Led By The Full Moon.

A year ago we left Plainfield as retired entrepreneurs and tonight we return as nascent filmmakers.

Our journey continued as the white birch enclosed driveway we wind along the stone wall to the house we built and lived in for over 20 years. 



The car headlights brought the house into view.  It looked exactly the way it did when we left.  Pristine.  A testament to the house's construction.  

We stopped, turned off the engine and sat for a minute.  The local NPR station, WAMC, continued softly.  I wasn't ready to turn it off...I'd had to live a whole year without it.  Opening my door, the air was moist.  Out west the air had been much drier.  Moist felt good.








                       

                        



A wave of spicy and sweet smelling swamp azalea greeted my nose and lungs.  Seemed early.  My mind drifted back to when I'd found them in a nursery.  I'd almost given up looking and then there was that smell.  I bought all they had and they'd thrived here.








The uncut grass is long, dewy and thick.  Tons of wildflowers.  We walked through an expanded, thick carpet of purpley-blue  ajuga.  Later in the summer, we'd be able to mow the entire lawn but tomorrow's mowing would be mostly paths through the buttercups, daisies and bedstraw.

The only sound is the spring peepers conversing in the distance.   I've never lived in a place where the quiet is so intense.

Led by the full moon and the solid, local-stone walkway, I moved toward the house...and there it was....sitting alone on the stone bench was the stainless travel mug I thought I'd lost a year ago.  I've been lucky all day.

It's midnight.  Tired from driving 3,000 miles, I decide to wait until tomorrow to check out the other house. (yes, there is another house).  

p.s. Tomorrow is Saturday.  I wonder if the farmer's market has started?

photos:
•south elevation.  kitchen/dining wing fronted by stone patio.
• spicey sweet smelling azalea.
•wildflower lawn with apple tree
• wildflower lawn
•barn with walkway
•barn with stonewall and bench
•main entry and flower box

Morning Coffee On The Stone Patio.

It's 4 am in Washington state but I'm not in Washington anymore, I'm in Plainfield, Massachusetts where it's 7.

Our sleeping space

Our sleeping space again

Bathed in morning sun, I lie in bed surrounded by treetops and a million birds while mentally organizing my day.   I recognize hermit thrushes and 'warblers'.  (there are there are way too many types of warblers for me to keep track of so I just lump them all together).  The hermit thrush owns my favorite song...even more favorite than Blues Traveler 'Runaround'.



I'm up.   Morning coffee on Vince's judiciously laid stone patio followed by a walk down the road to the other house.

Vince constructing the stone patio

Max watching Vince constructing the stone patio

The next 5 photos are of the 'country estate' I was telling you about.  Recently sold, it is the nearest neighbor to the blog's featured home

wide shot of from the south east

eastern sun on the entry deck

front yard from the west

view of carriage house from the deck

view from front yard

I turned into the winding driveway lined with rhododendrons in full bloom while the bicycle tire tracks I'd been following continued to the state forest a mile down the road. The extensive trail network in   Kenneth Dubuque State Forest (some call it Hawley State Forest) is well known throughout New England for being a mountain biker's paradise.


Standing solidly before me were the buildings that had housed the business we sold 5 years ago.   Like the other house, other than needing the thick, green lawn mowed and some weeds pulled, the place looked exactly like it did when we left a year ago.


The eighteen months of well-executed construction had transformed the complex into a country estate.


We designed it to feel like a home since we knew we'd spending so much of our life, at the time, there.  We wanted it to be welcoming.  Traditional New England architecture with good windows, slate roof, large comfortable spaces, efficient heating systems and insulation.  Here we'd spent each day with our family of employees designing and constructing cycling and ski apparel IN AMERICA.  Our groomed cross-country ski trail kept us sane when 60 hour work weeks were inevitable.  Abutting the state forest was a convenience we appreciated on nearly a daily basis (hiking, running, cycling and skiing).