Happy Holidays From Duffy

MY GARDEN(S)

People ask me if my garden is large or small and I stumble all over the answer. The correct answer is yes. Plunked down in the midst of 40 acres, my garden is small. If it were in a townhouse community it would be too large. It is difficult to categorize my garden. It is really a series of linked gardens that encompass the foundation area of the front of my house. If you stand on my front porch, to the right of my 5'long sidewalk is a 10'wide area that is planted with azaleas, peris japonicas, "Firepower" nandinas. roses and a small japanese maple. It includes an outer border of cranesbill and curves around the corner of my house to a lorapetalum. To the left of my house is a stepping stone pathway leading around a large spruce tree to my informally formal garden. Or you might feel it is formally informal. The tree is planted around with day lillies except on the side closest to the house where there are a christmas fern and a japanese painted fern, catmint and ginger mint. and lillies of the valley. Around the bay of the houses are peeris japonicas and a crimson barberry with a heavenly bamboo nandina tying that to a row of azaleas down the bedroom wing.
The formal garden is 62' long by 34' wide. It has aspects of an english
garden. It is a flower garden, a vegetable garden, a scent garden, a color garden, a shape garden. a butterfly garden. It has aspects that are very Zen. There are paths throughout the garden and the beds are outlined in interesting rocks we have gathered from the farm after the farmer plows them up. You enter the garden on a peony lined 10' path of thyme and roman chamomile. The path circles a 4' diameter bed of golden galardia centered by a birdbath. It is like the circular sun of the garden. The entrance path curves around to the right and left corner beds which contain most of my herbs: sage, tgarragon, rue, germander, meadow sage, santoliina, southernwood, lambs ear, anise hyssop to the left and lemongrass, texas sage, chives, garlic chives, winter savory, burnett to the right. These beds on their outer corners have day lillie and iris. I have over 60 daylilliles and about 3 dozen iris. Down the path after the galardia bed is a square 6' x 6' brick patiio with an antique iron white table and two cnairs. Next is a small circle of pilled up rocks topped with a little concrete dog statue. Then it goes on to an oval bed containing hydrangeas marginata and pink diamond, a hugh golden mum, and four blueberries. That leads to te final bed of dianthus, day lillies, iris and a rose of sharon. The front corners have daylillies and iris the same s the back. The right one has an oak lead hydrangea and a red carbet rose. The left one has a korean spice viburnum, a red canna and a pink carpet rose. The outside beds in th e middle of the garden contain hydrangeas, peonies, day lilies, bergamot, angelica, hardy hibiscus, feverfew, horehound, salvia, roses, mexican primrose, yarrow, garden phlox, lavender, marigolds and tomatoes.

Harry

We don't know anything about Harry's early years. We first met him when Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Riggs adopted him from an animal shelter. We think he must have had a happy life because he is such a happy little fellow. He brought much joy to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Riggs and he, in turn, enjoyed walks with GGpaRiggs and visiting with guests and their greatgrandchildren. GGmaRiggs kept a spotless house and Harry was the perfect pet. Being mostly Shih Tzu, he did not shed and his manners were perfect. Sadly, the Riggs were in declining health. Not long after Great Grandma Riggs died, Great Grandpa Riggs needed care in a nursing home. Harry went to live with Grammy and Poppy in th e country. He missed his former life fiercely. He ran away twice. Both times he went to barbecues at neighbors up the road. It was then we realized Harry is a party dog. Somewhere along the way, his grief turned to anxiety. He made messes in the house and would not stay in a crate. Just at that same time, little Julia wanted a dog and her parents heard about Harry's plight. Harry hit the big time! He had a new home with fenced yard and dogs on both sides, Victoria the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel on the left and Chloe the Golden Retriever on the right. Harry has a Halloween costume and greets trick or treaters every fall. He has his own life jacket so he can go to the lake house and ride in the bass boat. He comes to the country with Grandma Nina, who calls him a Chinese Foo Dog because of his fangs. He has a strange relationship with Anna N'Kitty. When he arrives, he barks at her until she extends her claws and bops him on the head, whereupon he prances about happily. We don't know how old Harry is, but he is beginning to slow down. He isn't letting that stop him. Harry just retired to Grandma Nina's Assisted Living Farm for Old Dogs where he has constant companionship, food and drink always available, massages, petting and praising, and walks daily, and his very own pillow to sleep on beside Grandma Nina's bed.
Here's to Harry, the dog who knows how to live!
And how to leave gracefully. In the early morning hours of July 27, 2008, Harry Riggs Potter Jones peacefully slept away to join his beloved Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Riggs after a day of his favorite things with his favorite friends. His day started with a lavender scented baby shampoo bath followed by a lullaby just for him from Grandma Nina as she rocked him in her rocking chair. In the afternoon, he rode with Grandma Nina, Joe and Duffy to the Jones household where he was reunited with Precious, his cat, and met the new puppy
Bella Sweetpea. After a wonderful cooling swim with Julia and Joe, his favorite aroma of
steaks on the grill filled the air. as everyone sat around the pool and chatted. He knew he was the number one topic of conversation about his having trouble walking and about his labored breathhing, and he knew they all agreed it was almost time for a final trip to the vet. We all found him in the morning in his bed. He is buried on his path through the garden to the playground and there are flowers planted on his grave. He is missed.

