Where up meets down

It's high summer in the Berkshires. The heat wave of the past weeks is gone and the air is pleasant. Even when the temperature last week was over a hundred, in the valley where I work, it was it's usual 10 degrees lower as I approach home. We don't have A/C at home so this is significant so it was bearable with all the fans going.

Usually this kind of weather is reserved for late August.



Yesterday another strange storm came through. With reminders of the the tornado warnings just a couple of months ago, I found that people I work with were quite edgy when the sky grayed and the severe weather warnings were sounded. It actually hit heavier in the central Berkshires and as I needed to be in Pittsfield last night I found many major trees and limbs down.
Yesterday also marked the day that I came home to find that the roofer had finally fixed our roof that was damaged when the tree fell on it. Now I just need to have the gutter people fix their piece and we are back to where we were, except that is for the barren piece of land or hill next to our house where the stand of pines once where.

I have been tending to the "hill" and watering it daily and nurturing the small seedlings that were revealed when the trees were taken. Initially it was just total shock on the land with the harsh sun, but now, with the watering, bushes and sprouts are coming up and a few maple and aspen seedlings have potential of again shading the house, even though this may be years away.
This new chore of staking up the bushes and tending to them has booted some more important projects from the list and that seems to be the way it often is.

I am so looking forward to vacation the even of next month. Crowded out by all sorts of work commitments, I have just a little more than a week that is locked in on the calendar with a few random days on either side. We've done a few artsy things so far: a play, a few concerts and of course the new Harry Potter movie [some of us, 3 times]. The pleasure of living where we do.

Hope all who venture here are having a good summer.

End of summer blahs

The clouds blow in, the rain comes, the clouds blow out. That seems to have been the rhythm of this summer. Rain more often than I wanted, making the grass grow faster then not giving enough dry days to keep up with it. The dampness seems to add more chores to the list. Water seeping in where it hadn't before, mold growing on the leaves of trees, the porch plants that always thrive are under attack. Ants are finding the dampness of wood and discovering a feast.



I usually find summer restful although it is always busy. This summer seems different. I am tired. Not in a sleeping sense as I am still keeping up my 13 mile a week running pattern that I started in the spring, but a fatigue that has set in, a fog on the mind and like the rain it seems to leave for a bit but then comes back.

So this week I am on vacation. Nothing scheduled but a totally unrealistic chore list , a summer cold settling in on me and the need to stay a little tethered to work email. Blah.........

So if you notice I'm not posting as frequently its where I am at the moment. The camera is hidden in the car as I am tired of taking pictures of mists and rain. Its too much like the fog that I am working to get free of.

We'll see how the week goes. Does this cold set a different schedule for me than the list that is on the frig? Do the work emails give good new that the project I've been sheparding has been successfully uploaded and I can then shut them down? Can I get enough painting done to get through to next year? Well I get a warm afternoon out in the kayak? My complaints for the day.................................



An then I recall yesterday when I traveled back to Springfield for the wake of the husband of a former co-worker. Several years younger than I, he was diagnosed with brain cancer a year ago and despite an active fight succumbed. Barely 50. The body in the coffin I did not recognize. Not the same person I had seen before his illness or vibrant person in the family pictures on display.

Something like that gives you another perspective, a sort of dope slap up the side of the head. Yeah I am tired, yeah I am fatigued and getting a cold, yeah I feel like I am fighting a war against ants, yeah feel resentful that I need to check in with work emails while on vacation. Yeah I feel totally blah.........

But I feel...... I am living....... I am healthy........my family is healthy......I have a choice of doing chores and even complaining about them. The fatigue will eventually fade as will the fog and this cold will also fade. So life ain't all that bad, its life.

So that is where I am at. It is the end of summer in the Berkshires. The nights are cooler, the sun comes up later. But the sun comes up for me and it sets and the moon rides and it sets and that isn't something to be taken for granted.

