They're Baaaack!

After 17 years underground, these local residents—the periodical cicadas of the Magicicada genus—are boring holes up to the surface, climbing onto whatever they can find, cracking open their carapaces, emerging as winged insects, and humming all day in search of of a mate. 

Soon the fertile females will be going out to branch tips to lay their eggs, which will hatch into larvae who will drop to the ground, head downward, and start all over again.
 

Springtime in the Mountains

 

Aspirational mint tub: Robin takes a bath in the future

 

Gaelen and Nicole (with some help from their friends) are putting up a new barn. It's on the highest spot they could find because, you know, the old barn (it was quite old) was lost in the flood. 

This one is smaller, but so beautiful.
 

De-fence! De-fence!

The rebuilding of the flood-ravaged Hannah Branch Road community garden continues with a new deer fence. We'll add hardware cloth at the bottom to make it a rabbit fence as well. 

In case you were wondering why the Blue Ridge Parkway is closed

Here is but one reason.

Birthday Suit

 

 

Happy 60th, Tim. Lookin' good!

Ken in the Buff

 

The river cleanup events have been fun and rewarding. And you just never know who you are going to meet there.

Scavengers about to scavenge

 Click on this picture to see it larger. 

These are all of the teams in this year's adult scavenger hunt just before they received the elaborate instructions for the hunt. 

 

 

Here's a closer look at some of the contestants.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David was sporting a canhawk. 

 This crew was highly visible.

 

 Special props to the Disaster Snacks team who came as water bottle, trail mix, juice box, MRE, and granola bar.

 

Fresh Squeezed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah and Kevin brought their new squeezer and a lot of beautiful oranges to Sunday brunch. So fresh, delicious, and fun.

humans at work

 

Skidsteer U-Turn

 

Field of Ghosts Crew

Yeah, it was cold and wet and it snowed a bit. Nevertheless, these folks spent their afternoon removing the mysterious white plastic sheets and other crap from that field next to Hwy 80 just outside of Micaville.

Meanwhile, another crew was down in Micaville proper picking up all kinds of stuff left behind when the the waters receded.
 

Flood clean-up in the Micaville field of ghosts

 

Tickets

We're a little bit sorry if you had to wait a long time for your breakfast on New Year's Day. (Only a little bit because Dreams Die Hard is not a real restaurant, and it is a holiday after all; we hope you were having fun.) 

But, in our defense, these are the tickets that were waiting to go to the cooks at 10 AM--with two hours left and people streaming in. 

Evan makes the waffles (56 this year!) and keeps the tickets in order so--we hope--people get their breakfast in more or less the right order.

We're not sure how we ended up with three people who waited a really long time and hadn't gotten any food by 12:30 when we thought we had filled all the orders and were done. But we appreciate how nice you were about it and hope you enjoyed the waffles. 

It was definitely the biggest diner ever--over 200 served. Happy New Year!

Generations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julian teaching Ruby the finer points of the bagel schmear at the Dreams Die Hard Diner.