Cat and Mouse Game

Our county extension office is housed in modular units and sits on a nice little plot of land in the middle of town. The path to the door is lined with native plants. Herbs are planted along the building around the corner to raised beds of strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers. All of this has been named the "Teaching Gardens". With this background, you can see that mice could be happy in such a setting. Indeed, they are a constant problem. Finally the county maintenance people told the office manager to get a cat. So cheery little Jolene took $25 from petty cash and purchased The Boss. He is marvelous. He looks like a Himalyan and has the personality of a superstar. His blue eyes match the new carpet. He greets everyone, attends all meetings (dividing his time betwen them if there's more than one), occasionally jumps up on someone's lap, purrs liberally, tries to crawl into large purses (security check, of course). He has found a spot where he can watch the front door, reception desk, two offices and a donference room at the same time. Does he mouse? It's too soon to tell, but I can assure you he's well equiipped: moves fast, jumps well, and has sharp claws. He will sometimes knit on the back of a chair and, since there is an open space between the back and seat, people tend to jump around a bit. If you want to know what goes on in the extension office, ask the cat!

LAUGHTER

"You don't stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing." Michael Prichard

FRIENDSHIP

Every Brownie and Girl Scout has sung "Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver the other gold." Whoever wrote that is wrong. They are all gold. From the next door playmate you spend most of your days with until you are old enough for school to highschool graduation when you all scatter different ways. Can you imagine making it through puberty without friends? The joys of having friends in your later years who are there to support you and you to support them are priceless. I have been so very fortunate to have all of that.

Dora

I met Dora at least 20 years ago. She attended meetings of Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship that were held usually on Friday evenings for a lecture and Saturday for a workshop. I met most of my group of friends that way The whole group would go out to lunch together on Saturdays and the members who helped put on the program would take the speaker out to dinner. As time went on, the friends group began to form and I was invited to help with the programs and then to attend the full moon meditations at Dora's. She was old enough to be my mother, and, in a way , she was the mother of the full moon group. In other ways we are all llike sisters. If you believe in reincarnation, we must have been. We were in a restaurant once for someone's birthday and a fellow diner asked if we were sisters and Pat told him yes and gave him some sort of outrageous story.Dora was the astrologer of the group. Our meditation sessions were led by her and consisted of reading from a book by Saradarjian (spelling?) that was very interesting, prayers for people who needed them, prayers for America and its leaders and then a silent meditation with music in the background including a solo from the piano playing cat.
I adored Dora. She was knowledgeable, kind, witty, sarcastic, sure of her truth and when she dressed up in her red dress with rouge on her cheeks in the manner of ladies of her time, she was positively regal.
I'm sure she loved her memorial service. It was a group classic. Emily, who is a little foggy sometimes, got the call about Dora from Dora's grandson and called us each. We were so proud of her and made arrangements to go to her house with a pot luck light lunch for the memorial. Then Dorothy in Birmingham (who is never foggy; a little far out sometimes but never foggy), called Maryann to say Dora wasn't actually gone yet but the three of us decided to protect Emily's new found status as capable and not mention that. The meditation was a little distracting because Emily's husband and son and Pat's protege were talking in the next room. Not one of my friends noticed the music in the background (what is it with me and music?) and they all fussed afterwards because of the talking. As we started meditating, the music was that lovely song from Superman, "Can You Read My Mind?..." I pictured Dora larger than life in her red dress and as she came swirling thnrough the stars, the music changed to "Dancing in the Dark". Emily has a 22-year-old longhair calico cat who usually hides from company. Her hair is so long it sticks out in bunches, not matted, oddly, giving the impression of a creature from outerspace who stuck its paw in an electrical outlet. She meditated with us staying about 3 to 4 feet away until it ended, when she approached to within a foot and meowed constantly for a full minute. A fitting eulogy.

