peers knowing all the Glenn Miller music. I did because I was a weird kid, but we didn’t have 40s dance parties and sing along to all the music. I found an old dress I had from high school, and since it fit, I wore authentic 80s attire. It was funny how different my real 80s clothes looked from the costumes others had put together.

I got home Sunday afternoon and collapsed, but then I had to get up and out again because I was volunteering for an event. There’s a community garden that a group of sisters got started. Their main goal is to provide fresh, healthy food to people who might not be able to afford it, and they deliver to seniors and families with children. But they fund this by also selling produce at a market stand. The market is about a 10-minute walk away, so I go on most weekends during the season to buy whatever they have and see what I can make with it.

Meanwhile, there’s a bakery/restaurant building just down the hill from my house. The back of it would be across the street from me if the ground were flat, but there’s essentially a cliff. Apparently, it was a really good bakery, but it closed during the pandemic and has been empty the whole time I’ve lived here. Recently, the owner donated the building to the community garden, and they’re going to turn it into a kind of cafe/bakery/grocery/community center, where they’ll have cooking classes and educational seminars in addition to serving food and selling produce and groceries. Monday night was the initial fundraiser to get this started, a farm-to-table throwdown. Area farmers donated ingredients, then some of the top chefs in the area had to create dishes using these ingredients. Three did appetizers, three did entrees, and three did desserts. A panel of judges evaluated the dishes and picked winners. The tickets for the dinner sold out almost instantly (and they were expensive). Since I’m in favor of having a restaurant a block away (since there’s no chair lift, so I have to walk down the street and back down the next street), I volunteered for the event.

They had an interesting setup for carrying out each flight of dishes. There were these thin boards that they piped dots of icing onto. The servers would pick up a board and go to each station in the kitchen, where someone would press a small plate onto the icing (so the plates wouldn’t slide). Then we’d carry the board out and set it in front of a diner, then hurry back to get another one. We had about 30 servers doing this, most of them high school students but a few adults. I pretty much spent the evening running laps. We’d go until everyone was served, get a brief break, during which we got to eat any food the chefs had left, then we’d run bring in the boards (which went faster than serving because we could stack them), and then it was time for the next course. In between courses, the chefs went out and described their dishes.

It was a lot of work and my feet and knees were mad at me by the end of the evening, but it was a lot of fun. I knew a number of the volunteers, either from other events in town or from running into them and chatting at the garden market. My next-door and across-the-street neighbors were there as diners, and one of my neighbors was doing logistics and hauling things in his truck. The guy two doors down was part of one chef’s team, and one of the pastry chefs has his bakery in the neighborhood. It was nice seeing everyone come together. One of the entree chefs was running behind getting her dish plated, and one of the pastry chefs pitched in to help. There were teenagers from the volunteer group getting drafted to help the chefs (I think the organizers knew them and knew they were interested in restaurant work). I met a lot of interesting people. One of the women I was working with turned out to have lived in the same general area of Germany I did when her husband was stationed there (he worked at the hospital where I went to the doctor when we lived there).

I mostly didn’t get to try the full dishes as they were plated, so I couldn’t really judge anything other than the desserts, where I did get a full plate of all three (another volunteer and I split it, but we got all the sauces and toppings the way it was plated for the dinner). My favorite was a goat cheese cheesecake. It wasn’t too sweet and had just a bit of tang.

The event was in the high school cafeteria (with lots of decoration to make it look like a restaurant), and during the down time between training and the event, I explored a little. I peeked into the auditorium and saw that the drama club was rehearsing a stage production of Hogfather, based on the Terry Pratchett novel. I’ll have to go see that. Based on the bit of rehearsal I saw, I think they’re having fun with it.

I enjoy being around people like that and feel energized while I’m doing it, but it also drains my batteries quickly, and I need solitude to recharge. I was only partially recharged from the retreat before I had to go into public mode again at the dinner, but I have a few days of quiet before next weekend’s fun kicks in. I’ve got a couple of hikes on the agenda, but there’s also a big local festival. I didn’t sign up to volunteer for the festival this year, so I may just pop by, depending on how tired I am after the hiking.

Remember that Pottery & Peril comes out tomorrow! I hope you enjoy it.

