Posted on by Anne

Civic duty

Saturday was neighborhood clean-up day!

We moved to SW Virginia from the much more densely-populated northern part of our state, so our neighborhood looks a lot different.

Here’s the old neighborhood.
Our new-ish neighborhood has two streets and they both look kind of like this.

Even our small corner of Wirtz has a property-owners association, though. When we first moved here, I’m a little embarrassed to admit that we didn’t engage with it very much, but as Covid has lifted and folks have started meeting again, I’ve been trying to get out and take part in neighborhood events.

This includes cleaning up the neighborhood common area.

Since we live on a lake, our common area comprises a community dock, a boat ramp, and a steep road that extends down to those facilities. They needed some tidying, so I grabbed my garden gloves and boots, and headed over.

I was joined by Bruce, our POA president, along with Mark, Mark, Curt, and Bob. All very nice guys. All of whom rolled up in golf carts (Jim and I do not have a golf cart or ATV, which puts us in the minority among our Franklin County neighbors). Curt unloaded sort of a chain saw on a stick (I knew someone with a chain saw would show up — I’d never owned a chain saw until we moved here, but that was one of the first pieces of equipment that Jim made sure we had) (there are a lot of trees and branches that fall into local roads and I’ll tell you what, these folks and their chain saws are unparalleled in getting those impediments out of there). My job was to follow Curt down the driveway as he trimmed the trees and throw the branches and foliage deeper into the woods.

I tossed foliage for about an hour and got a nice workout and also dirty while the gents did the real dirty work with a drainage ditch, until Bruce announced we were mission accomplished. I wandered home, cleaned up, then headed into Roanoke for my Saturday chores (it was National Independent Bookstore Day, and the cupcakes at Book No Further were not going to eat themselves, after all).

As I drove out of the neighborhood, I saw the clean-up crew cruising through like a small non-political golf cart parade, and I know our neighborhood is in good hands.

Golf carts, mission-ready. Note the newly-cleaned branches, please.
Posted on by Anne · 6 Comments

Creeping Out, Creeping Back In

I first drafted this post talking about how lucky we were in our remote part of the country. Until very recently, our reported cases of Covid-19 had been very moderate. Even with the rate of people wearing masks standing at about 50-50, with the wide-open spaces in Franklin County we felt like we might miss the worst of it.

Then Memorial Day came and evidently everyone went to Myrtle Beach, including that virus. Myrtle Beach is a spot on the South Carolina shore, just about five hours south of our area. There’s a boardwalk, and golf courses, and an amusement park, and evidently lots of pent-up need for people to get out to the sand, because they opened up their businesses in June and the virus exploded.

Look, it’s the Coronavirus Highway!

People in Roanoke love Myrtle Beach! And they brought that virus back with them. The worst souvenir ever.

So now our local cases are creeping up. Mask wearing is a little better, but I’m cautious and more mindful of staying home. But for awhile there…

Jim and I went out to eat at our favorite restaurant, instead of doing take-out.

Napoli Cowboy has a nice outdoor area now! And you have to make a reservation.

I made a trip to Rocky Mount for a mammogram, which is no fun but you gotta do it. Hats off to the clinic for being extremely impressive at monitoring patients’ health and getting us in and out quickly.

I started going into Roanoke on Saturday mornings to peruse the tremendous Kolsch selection at Barrel Chest, where they remember you and what you like, with always something new and good to recommend.

I would also include a stop at Roasters Next Door so I could support a local coffee shop that happens to have delicious lavender-pancake flavored lattes.

But now it looks like all of those good things might be on hold and it’s 100% worth it if we can avoid this mess spreading any more than it is.

Posted on by Anne

Good Food from Everywhere

Last week I stumbled upon an advertisement for a Taste of Virginia food expo to be held at the Hotel Roanoke.

It was offered as part of the meeting of the 21st Annual Virginia Biological Farming Conference, and since Cora and I were going to be downtown anyway, we knew we wouldn’t want to miss it.

It surpassed our expectations!

We sampled breads, herbs, coffee, and cheeses, all made fresh and locally, served up by friendly vendors. There was plenty of wine, beer, and even moonshine (two different distillers!) but we had a long afternoon planned and didn’t want to slow ourselves down.

If I’d indulged in a wine sample, it would have been with H.T. at the Brooks Mill Winery

Plus, because the emphasis of the conference was organic and biological farming, most of the crowd there were actually farmers or people associated with the food community. You would think that, living down here, one would have more opportunity to hang out with farmers but on the other hand, those folks have pretty long hours.

We went home with some delicious Persian kolompeh cookies and some chutney from Kelly’s Persian Foods, located in Charleston West Virginia, some chimichurri spice and pimiento cheese from Piemonte Kitchen & Garden, whose Facebook page has some cool photos of the event, and a jar of lavender jelly and great-smelling soap from Green Roof Soaps, right up the road in Bedford (and on Etsy!). The diversity of offerings was incredible and the crowd was large enough to feel festive without being too crowded. In fact, I felt a little like I was in on a secret.

But now you know, too.

This is an event that I want to make sure is on my calendar for next year!

Posted on by Anne

Road Trip Ahead

I have not been writing much here lately because the two Reynolds kids are home and I have been trying to squeeze in work writing in the early part of the day and kid activities in the afternoon and evening.

