Spring is perhaps the most beautiful season in Virginia. Sure, driving down Skyline Drive is a treat in the fall but springtime in Virginia is unusually beautiful compared to elsewhere. Yellow daffodils and cherry blossoms, redbuds in the woods and bluebells on the battlefields, the landscape bursts with color after the gray of winter. A recent getaway to Barboursville was no exception.
A vineyard developed around the ruins of a true Jeffersonian mansion, four Doric columns punctuate the boxwood hilltop but forsythia emphasized it that weekend. When they were planted I do not know but these bushes native to Eastern Asia seem to have first become popular along with the introduction of red spider lilies here. While the lilies signal fall for me, popping up without leaves after the first cold rain each year, forsythia counters them by blooming without leaves as well after the last real cold snap.
Romantic minds might fantasize about the brick shell on top of this ancient knoll with its now vacant windows and octagonal room, but the dream is better than reality. A photograph surviving from before its fire shows that the mansion was less refined than Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and rather clumsy looking in comparison. Nonetheless, knowing that somehow makes Barboursville more comfortable to walk around and just enjoy the countryside that can never really be outdone.
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