Virginia calls, and I must go

It has been 20 years, exactly, since I last saw Welbourne. (I almost wrote: "Last night, I dreamt I went to Welbourne again ...") This weekend, I will be there again.

With two friends, I will drive the Sycamore-shaded sunken road, pull into that graveled drive, alight from the car to the sound of horses nickering softly on the other side of the fence, and walk the worn steps across the old porch, likely stepping over a couple of black-and-tan coon dogs as I do so.

I'm looking forward to seeing Nat and Sherry Morison again, the latest generation of family who own and are tasked with the care of  this 250-year old plantation; for several decades, they've opened it as a bed and breakfast for guests who eschew the chintz-and-comfort type of inn in favor of the real thing.

There's plenty of chintz and comfort around Middleburg, Virginia, but since I discovered Welbourne, about 25 years ago, I've not wanted to be anywhere else.  It was built around 1770 by Peyton Dulany, who founded the first foxhunting club and the oldest horse show in America, the Upperville Colt and Horse Show,  in 1853.

The place was a recurring refuge for Confederate warriors Jeb Stuart and John Mosby as they strove to evade the Union Army during the War Between the States; the battle of Goose Creek took place on its back acreage even as a later Dulany served as colonel of a southern regiment.  Later, notables such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe, and John Foster Dulles were guests. Succeeding generations of the family have stepped into the role of caretaker/owner of the property, taking on willingly or unwillingly the accompanying financial responsibility. Besides the B and B, income is derived from the retired horses -- sometimes as many as 50 -- who are sent to graze their final years in Welbourne's pastures. 

So this week, Welbourne will be the base from which our sightseeing will be launched. We're headed for the Hunt Country Stable Tour.   It's a weekend guided tour of the finest that Middleburg's Horse Country has to offer: farms that feature hunters, jumpers, carriage horses, race horses -- horses of nearly every breed, used in every discipline.  We'll take breaks long enough to eat in the village restaurants and at the Red Fox Tavern, Virginia's oldest "publick house." We'll drive a few back roads and soak in history, history, history all around us. 

By Sunday, we'll be happily heading home, but ever so glad we went!

Who has time to sit and blog?

Wait! I'm here, I'm here.

I know it seems as though I've dropped off the edge of the earth, or lost interest in blogging. The evidence is all there to support that theory.

Truth is, I just forget.

Riding the mower to keep the grass in some kind of check, I take a good look at the house and decide it needs paint/stain. Now. So, no time to sit and blog.

Coming out of the barn, I glance at the roofline of the house and realize I need new shingles. On the garage, too, and the cottage and barn. Now. So, no time to sit and blog.

Ego and the refusal to stop being important to someone keep me going to work a couple of days a week as a wordsmith of sorts. So, no time to sit and blog.

 Everyday life on the farm is taxing on people much younger; while I don't plant or harvest crops, there's a lot of yard to mow, and a nearly-200-year-old house to try to maintain, and a handful of horses to tend to. So, no time to sit and blog.

Especially now that the horse tending has intensified by one.  My little herd of four mares has just been gifted with a young stallion in the adjacent pasture. For sure, no time to blog!

This is True Sensation.  Aptly named, no?  He bears an achingly striking resemblance to my first stallion, Ibn Marengo, except that he's bigger and bolder and, unlike wise 'Rengo, he loves to play. Give him a Ginger Snap and he'll hold onto your coat until you give him another. Open his stall door to let him into his paddock and he leaps out and then spins around, waiting for you to come play.

Play? At my age? But I do. Who can say no to him? Already, I adore him.

I said, a few years ago, that I would no longer plan to keep horses -- that through attrition, my herd would be reduced to nothing in a few years. I was too old for this, I said.

Man makes plans and God laughs.

"Tru" found himself in a position, a few weeks ago, where he needed a home. Now.  Apparently, I needed another stallion.

It's going to work out.  But probably for sure now, no time to sit and blog.