SEDONA

About a dozen years ago, I had the opportunity to take a weekend all expense paid trip to Sedona. Sedona was at the top of my list of places I would like to visit in this country. I waasn't sure i could. Fear of flying is one of my serious issues. When I was 19, I flew from Kansas City to Washington, DC, on one of Howard Hughes' TWA prop planes. The weather was very windy and we bounced down to Washington National like bumping on your bottom from step to step on stairs. On my return trip, it was very cold and we had to wait to be deiced. A woman in gypsy clothing got up and started screaming "Let me off--this plane will crash." Well, that just wasn't much fun. They subdued her but she went off again so they got her off the plane. At Chicago's Midway, there was serious fog, so bad that we had to circle around for a while. We could see planes circling above us and some circling below. Every so often a plane would come shooting up through the fog. As we finally landed, we just missed skimming the top of a chain link fence at the end of the runway. When we took off, we were one of the planes shooting up through the fog. I said, "God, get me out of this and I won't do it again!" I didn't, until Sedona. The reason for the trip was for my boss, Joyce and me to give a presentation at a retreat for State Farm agents at a community college in Prescott, AZ. Joyce can see auras, including those of planes. So I made peace with God, since I knew making bargains with Him was not the right thing to do. I craved chicken wings so ate them daily from The Colonel for a month. Joyce approved the aura, I self hypnotized, drank a glass of wine and traveled half out of it, 1/4 drunk and 1/4 sick to my stomach. The plane shook and made noises as we landed. Joyce must have noticed I was about to panic because she said "wasn't that a smooth landing" and I said "Thank God, I thought we crashed." Prescott was wonderful. I wore Joyce out (she is 5 years younger than I) looking for a wedding gift for a close personal friend of both of ours. The next day we headed for Sedona by way of Jasper the old mining town on the mountain side with a restaurant that featured yummy strawberry pie. Then the hairpin turns to end all hairpin turns down the mountain. Joyce decided we needed water since we were going across the desert so she stopped at the only building there, an old saloon. I waited and waited and finally she came out with an old bottle of pepsi. That's all they had other than beer. We got to Sedona and checked in. Joyce wanted to go to dinner and I could not move or stay awake. When they tell you there are energy vortexes there, believe. We arranged for a jeep trip the next day which was wonderful. We had the first appointment in the AM and were the only tourists our guide had. He took us on a mountain and we sat on the edge of a canyon while he played his flute and the wind whistled in circles around the canyon. Joyce asked why it did that and he said he didn't know, that it never had before. I knew why. It knew me and I knew it. Our spirits were aligned. We walked a medicine wheel. We ate leaves from a bush our guide gave us to atune us to the area. I knew he was trustworthy. Then we shopped all afternoon, met a psychic cat, and found the perfect piece of pottery for our friend. On our way back we saw the cave homes of early natives and had perfect flights.

THE AFFAIR

My daughter thinks I am having an affair with an old man I met on the internet. ME, her prim and proper mother who has never had an affair in her entire 73 almost 74 years! And all because I asked for a picture of their dog. Am I so dully predictable that I can't make one simple request? When I originally asked for pictures of Harry, she asked why I wanted them and I said because I love Harry, which I do. She asked again, so I told her I wanted them for my blog. Oh, boy! Our conversation follows.
Elizabeth: How did you get a blog?
Me: It just sort of happened.
Elizabeth: Oh, my God, you're having an affair with some old man you met on the internet.
Me: Not exactly. I'm corresponding with an old man I've known for a long time and he set up a blog for me. We're not having an affair--he lives in California and here I am in Virginia.
David: Doesn't sound like much of an affair to me.
Elizabeth: Is he one of those people from your highschool?
(She went with me to the 50th reunion so she met "those people".)
Me: Yes.
Elizabeth: OK.
So I guess this means I have approval for a nonaffair. What I didn't tell her and she apparently hasn't noticed is that I automatically flirt with old men. Can't help myself. Discreetly, of course. Sometimes either so discreetly or so poorly that they don't notice either. Oh, well, I can always play my recording of I Ain't Got No Satisfaction.