Tanglewood

One of the interesting things about living in the Berkshires is what goes on in the summer. As with all areas that have something that attracts tourists, we don’t have beaches or an ocean, we have mountains trees and all sorts of cultural activities within minutes of our house. I think if you live in a tourist area you find it interesting what people come hours and spend a weekend to see what you have with in minutes away. We have many second homeowners and while many are very nice people, you can usually pick them out. And the ones who still think they are just in a different part of New York don’t even try to blend in.

Tonight we ventured across town to Tanglewood, which is the summer home of the Boston Symphony and sits on 200+ beautiful acres and at what use to be one of the big Berkshire cottage estates. In addition to the BSO it is also used for all sorts of concerts and events and also is the site of two summer music programs for gifted young musicians. If you walk the grounds during the week beautiful music drifts from various small cottages that are practice studios.

But tonight the reason we crossed town was a live broadcast of a Prairie Home Companion (on public radio). We left home about a half hour before the ticket time, to allow for parking lot traffic and having to walk from the car. The shed, as the wall-less amphitheater is known, was full as was the lawn. Unfortunately our tickets, which I purchased on the first day of sales, were in the last row and 15 rows ahead there was this pole that seemed to move as the key people on stage did…..Well I’m sure you can get the rest of it. We had planned on going because a relative really loves this show and they wanted to go. What we didn’t know, and after we had non refundable tickets, was that all the snow days of the last winter pushed an important graduation right to the same day. So they couldn’t go but our kids now got the chance to go and have the experience, which despite the seats was a fun and interesting.

Here is one of their pictures of Tanglewood. I am still working on the camera :(



Then after the show we hit the back road exits and are at the ice cream shop in 5 minutes as many others sat in the lines waiting to get out.

So far this year we have seen something at Shakespeare and Co., a nationally known theater program, the musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, at Barrington stage Co, [where it was developed before it moved to Broadway] and Prairie Home and the summer is young. The kids are also getting the opportunity to see good theater and concerts within almost biking distance, which is great.

So our pay for the quiet and boredom of the winter months is these wonderful opportunities that normally would never exist in a town of 5,000 in the hills of the remotest part of a state. But it does here and we are glad.

Here are some links to Tanglewood

http://www.berkshirelinks.com/
http://www.bso.org/bso/index.jsp?id=bcat5240070

The Buffalo and the black plactic around the tennis court

The town of Lenox has several resorts and inns that serve the many tourists coming here for the cultural events, to be with nature and just escape. Some quite luxurious and where the celebrity set is found and some are modest and there is much in between. A short distance from where I live is a resort named Eastover. www.eastover.com It is an interesting place. A little on the rustic side [some say tired] and definitely on the casual side. It has one of the largest civil war memorabilia coolections and also has tennis and pools and lots of activities and hosts events such a the special Olympics and many event weekends. It is set among woods and has great tracks of pasture land that run for miles up against the ridge. One of the unique attractions of Eastover is a herd of buffalo that live on the property. They can be seen from the road grazing in the meadows and there is a hay drop by the main road with a pullover for folks to stop and see them feed by this unbelievably muddy pond. The buffalo are fun to watch especially when a new little one is born, though if you didn’t know it was there you might drive right by the small turnoff. When my kids were little it was often a routine stop to check them out and as I drive past now there is frequently a car pulled off with people peering over the fence.

A definite sign of summer is that each year about this time the fence around the Eastover tennis courts is wrapped completely in black plastic with wood supports to keep it from flapping in the wind. When we first saw this it seemed odd. Especially because the plastic seemed to appear mid week and then by the next week it was gone and things were back to normal.

Then we learned that the black covering signified “nudist weekend” at the resort and one of the agreements with the town for allowing nudity was that the tennis courts be shielded from passers by. When the kids were young, my son joked about seeing a nude body between the slits in the plastic and his reaction was, EEWWWWWWWWW. That continues to be a part of family lore and the image of nude tennis still brings a smile.

So, on this first day of summer when you think of the signs that tell you that summer is here, I offer up another that is a sign of summer in this section of the Berkshires, the black plastic around the tennis court.

Summer is here. Welcome visitors to the Berkshires.