We had a glorious fall-like day yesterday, so I packed a lunch in my backpack and headed to the city park down the street. We have two main city parks (plus a lot of smaller pocket parks). There’s a very manicured one that has a duck pond, playgrounds, the bandstand, a fishing lake, and sports fields. But it doesn’t have walking paths. There’s a road winding through the park that at one time was a carriage path. Now that’s a multipurpose road, which cars, bikes, and walkers all have to share. When I lived in the apartment, that park was close by, and I initially thought I wanted to live in easy walking distance of it. Then I learned that the concerts there get loud and it’s annoying having to dodge cars on the walking path. It’s about a 20-minute walk from my house, so I can still go there for concerts and events.

The other big park is a bit wilder. It has a swimming pool, various sports courts, a few playgrounds, and sports fields, but the big hill in the middle of it has been left mostly forested, with walking paths—real hiking-type paths—winding around the hill. It’s about a 10-minute walk from my house, so I can very easily get to an experience that feels wilderness-like. You can forget you’re in a city. It feels almost the same as being on the Appalachian Trail, though it’s much, much shorter and has a lower risk of bears (since they’d have to go through the city to get there). You can also get the good kind of lost.

I forgot where I read it, but there’s apparently some benefit to your mind from getting mildly lost—not to the point of needing a rescue crew, but going through some time of not being exactly certain where you are or not heading for a particular destination. It does something to spur creativity and problem solving. This park is perfect for that. The trails are marked, but the markings aren’t always clear, there are trail spurs that aren’t marked, and the trails intersect with each other, so you may find yourself on a different trail, with the markers far enough apart that you don’t realize you’re on a different trail. The trail map on the website is fairly vague. It is very easy to get on these trails and not be entirely certain exactly where you are within the park. At the same time, it’s impossible to get truly lost. If you stay on a trail, it will eventually come out at a parking area, a sports field, or a picnic area, though it may not be the one you were aiming for. You might walk a bit longer than you planned, but the longest trail is only a little more than two miles. It’s a great place to just wander and feel lost while knowing that you’re not really lost.

The getting a bit lost thing is only bad when you’re aiming for the picnic area at the top of the hill and you’re starving for lunch, but you made a wrong turn and realize you’re heading away from the picnic area instead of toward it, so you end up walking about 20 minutes longer than you planned before you stop for lunch. Not that I have any experience with this. Ahem.

I do have to say, though, that the getting lost definitely seems to help with creativity and brainpower. Figuring out where you are, where you went wrong, and how to fix it is like solving a puzzle.

Now that the weather’s cooling off, I need to do this more often. I can take a notebook and do brainstorming and planning while I eat lunch. It’s great exercise. And I enjoy watching the way the forest changes with the seasons. When I was house hunting, I didn’t consider trying to look for a house close to this park, but I think I ended up with the best of all possible worlds. I can walk to the “nice” park for events. I can walk to downtown. If I just want to walk for exercise, there’s the cemetery across the street. And if I want to go for a hike without driving half an hour to the Appalachian Trail, I can walk ten minutes to this park. I may even start making a point of scheduling these outings, picking the best day of the week based on schedule and weather and planning around it.

I’ve found some groups for more serious hikes, and I’m trying to do more of that, as well, since the outdoors opportunities are a big reason why I wanted to move here. Instead of having to drive 3 hours to get to Oklahoma mountains, I can drive half an hour in either direction and be in more serious mountains.

I’ve been trying (and, to be honest, mostly failing) to post more on Instagram, since supposedly that’s where a lot of people find out about books. But even though I mostly just post about my books, what Instagram gives me in my feed are mostly crafting videos. There’s a lot of “look what you can make with stuff you get at Dollar Tree” or “why throw these things away when you could make this out of them?” type videos. A few of them are moderately useful things. Most of them have me wondering why you’d want to make that thing, or it seems like a lot of effort to go to for something only mildly attractive or useful. For instance, there’s a lot of hot glueing wooden beads to the bottoms of cutting boards to make little display stands, or turning soda cans into little vases you stick on your refrigerator with magnets. I guess it’s the process of making it that’s fun, if you’re into hot glue guns and spray paint.

But I think those videos are infecting me. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to throw away one of those bins that dishwasher pods come in and thinking, as I always do when throwing one away, that they really should sell the pods in bags that you could use to refill the bins because it seems like such a waste to have to buy the bins every time and yet only really small quantities come in bags. Then it occurred to me that this bin would make a perfect countertop trash/compost bin.

