Photo lushness, garden goodness

Monday I visited a friend in the more rural part of the county to help her pick her garden produce. What a garden! It was beautiful as were the rolling hills surrounding it and the treeline filled with songbirds. At 7:30 am they were lively, the heat of the day not having set in nor the dew having been dried by relentless summer Georgia sun. Here are a few pictures of my drive to there, and the garden itself.

A quiet, windy country road over red clay in the early morning.

Sunrays peeking out from the clouds as I turned the curve out from under the trees.

Reminded me of the Downeast blueberry barrens on the way to Lubec, Maine

Her garden. Nice, isn't it?!

Her granddaughter in the sunflower row.

Aren't sunflowers gorgeous??

Finally tired of cavorting with the kids, the dog just sits and guards the garden.

Somehow the cat makes a more threatening guard, lol.

See the bees working the sunflower?

And that was one fine summer day. I came home with tomatoes, cukes, purple hull peas, beans, blackberries, and blueberries. Thank you for sharing!

60th Annual Fair coming to town!

The Lion's 60th annual agricultural fair is coming, it starts on Tuesday. There will be boogie woogie music, rides, animals, and lots of friends and browsing around booths food and crafts.

Here are some of my favorite photos from last year's fair!

Above and below

It's been quiet here in little Comer lately. School has started and I see the orange busses trundling along in the pre-sunrise hours. We've had rain, thank the Lord, so the fields are green again and the farmers are busily baling hay.

The Fair is coming and that is always exciting. This year it's the 60th Annual and it's a great gathering place for everyone in the now-cooler days and evenings. I'll be going. Especially fun will be the music. I've got my camp chair ready and my ears tuned and can't wait for the front porch pickin', boogie woogie, and gospel singers to take the main stage.

It's autumn so the air is slightly clearer and less humid so photos are sharper. The moon last Wednesday was pretty, above the green fields at Paoli Junction, so I snapped this with the wires crisscrossing the half moon in the purpling sky.



Yet the first frost is a long way off and we still have flowers:

Scenes from a neighbor's yard

View from here

I am so blessed to live in northeast Georgia. I awaken each day to a raucous chorus of birdsong, off-distant rooster, occasional hum of a hay tractor. As I traverse my normal route to the county seat and thriving town of Danielsville for groceries, here are a few of the scenes that I pass by.

New road cut behind the High School winds over a hill and through grassy fields on both sides. Where it ends and I must take a left or a right, this is the view in front of me.




Horses! Fields! Farms!


My driveway with the ever-popular photo of fences. It's deep in and curves so that I am far back from the road, a local road which only ever hosts tractor traffic and the occasional car anyway...

I see the devastation in Myanmar and China and in other places in Central US with tornadoes and I count my blessings. I have traveled to the Bronx, to Quito Ecuador, to Mexican border towns, and I count my blessings. I see the snow totals in Maine and the heat wave in California, and I count my blessings. I don't do that enough, so today I take a look around and I say thank you, God, for such a beautiful world and for putting me smack in the middle of the gorgeous beauty that is Comer Georgia.

04039 vs.30629. No contest!

I write often about how nice it is in Northeast Georgia. Not for nothing, but it's mostly the weather. People are nice, the living is a bit less expensive...but the weather sure does make the difference.

I spent 17 years in Rhode Island, a nice state but still New England, which means snow and ice and sleet and dark winters. But I was a kid and I didn't know anything then. I went to college in Bangor-Orono Maine, 300 miles further into tundra-land. Talk about dark! Talk about cold! Talk about snow! Amazingly, I stayed in Maine for the next 30 years. I don't know why. Seemed like the thing to do at the time.

If you count the frost time when you can't plant anything in the ground, Maine winter lasts 9 months. The average temp is below freezing five months a year. In November, less than half the possible daylight hours are cloudy. (48%)

Contrast that with Comer GA and, well, I am happy to report that there are NO months when the average temp is below freezing. None, Nada, Zip. And the highest average temp occurs in July, 89 degrees. Not bad!!! (Thirty-year data ending in 2000).

Now, forget data, let's have a visual compare and contrast:

I snapped this blooming dandelion yesterday. Notice the greenery poking through the blow-down, too.

Contrast that with a snap from the Gray Maine webcam today. My office used to be a few feet from here and my apartment two miles from here. Dark and nasty weather, huh?

Below: winter bird, sitting on a branch near my second floor deck. Blue skies, happy bird.

Here we have a snap of a winter bird in Maine during the same February week. (Photo from robotbunny on Mainetoday.com website)



Below we have a buried car. My husband at the time and I returned home from a week in FL and this is what greeted us, my Saturn station wagon was completely buried. Not happy.



A Saturn wagon...not buried. Which would you prefer, if you had a choice? Thank God, I did have a choice and I've never been happier to dwell where the livin' is easy and the climate is gentle.