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Garden geeks
By Carrie | June 23, 2008
We had an exciting venture to western Virginia this past weekend. The main motivation for this trip was Edible Landscaping’s All About Fruit Day. Hoo ha! Well, Daniela and Oak were very excited. Belinda and I became somewhat interested when we heard you could eat fruit right off the trees at the nursery. Ding. So we chowed down on raspberries, cherries, mulberries, gooseberries (OK, I think mostly berries) on the “tour the garden” tour, and then snuck back later to chow down on some raspberries later on while Oak and Daniela were shopping. Don’t tell anyone! They were tasty. Of course, we did end up getting a few plants. Here’s Oak clutching his Kefir Lime plant. We also got a lingonberry bush so we can someday no longer have a need to purchase the preserves from Ikea (or something).
Of course, visiting a crazy landscaping place does not a weekend make. We discovered that this joint is nearby to Charlottesville, which seems to be the land of President’s homes. We chose Monticello, well, because that’s one you see on the back of your nickel. Surprisingly they schedule the “house tours” at 5 minute increments, and we had almost 2 hours until our scheduled time. So we took time to enjoy the grounds tours. Here’s Oak and Daniela internally mocking the garden tour guide, who apparently had no street cred. (YES, we know what kale is! Don’t insult our intelligence.) That did not stop several strolls through the vegetable gardens. Belinda and I secretly wished that Thomas Jefferson was into paper crafting instead of gardening. LOL.
So, you can see how exciting it was to get on the house tour. Besides not being allowed to take pictures inside, this was when my camera promptly decided to run out of battery juice for the rest of the weekend. Let’s just say that it’s much smaller than you would think it was after imagining it on the nickel all your life. There were some very clever features however, like a dumb waiter that brings wine up from the wine cellar, a fancy door to pass food from the kitchen to the dining room without anyone needing to go through the doorway, and a bed that divided two rooms. The entire house was something like 11,000 square feet (counting the basement areas), but it might be the division of rooms (sitting room, tea room, greeting room, etc etc) that made it seem smaller, along with the cattle-hearding effect. Oak really enjoyed that there was a separate beer cellar, though apparently Martha (his wife) oversaw the brewing processes. LOL. All in all though, it was an enjoyable experience. Did you know that Thomas Jefferson didn’t get married until he was 28? He must have been the equivalent of an old maid at that time. Then again, men are never “old maids”; they’re just “bachelors.” How unfair.
After Monticello, we ate at a crazy Mexican restaurant in Charlottesville and then headed up Skyline Drive and camped at Loft Mountain campground. On Sunday we did a 5 mile hike down (and the tough part - back up) to waterfalls - there were actually several sets that were very nice. The “slow hiking group” (I will leave it to your imagination who that included) took many pictures of butterflies, flora, and mushrooms. We found one that looked exactly like Mario’s toadstool, and were tempted to eat it so we’d get Super Powered for the remainder of the hike. Apparently the ticks wanted to accompany us home as a souvenir. Now every time I hear the word “tick” I get itchy everywhere. *Scratch*
Topics: blog, travel, weekend |
June 24th, 2008 at 7:49 am
I’m still scratching and checking myself every 5 minutes…
Next time we hike, we need to get some bug spray.
June 30th, 2008 at 7:12 am
Oh btw, my pics are up