I keep a grocery produce bag handy to put small bits of trash, mostly stuff like vegetable peelings, tea leaves, etc., in as I cook. The city is encouraging people to compost, and if you don’t have your own compost pile, there’s a bin you can put your compost stuff into at the recycling center, so I try to keep compost-type trash separate. But I don’t like having that bag on the counter and have been looking for some kind of small bin or can that would close. Most of what I’ve found is way too big. But the dishwasher pod bin is perfect. There’s a lid that lifts off for pulling out the bag, and then you can flip it up and down to use it. It just didn’t fit my decor.

So I went into craft mode. I peeled off the label, spray painted with white primer, then used craft paint to paint the lid and paint stencils on the side, and I then covered it all with a sealer. The paint job isn’t great because I’m not very practiced at it, but I figure I can always make another the next time I empty a dishwasher pod bin. I did it in the blue and white color scheme that matches my kitchen. If you squint and stand at a distance, you can pretend that it’s blue and white porcelain. It works pretty well to contain any odors and doesn’t look too bad.

This was what I did last weekend after I finished proofreading a book. I was in between writing projects and trying to do fun stuff away from the computer.

Today’s my birthday, and I’m giving myself the day off (mostly) to have fun. I don’t have firm plans, but most of the bigger things I have in mind for celebrating will come later in the month when it’s cooler. Today is going to be hot and with a chance of storms, so I don’t want to go too far. I think I may head up to the book fair — it’s really just a big bookstore, but they call it a book fair. It’s about three barns full of books and book-related stuff like calendars, puzzles and notebooks. They also sell closeout merchandise they get from large retailers like Target. I got my coziest pair of winter boots there last year. You never know what you’ll find, so it’s like a hunting expedition.

From there, I can get to a couple of farm markets and there’s the Amish mall (I think there’s just one shop there that sells Amish-made wood goods, but they also have a housewares shop and a sewing shop that cater to Mennonites). There are some things I’m looking for to do some projects around the house. And then there’s the international grocery store not far from there so I can restock on tea. I may have lunch while I’m out, then there’s an ice cream shop on the way home, and I hope to be back before the afternoon storms kick in. I may treat myself to dinner out in the evening, if it’s not too hot to walk downtown or isn’t storming at that time.

I have to sing for a funeral Saturday morning, so I may get lunch and gelato at the shop downtown afterward. Otherwise, I’m planning to let myself relax both Friday and Saturday. I’ve had a busy couple of weeks, and I’ve done a lot of house work and yard work. I have some craft projects I’ve been working on, and I have books.

Later in the month, I have a day trip planned and a short overnight trip/mini vacation planned. There are a lot of downsides to having an August birthday, and one is that the weather usually isn’t great. The other is that I was never in school for my birthday or able to get invitations to my school friends, so I seldom had birthday parties as a kid. As an adult, this seems to be when everyone is out of town, getting in one last trip before school starts.

One thing I find amusing about life in the small city I’ve moved to is that there seems to be a lot more going on here than there was in the Dallas area. I’m sure there were actually more events in the entire DFW Metroplex, but they were scattered all over the place, so going to anything usually involved at least half an hour of driving on freeways. There wasn’t much happening in my immediate area. Here, there’s always so much going on that I sometimes get paralyzed by the choices, and most of it is within walking distance or, if it’s at night, it’s a 5-minute drive.

Today was a chamber music day. There’s a summer string institute hosted at the local university, with kids and young adults from all over the world coming to spend a couple of months studying with top-ranked teachers. There are a bunch of concerts associated with the event, but my favorites are the chamber music matinees. They have free midday concerts at the Shakespeare theater, with the kids divided into string quartets and devoting the summer to working on a major piece that they then perform at these concerts. They have to introduce the piece and describe what it means to them, and they have to go through the proper protocol for bows and response to applause.

This venue is amazing for chamber music. It’s a replica of the Blackfriars Theatre, where Shakespeare’s troupe performed once they were famous and were organized as the King’s Men, and all that wood makes the music sing. It’s like being inside a cello, and you can even feel the music. I like sitting in the box seats that are beside the stage because the vibrations are stronger there and I can see the violinists’ faces. I like watching the interplay between the musicians as they check in with each other and cue each other. It gives me hope for the future to see kids from China, Taiwan, and the US making music together.

