A Country Autumn, Part 1

I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that I've been taking photos of the lovely autumn scenery which I passed whenever I traveled anywhere. So I collected some of the pictures into two blog posts. This first photo is of a field on Barrett Road in Fort Jackson:

Another farm field with black and white cattle grazing, off in the distance:

A corner lot with a small white shed way off by the trees. Might it have been a ground level deer blind?:

Luscious red apples in my own yard, backed up by rows of hay bales and the brown barn:

At the Mound Hill Cemetery in Nicholville:

A wonderful country scene along the Port Kent Road:

All along the road were explosions of color, almost like fireworks:

Red, yellow and green interrupted by the white trunks of birches and poplars:

This scene brought the climactic finale of the 1812 Overture to my mind:

A gigantic pile of neatly split and stacked firewood beneath brilliant red trees:

A quiet country lane, swathed in gold:

Orange and gold, yellow and green - all of it beneath blue skies. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow:

Mound Hill Cemetery Revisited

I was up on Tuesday morning before dawn and ate breakfast, cleaned my little farm apartment and loaded up the car with everything I needed to bring home. I left early and opted to take the Port Kent Road out of Nicholville instead of Route 458 out of Hopkinton. It would be slower, but I'd see some different Adirondack scenery. I hadn't gotten far, however, when I decided to pull off the road and up into the Mound Hill Cemetery:

The newer gravestones here are often planted with colorful flowers and covered with mementos of various types, often quite touching. This one had Day Lilies, Geraniums, an angel, a trophy, a baseball cap and a teddy bear with angel wings:

More figurines, more flowers (both real and artificial) and a small conifer. But what I really liked was the idea of the gravestone being a bench. What a lovely idea:

More Day Lilies, another conifer and a figure of a puppy in a baseball cap. You know that I have a soft spot for dog lovers and always wonder, when I see such mementos, what became of the pets the deceased left behind:

I was walking around looking at gravestones when I saw my two Papillons jumping and acting a if they were worrying some unfortunate animal at a nearby grave site. They didn't stop when I hollered at them so I trotted over to see what was going on. When I got there, the only animal I saw was this cow planter. Could that have caused the commotion? I guess I'll never know for sure:

More colorful flowers, more figurines and a photo:

I called the dogs back to the car and drove to the older portion of the cemetery:

Jerusha Doud, died in 1847 at the age of only 33:

A very sad gravestone marking the death of two children. Hector was 16 years old and died in 1832. An infant son, unnamed, died in 1833:

Sabra Russell died in 1843 and had a weeping willow on her gravestone:

Silas W. Sheldon, a military man, died in June of 1862 when the Civil War was raging. Perhaps he died in battle. I found it touching that someone still decorates his grave site, honoring him as a veteran:

Amanda Ellithorp, aged 32, died in 1836:

Katie Squier, aged 35, died in 1870. Life was hard back then and many, especially women, died young. But there were also many old gravestones honoring folks who had lived into their 80s and 90s:

But I had a very long Journey ahead of me. The dogs were watching me anxiously from the car, so I returned to continue on our way back to Albany:

Finding A Cemetery On The Drive Home

Morning arrived and I let the dogs out once again, made myself breakfast and packed everything and everybody into the car. I began heading south once again on the Port Kent Road. And once again, I saw no other cars moving in either direction. The dogs and I seemed to have the whole countryside to ourselves. I was driving across the flat landscape when I noticed hills popping up all around me. This one in particular caught my eye as it dramatically demonstrated the sandy soils of the area. This could be a scene from Cape Cod, but it's actually from inside the northern Adirondack Park:

And just around the bend I passed a road up a hill to the Mound Hill Cemetery. I've always been tempted to drive up there and look around, but this time I figured I had time. Besides, being so high up on a hill, there might be some scenic overlooks. So I drove up the steep entrance road and encountered a large, well kept cemetery with these large flowering bushes dotted across the lawn. I'm not sure what they are, but my mother just called hers a Snowball Bush:

There were no scenic overlooks onto the surrounding flatlands, but it was a peaceful, lovely experience and I left the dogs in the car as I walked around snapping pictures:

There were very many graves considering how sparsely populated is that part of the country. I supposed that meant it had been a cemetery for a very long time:

Indeed, some of the tombstones were quite old, many even unreadable:

This one was of a Civil War veteran born in 1821, but I saw many which were older still:

And right next to his tombstone was his wife's She lived twentytwo more years after his death, probably tending the farm they'd started together:

And one much more recent death where the family was leaving many mementos. I was moved to see how much this person had been loved and, (this won't surprise you given my love of dogs), by the small statue of their beloved dog which the deceased had presumably left behind:

My own dogs were waiting rather patiently, which wass unusual for them. I guessed that was because they could see me and because there were no other people at which they could bark:

Old pines and cedars were sentinels on the hill:

But I did have many miles yet to travel. I'd only just begun. It was still early in the morning and the dogs were anxious to get me back into the car. Daphne and Clover, you can see, were quite concerned about what I might be up to and if I would be returning soon. So I left the cemetery and resumed my journey homeward: