Category Archives: Country Living

NRV Livibility Initiative poses interesting challenges

Yesterday's kickoff meeting for the NRV Livibility Initiative brought together people with a wide range of interests and hopes for vastly different outcomes as far as the future of life in the New River Valley. The meeting started with small … Continue reading

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Changing of the Guard

AGray Kittys any pet owner knows, the hardest part of sharing your life with animals is that they do not live as long as we do. When our daily companion of many years dies, it creates an empty space in our lives that seems like it can never be filled. I have known families which have mourned the loss of a pet for years

In families with only one pet, the loss can be catastrophic. When there are other pets sharing our lives, these other pets seem to respond to the loss by becoming more affectionate with us and with each other. The loss of one member of the group makes all of recognize the value of our remaining companions.
Buffy
We lost two of our cats in the last few months due to advancing age. Buffy, our Siamese cross, was 17 years old and Gray Kitty was 14 years old. They shared our adventures and our daily routines for many happy years. They had become part of the fabric of our lives and their passing left us with many moments of loss as we listened for the friendly chirp or purr that would not be heard again except in memory.

We live lives of considerable complexity and we do not always appreciate how skillfully our pets accommodate themselves to our daily routines until they are no longer there to greet us in the early hours of the morning or to jump up in our laps during our hours at the computer.

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So, you have been wondering where all the stinkbugs are coming from?

CLOSEUP OF STINKBUG We have been increasingly upset with this years horde of of unwanted visitors. They keep appearing even though we have captured and disposed of hundreds of them.

We could not see what they were eating and they all seemed to be the same size, so we feared that there was a little machine that was cloning them. There seemed to be no other explanation.

Then I thought of accessing Google, the universal fount of knowledge.

I googled "stink bugs" and found that most varieties were plant eaters and that's when the penny dropped. My dear wife has filled every corner of our house with wonderfuly healthy plants!

WE ARE HIDING IN YUR PLANTS
This morning we discovered stinkbugs on almost every plant in the house. They hide under the leaves and can easily be picked off and dropped into a glass of soapy water.

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How bad was the drifting snow today?

You can get an idea of the difficulties facing drivers when you see people driving an ATV to get to the food market. Continue reading

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