BOY did it rain last night!!

Our normally sedate river was raging when I woke up this morning.  I knew it would be wild.  Last night it poured and the wind BLEW.  It was still windy today.  74 yesterday.  Today I think it may have been in the high 40s but the wind made it feel much colder.

I know I have mentioned before how much I love living literally right across the street from the river, especially this time of year...not so much in the summer when everyone starts gathering and invading My River Space....

We are high enough to feel perfectly safe, so I can enjoy the power and sometimes unpredictable personality that defines the Rappahannock.

Our house is located right on the Fall Line, the point where the river was no longer navigable by the tall ships.  Just down stream is the tiny, now almost non-existent town, of Falmouth.  Falmouth and Fredericksburg were MAJOR ports during the eighteenth century.  All the local growers would roll their hogs heads of tobacco down the dirt and rocky roads to the ports to be shipped off to England.  Living here now it is difficult to imagine the hundreds of ships that would be docked here.  The river is tidal, and the silt build up over the years hardly allows the small paddle boat to make it to the City Dock.  (Oops!  Sorry for the history lesson, once an historian always an historian I guess!)

I especially like watching the geese.  I have never seen them in the water when it is raging like this.  Today proved me wrong.  This group was having a ball.

The six of them (obviously three very adventuresome couples into extreme sport) would fly upstream to a calmer area of the river....

Situate themselves with their backs facing downstream....

And just ride the current.....

Then they would call to each other, and fly back up stream to do it all over again! (Layla tugged on the leash as I was trying to take this picture...but you can see the geese in flight there in the center if you look closely.)

Luckily our new place, though not just across the street, will be an easy walk to the river path.

And SOON we will be moving in!  They are working on the last few details...and we are still waiting for Dominion to put the line in to my studio.  But the house is nearly there!!

One last thing....I can't help but boast.  Tiny A Story about  Living Small, the movie made by my niece Merete and her friend Christopher has been accepted into the SXSW Film Festival!  I am just so damn happy for them.  Such a creative, talented and motivated couple.

Makes me feel like it's time for me to get back into the studio and do some creating myself!!!