My favorite road

Since moving to Durham, NC, I have come to really enjoy the area and its beauty. I love the greenness and the trees and the vines. There is one road in particular near where we live that I have fallen in love with. It is called Massey Chapel Road and I get to drive on it almost every day.

It starts out with some lovely, cute, nice little houses with awesome country yards.


Then you go around a bend and it becomes very pastoral. There is an old shed or barn with flowering vines growing all over it.

Across the road from the building is a pasture sloping down to a small lake. There are usually some nice cows and a few horses grazing in this pasture, as well as many geese that stop by. Down the road a bit there is a Volunteer Agricultural Farm with lots of mature grape vines and lots of garden space and a pond.

Then there is a lot of trees (which are basically everywhere along most roads) and a creek - Jeran rescued a turtle crossing the road by this creek once. There is a power line alley through the trees with an old blue bus posing in it.

Further along there are some more country houses. There is one house that Jeran and I would consider buying if it were for sale and we were feeling brave. Think Joe Dupnick. Ah, what potential. Anyhow, I love this road and the beautiful drive it is.

Rain, rain go away

The weather the last 5 or so days here has been lousy. Rain! Not our usual dumping-buckets-for-half-a-day rain, but long-lasting drizzly, cloudy, on-and-off, misty rain. I know as I am saying this that I will not get any sympathy at all from my overseas family since that is kind of the norm there, but I still don't like it. When we first moved to North Carolina, I didn't like the rain much at all but I got to like the quick in-and-out storms that are more common here. I like the craziness and randomness of a lovely morning followed by tons of rain for an hour or two and then sunshine. I think one reason why our current weather is now so despised is that we had a marvelous weekend before this with 80 degree days and sunshine the whole time. Psych!

There are a few things I'm really looking forward to this spring:

• Picking strawberries at the pick-your-own farms
• Seeing all the tons of spring flowers all over, especially all along the highways
• Planning and hopefully planting some vegetables in our garden
• Tennis!
• Hiking and camping

Hooray for the first day of spring on Friday! Everyone balance an egg to celebrate!