Kindle Edition
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Beth Trissel
Amazon
Category:
Memoir
Publisher: Self
ISBN-10: B004YDM3IG
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 109
Written in a month by month journal style, Shenandoah Watercolors follows a year in my life on our farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
2012 EPIC EBOOK FINALIST!
Author/farm wife Beth Trissel shares the joys and challenges of rural life on her family’s small farm located in the scenic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Journey with her through the seasons on the farm, owned by her family since the 1930's, and savor the richness of her cherished gardens and beloved valley. This journal is a poignant, often humorous, sometimes sad glimpse into a vanishing way of life for anyone who loves or yearns for the country and even those who don't.
Excerpt
There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau
This is one of those sweet June mornings when the world seems fresh and new, too soft for words, but I'll try. I'm looking out the two windows in my bedroom as I write into the most beautiful gold light, the sort of light photographers love. Roses glow like jewels, their red, yellow, pink blossoms heavy with rain from the night. White daises sparkle, lacy pinks, red clover, lavender candy tuft, angel wing poppies, nodding columbine bells, spires of blue salvia, and crimson lupines, all the plants with a rich promise of more to come.
Hues of green spread through my yard and garden, out over the meadow, and up into the hills beyond the fields. The sky is washed in pale blue at the edges, deeper blue as it arches upward. And the air is alive with birdsong. Cows impatiently bawl for more hay, greedily snatching at the bales tossed down to them from the mow. Plump gray and white barnyard geese fuss, as is their way, I never quite catch the argument, while the goslings make this funny whistling sound.
Waddle-butts, I call the infants, busy little waddle-butts, plopping down to rest when they tire and then darting off again to catch up with the group.
If a gosling falls too far behind, its shrill peeping can be heard over hill and vale, by all, including the baddies out there that eat silly babies. Given the absentmindedness of mama and papa geese and auntie and uncles, it's amazing that as many goslings survive as they do. Somehow, they manage, usually.
Wood duck mamas loudly cry whooeek from the pond to round up the ducklings darting over its calm surface like little bumble bees. Mallard babies quietly follow their mothers in a dutiful row or all huddled together. Not so the wood ducklings. They are far more independent. But fast. Bad old snapping turtles are hard pressed to catch them. Snappers are the pond's version of sharks, and not to be confused with the benign box turtles, but I shouldn't end on that visual image.
Way up beyond the hills and the distant fields, the Allegheny Mountains rise above all. Why weren't they called the Blue Ridge? They are equally blue, and can be every bit as hazy as the Smokies. What's in a name? Much? Little? Some are steeped in meaning, others not. I don't even know what Allegheny means, only that the mountains are glorious. They seem to roll on and on forever like the swells of a sea. I tell my daughter, Elise, that as long as the mountains stand and there are green meadows, we are well.
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