Tomato Time!

 Mostly, Trish and I grow just flowers in our yard.  But, one thing, beyond flowers, we can’t so without: tomatoes!

For the past weeks our plants have been rewarding us with abundance!

We grow several varieties, both determinate and indeterminate, to keep the season starting early and then lasting over a long time.

The Early Girls and producing multitudes of pound sized fruit; perfect for Caprese salads with fresh mozzarella! A lunch time treat.

The Big Boys are even larger: just the right size for a single slice to more than cover the bread for a great sandwich.  We are also having a wonderful crop of Cherokee Purples, so sweet and tasty.

Then, there are the little babies, about half dozen varieties and colors here.  They make a great snack to just pop in your mouth. Each variety has a different flavor that makes them so interesting.

Not counting these little ones, it looks like we will be picking about two dozen today!  What delicious fun.

At The Swag

 This week Trish and I are at The Swag, The Great Country Inn Of The Smokies.  For the past twenty years I have been coming here two weeks each year to tell stories and lead hikes.

The Swag is located outside my home town of Waynesville, North Carolina.  Its property runs right up against the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and is an area where I roamed, camped and hiked when growing up here. There was no inn here in those days, just wild mountain land.

There are twenty total rooms and cabins here.  It is a destination with rooms including three gourmet meals each day and a variety of activities.  My activities are storytelling each afternoon and what they call “walk and talk” at another time each day.

Almost all the rooms have their own fireplaces which are supplied with plenty of wood each day.  There are also gardens and beautiful views everywhere.

If you want to take a really restful break, check out The Swag.

Iris Time!

 We have a lot of reblooming bearded iris plants around the yard.  Reblooming means that these plants bloom twice each year, once in the spring and once in the fall.

Living where we live, they seem to bloom all year.  We had at least some of them in bloom all winter, but now they are coming into full glory.

We have about forty different varieties and each one has its own color pattern identity.  They are gorgeous and smell divine.

The southeast exposure seems best for them.  There the house and garage block the wind a bit and they get full morning sun and beyond.

I have a whole new bed started also this year with twenty-six more varieties.  They are such a joy and do well on the island.

Easter Eggs?

 When Trish and I are at Walt Disney World, we eat at a variety of places all around all the resorts and theme parks.  One of our nights, we were at Citrico’s, which is at the Grand Floridian Resort.

Something was going on in the lobby that was fascinating people.  When we went closer to investigate, we discovered an extensive display of more than two dozen Easter Eggs that had been created by members of the culinary department

Most of these special eggs were more than two feet tall and totally made of edible material.  The beauty and creativity were remarkable.

The more we looked, the more details we saw. I spent about a half hour studying and staring at these amazing creations.

What we both wanted to see was photos of the creators.  Their names were on their eggs,  it, we wanted to meet them or at least see what each if them looked like.  Maybe a suggestion to Disney!

Disney Adventures

 Trish and I are at Walt Disney World for ten days of fun.  We come here every year to rest and eat and sleep and play.

We are in luck at this time of year because we are here right in the middle of the Epcot Flower Festival.

There are flowers in bloom everywhere you look, and some of the most outstanding are the topiary figures all made of living plant material.

Many of the familiar Disney characters are in the gardens as we walk around.  Here are Captain Hook and Tinkerbell right outside the Rose and Crown pub…a good London setting for the two of them.

Even if we rode no rides, the beauty and creativity of the flowers makes it worth being here.  Since we do ride rides, the flowers are an extra bonus.  We love being here during flower festival as it gives us all sorts of ideas about thinks we can try growing at home!

On the Auto Train

 Last week Trish and I were in Connecticut for a week long workshop that we conduct each year.  The event ended at noon on Friday after which we drove around New York City and down the New Jersey Turnpike where we stopped for the night at the edge of Delaware.  The next morning we got up and drove a couple of hours to Lorton, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC, to get the Amtrak Auto Train to Florida.

We checked in and our car was put on the train to go with us.  The Auto Train is the longest passenger train in the US at three-fourths of a mile long.  It can hold 350 vehicles and 650 people.

We checked in and boarded  our chosen car, a bedroom sleeping car.  It was precious!

Our little room had two beds, a large window with sofa and another chair for viewing, and even a bathroom with a shower.

After we were settled and the train started, we headed to the dining car for our dinner.  We went early as we go to bed early.

While we were gone, our porter made up our bed.  The bottom bunk was plenty big for both of us so we didn’t even let down the top one.  We went to sleep for most of the seventeen hour journey taking us to Sanford, Florida, just east of Orlando.

The cars were unloaded and we were on our way to Disney World for our annual trip there.

There are two trains on this route.  They leave from both Lorton,  Virginia, and Sanford, Florida, at four in the afternoon.  The only stop is for a brief crew chance halfway through near Florence, South Carolina.  They they each arrive at their destinations at nine in the morning.

After our Disney visit, we will take the remain back overnight to Virginia as we are in Colonial Williamsburg next.

Great fun, and a saving of both time and driving.  We will do this again!

First Blush of Spring

 Back home for a few days we are beginning to see promises of springtime.  Our hyacinth bed is all popped up with its hundred bulbs both looking and smelling wonderful.

While tulips and daffodils are a bit behind, we took advantage to do some planting.  Our reblooming irises did so well by blooming all winter that we are adding a whole bed this year.  I think we will have more than thirty colors when they really come to life.

Then…I couldn’t resist getting a head start on tomatoes.  If these do anything close to last year’s crop, we will have more tomatoes than we know what to do with…or maybe we will know what to do with them!  Wait and see.

One more month will make a lot of difference.