LABYRINTHS

About 15 years ago I attended a workshop at Unity of Fairfax presented by a young man who had a degree in Sacred Space. Oh, wow! In addition to his presentation of sacred sites throughout the world, we built a labyrinth, which is creating sacred space, and walked it in prayer. Oh, double wow! It makes my soul tingle to think of it.
The labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. Labyrinths are not mazes; you cannot get lost. You follow the path to the center and back out which symbolizes your own transformative journey to your own center and back into the world. This involves your brain in intuition, creativity, imagery and the search for possibility. You can walk alone or with a group, in silence or with soothing music, as a prayer or in meditation, in joy, as a ritual. Walking the labyrinth clears the mind and gives insight into the life journey.
Fifteen years ago I thought of labyrinths as being outside the mainstream of spiritual acceptance. You can imagine how exicted I was 2 years ago to find a listing under the activities section of our local newspaper for a labyrinth at the Warrenton Methodist Church. It is beautiful--a path of flagstones with flowers, shrbs and trees as well as benches. It was suggested to me that pausing at each turn to remember family and friends, dead and alive, was a meaningful approach to the labyrinth. I found it very moving. I like to walk the labyrinth each Eastertime. There are several designs, but my favorite is at Chartres and dates to 1220AD.

WHAT'S IN A NAME

Every family has its nanas and pop-pops and we have our share of those. One of my cousin's children called Aunt Jo "Joann", which makes sense in a dyslexic sort of way. Another called their mother Mary "Mercy" which I always found strangely interesting. But how do you explain my sister calling our grandmother Mary "Ida"? There were family members who continued to call her that until the day they died. Now Julia has renamed both grandmothers and the new names seem to be permanent, Her father's mother, Edna, is now Mimi and I am Nina.
Animal names are always interesting. My first Border Collie was purchased in July. I named Belle in honor of my grandmother because she had such strength of character and steadiness. We had a hail storm. In July. I found my cat, Anna N'Kitty, in the Manassas Mall at an adoption day. Names were required before the animals could be taken, so I looked at my choice and thought what shall I name you and clearly heard in my head "call me Buffy and lets get out of here!" That was good for me. After she settled in my house, I said to her OK, what is your real name and she replied "You will discover it". After much thought, I looked at her blue eyes one day and thought, of course, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes. Now my friends are all intelligent and well read with many interests, but not one of them showed a flicker of
recognition. Nor did my children. So when my son renamed her Anna N'Kitty and one and all finally understood her name, I was relieved not to have to bemoan Judy Collins' loss of popularity every time I looked at my cat. We briefly considered renaming her Hillary to keep up with the times, but she is an Anna through and through.
Then there's Johnny Mercer. After all 3 of my children had seen Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil, I asked them if they noticed that when the reporter came in, t he pianist started playing Johnny Mercer's Fools Rush In. In unison, they replied "Who's Johnny Mercer".
AAAAAAUUUUGGGHHH!!!!!

Secret Garden Meditation

Read this over a couple of times and you can guide your own meditation at your own pace. Use with love.
Close your eyes, sit comfotably and picture a rose with a stem. Look deeply into the rose until you see an opening at the top of the stem. Slide down the stem and find yourself in your secret garden. Look at the colors, smell the fragrance. Is there a path? a bench? It is your garden--create it any way that pleases you.Walk along your path. Sit and enjoy for as long as you like. When you are refreshed and ready find the end of the stem and go back up and through the rose at your own pace. When ready open your eyes. Welcome back.

