Fall Foliage and More

A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I took a brief road trip down to Waynesboro, VA to visit my mom and our pals there and to take in the glorious local Fall Foliage Festival. If you've been following this blog for more than a year, you know this is an annual pilgrimage for me, but Jeff hadn't been down to Virginia for this weekend for eleven years. It just never worked out, vacation-wise, for him. But this year--yea!

We started the festival off at the pancake breakfast, served in the social hall of Main Street Methodist Church. What memories that room has, as it was the venue for many a Junior Girls Choir practice. That's where I met Barb and Susan (aka, Chibby), who were to become my fast friends through the vicissitudes of junior high school, and beyond. And this year the pancake breakfast proved to be a reunion of sorts, with Susan and Laura--a fellow former Young Fool, now a psychologist--providing some of the entertainment.


That's Laura on the left, Susan on the right. They sang folky duets, including an old Girl Scout camp fave, "Walk, Shepherdess, Walk." I'd forgotten the song completely until they began singing it, and every word came back.

Barb met us there, and Susan's mom joined our merry band as well--we were the fun table.

That's my mom, of course, mugging for the camera.

After the breakfast, we headed down Main Street hill to the legendary art show.

There, at the fabulous Ed Brownlee booth, we met up with Beth and Cortney to check out the ceramics.



And check them out, we did:


Barb found a couple of kindred spirits and spirited them home with her.


Jeff and I each bought our own ceramic jar. Mine has insane bunnies on it, as you can see:


And Jeff's has a sad ghost.


It didn't take long for us to walk off our pancakes and sausage among the many booths of photography, ceramics, pottery, watercolors, glassware... and I really should have taken a picture of the guitar-playin' dude in the purple suit. He had flowing curly blond locks that he threw back in ecstasy as he strummed, his long teeth bared in the rictus of what can only be called orgasmic pleasure. Or pride. Or pain? But anyway, before we knew it, we were lining up for some fried rice.


Alas, we did not partake of the sacred funnel cake at this festival, but it was available had we wanted to. As always, Barb, this snap's for you:


Notice the shorts on the dame in the picture above? Everyone was dressed for summer. It was well into the 70s--maybe even 80 degrees. As I noted last year, that seemed way too warm for early October in the Shenandoah Valley. In fact, I have a picture of myself about 20 years ago at the FFF, and I'm wearing a sweatshirt, jeans, and a thick corduroy jacket. And a hat! Times have changed, or at least, the climate has. Everyone was in shirtsleeves, including Beth, who also seems to have a spindle sticking out of her cranium.

In reality, it is the steeple of the aforementioned Main Street Methodist Church.

There were other, more troubling changes to the Big W... for example, I found this sign to be rather disconcerting for a returning ex-pat:


Yikes!

Well, the bulk of the fall foliage pictures (and there ARE more than the mere teaser at the top of this post) will have to wait for the next entry.

Time to get some shut-eye. I'll have more tomorrow or the next day...

Fall Foliage Festival Art Show, 2007

Well, there it is: the Main Street portion of the Fall Foliage Festival Art Show in lovely downtown Waynesboro, VA! This is one of the big events of the year for the big W, what with lots of local and regional talent displaying and selling their wares. There was everything from hot air balloon windchimes...



to stained glass panels...



to sporty verdigris frog statuary...



to the ubiquitous and much-loved funnel cakes.



Barb and Charlie? We have funnel cakes! Heh.

As you can see, it was a lovely day--more summery than fall-like, though. What with temperatures that just wouldn't dip below the 70-degree mark, this portion of the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah Valley had yet to sport much fall color, even in the midst of October. Lee and I walked from my mom's house in the lesser tree streets the mile or so to the festival, and we soon had to doff our jackets, the sun was so warm and unrelenting. And then, when we got to the festival, we were met with THIS odd sight, smack dab in the middle of downtown--not fall foliage but TROPICAL foliage!



That huge-ass palm-looking thing (look at me, ma! I'm a botanist!) would have never been able to even grow that big over a Waynesboro summer twenty years ago, much less still be thriving in the middle of October.

Ah well... it was warm enough that Lee and I enjoyed al fresco dining in the food concession area (he had a kind of Chicken Satay thingy, although it was being touted as "Chicken on a Stick," and I had an Andouille sausage), followed by yummy, hand-cranked ice cream at the SNACK concession area. Believe me, the pumpkin pie ice cream was to die for!

The wonderful Ed Brownlee was there yet again this year, he of the colorful and amusing ceramics...



Here are some more of his wares:



I love the little box bedecked with eyeballs! Stay tuned to see what I bought from him...

We ran into pals Beth and Barb (and Cortney and Charlie), PLUS Beth's daughter Erin and son-in-law Ben were there with their daughter Anya and their teeny new son Adonis... um, I mean, Elliot...in tow. Here's a picture of three generations, plus a doting auntie (L-R: Erin, Anya, Barb, and peeking over, just visible, is Beth):



Speaking of generations, Barb and Beth's mom, Patsy, was also exhibiting. If you look back over last year's account of the art show, you'll know that I bought an original watercolor from her. This year, another original caught my eye, but, alas! This one was just too dear. Still, here it is... there's some glare on the glass that obscures the depth of color, but trust me. This is lovely:



On Sunday, I took my mom to the art show, mostly so she could socialize. She made a beeline to Patsy's booth...


(That's Mom on the right, Patsy on the left)

Which gave me a chance to run over to Ed's booth and purchase a couple of cool things: a pitcher with the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities on it for Jeff (who is a Dickens fan) and pot decorated with a cactus-shaped alien, a sock, and so forth (it looks great on the new table in the sunroom):



I also bought a print of Patsy's called Along the Skyline Drive. This picture doesn't do it justice, but you get the general idea.



So, it was a lovely art show--and one I hope to attend for many years to come.

Next up? A look at a very weird display at the Waynesboro Heritage Museum, where Lee and I took refuge from the sun for a moment or two...