NEW BLOG POST # 21
ADJUSTING TO OUR NEW MOUNTAIN LIFESTYLE
After I recovered from my two knee surgeries and Al was no longer working for the government, we finally settled into enjoying our lives in the North Carolina mountains. One of our pastimes was dining out at interesting places. We visited almost every restaurant in Cherokee County, N.C., Fannin County, Georgia, Cleveland, Tennessee, and other nearby communities. We returned to the good ones and avoided the bad ones. Just like we did no matter where we’ve lived. It got me out of the house, so I am grateful to my husband.
I do not mind cooking, but not all the time! However, I love to can fresh vegetables and fruit. It has been a hobby of mine since I was a teenager and canned with my mother in her kitchen in West Virginia. During our six years in North Carolina, I ‘put up’ jellies and jam, hot pepper pickles, spicy green beans, pasta sauce, tomatoes, and scores of peaches.
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When Connie’s husband, Ritchie, was still alive, I hired him to plow a section of our front yard so I could have a garden. I have been a gardener since I (reluctantly at that time) helped my parents with their gardens as a kid. Al and I moved many times through the years. Still, at every property we owned, I almost always had gardens for my Koi, my beloved flowers, and especially my vegetables and herbs. So, in Murphy, I had a large garden space that Ritchie plowed, about 30’ x 40’. I took samples to the county extension office for analysis. They tested the soil and told me it was heavy with clay, making gardening difficult. So, I ordered a massive truckload of a special mix of horse manure, sand, and composted vegetation from a local feed and seed store in town. Eventually, I turned my nearly barren clay soil into a veritable garden haven with this mixture. The added material lightened up the soil so it was no longer heavy, enriched the soil with the addition of the composted manure, and loosened the soil with the sand and composted vegetation.
We had a small but powerful tiller I’d bought in Murphy that was easy for me to use. I tilled the new compost into the existing soil. After going through the garden many times with the tiller, the now mixed soil was light as a feather and had turned into a beautiful dark brown. Once I planted my heritage tomatoes, rows of a variety of peppers, squash, green beans, flowers, and a nice section of herbs, it looked marvelous. Of course, we had rabbits that visited early on, but I figured there was enough for all of us. Eventually, I put up chicken fencing to keep most critters out. By the end of my first garden season, I had tomato bushes taller than I am (5’2”), loaded with large, juicy tomatoes. I can’t take credit for those awesome tomato plants since the horse manure was the winning ingredient.
Gardening has always been my solace, where I can leave my troubles behind and watch and encourage things to grow and thrive. My first real garden as a wife and mother was when our son Marc was about four. Our student apartments in Kent, Ohio, had a community garden they’d plopped down in the middle of a former cornfield adjacent to the apartment complex. Every day after work, I’d take little Marc to our small allotted space, where we would weed, check our bean seedlings, and tie up our tomato plants. Thinking back on Marc and that garden, I know he wasn’t interested, but he was sweet enough to help me with the gardening chores. Sadly, the community garden was overrun with rabbits, snakes, and insects that ravished my ‘crops.’ Birds ate my corn seedlings, and rabbits ate all my lettuce once it was up and tempting. It was a lesson for me. Never plant a new garden in the middle of an old cornfield. Nothing much will grow, and what does will get eaten by critters. After that experience, I took a four-month intensive Master Gardener course at Kent State University on my lunch hour. It was the most difficult course I’ve ever had, but I learned a lot that still helps me today.
In my Murphy, N.C. gardens, I had so much produce I couldn’t can it all. After going through cases of canning jars, I still had plenty of fresh vegetables left over. I gave the rest of my garden’s bounty to neighbors, including Jack Rhodes, Graham and his wife Sue, and Connie.
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LIVING REMOTELY
There are always some negatives about living in a remote area like ours. Some folks rise to the challenges, but others struggle to overcome the obstacles. Al had to drive twenty miles round trip to town and back to do his running each day or when he wanted to hike Murphy dog on longer outings. The road circling the mountain above our house was too steep to walk our dog, bike, or hike. Sad to say, but Cherokee County, North Carolina, is not a great place to live for cyclists like us. The county roads that follow the steep mountain contours are difficult to ride. Drivers are not accustomed to seeing people riding bikes on these treacherous roads, which can be very dangerous. Bicycle riders who choose to take this chance could jeopardize their lives.
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The dirt/gravel road we lived on, called Cobb Circle, constantly needed repair. Heavy rains would wash out tons of gravel the neighborhood volunteer road group put down several times a year. There was always a worry that the road would wash out on both sides of the circle during the rainy season. If that happened, many of us would be stranded with no way out.