R*E*S*P*E*C*T

An interesting and worthy of note underlying theme in the current political discussions is the issue of respect. When they talk about the old politics needing to give way to a different approach it is glaringly apparent that the old way lacks respect. Gwen Iffill of National Public TV explained it best when she talked about how the constituencies of the different candidates are sensitive. If a remark about Hillary is the least bit demeaning to women, women in general are energized to support her. Similarly, African-Americans hear slights in words that were not intended to do so. Sensitivity to our actions and words needs improvement from everyone. This situation spills over into the general consciousness and people find themselves dealing with all facets of respect in their everyday lives. God bless Hillary Clinton for enduring the insults aimed her way so that women will eventually be respected in the workplace whateveer path they choose. So please work out your individual issues concerning respect so we can elevate the consciouness of the planet and eventually emerge as a world without war, discrimination, or poverty and thus proceed with the evolution of mankind.

Monterey Bay

My father graduated from Wentworth Military Academy in Lexington, Mo. which gave him a Reserve Corp Army Lieutenant's commission. So, when the government began ramping up for WWII, his commissioin was activated and he was sent to Fort Ord, which was in the neighborhood of 1940. I had gone to kindergarten and 1st grade in Leavenworth, kindergarten at the 3rd St (?) school and 1st grade at the old Franklin school. So I must have been in 2nd grade and maybe 3rd in California. I was about 6 and my sister 1. My grandmother came along to help my mother get us to California by train. Many service personnel were being shipped here and there via train which made for crowded conditions on old uncomfortable seats. I remember young men in uniform sitting on their bags in the aisles. Those old trains really lurched about. I was born with motion sickness. I remember negotiating the walk to the diner car with my mother carrying my sister. We no sooner got there than the train lurched and I threw up in some stranger's plate. My poor mother and grandmother! Then my grandmother had to make it back alone, which might have been easier.
We found a furnished house in Pacific Grove that belonged to a self-proclaimed Russian countess complete with turbans and shawls. The countess, not the house.
The house was built around a solarium so my sister and I could run completely around it. We loved it. My mother hated it. She swore the furniture had bugs because of the solarium plants. So we found a nice little rambler, newly built, that sat up from the cove a few blocks thus giving us a wonderful view and friendly neighbors, and the opportunity to play on the beach and see the fish from the glass-bottom boat. There were floor to ceiling windows at the front corners of the living room which we had to cover with black paper during the blackouts. There were fire wardens that were stationed on roofs to watch for enemy planes. There were designated safe houses on the way to and from school. Our car had yellow fog lights because you were not allowed to use regular lights at night. You could see lights flashing out to sea from the hills behind Pacific Grove at night. The rumors were that Japanese submarines were out a little way getting and sending messages by flashing light code. One day my mother was bringing us home from town and as she was unlocking our door 2 military planes swooped down just outside our cove. The ground shook from an explosion. Rumor had it a Japanese sub had been destroyed and that bodies later washed up on shore. I have no clue if was true. The next door neighbor's daughter was a Rose princess. She and her boyfriend would take me with them to the movies and sit in the back row so they could smooch through the movie much to my disgust. I wanted to sit where I could see the movie better. One beautiful sunny December Sunday my mother was cooking dinner and my father was out washing the car when the nessages came over the radio for all military persnnel to report for duty. They sent my father to a muddy tent camp near San Luis Obispo and promoted him to Captain because the Westpoint grad in charge could not control his men. They trained in desert warfare. We found a bungalow on the ocean outside of town with our own private beach. It was foggy at night; you could hear the foghorns. My mother must have been terrified because there were alll kinds of rumors about Japs coming ashore. We soon moved into town to a stucco duplex with poinsettias growing in the courtyard and located across the street from my school. They shipped my father's outfit to the Aleutians with their desert gear. He was wounded, thus earning a Purple Heart, and, small wonder, suffered frostbite. The wives left behind banded together for moral support. I don't remember many children other than one family with two boys about my and my sister's ages. One of the wives was very pregnant so my mother took her under her wing. I remember taking her to the hospital and staying in the waiting room until she produced a big healthy boy. All the wives made sure everyone got on their ways home and we eventually came home to Leavenworth via our car, bringing another army wife to Nebraska on the way.
I have so many more memories about that time I think I could write a book.