Today’s concert also included a few solo pieces, with a cello and two violin solos, featuring some of the more advanced, older students.

Then next month is the classical music festival put on in this town. I usher for that, so I get into a lot of the concerts for free. There are people who make it their summer vacation to spend two weeks in town going to every concert.

Meanwhile, there are concerts just about every night in the park, with the community band on Mondays, bluegrass on Wednesdays, and jazz on Thursdays. There’s a concert on the street downtown this Saturday evening. There are also Irish jam sessions in various places around town.

I could fill my schedule with music alone. Then there’s all the theater, gallery shows, lectures, festivals, etc. I seem to have found the small town that isn’t at all boring.

I’ve been on a home improvement kick lately. I got the new office rug last week, and last weekend’s project was redoing the kitchen window. It’s an odd window not like any others in the house. I think it may have been added after the fact during some other renovations. The cart with the air fryer oven sits in front of it, so curtains are out, but it also faces the street, so I need something at that window for privacy. There are tall bushes along the front of the yard next to the street and there’s not a lot of traffic at this end of the dead-end street, but you could still see into the kitchen while coming up the street or from the front yard across the street.

The solution I came up with last year was cling film on the lower pane. That came up to about my neck, so if I did go to the refrigerator while wearing my pajamas, anyone who saw me would only see my head. But the film wasn’t what I thought it would be. I was hoping for something like stained glass, but it was more matte and looked cheap.

Then I found a valance that matches some placemats I already have that I mostly use to protect the countertops. It would have clashed with the old cling film, so I got some that has an etched glass effect but no color. Last weekend, I put up the curtain rod with the valance and the new cling film, and I really like the result. It pulls the kitchen together.

As a bonus, I moved the old film to the south-facing window in my spare room, and it blocks a lot of the direct sunlight I get in the afternoon, which keeps the house cool. I had extra etched glass film, so I put one bit of it in the downstairs window that directly faces the neighbor’s house. I can still see out of the upper pane but it gives me a little more privacy, and it’s supposed to have some UV protection. I think it softens the direct sunlight in the evening (the window faces west). I’m going to put the other piece of it in the bedroom window that faces the neighbor’s house. I like to open the shades, but then if I need to change clothes during the day I have to go to another room or close the shades. With this and the lace curtains I think I won’t be visible. I’ve tried looking from outside and can’t see anything, but when I can see my neighbor’s windows from inside, I feel like I can be seen.

Then I went to work on getting the front porch ready so I can eat outside. I had a coupon from Lowe’s, so I got the rest of the stepping stones I needed to redo my front walk. They’re currently in place, killing the grass below them. Later I’ll get them set in the ground better and fill it out with gravel. It’s so much more convenient taking that path. I’ll be turning the little triangle that creates into a flowerbed, and that’s where I’ll move some lilies and hostas when I divide them this fall. I got the new table this morning, so my front porch dining is ready to go. Alas, it will have to wait because we’re getting the wildfire smoke, and it’s not pleasant to sit outdoors right now. Next week, though, I’m looking forward to having breakfast outside.

One other thing I found when shopping for the table was a rechargeable LED table lamp. The overhead light in the spare room is too bright for when I do yoga in the evening in there, and since the light is on the ceiling fan, turning on the light means turning on the fan in the summer when I have the ceiling fans on. There’s only one power outlet in that room. So a battery-operated light that dims and changes color temperature will give me some light without it being overwhelming, and I can easily turn on a light when I need to just grab something in that room without turning on the ceiling fan and then pulling the cord to turn on a light. I have a similar lamp on my desk in my office, and it’s really handy. I just have to remember to charge it every so often. It should be good for power outages, too.

Eventually I may get this house just the way I want it, but by then I’ll come up with some new project. I still plan to get some curtains for the office and front room, and I may eventually want a rug in the spare room (I currently have a moving blanket folded up under my yoga mat). My main project, though, is the yard. That’s an ongoing struggle, but I’m gradually reducing the number of weeds and I have some flower beds started. The raspberries have stopped producing fruit, so I can start clearing those out, and I may even be able to get to the fire pit by this fall.

