Mountain Weekend again

We went back to the mountains on Thursday night last week for another long weekend. It is now deer season, and opening day for bow hunting was Saturday. I went along with lots of projects to amuse myself, but, turns out I didn't need a thing.

Charlie and I went on a few rides up the mountain...no bears on the stealth camera this time. We walked down a hill to some big rocks overlooking Peak Creek in a beautiful spot. Here I am perched on a rock on the ravine.

On Saturday, Charlie hunted early in the morning, and in the afternoon he got ready to mow grass and I got ready to try a project with Sculpey Clay.

I have never used polymer clay, believe it or not, although I have watched hundreds of episodes of the Carol Duvall show on HGTV. I found that it was NOT easy to soften the clay by hand-kneading. I fashioned a rolling pin from this roll of tape with a handle, but it was slow going. Now I see why they use pasta machines to condition the clay.

I had only worked with one fourth of one package, when I heard the sound of heavy equipment coming our way. I was so excited when I discovered that our neighbor Ricky and his uncle Gary decided that this was the day they would help clear off the scraggly trees and pines from our hillside above the pond and driveway. We were so excited!

When we built our cabin, we had to start from scratch with building a road, having gravel added, clearing the lot, planting grass, etc. All around the house it is just rustic woods. But when they added a pond below our cabin, we could hardly see it because of all the trees. All we wanted were the big oaks and maples, the hemlocks and rhododendron. Here is the hillside before. You can see blackberry bushes coming right up to the lawn, and lots of skinny tree trunks that could not compete for sun.

Ricky started knocking down and digging up pine trees with his shovel.

Charlie would wrap a chain around the tree trunks that had been felled, and then Gary would haul them off with his bulldozer.

Now it is nicely cleared out all along the driveway, and we have a good view of the pond. I am so grateful for friends with power equipment that are willing to help out.

On Saturday, I spent the whole day with my father, who was just getting out of the hospital last time I saw him a week ago. What an improvement a week makes! He was well enough to go out to lunch with me in Blowing Rock, run some errands, visit a friend in the hospital, and do some things he wanted help with on his computer. I am so thankful to have my daddy back in pretty good health!

This picture was taken at the parking lot at Canyons, where we ate lunch.

During the Saturday afternoon hunt, I walked around by the creek and took pictures. This is a native plant called Jewel weed, the leaves and juice of which can be used to ease itching from poison ivy or bug bites. It often grows along creek banks.


These are buds of the deadliest plant in North America...water hemlock. When it opens, it looks very much like Queen Anne's lace.

This toadstool is the largest I have even seen...a full eight inches across the top.



Once again, we hated to leave the Blue Ridge mountains. But we are going back next weekend!

Mountain Fun

It was another gorgeous weekend in the North Carolina mountains. Charlie and I went up on Thursday night. On Friday afternoon, we got to meet my newest great-niece, Lacy. Sixteen days old! What a sweetheart! I caught her smiling in her sleep in this picture.We did not have our grandchildren there this time, but we enjoyed watching everyone else's.We spent lots of time fishing in the pond, putting our chairs in the creek and watching the little ones, and of course, riding up the mountain on our Gator. The weather was sunny and warm most of the weekend. Look at the happy clouds and blue sky!Mother Nature decorates the Christmas trees in the field during the summer.

So pretty on the mountain! Charlie and I picked blackberries on Saturday afternoon, and Mary made a cobbler for dessert. I did most of my picking from the Gator, since at our first stop I almost stepped on a very big snake. Just a black snake, but ....The wildflowers were abundant, with lots of black-eyed Susans.

We took one more ride on Sunday afternoon, and it looked like we might get a storm. Look at these scary snag trees!

This picture reminds me of the John Denver song: "There's a storm across the valley, clouds are rolling in..."

However, we only had a few sprinkles before we left for home. We stopped in Cary for a birthday dinner with our son Dave and his wife Emily. Here they are with their new ECU flag.

Dave wanted us to try some Thai food and Sushi for his birthday dinner...something we normally would never had experienced. It was an excellent delight!

Tired today...I have a customer's Christmas quilt on the Gammill today, so I guess I know what I will be doing!

Wildflower Walk

I am so lucky to have a nice street with lots of nature to view when I am walking my old doggy. There are fields, woods, ponds, and creeks, affording all kinds of flora and fauna. In the past week I have seen two male redtail hawks performing an airborne battle over a third, presumably female hawk; two little tweety-birds chasing a great blue heron through the sky, and almost stepped on a brown water snake wriggling through the grass near the pond.

