It’s fall here. It seems late. Colors are not spectacular this year; only a
few bright leaves recently appeared on our sugar maple.
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| Our sugar maple, just beginning to turn |
No freezes in
Greenville so far, but the first frost is supposed to arrive later this week.
It was enough to get us to the mountains for a day. I’m starting a new book,
tentatively titled Shallow Grave,
that’s set in a fictitious county in North Carolina, and I’m ready to begin some
research. I already have an idea for the cover--cart before the horse?--though it may change many times before the book is finished.
Many of the trees there are already bare, but patches of vivid
golds and reds still caused us to pull out the cameras. The scenery in western
North Carolina always interests me. It’s a land of steep rock faces, streams
and waterfalls, and fertile valleys.
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| Maybe hay under protective cover |
Old barns with their mellow colors or
weathered wood and often defunct equipment tell stories of their own. Near one,
the bay of hounds from an array of small dog houses tracked our progress.
A pulled-pork lunch on the patio at Hubba Hubba, a
smokehouse in Flat Rock, kept us going all day. I should have taken a picture of
the food, but I did get the pink Mandevilla growing up a stone chimney.
An excellent day outside—perfect weather, gorgeous scenery,
and lots of information and ideas. I need to go back and talk to some of the
law enforcement people in the area, but I have much to go on with.