I got my new office rug earlier this week, and it turns out it wasn’t just a frivolous “pretend my office is fancy and belongs to a bestseller” thing. It functions differently. The old rug had a pebbly texture that kept my chair from rolling smoothly, so it was difficult to position myself for optimum comfort while writing. The new rug lets my chair roll easily, so I can move around and get into place. Since it’s bigger, it means I don’t have to worry about rolling off the rug. It’s also more pleasant to walk to my desk. I didn’t realize how much the texture of the old rug bothered me until I got the new one.I wouldn’t say that my productivity has escalated since I got it, but it’s only been a couple of days, and on one of those days I had an appointment so I was out all afternoon. The true test will come next week. It’s funny what a big difference little things make.

My next project may be fixing up my front porch and finishing moving the front walk. I haven’t really used my front porch because I haven’t lived in a place that really had a front porch so I don’t think about it. The porch was mostly something that gave some shelter while I unlocked the door. But since I have an old house, I have a proper front porch, and I live in a very front porch neighborhood in a front porch town. I’ve pretty much gone on autopilot, thinking in terms of the back porch, so I’ve been using my deck for sitting outside. But the deck isn’t covered, so it’s not good in rain or when the sun’s at the wrong angle. It’s also up the stairs and through the house, which has affected my breakfast and lunch habits.

In my old house and in the apartment I had here before I got the house, I ate breakfast and lunch most days on my back porch/patio when the weather was decent. I haven’t been doing that much in this house because getting to the deck from the kitchen involves going up the stairs and through the house. In the old house and apartment, the back door was pretty much right at the kitchen.

But last night when I was walking to the park for a concert, I passed a Victorian house where a couple was eating dinner on their front porch, and I remembered that my next-door neighbors putting a dining table on their front porch was the reason I needed to get better blinds in the window that directly faces their porch. I came home and had the “duh” moment of realizing that I have a front porch that opens almost directly from the kitchen.

I currently have a couple of chairs and a small table there. The table’s just enough to set down a drink. But if I put a bistro table there, I could eat meals there. I need to finish moving the front walk because the new path takes it to the front door and the current path means you’d have to walk past the table. The front porch isn’t as private as the deck, but then the porch at the apartment wasn’t entirely private, as the yard was open to everyone in the building. Then again, I’ve frequently had conversations with neighbors over the fence from my deck, so it’s not as though I’d want to go out there without being properly dressed. There’s not a lot of traffic on my street, so most of the time it would be pretty private. And since it’s covered, I could be outside in the rain unless it’s really windy, and I could eat lunch there. The deck is a bit too sunny at lunchtime.

So I just need to find a table. Fortunately, we’re at the time of year when patio furniture is being put on clearance, so I might be able to find a deal. Then I need to finish the front walk, and I’ll be turning the area in front of where the table will go into a flowerbed, which will eventually offer more privacy. I need to divide a lot of my dayliles and hostas after this growing season, so the excess will go in that flowerbed. I may also put up a trellis and get something climbing. I suspect this is another one of those small changes that will make a big difference in day-to-day life.

Even before I get that table, I need to remember how much I enjoy sitting under a covered area when it’s raining. There’s something about having a cup of tea with rain falling just feet away. I can do that on my porch at any time and yet I haven’t.

I moved to the mountains of Virginia from Texas in large part to escape from the summer heat, and this week it seems to be coming after me because we’re getting hit with a heat wave. We might even make it to 100 degrees. They’ve been talking about this and warning us on the local weather forecast, and I was getting caught up in the hype, and then I realized that the heat wave is pretty much a normal July in Texas, and it won’t even be quite as bad because it’ll still be under 80 overnight. That was the part about Texas summers that got to me, that you could get up at 6 in the morning and it would already be about 83 degrees. At least we’ll be in the lower 70s overnight. The big difference in the mornings so far has been that I don’t need a sweater to sit on the deck to drink tea and read the newspaper in the morning.

One thing that is worse here is the humidity. I thought it was pretty humid in Texas, and on paper it didn’t seem to be that much worse here, but it feels a lot worse, so it feels hotter. I had a chance to ask the local TV meteorologist about that at a library talk, and she said it may be that the humid layer goes up higher in the atmosphere and there’s less wind during the summer here. It also feels like the direct sun is more intense. When it was about 85 in Texas in the summer, we’d consider that cool, and here I go indoors and close the blinds.

