Being a Tourist

Top on the list to tour with my brother and his wife was the Biltmore Estate, which I hadn't been to in over a decade.  As beautiful and interesting as ever!  Other things included hanging at the boathouse and hiking to Pearson Falls.  Cooler than normal weather made walking and touring that much nicer.

The dresses from Downton Abbey were on display adding more to the attraction.  Loved the dresses and jewels!

Hard to top the gargoyles, though!

Blooms in the Garden

A profusion of blooms everywhere from wisteria to dogwoods, saucer magnolias, viburnums, ajuga, phlox, kerria, and lots of old-fashioned azaleas with more to come!  This spring is full of surprises plant-wise.

This week I also made a trip to Atlanta to pick up Zorro who spent the weekend and Daddy wanted a personal meeting.  

I drove two hours north above Charlotte to get Zorro on his transport to NJ and picked up Walker, a Great Pyrenees who needed a home and through contacting my goat peeps, found him a home on a farm in Greenville, SC.  Very busy week for sure. Gearing up to get started on the outside painting.  Our painter "Shaggy" was here and gave us an estimate and we are ready to start.

George, this post is for you!

On Easter we decided to drive to the Gorge Zipline at the top of the mountain nine miles from our house to watch the people zipline.  Getting prepared for when my brother visits at the end of the month, lots of fun things planned.

Very nice place to hang out for a few hours and drink coffee.

Next we went to the bottom, the gorge, to see kayakers and look at moss and wildflowers.  I must say the road up and down reminded me of  the road to Machu Picchu.

Hope my city boy brother can handle some adventure in the great outdoors!

A Touch of Easter

I usually don't do a lot for Easter because in the South it is crunch time for getting your seedlings in and cleaning up the yard.  I am usually in the garden from sun up to sundown from Good Friday until Easter and don't want to be inside cooking.  I do, however, place a few Easter objects about so it reminds me of this holiday.

I found this white plastic bunny at a Goodwill for $2 last year and thought it would look much better painted a brown to resemble a chocolate Easter bunny.

I think he turned out pretty well.  He even has a sheen just like chocolate.  I put some crinkle paper and a dried egg gourd in his basket, but it would look just as good with a few flowers.

A friend has invited us to Easter dinner, so I think I will put these farm fresh eggs to use and have an Easter brunch, maybe at the lake, take the kayak out for its first spring spin!

Maybe something fancy from this wonderful cookbook, a lady that has a bed and breakfast in Lancaster, PA. 

A Doggy Dog Weekend

It all started with getting Athena out of a boarding situation she had been in for six months to a rescue willing to take her in CT. 

Friday I did a four and a half hour drive to the Eastern part of NC to get Athena.  My friend in rescue, Vickie Shutt, lived close by and also had another chow I was going to pick up for a rescue in Houston, so I stopped by her place for lunch.

Vickie is a fantastic cook and baker.  She made a delicious chicken tortilla casserole and below an even more delicious flan cake.  She actually sells these because everyone wants them. 

I couldn't believe the size of the pinecones in her yard, smallest one I got was 7 inches!

Hers compared to mine, big difference!

I wasn't far from the coast, the Outer Banks, flat and boring.  I prefer the Western side with the mountains and the evergreens, but we don't have those pinecones!

This is Sterling, the corgi chow that I picked up at Vickie's.  An odd mix of a corgi body with a chow head, but the energy of a corgi and added energy because he is only 10 months old.  I'm glad he only spent one night here.  He was sweet, but I can't handle energy like that!

Bob spent the night with him in the Tiny Farmhouse.  Saturday we drove to SC to meet Tracey who was going to take him to Atlanta before his trip to Houston.

I dropped Athena off at Double N Stables in Charlotte.  She will be boarded there until Tuesday, then is on her way to CT.

This is Nicole who owns and runs the stables and kennels.  When I got there 7:00 that night, she had two buses loaded with dogs going to the NE.  We were both tired and ready to be done with the day, but I had another two hours of driving left.  She does an amazing job with all the animals, I don't envy her job.

Saturday Bob and Sterling were ready to hit Starbucks and meet Tracey.

You can really see the corgi in him in this photo.

I've known Tracey for quite some time being in rescue, but she recently moved to GA from CT, just months after I moved to NC.  I finally got to meet her in person.  She does awesome rescue work for chows.  It was her turn to have Sterling (ha) for the rest of the weekend.  She told me one chow had puppies Saturday night, her mom came from CT for a visit, and Sterling was non-stop and bothering all of her other chows so she had to confine him.  I don't envy Tracey, either!  It was a good weekend in chow rescue.