When your kids are in their 20s, a favorite activity is thrift shopping.

Alas, though, all good things (like college holiday breaks) come to an end and our boy is heading back to school tomorrow morning. He and Jim are driving out there together, leaving me and Cora with a quiet weekend. So we’re heading to Charlottesville!

Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia, of course, and the community sits geographically (and culturally, I think) in between busy Northern Virginia (whence many UVA students originate) and the rest of Virginia — with its tempestuous history and pretty mountains. I think that it has a cultivated country-cultured vibe.

Which is illustrated in our planned outings for the day. We are first heading to Blue Ridge Pottery, just north of the city. Then we’re going to have lunch at one of those shops that has bowls of superfoods and quinoa because that’s what the girl likes to eat and you really can’t find too much of that in our local vicinity.

And we both agree on our final stop:

This beautiful sighthttps://www.traderjoes.com/ is from the Trader Joe’s website

We don’t have Trader Joe’s in Roanoke. Our nearest one is Charlottesville. It’s going to be a well-timed, really good day.

Posted on by Anne

Roanoke’s Christmas Market

We had a chance to visit the Hyde Park Christmas Market in London a couple of years ago, and we found out last night that Roanoke’s “Dickens of a Christmas” has a very similar vibe.

Dickens of a Christmas happens during the Friday evenings between Thanksgiving and Christmas. On one Friday, the city hosts a parade. Last night the big event was a dog costume contest.

The city was filled with very cute dogs.

There were singing kids…

And lovely shop windows …

And all of the restaurants seemed to have a crowd, including this Roanoke institution:

Cora and I wandered around and left with a lot of holiday spirit (and a cool needlework kit from the Crafteria (a former cafeteria restaurant converted into booths of crafty stuff).

During the week, you can even get coffee in the Crafteria! This is where I’m taking out of town friends next time we have visitors!
Posted on by Anne

They Brought the Party

Oh, what a weekend it was!

This past weekend, Jim and I were deep into a road trip to the Midwest, and that’s not what I’m talking about.

The weekend before that, we received a marvelous gift, named Lorenda, Meg, and Aviva. These are three friends of ours from our former neighborhood AND THEY DROVE THE FOUR HOURS FROM NORTHERN VIRGINIA TO COME VISIT!

It is not an easy trip. They did it on a Friday afternoon, which is a doubly difficult maneuver. But they arrived with White Claws, and wine, some AMAZING applesauce cake and a ton of laughter.

The neighborhood we moved from was one of those neighborhoods that circles around the local school system. Thus, everyone’s kids are about the same age, doing similar things, and you all pretty know the main structural information about your neighbors’ lives. Then, of course, those kids go off to college and some people move to Smith Mountain Lake where the new neighbors might not even know where Robinson Secondary School is located.

Lorenda’s husband is a Virginia Tech alum, and now her youngest fella is a student there. She popped in back in April after hiking with her lad, so she knows a little about Franklin County. Meg and Aviva were real newcomers.

And they were wonderful, enthusiastic, energetic guests. We got up relatively early on Saturday (not as early as Aviva, who took in the lakeside sunrise) and drove into Roanoke for the Farmer’s Market and some exploration of the establishments on Market Square.

We saw the Star getting polished up
We pondered purchases as La-De-Dah
We made it over to Black Dog Salvage
And we had a great time in Floyd
The Floyd Country Store has fantastic food and Saturday afternoon entertainment
We even got up early on Sunday morning for water sports! Look at that paddle board skill! True KICK ASS ROCK STAR BABES!

They were tolerant of the ride over Windy Gap and a little disappointed that the Booker T. Washington National Monument was closed. Homestead Creamery Ice Cream was enjoyed by all. And we are so looking forward to them coming back!

Posted on by Anne

Holiday Business and Beer and Wine

We are nearly ready for Christmas, and took care of just a few more items today.

And it’s a good thing, because the traffic around Tanglewood Mall was impressive.

There are two shopping malls in Roanoke: Tanglewood and Valley View. Valley View is near the airport and was so crowded last Saturday when we went to pick the kids up, it not only threatened to make us late for the first child’s arrival, but gave me flashbacks to living in the Northern Virginia area. (Tysons Corner-loving friends, can you relate?)

But we only had one real errand over on Electric Road today: to pick up some wine for our neighbors. They brought us an amazing pie, made with rhubarb from their garden (!) and how do you reciprocate that?

Well, lucky for us, they mentioned that they like to toast the return of the light on the Winter Solstice (which is tomorrow, y’all!).

I may have mentioned that some of the chain establishments that we knew and loved in Northern Virginia have not made it down here to the Blue Ridge. So, where I would previously have gone to Total Wine in Chantilly for a nice bottle of wine, I had to do a little research to find an enhanced selection around here.

Except the Virgnia’s Blue Ridge Twitter account did it for me, with a listing of the best local places to find holiday gifts. That’s how we found Barrel Chest Wine and Beer. It’s a beer store and a wine store and a bar! They were super helpful and located a tasty looking cabernet for my neighbors. They also carry Cougar Bait American Blonde Ale, from Lexington, KY’s Country Boy Brewing company, for us to bring to Jim’s family’s place on Cape Cod.

Now, as long as our neighbors don’t read my blog, the surprise won’t be ruined.