The sad thing is that this is hitting for the July 4 weekend. I’d been thinking about walking to the park to go to the city parade, but it may be too uncomfortable. It is in the morning so it may not be too hot. My main activity may be going to an organ concert of patriotic music being held at the church. I can see the city fireworks from my house, so I can sit on the front porch for that, or maybe even lie in bed and watch through my bedroom window. I think I’m going to make barbecued chicken (cooked indoors, not grilling outside), and I’ve got raspberry pie from the berries in my yard. I may watch Hamilton again in the evening before the fireworks start. I’ll watch the Capitol Fourth and the fireworks from Mount Vernon on PBS on Friday night, so I’ll get my fill of fireworks.

I’m giving myself the day off on Friday, so no post then. I figure I need a holiday every so often. There are some things going on in town I want to go to, or I may be lazy and stay home in the air conditioning.

I’ve had a fascination with trains since I was a little kid — not to the point of things like memorizing timetables and routes or learning all the different kinds of locomotives, just “ooh, trains!” It may have had something to do with “The Little Engine That Could” or the trolley on Mr. Rogers, maybe the little train that went around the zoo. Anyway, there’s something thrilling about a train and rail travel. I like visiting Europe and being able to really take the train to get around, and I’ve traveled a bit by train on the East Coast, particularly around New York. I once took Amtrak from Denver to Dallas, which involved two overnight rides in a sleeper compartment, which was fun.

One thing I miss about Dallas is the rail system for getting around the metro area. I used to love being able to take the train to get places and bypassing the cars stuck in traffic. Where I live now, the city’s too small to have a rail system. It apparently once had a streetcar system, and you can still tell about where the stops were. Now we just have a bus in the form of a trolley. Our rail service now is Amtrak a few days a week — you can go east to D.C. and then on to New York and west to Chicago — and sightseeing trains. In one embarrassing incident, the sightseeing train had to rescue a stalled Amtrak train. They hitched the Amtrak train to the excursion train and finished the sightseeing route, hauling the Amtrak to the station. I haven’t yet taken the train from here, but if I ever make a trip to D.C. or maybe even New York, I’ll probably go that way.

There’s a railroad museum nearby, and they have a working mid-century steam engine that they occasionally use for the sightseeing excursions. I have found it to be elusive, though. They were supposedly running it when I visited on vacation before moving here, but when I went to the station to see it come in, it turned out that the steam engine was out of service that day. Then last fall they were running special excursions, and it should have come through the railway crossing that’s just a short walk from my house, but it seems they moved the boarding point away from the downtown station sometimes. Every time I walked down there at the right time, that was a day they were boarding elsewhere. If I didn’t bother to walk down there, that was when I’d hear the steam train whistle from my house. I did see it running one day when I was driving on a road that parallels the train tracks.

This summer, they were running steam train excursions from the downtown station for two weekends. They had an open house at the station, so I got to go see the engine up close. Then on Saturday morning I had an event at the church, not long after the morning departure, so I walked over there early to see the train leaving downtown and crossing the bridge over the street that leads out of downtown. I wasn’t the only one there. A whole crowd of rail fans had gathered at the park that used to be the turntable for turning engines around. Since I was dressed for the church event, I didn’t exactly blend in. I was wearing a dress, pastel cardigan, and pearls. The rail fans were all in cargo shorts and t-shirts from the rail museum (apparently this engine has an actual fan club. They were wearing shirts for this train. It was like wearing a Star Wars t-shirt to see a Star Wars movie).

But I finally got a close-up look at the train when it was running. It really was pretty.

This town was a big rail hub back in the day. It was a supply center for the Confederacy during the Civil War, so the Union blew up the tracks and the rail depot, but spared the town, so all the old architecture is surprisingly intact. The current passenger terminal dates from the early 1900s (the old one was destroyed when a train missed a curve and crashed into it) and is now a restaurant. The passenger waiting area is the bar/lounge area, and they’ve kept a lot of the charm. The restaurant part is in the now-enclosed old platform area, right next to the tracks. The current passenger platform is next to it. There’s also a restaurant in the old freight depot, but it doesn’t have the good view of the train tracks.

Even if I don’t get to see the steam engine often, I love when it’s running because I love the sound of the steam whistle, which I can hear from downtown. I think they run it through here every so often to give it a workout, even when they aren’t scheduling excursions.

This has turned out to be Raspberry Week.

