Travels with MaryE

Most things I love best are about good light and good timing. That's where the adventures start. Don't be in no hurry here. Here you'll find a little bit about bluegrass music, fox hunting, life on the road, time on the mountain, and a whole lot about other things, too.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Will It Ever???

Okay so at the moment I'm beginning to wonder...will it ever quit raining? This is beginning to dampen my spirits just a little bit. You folks in Colorado and places like that have it good -- all that snow gets you in the Christmas spirit, right? I'm over here in wet Wales saying "bah humbug!!!"

But for a little light entertainment, here's Katie doing her bucking bronco routine out on some local moor....it was quite a show, witnessed by many, but she stuck to her horse right good!

We have a lot of fun on these wild hillsides around here. Me? I'm waiting for some snow so I can get out there and make some snow angels and think about the good old days and walk down the narrow lanes in utter silence. There's nothing quite like the silence of a heavy snowfall.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

A Bit of A Lull

My friend "L" did this the other day when she was over here goofing around on my computer. Haha, if only I were that shapely once again. Nice red fox though (except for the mask!)

That's about all I can call this: a bit of a lull. Maybe that's a good thing. Suppose we all have them from time to time. Maybe it's the weather (wet and windy and wet some more). But these last days I'm just feeling kind of well, curmudgeonly and it seems like the best thing I can think about doing most days is settling down with a good book. The local library was recently refurbished and they actually got some new (old) books...the kind I like! Right now I'm revisiting Wuthering Heights if you can believe! And enjoying the writing of Jodi Picoult and Anne Tyler (and no, I don't only like women authors by any means!)

So during this lull I'm trying to do some serious thinking and see what direction I'll head next. One thing I want to do is work more on a catalogue of photographs documenting the people and places in Radnorshire. I've been doing some of that over the last six years but there's so much more to be done. As the outside world creeps in (and I'm hoping I'm not part of the problem) to this wonderful place that feels like it's about 50 years behind the times (and I mean that in a very GOOD way) the old ways and the old timers and the Radnorshire dialect and all those good things are ebbing away. It was bound to happen. So I hope a bit of my part is to capture some memories with my camera and maybe some day a few folks will care about the images I manage to record. It's a small part, but I'm going to play it.

Speaking of cameras mine has been acting up recently and it has caused me a lot of worry; so much so that I finally sat down and read all 200 pages of the operators manual last night, something I hope never to have to do again! The good news is that I think the problem has now been fixed (there are so many buttons and menu selections on this digital camera - and probably thousands of combinations as well that it's no surprise that I somehow had some of my metering and so forth on very inappropriate settings). So once in awhile it's worth it to consult the directions (but don't tell anyone I actually did that).

Outside the winds are howling across the moors and the rain is pelting against the windows and it's good to be inside with plenty of firewood and a good book (currently "The Memory Keeper's Daughter.") It won't be too many days before I'm out doing something worthwhile once again.