Beaches

I'm not really a beach person in the usual sense. I like to be able to see whats in tke water I'm in. Also, by the tiime you reach our age, bathing suits are better worn in private. And then there's pollution. Not to mention sunburns. The Maryland beaches are not my favorites, but certainiy Rehoboth beats Ocean City. Virginia Beach is my pick and October is the perfect time to go there. Actually, October is the perfect time to go anywhere in Virginia. There's Williamsburg nearby and lots of really good seafood restaurants. Then there's the Edgar Cayce Institute with a lovely meditation room that looks out over the ocean and a lunchtime prayer group. I had a really neat experience meditating there and projecting my thoughts out to the ocean where I imagined I was with a school of dolphin. After I left, I drove up the beach and stopped to walk by the ocean. Five dolphins swam by and just as they got in front of me the middle one flipped up and over and chattered at me.
I spent a miserable weekend in Ocean City about 6 or 7 years ago. My son-in-law, David, is a project manager for Balfour-Beatty Construction (formerly Centex Commercial Division) and they had a team-building week in Ocean City so my daughter Beth, her daughter Julia who was stiil a baby and my other granddaughter, Peyton, who was a toddler went down for the weekend. We had a good trip down and a wonderful meal at an off the main drag restaurant known only to the locals The motel was a little difficult with the kids because it had only outside big wooden steps and we were on the third floor and we had to go out to get to each others rooms. We woke up to a downpour Water was up to the curbs and flowing like streams The parkiing lot was ankle deep and everything and everybody was soaked.
There were a lot of young people around and they played in the streets including one who wore a yellow feather outfit like Big Bird, so we were somewhat entertained. Poor Peyton kept saying When are we going to the beach and it was hard to explain we were there and we were only a block off the boardwalk. We finally waded through the parking lot and went up near Rehoboth for lunch, soggy as we were. The rain stopped just at dusk so we had some time on the boardwalk. Fredericksburg is just half an hour from me and Colonial Beach is on the Potomac not far downstream from there. They had some good seafood restaurants there and its a more low key place, so we enjoyed it, but a hurricane a few years ago pretty much destroyed it and I haven't been down since so don''t know what they've restored.
Are you close to the ocean and do you go to the beach? Do you have a favorite?

Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day--like writing a poem or saying a prayer.

--Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Strange Beliefs

You know how we have strange beliefs. I've heard happy the bride the sun shines on and blessed the dead the rain falls on so much that I think Oh,Oh when it rains on a bride and I worry about the dead the sun shines on. We had a drought breaking 3-day rain for Teddy's funeral and I sat and cried all day and I'm at peace with it. I think she somehow knew it would be her last reunion and I know she died happy.

Computers

My computer knowledge is limited. With State Farm and then Nationwide we had in-house systems. I did take an Infomation Technology certificate course at our local community college about 20 years ago. Twelve hours of straight A. My daughter and one of my sons were at Virginia Tech at the time and it was wonderful to say what are your grades; here are mine! I looked at google earth and didn't know what to do with it, plus they made it sound like I'm a voyeur for using it and I just wanted to see my old house.

