Last weekend we visited a furniture store in West Jefferson that is going out of business, and purchased some new bedroom furniture. It is for our home in Wake Forest, but before bringing it upstairs, I decided we had to paint the bedroom. We have lived here since 1994 and never re-painted this room. So, that's what I have been doing this week. No Violette-inspired casbah, just a nice soft creamy beige with off-white trim. I am getting a little old to be going up and down ladders all day and crouching on the floor to paint baseboards- but it is worth putting up with the aches and pains to see the lovely, fresh walls. You may be aware that we have been undergoing a severe drought here in North Carolina, but yesterday it decided to rain off and on again all day. Not the best for painting walls and windows! We are grateful for any relief to our water shortage. It appears to be continuing today, with gray and depressing weather. Since I cannot work on a quilt project due to my painting duties, I will give you a little tour of our mountain retreat in Laurel Springs, NC.To get to our place, you have to cross a bridge over Big Peak Creek.
To the left is the dam, which once powered the old copper mine on top of Ore Knob mountain. The housing for the turbine is still in place on top. When we used to camp up there, the spillover from the dam was our shower! Very brisk even in the summertime.
Here is the view if you look to the right of the bridge.
After crossing the bridge, turn to the left. This is the road we built to our place, but all this land except for our little acre actually belongs to my sister and her husband. They wisely bought parcels of land back years ago and now have over sixty acres.
Charlie always thought this big tree next to the creek looked like a man with long arms, so he got on a ladder one day and added the tree face.
As you ascend our driveway, look to right and you will see the new pond constructed this summer. There is a stream that trickles down the mountain. Some of the men used bulldozers and backhoes to build an earthen dam to create the pond. (We had all sorts of government agencies check it out and give permission.) They just finished raising the dam to its final height, and the pond is now filling in. You can see the trees and leaves reflected in the water. Hopefully, we will have grass covering the banks soon.
One of our favorite things to do up there is ride around on the Gator, especially up to the top of the mountain. That is a great place to view the sunset, smell the fresh scent of Christmas trees, and look
for deer, turkeys, and other wildlife. 
Since there are usually numerous dogs running along ahead of the ATV's, it is rare to actually come across a deer on the path. My dog Maggy likes to be the lead dog. She is eleven years old and has bad hips, but she acts like a puppy up there. Here she is running ahead to the Christmas tree farm.
And when we get back down to the bottom of the mountain, she makes a beeline for a shallow place in the creek for a refreshing drink.
That's it for now- must grab my paintbrush and finish the bedroom!
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