What a lovely day this is - and yesterday was, too. We were in town a lot of the day yesterday - St. Johnsbury, that is. Fred was reading somewhere, I think it was the piece written by David Book in the last Cabot Chronicle, that in the 1800's St. Johnsbury was frequently referred to as simply, "Johnsbury." I laughed when he told me that. Immediately I could hear my Grandfather Bolton saying he had to go to "Johnsb'ry" for whatever. When I stop and think about it, nearly everyone when I was growing up on Cabot Plain referred to St. Johnsbury as "Johnsb'ry." Only folks from Barre or Montpelier or out of state called it otherwise. Then, of course, it was also referred to as St. Jay, but not by the locals on the Plain. Of course, there aren't many left who could vouch for my memory of that; nearly everyone has either died or moved away. One I can think of, Bill Gamble, lives in Cabot, but on the other side of town and another one, Frieda Maynard is in St. Johnsbury, and some of her sisters are scattered around the state, but I bet they'd recognize that colloquialism right away.

Have you seen the moon the last couple of nights? Beautiful. Last night on the weather report they were predicting possible showers, but the moon was bright as could be all evening, and when I read my rain gauge this morning, there was only condensation in it, and very little of that compared to previous mornings.

We walked early this morning and it was very nice. The fog had mostly lifted on our hill, but was still hanging low over the pond. The air was fresh and there was a nice breeze. Lots of people were headed towards Route 2 to go to work, and as we came to the big field west of us, the school bus was just pulling out of Wright's. It didn't seem to have many children aboard, but I suppose some get picked up on the return trip. The bus was turning around in the driveway there. Busing kids in Cabot is quite an undertaking because there are so many back roads. In fact, it's all "back roads" except for Route 215 and the South Walden Road. And lots of the roads are pretty narrow because folks have built off in the woods. Of course, there were farms on these back-woods roads, and kids galore, but years ago there were school houses scattered strategically all over town, most spaced so nobody had to walk more than two miles to get to school. And all the kids walked; it was rare for parents to (literally) cart them to school. Sometimes in the winter when it was well below zero, but otherwise it was "shank's mare" all the way.

The cows were content, warming up in the early morning sun, in the pasture across from Wright's. There's quite a herd now, with lots of little guys. They've cropped the grass very nicely in both pastures on either side of the little brook.

Further down the road we noticed a For Sale sign on a lot on the upper side of the road. There has been a very nice camper set up there for a number of years, but now I guess they are hoping to sell the lot. I expect it's a fairly good number of acres, but I don't think the sign specified. The brook runs along one side of it, and it's pretty much spruce trees and some clearings, I think, although I haven't been up that way for a long time. There used to be some pretty nice apple trees on that piece. I think years ago it was part of the Ora Ennis place, and later belonged to Ashley and Sarah Barnett. I can't remember if Ashley hayed it or used it as pasture, but it's pretty well grown up now.

Another sign announced that Metcalf's have garlic for sale - they are on Deeper Ruts Road, and Elaine always has a great garden.