The divinely sweet smell of honeysuckle is permeating the air with intoxicating scents.

It tends to be very invasive around here. It winds its way up bushes

, trees, fences

but I don't care since it smells SO GOOD and attracts hummingbirds and butterflies.

I noticed a field of daisies in the new, still uninhabited neighborhood down the street and hiked through the tall grass to get a nice close-up.

There is also a bluish-purple wildflower growing in one of the empty lots in the new neighborhood. I think it is a type of vetch. Very unusual color!

And it is always fun to see what is going on in the ponds around the neighborhood. This one is where the ducks like to hang out, not to mention turtles and frogs.

We are off to the mountains again as soon as I get off work this afternoon. It will be a three-day weekend since we celebrate Memorial Day on Monday.

Last night at guild, our speaker was the founder of a non-profit organization called Military Missions in Action. You could have heard a pin drop in the room as he spoke of the organization's work to modify homes for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In my twenty-one years in the guild, I don't ever remember a standing ovation for a speaker until Mike Dorman spoke last night. In honor of Memorial Day, you may want to visit the website, see the great work these volunteers are doing to help our young people suffering from loss of limbs, head injuries, or even post-traumatic stress disorder, and see if there is some way that you or your organization can help out. The guild has chosen MMIA to be the recipient of our Heritage Auction in October. I am going to get busy making items to sell at the auction.

Come With Me to the Mountains

We had another wonderful weekend in the North Carolina mountains starting on Thursday. The weather was perfect- warm and sunny during the day and cool at night and in the early morning.We took several of our usual rides over the mountain and through the Christmas tree farms (with permission.) Here is the bridge over the creek at Grizzly Glenn's, where we saw the little fawn last weekend.
It is high summer in the mountains, with explosions of color and flowers everywhere you look.
Here is my personal contribution to the colorful flora and fauna. I planted three mums last fall in eight inch pots. They are now big, fat, towering bushes. I also put in some zinnias and marigold seeds and stuck in some impatiens and ferns when the mums were still dormant, and they are totally dominated now by the mums. Do you see Maggy greeting you at the back door?Speaking of back doors, look what was lurking between the back steps. This is an insect called a "walking stick," hard to spot due to their great camouflage. This one appears to have lost a leg. I wish he had been there munching insects two weeks ago- I was pulling out the grass behind the steps and got stung by a wasp.
Although it mostly looks and feels like summer, there are some changes coming on: look at the red maple leaves below our cabin near the pond.
And these are at the edge of the woods in my back yard.

These wild-looking fuchsia seed pods are from a native magnolia next to the cabin. They look like they belong in the rain forest.

Our plans for Saturday were supposed to include a pig-picking at the home of our college friends, Tom and Vickie in West Jefferson. We ended up not going, because my brother-in-law Kenny and his brother Ricky decided this was the day to build a dock on the pond next to our driveway. Poor Charlie spent the afternoon standing in cold mountain water holding the posts. They had a brilliant idea to use the pressure washer wand to drill down into the silt at the bottom of the pond to sink the posts. It worked!Once the posts sank in a couple of feet, Ricky hammered them in a little deeper with a sledge hammer. Now we have a solid dock for fishing, sunning, or just climbing out of the pond without sinking in the muck.The rope across the middle of the picture is where they have hung a deer feeder. It is filled with fish food and is timed to go off twice a day. We stocked the pond with baby bream, river bass, catfish, and two koi. The fish now follow us around as we walk around the pond, hoping for a handout of fish food.

Speaking of deer feeders, Charlie put one up near the stealth camera that he installed last weekend. Friday morning we checked it and were thrilled to find 68 pictures of deer, squirrels, and raccoons enjoying the free corn. We checked it again Sunday, and found 175 pictures, mostly of does and spotted fawns. It is pretty cool, because at night the camera takes infrared pictures. It also tells the time and date, and records the temperature.

Of course, Charlie was hoping to capture a photo of a big trophy buck, but if there was one around, he was camera-shy. Except, for some reason, we think one of these might be a boy!

That's it for this week's edition of mountain fun. We are probably staying home for Labor Day weekend to get ready for some remodeling at home, so these pics will have to last me a while!