Catching Up

Just to catch you up. We've been working on finishing school, enjoying the beautiful weather (well except for the absurdly hot week), trying to do the finishing touches on "moving in", basically organizing better and doing some decorating. We're also heading into our months of birthdays. Thought I'd share some of our spring with you all.



This is our house, on a cloudy day. We finally have a paved driveway and some "grass".

We have a wild hedge that borders are yard, between the trees and the grass. Lots of wild life and wild plants and flowers. The entire back of the lot is full of these wild roses, they are beautiful and fragrant, can even mask the aroma from the neighboring cows ! The are as tall as I am and home to lots of birds, chipmunks, gophers, bunnies, some turtles and at least one black snake. Or that's what we've seen so far.

The roses are even growing up the trees on the side of our yard.

We also have some wild blackberry bushes growing in the hedge.

Here is a close up of the blooms, pre berries.



The gophers here are gigantic. They are the size of a large house cat. We have two who live in our backyard, and they are quite funny to watch. When startled they try to run, but can really only muster a very fast waddle. They are quite playful. If you look closely you can see a cow peering through the fence, from the farm behind us.

Do you see anything??? If you said "rabbit ears" , you're right.

Our friendly cows. We've enjoyed seeing many new calves and watching them grow. We've also learned that cows really bellow, not "moo" and they can be quite loud.



We have a Piliated Woodpecker living in an old tree in the far corner of our lot. I captured a picture of him while he was snacking. They are very large and have a bright red crown on their head and they are very loud when pecking. We had one in our old yard and were thrilled to find one here as well.

Not to leave out our night time discoveries. We saw this Lunar Moth, though the other side is a beautiful emerald green, it was pretty cool to see the underside so up close.

We live situated between the Appalachian Mountains and the Alleghany Mountains, and that apparently can make for some interesting weather. We have gotten quite a lot of rain, and the storms roll in quickly and then leave the same way. It makes for some very pretty skies. I like seeing the clouds rolling lower than the mountain top. The pictures don't really show the deepness of the purplely blue sky. These were taken from our front yard. The mountain, is Massenutten, which is the closest to us, about a 15 minutes drive. There is a nice resort, indoor Water Park, trail riding for horses, golfing, and of course skiing.

The storm passes and then the sun shines brightly, making for a wonderful blue sky. This is from our back deck.

Just some more views from our yard, so you get an idea of what it's like. Until you come and visit and get to see for yourself : ). These are our backyard, taken from our upper deck. You can see the dairy farm and the mountains to one side and then the forest to the other.

Mother's Day

Of course we have like 8 takes, this one is the best of us, but has the big flash reflection. The others have no flash but at least someone is not looking, not smiling, not happy.... But a shot of me and my gang of four.

Frontier Museum

This is a neat living museum not far from us. It shows the frontier life from various countries, with period actors sharing information and demonstrations. The buildings are all original to both the country and time period they represent. Most of the homes are from the late 1600's and early 1700's. The American homestead area is being renovated but had homes and buildings from the 1800's. All the homes are furnished with period furniture and accessories. It was a beautiful day and we went because it was sheep shearing time and this tied in great with one of the books we were doing in school.

The shearing took place in England. They had both the american sheep and the traditional Cotswold sheep from England. It was amazing how the sheep just hung out while being clipped.

The girls got to participate in the cleaning , carding and dyeing of the freshly sheared wool.

We also got to see how they spun the wool into thread and then wove it on a loom into fabric.

On the Irish homestead they were demonstrating how Flax is turned into a fine thread for making linen cloth. It is very labor intensive. The girls got to try their hand at it.

They also had some traditional Irish music being played indoors.

Of course there were many animals to see, much to the delight of Aaron. The lambs were very fun to watch and very playful.

The German homestead had an assortment of very colorful roosters and chickens.

The Cotswold sheep from England

The Iron Smith's shop. He was fun and informative and showed us how to make several of the needed items of the period. It was hard to get some good pictures due to the smoke from the wood burning.

There are huge bellows behind the chimney, used to control the fire and the temperature. The Iron smith operated them with the lever just above his head.

There was a nice pond with ducks that we enjoyed feeding. Aaron wanted them to eat out of his hand, though was still thrilled with them coming close and eating at his feet. Hannah took this picture, it's nice to have another photo taker, so I get to be in some pictures.

The English homestead. We decided that the bed quarters for all the houses were quite small. Some of the adult beds didn't look like you could lay down in them. And we found out they didn't'. They usually slept semi upright , to help with breathing and respiratory issues due to sleeping with a burning fire in the room.

This was the nicest bedroom we saw, with a child bed underneath.

Wildflower Walk

We went on a beautiful walk that ran along a mountain stream, it was filled with a wide variety of wild flowers. Here are some pictures from our outing. Some are not so good, as I was taking pictures while slinging Caleb, so between the wind and Caleb's interest in my camera lense cover dangling near him, my point of focus was often changed during the picture taking.

I just love the sound of the water flowing and babbling over the rocks.

Virginia Bluebells

Delphinium???

Fringed Woodland Iris

Star Chickweed

There were lots of Trilium all over, growing in groups and some were over 18" tall.

White Trillium

Red Trillium

Pink Painted Trillium

Wild Geraniums




Lauren found her name on the side of a tree, she thought it was wild to find your name on a nature walk, but then decided she didn't like the fact that someone used "her" name to hurt a tree. We have to try and find the names of the rest of these and others that we have found since. Hope you enjoy our little walk.