The road was also only wide enough for one car at a time. If you met a vehicle coming in while you are going out, it could end up at a standstill. Once, I was driving out when I saw a sheriff’s van filled with county prisoners approaching me, driven by a neighbor I recognized. I had nowhere to go. I was on the steep side of the hill with a dramatic drop-off on my left, a forty-foot wall of rock on my near right, and a steeper hill directly behind me. I stopped, hoping the van would back up and let me pass. Nope. He drove the van forward and forced me to back down the steep stretch until I could pull over on a wider section of the road. I thought I’d pee in my pants when he passed me going very fast. Funny now, not funny then.
All around the circle, one side of the road was a steep drop-off that fell at least fifty feet to the bottom. The other side usually rose high above the road, creating the terrifying possibility that my car could easily barrel over the edge. However, some residents were so comfortable and accustomed to the steep dropoff that they tore down the road like bats out of hell, scaring people like me near to death.
We also had problems with power failures from the local electric company and regularly lost internet reception. The electricity and internet failed during snow storms and dozens of times when we’d get high winds, making it impossible to pump water from our well, use the computer, or watch television. We sometimes had to haul water from the river to flush the toilet during such outages, an adventure, to be sure. Also, our well water was not always pure enough to drink. We had it tested a couple of times a year by a well-digging company, and they often had to treat our well with chlorine pellets. I later learned this was common in our county, as water sometimes got contaminated by runoff from the large farms in the area. Eventually, my solution to that issue was to have pure spring water delivered a couple of times a month from a water service in nearby Blairsville, Georgia. Even though our well water was supposedly good enough, we used bottled water for drinking. I didn’t want to take the chance of getting sick or an infection. Such are the typical crises one has to face when living in what we call the wilderness.
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Things got a bit concerning during our only bad snowstorm in Murphy, N.C. The power went out, and Cobb Circle was impassable with several inches of snow. Driving on the road was impossible, even with 4x4 vehicles like our Jeep Wrangler. Thank goodness our cabin had two gas-log fireplaces. The one on the lower level was so powerful it easily heated the entire house.
My beloved older neighbor, Jack Rhodes, had not been well. He was a WWII hero, lived alone, and was well over 90 years old. During that one terrible snowstorm, I hiked to his house every day with bowls of chili or soup and extra blankets. I checked the little propane heater he had going in his kitchen each time, and it seemed to keep most of the chill out of the living room. Even so, I got worried he’d need medical help. I called just about everyone in the county to try and get the electricity and phone back on, as well as the road plowed for our neighborhood so if Jack needed emergency transportation, we could get someone in. It took a few days to finally regain the power for our community and the county to plow the road. Finally, a team of nurses from the hospital was brought in to check on Jack since he’d been without heat or electricity for days. With help from his neighbors and friends, Jack made it through that emergency, but from then on, I worried about him.
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Al often went to Murphy’s Fitness Center in the town’s park, which had all the necessary equipment, a nice setting, and a two-mile hiking and biking trail. Still, it was about nine miles from our cabin. That required many trips back and forth to town to get what we needed or do what we wanted. However, we had the best-ever grocery store in Murphy called Ingles, which was large, had wide aisles, great fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables, and a real bakery, all in a clean environment. Living in Murphy had many positive aspects but some negatives, like anywhere.
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I truly loved living in the North Carolina mountains, and even now, after we left, I still recall my time there as a great adventure. The peace and quiet were something that I welcomed each day, and the lack of distractions made it possible for me to focus on my work. I had no stress there and was very productive regarding my painting. We hiked the trails in the area, visited state and local parks, and often went hiking and biking around beautiful Chatuge Lake and Dam in Hayesville, about 15 miles away. And once again, I likened my life in the North Carolina mountains to the carefree days of my youth, going to West Virginia state parks, swimming in the sweet wilderness pools of places like Holly River, and being…one with Nature, if you will.
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PAINTING IN THE MOUNTAINS
Depending on my subject, I painted daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It took me time, but I did portraits of almost every bird I’d seen in our mountain community. So, I decided to broaden my subjects to mammals and fish. I must admit that my bird paintings helped me advance my watercolor skills. I’d spent decades painting historic florals and scrolls in oils, but watercolors are more complex in some ways. After many attempts and even more mistakes, I was finally able to teach myself the intricacies of working with a medium many artists believe is difficult. I applied watercolors as I had done with oil paints. I used a fine brush with short, thin bristles and numerous layers of varying colors. This technique gave the subject depth and dimension. The end result was a painting that gives the illusion of a photograph. I’d had no formal lessons in this medium. Still, I’d had years of painting professionally, which helped me gain confidence in this new adventure in art.
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A BLACK SNAKE WE CALLED FRED
Eventually, I needed willing subjects, live animals I could study in order to paint them anatomically correct. So I would take my good camera, one I could use to send photos to my desktop computer, outside and try to capture images of animals in their natural habitat. I started with the relatively easy ones: chipmunks, squirrels, mice, ground moles, and snakes. Those critters all lived on our rough mountain property, including a large black snake we called Fred.
