Daylily Border

Pasture

Palace Green

Good Morning!

Consider the Lilies

Daylily Hill

Buttercups that "Skim"

Make me a picture of the sun --

So I can hang it in my room --

And make believe I'm getting warm

When others call it "Day"!

Draw me a Robin -- on a stem --

So I am hearing him, I'll dream,

And when the Orchards stop their tune --

Put my pretense -- away --

Say if it's really -- warm at noon --

Whether it's Buttercups -- that "skim" --

Or Butterflies -- that "bloom"?

Then -- skip -- the frost -- upon the lea --

And skip the Russet -- on the tree --

Let's play those -- never come!

- Emily Dickinson

Joining Skywatch Friday

Crim Dell

"The Crim Dell bridge is a wooden bridge on the College of William & Mary’s campus in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States, and is considered one of the College's most visually appealing elements. Crim Dell is the pond that the bridge crosses, but the bridge is commonly referred to as Crim Dell." -- Wikipedia

Observation Deck

Views from inside the High Knob Fire Tower's observation deck.

High Knob View

View from the High Knob Fire Tower

Private Property

The High Knob Tower Trail in the George Washington National Forest borders private property in places.

High Knob Tower Trail

The High Knob Tower Trail, part of the Great Eastern Trail, lies west of Harrisonburg, Virginia, on the border with West Virginia and in the George Washington National Forest.

Joining Skywatch Friday.

Summit

Hightop Mountain summit (3,587 ft/1,093m)

Shenandoah National Park

 

Peek

Nearing the summit of Hightop Mountain here, with just a peek at the view beyond. 

Monuments

I guess you probably already know that our mountains in Virginia are old. I mean, REALLY old, to the tune of millions and millions of years old. That's why I felt like I was walking back in time the minute I set foot on the Hightop Mountain Trail, which is part of the 2100+ mile Appalachian Trail . It's filled with--as I'm told Nathaniel Hawthorne once put it--"earth's undecaying monuments." 

Huge boulders stacked one on top of another suddenly made me feel very, VERY small and in awe of the unimaginably powerful forces that put them there.

Trail Bites

A recent return to the Greensprings Interpretive Trail revealed higher than usual water levels in the swamp and . . . a correspondingly high number of bug bites. Ouch!

Leverett Trail

Leverett Trail

Chinese Temple Garden

Naumkaeg

Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Afternoon Garden

According to the National Trust for Historic Preservatio, the Afternoon Garden, complete with its Venetian poles  was Fletcher Steele's first landscape project at the Naumkeag estate in the Berkshires. The  boxwood hedges were shaped to resemble an Oriental rug.

Blue Steps

 

(View from below)

One of the first features people see upon visiting Naumkaeg, depending on how they approach the house, are its iconic Blue Steps. According to the Library of American Landscape History, Fletcher Steele "used industrial materials—cast concrete and metal pipe—and the Italian Renaissance form of the water staircase, planted with lithe white birches that uncannily mimic the stair railings."

 

(View from above)