I have semi-wild raspberries growing in my back yard. My neighbor across the street, who’s lived here about 30 years, says someone down the block planted raspberries years ago, and they spread around the area, thanks to birds. While my house was abandoned, they grew out of control in the yard. The person who bought the house at tax auction and restored it just mowed the back yard down before putting it on the market, and then the berry bushes sprang up last summer. I guess that makes them feral berries.

Apparently, they only produce berries the second year, so only a few bushes along the fence had survived the mowing. I got about 20 berries, total. This year, I have a huge thicket full of berries. They’re black raspberries, so they taste kind of like a sweeter blackberry with fewer seeds. Yesterday, I filled a container that 18 ounces of blueberries came in and most of a pint container. I baked a pie last night, and I still have most of that 18-ounce container, plus nearly a pint from this morning. There are more berries that I couldn’t get to because I wasn’t wearing the right clothes to get in there among all the thorns. I’ll have to put on jeans later today and give it another try. I’m thinking of making jam, though I did have some with my yogurt for breakfast.

After this growing season, I need to cut the bushes back (I found some instructions on how to deal with raspberries), and I plan to train them up on trellises to keep them under better control so I can get to the berries easier. I’ll also be evicting some of the bushes that are growing where I don’t want them, like in the campfire pit. They pop up all over the place, and it’s a constant battle to keep them from taking over the whole yard. On the other hand, these are very good berries. I think that pie was the most “from scratch” thing I’ve ever baked, since it used berries I picked and that I grew. Not that I had anything to do with the growing. I did nothing to tend them. I feel like I earned them just by picking them because my hands and wrists are all scratched up. I wear long sleeves to deal with them, but the berries are so delicate that I don’t think I could pick them while wearing gloves.

Now, an update to the blinds/curtains saga.

The blinds I got last week didn’t work. For one thing, they were not as “blackout” as advertised. I think they blocked less light than the lightly-lined curtains I was using. For another, they didn’t sit flush against the window frame. The bracket put them out about half an inch, so light came out from the sides and top. And then they just didn’t work. I couldn’t pull them down and they didn’t roll up. When I tried, the mechanism that was supposed to roll them up and down came out and then they just unfurled completely.

I did a little more research, and I found that the brackets of all the blinds like that stick out. You’ll only get close to complete blackout by putting them inside the window frame. I got the bright idea to mark the measurements on a strip of vinyl from trimming that blind so I could really get into the frame and see what size might work in the frame, and it looked like the next larger size of the blinds I got last year would have fit, though it would be very close. Close is good, though, since it gets closer to blackout. I hadn’t been able to measure that precisely using a yardstick or metal measuring tape because they don’t fit inside the frame.

And then I got an e-mail from Lowe’s with a coupon for 10% off an entire purchase, which made it seem like it was meant to be, so I got those blinds. Once I took the old blinds out, I found out that my original measurements had been accurate. The window frame is smaller at the top. But if I took the plastic end caps off the top and bottom of the blinds, they fit perfectly. And since they’re the same kind of blinds I already had, I just used the brackets that were already there.

It is a bit annoying that I spent so much time and money trying to work this out, and I could have just bought the next larger size to begin with, but I didn’t know then that there were plastic caps on the ends that could come out to make up that tiny bit of width.

It’s still not total blackout, as there’s a tiny sliver of light around the edges, but it’s better than it was, and this morning I actually managed to sleep almost to 7 a.m., when I’ve been waking up around 5:30, whether or not I was well-rested. I’ve also been able to open the blinds during the day and open the windows when the evenings have been cool since I don’t have to undo my elaborate light-blocking rigs. I’d tried balancing skinny boxes to fit around the edges, plus throwing the curtains over the rods holding the lace curtains. With these blinds, I don’t have to do anything. Maybe if I wanted to sleep in the middle of the afternoon or if I wanted to sleep late in the middle of summer I could go back to throwing the curtains over the rod, but for most of the time, the blinds alone are just fine.

Now I can turn to fixating on the windows in the rest of the house, but I’m going to take a break from all that until maybe next month. I have to deal with the raspberry explosion first. Then it looks like I’ll have a lot of ripe tomatoes soon, and I’ll have to deal with that. It would be nice if they’d ripen a few at a time so I can just have them in salads and don’t have to deal with them all at once. They do seem to be in various phases of development.