Every May, around the 7th of the month, Fred would appear somewhere in our yard after hibernating for the winter. Coincidentally, when Al and I were biking across Ireland for the first time, I heard an Irish tale that fascinated me. Some folks there believe that God tells all the hibernating snakes they can return on May 7th each year. A bartender in Dingle on the Sea told me this tale, so it must be true. However, he didn’t explain why it happened on May 7th. But it also happened on our property in Murphy, North Carolina, every year we lived there. Fred always returned around May 7th, so I finally decided he must’ve been Irish.
After returning from his long hibernation somewhere in our yard, Fred especially liked hanging out on the gravel rocks outside my lower-level studio. I suppose that was because he could easily catch and eat the many bugs, frogs, mice, and snakes we always spotted on the gravel or near the river, twenty-five feet from my studio's back door. My neighbor to the right of us was from Florida and had owned his Murphy summer home for twenty years. Wanting to make sure they could see the river from their cabin’s windows, we often saw him standing on the banks of the Nottley with his weed wacker, cutting down all the overgrown vegetation. He claimed that the Nottley River’s banks had copperhead snakes under almost every rock and that he’d shot many of them while weed-whacking. He even showed me his gun.
I never saw a single copperhead in the six years we lived in Murphy. I finally figured Fred, a credit to his black racer species, must’ve eaten them all, thank goodness. Black snakes are known for eating ‘the bad ones.’ I learned as a kid to stay far away from copperhead and water moccasin snakes because if they bite you, you’ll most likely have to go to a hospital for a shot of antivenom, or you could get sick. It happened to a junior counselor at camp I knew well. I later heard she recovered but didn’t return to camp.
I have never hurt or killed a snake in my life. I used to carry baby garden snakes in my pockets as a kid in West Virginia. I took many photos of Fred, and someday I plan on painting him, but here’s the problem with that. Fred grew longer every year. When we left North Carolina for good, he was over 6’ long (I measured him using a long straight stick), about three inches thick, and a shiny black that was as dark as coal.
I remember our second year there in particular. On or around May 7th, I had the Jeep full of groceries I’d bought at Ingles in Murphy. Since Al was at work, I had to carry all of them up our fourteen steep steps to the main floor of the log house, so it was a major chore. I had one bag left, and inside were a carton of eggs, a bag of flour, a dozen cans of soup, and donuts I’d bought for Al. I picked up the heavy bag and turned toward the steps. When I looked down, I let out a small scream. Fred had suddenly appeared from under the steps and stretched his considerable form across the gravel in the driveway. However, part of his body was lying lovingly over my shoe. I realized he was our black snake and slowly removed my foot. Unfortunately, while freeing my foot, I dropped the grocery bag, but thank goodness it didn’t fall on Fred. I quickly peeked inside the bag and saw some of my eggs looked broken. I swear to this day that Fred looked up at me with an expression of recognition on his precious face. Since I often tend to be clumsy, he knew it was me. Eventually, probably bored, he moved off into the woods.
We’d see Fred occasionally throughout the summer. Still, he usually hung out in the taller grasses or stretched out on the gravel near the back door to my studio. To be honest, I never failed to search the gravel to make sure he wasn’t there before I went outside. Mainly because I did not want to step on him or startle him. One time, I did holler after almost tripping over him. Fred brushed it off, curled up sweetly, and looked up at me as if to say,… Don’t you have any treats for me today? Fred loved fish food, too. I kept an old coffee can filled with fish food near the lower level back door for the Trout, Murphy….and Fred. I’d toss a few on the gravel, and he’d shimmy over to the fish pellets and gobble them down. I always reminded Al that when he was mowing the tall mountain grass on our property, to please keep an eye out for Fred. The egg accident reminded me of when my mother dropped all the Easter Eggs in our West Virginia kitchen after seeing my pet bat in a bird cage on the table. I guess I don’t learn my lessons well.
When we sold our house in Murphy, I told the new owners about Fred. I asked them to please not kill the large black snake that hung out on the property. I explained that he was tame and begged them to toss him Trout food when they saw him….since he had been our ‘pet’ for six years. The new owners, quite wealthy and over 70 years old, looked at me like I was batshit crazy.
Right before we moved, I bought a large bag of Trout food and put it in the utility room with the words Fred’s Food penned on the bag in big letters with a thick black magic marker. Even so, after their shocked reaction to the news about Fred, I feared they would not feed him. Fred was a smart snake, so I hoped he would move on to a better place not long after we left.
Check back soon for the exciting new chapter: MURDERS ON COBB CIRCLE.
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