 

For the Love of Dog! What have I done?

First I got the dog.  Then I read the background.  Just the opposite of how it should have been done.

Lizzie is a seven-month-old German Shepherd who adopted me because her former owner fell and hurt herself severely enough to preclude being able to care for her rambunctious pet in the near future. I got the call from friends who were responding to the call for a home and who knew I'd been contemplating getting another dog to replace the shepherd I had to put down last summer.

This is the fifth German Shepherd I've owned in my adulthood.  I am no stranger to the breed.  I've gone through obedience school, invisible fence containment, cage confinement -- the whole routine that protects strangers from the dog and vice versa.

This one, however, is the first one I've owned that's not an American-bred dog. Lizzie comes from Austrian stock. Her markings are darker, her hair longer, her body sturdier and stronger -- much stronger -- than the Americans.

And according to the information I've just been reading, the European shepherds are much more instinctively protective than the American ones. Great.

She's been here a month.  Count that in four pairs of shoes -- all mine, she prefers things that are mine; one scatter rug; countless real, nylon and rawhide bones, a sadly disfigured chair leg, and innumerable teeth marks because that's how she pulls my hand to her so that I'll rub her belly. And two other casualties: the collie and collie-mix who already live here and who are the targets of Lizzie's torment.


Forgive me, Dog. I forgot. I forgot about GSD pups, and what big teeth they have, and what big ears they have, and what big feet with strong claws, and how they love to play ... I'm contemplating getting a couple of those padded sleeves the trainers wear when they train protection dogs. At the very least, they'll cover the bruises on my arms.  And for sure we're signing up for obedience classes.

Oh, yes, one more thing. I adore her.

A Writer must Write, as a Chicken must Lay Eggs...

Thanks, fellow writer Carol Ann Kauffman, for reminding me that I do, too, have time to blog. If you have time to blog while writing a series of lovely romances; if Tom Wills has time to blog while creating art work and presiding over art shows while holding down a fulltime job as well; if Diane Laney Fitzpatrick has time to blog and finish a book while moving from Florida to San Francisco, surely I can find a few moments...?

The trouble with being a writer is, you gotta write if you want to keep the title. And I write all the time: ad copy, newsletter copy, even an honest-to-God Egyptian studbook for Arabian horses. But writing -- well, that's something else. That takes concentration and reflection. And quiet. All of which are hard to find among the din of my three dogs, two cats, and barnful of horses.

But (she said proudly) I have finished one novel, a story I began several years ago. I have another one half-done, and a genuine professional agent waiting to see the rest of it -- but I've set it aside to try to complete yet a third book, this one a fictionalized version of a real murder case.

Life, however, intrudes. There's work-for-pay intrusion, and let's-go-to-Italy intrusion, and better-pay-some-attention-to-this-200-year-old-house intrusion. Sometimes there's let's-do-a-play-and-throw-our-schedule-into-chaos-for-two-months intrusion. So the job jar suffers.

 But I promise to try to keep up from now on. For you, Carol.

For the record, here's a link to my currently published novel on Amazon, available for download to Kindle and in paperback: If you like it, let me know. If not -- well, another one's coming, with any luck!

This guy can do anything!

He drew a photo of my beloved Afghan Hound when she slipped away from us too soon. He picked up a photo of my beloved Italian ancestral village, and drew that ... he brought me a sketch of my German shepherd just days after I had to say goodbye to her. Why wouldn't I ask Tom Wills to make a drawing from my favorite photo, aside on my first, and still my most beloved, Arabian?

The photo from which this was made was taken by Patti Fife, who was a Vindicator photographer at the same time I was a reporter there. The setting is Tom Schubert's Vienna horse farm, where I boarded this and several subsequent horses (and sometimes wish I still did, because taking care of a barnful of horses is hard work!).
A lot of "society ladies" have paintings of theirselves over the fireplace. This is as close as I can come -- because I obviously come from a different society! I cannot wait to hang it on the wall!