Grand-Thinking Mayor

George B. Fitch has always aimed high. As mayor of Warrenton, VA he has increased services while dramatically reducing taxes. He mounted a spirited campaign for governor in 2005. And years before, he founded the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team, whose story of beating the odds was adapted into a Disney film.
But his current plan might be his most ambitious undertaking yet: to make his rural town of 8,000 residents energy independent before he leaves office in 2010.
The keystone of what Fitch calls his "low-carbon diet" is to build a $30 million plant at the county dump, which would chew up garbage, construction waste, agricultural residue, manure and other materials referred to as "biomass" and spin it into electricity and ethanol.
He reckons that his plant would generate 10 million gallons of ethanol a year and enough electricity to power every house in town with minimal greenhouse gas emissions and no use of fossil fuels.
All of this he hopes to accomplish without raising taxes or taking on debt. Moreover, he said, it could earn the town a modest profit.
"You don't have to be a big fan of Al Gore to realize that this is critical to our community and our national security," said Fitch, 59, a self-described fiscal conservative who ran for governor on the Republican ticket. "This is a sound and necessary investment that will ultimately pay dividends."
Fitch has developed a strategy to fund the project, aligning it with federal priorities to increase the chances of getting grants and loan guarantees. He plans to aggressively pursue private businesses and large energy and oil companies to invest in the project.
It is part of a larger Green Warrenton initiative, which includes instituting environmentally friendly building standards and using solar power and other technologies on government buildings.
If all goes well, Fitch said, a new plant could be up and running in three years, just in time for the end of his term. He has said he will not run again.
The town plans to launch a $50,000 feasibility study this spring. Although many industry specialists have seen promise in Fitch's bold idea, the mayor acknowledges that there are many unanswered questions, including whether the project is economically viable and whether the technology will work.
The unlikely initiative has already stirred some excitement in rural Fauquier County, where Warrenton lies, about 50 miles west of the District -- but the residents of this solidly Republican farming community in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains don't want to be called "environmentalists."
"My idea of an environmentalist is somebody who wears Birkenstocks and carries a knapsack and has too-long hair and spends his free time working for the Sierra Club," said John "Sparky" Lewis, a longtime Warrenton Town Council member. "But I have a great respect for the land, and I think we could all be better stewards of it."
When Fitch unveiled the first inklings of his plan to the Town Council several months ago, the reception was less than warm, Lewis said.
"I thought he was nuts," he said.
But Lewis and others have been swayed, not only by Fitch's promise to spend very little taxpayer money but also by a recent effort by the Bush administration to encourage alternative energy sources that could, among other goals, reduce the nation's dependency on foreign oil.
A key component of President Bush's plan is ethanol, a gasoline substitute primarily generated from corn. Researchers have devised ways to create it from biomass -- agricultural waste, some types of trash, manure and crops such as switch grass, which is native to Virginia. That technology has yet to be tested on the scale that Fitch envisions.
Some renewable energy specialists say the Virginia Piedmont, with its wide-open spaces and proximity to dense urban areas, is the perfect launching point for the nation's renewable energy revolution.
Jeff Waldon, executive director of Virginia Tech's Conservation Management Institute, says the southeast will eventually become the nation's "biomass basket." Its soil and climate, he said, are ideal for ethanol-producing grasses. An advantage particular to Northern Virginia is its proximity to urban markets.
All that could help revive East Coast farms, which have been struggling to stay economically viable, he said.
"There's some really interesting thinking going on, especially in the agricultural community, and that's what's really exciting to us," Waldon said.
Some national security experts have been calling for the decentralization of the electrical grid, leaving it less susceptible to terrorist attacks. That has made Fitch's plan, which calls for the production of electricity in addition to ethanol as part of a joint process, appealing to his conservative constituents.
Local farmers -- by all accounts a conservative bunch not beguiled by a lot of technology -- are casting an optimistic eye toward Fitch's plan, which could offer them new economic opportunities.
"I'm not holding my breath, but I'd dearly love to see them grind up some of that stuff and convert it into a useful product," said John Schied, who owns a cow-calf operation just outside of Warrenton.
But the project's greatest advantage could be Fitch himself. A man of boundless enthusiasm, he is building a $25 million recreation center, paying for it almost exclusively through budget surpluses. Under his watch, the town shrunk the real estate tax by 82 percent without cutting services. His secret, he said, is keeping government small and making developers pay their fair share.
Fitch, an international trade consultant who works part time as mayor, was elected to office a year after moving to town in 1997 with his wife, Patricia. For most of his life, though, he lived in Asia. He was born and raised in China, where his grandfather was a missionary, and studied pre-law in Singapore. Before entering politics, he embarked on an effort that has become a symbol of his imaginative, out-of-the-box approach: He cobbled together a bobsled team in Jamaica, sending four warm-weather athletes to the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, Canada.
A run for governor in 2005 didn't end as well. He was trounced by the Republican nominee, then-Lt. Gov. James W. Kilgore, in the party primary.
"George is a man of many ideas," said county activist Kathleen King, who supports the initiative. "As with most of us who have fertile imaginations, some of George's ideas are better than others."
Last month, Fitch spoke passionately before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about his proposal, urging panel members to offer incentives to communities to take similar risks.
"Local communities like ours are the answer to decentralization," he told the assembled legislators. "Don't forget about local communities being a major player in the effort to create more renewable energy."
He brushed off skeptics who point out that the technologies he is investigating are unproven and that what he envisions hasn't been done anywhere else in the country. With wise financing, the economic risk to the town would be nil, he said, so why not give it a shot?
Somebody, he said, has to take the first foray into a greener future.
"Everybody is waiting to see if these technologies will work," he said. "My view is, I don't want to sit on the sidelines. I don't mind stepping into the water."

By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer