End of August

It's the end of August and the orb weavers are busy on both porches, building huge webs of unestimable beauty and waiting in them, flinching a little when the dog barks but staying put. They weave at night and my best efforts can't seem to take a picture of how fantastically elegant their webs are; they're very elegant spiders in general, golden, bulbous, patient.

My friend J and I and Theo the dog went out to Douglas Falls near Barnardsville today. It was awesome & totally beautiful - should be some pictures up on Flickr momentarily. It's a long and gorgeous drive up a dirt road up the mountain to get there and then a short hike down to the falls. I'm so glad I found it again; it had been years since I'd been there. Then we went and had dinner and a beer at the Lucky Otter. It's days like this (except for the morning, when not one but TWO carefully set alarm clocks failed to go off and so I was late all day) when I'm glad I live here, when a lovely drive through the country can take you to a (more or less) pristine waterfall with noone else around, and then 45 minutes drive again, past the same bucolic cows, and you're having a beer on the porch of the Otter, watching West Asheville go by. It's perfect here sometimes, in late August, under the sunset.