We are rarely at Annefield during the week, but we’d made arrangements to stay on from Saturday through Independence Day. A good thing, too, with the now infamous derecho that whacked the mid-Atlantic with a stunning blow on Friday night. Like millions of others we lost power and did not have it restored until Sunday afternoon. While the house is relatively comfortable because of the high ceilings and state-of-the-art insulation, we don’t have a generator, and since we aren’t on a municipal water system, this means we don’t have water. We are now shopping for a generator. This also forced a long overdue reckoning with the freezer. We’d been meaning to clean it out anyway, because a few items in there dated back to 2008. It felt good to purge.

Since we were here for a couple of weekdays, we decided to have lunch at Charley’s Waterfront Café in Farmville so we could see our old buddy Tommy Graziano, one of the owners who you can usually find behind the bar. Tommy is always ready with a quip, a story, or a joke.  He’s hilarious.  But when we arrived we learned that he decided to take a no doubt well-deserved vacation.  So Tommy, if you’re reading this please know we were very disappointed!  Next time we’ll call first.

Charley’s is one of the few good restaurants in the area that serves lunch, and it is open daily, 11 am to 10 pm. If you’re planning a visit to the Southern Virginia Wine Trail, you’ll likely include it on your itinerary.