Almost every morning we begin the day with breakfast at the dining room table enjoying casual conversation while we are entertained by the nuthatches, flinches, blue jays, bright red cardinal and other birds at the backyard feeders. The deer appear cute to us, but around here they are pests that many refer to as "rats on stilts" (except cuter) as they eat all the flowers and vegetation in everyone's yard. The babies with their white spotted rumps are hard to think of as "rats" or even pests for that matter. But so they are.
Susan and I were on our own for this day's adventure. Bill and Carol gave us their car for the day, we punched our destination into our GPS, took the map Bill had outlined for us, and braved the strange world.
Poplar Forest in Bedford was Thomas Jefferson's country retreat. His real home was Monticello. He taught himself to be an architect, and designed every aspect of Monticello, modifying it's buildings and landscape over a period of 40 years. The thing I remembered from my visits here oh so many years ago was the clock. It is seen from the outside of the house as well as inside, and inside it also indicates the day of the week. Quite a trick back in the day of Jefferson. No photos allowed inside the house, so this one is of the outside side of the clock.
We learned a lot about Thomas from our tour guide of the house. We walked around the property and under the house where all the "guts" are -- food storage, kitchen, cook's quarters -- and tried to imagine life at that time. Even though Jefferson believed "all men are created equal" and felt everyone had the right of liberty, he owned somewhere around 600 slaves and freed only about 6 of them in his lifetime. A product of his time.
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Interesting roots on that big tree. Like clasping hands.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that tree too Meta.
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