Deck Update

Now that the deck crew has been at work for a few days, we thought we'd post a look at how construction is progressing.  All of the new understructure is in place and most of the Cypress floor decking has been screwed down.  The old pine uprights supporting the existing roof have been replaced by cedar posts and the cedar posts for the new part of the deck are also in place, although they are temporarily being supported by 2x4s until the roof trusses are in place.  Tomorrow they should start extending the roof support for the new portion.

Family Reunion for Lily

When we took Norris' mother back to Pigeon Forge where the rest of the family were camping for the weekend, we thought they might like to see how Lily had developed since last October when we got her from Sheri and DeWayne. We thought their daughter Kheley would be the one most interested to see her.

But it seems like her Daddy was the one who really wanted to hold Lily.  Lily was quiet but she did not enjoy the car ride coming or going and spent most of the time we had with the family either as you see her above, or hiding behind DeWayne on the dinette seat.

Other family members were also happy to see what a beautiful cat Lily has turned out to be.  This is Sheri, still wet from cleaning up after their visit to the water park, checking out Lily's pretty face and soft fur.

Lily did come out briefly to see if there was any way to escape all the commotion.

There was not.  Lu was not sure he recognized Lily when we got home.  We're sure Moki still does.

Saturday at the Tailgate Market and Shindig

On Saturday, we took Norris' mother to the North Asheville Tailgate Market to check out the local produce.

Although we have grown a lot of our own produce this summer, its always nice to see the attractive displays of real farmers.  The potatoes in particular seemed very colorful this week.

One of Norris' favorite events of summer is the market appearance of local peaches.  This vendor had a number of different varieties of yellow and white local peaches, only about half of which are shown in this photo.

After a relaxing afternoon at home, we all went to the Shindig on the Green for an evening of barbecue, music and dance.  We have two photos of one of the traditional clogging groups -

 

Cheryl had to post that first photo because that's her clogging instructor Kate showing off her fancy footwork during the King's Highway segment  - and this next one because it shows both Kate and her husband Andy. Kate and Andy don't usually perform with this group, but they fill in when extra dancers are needed.

There was also a Smooth Dancing group from Avery County High School.  Smooth dancing is very different from clogging - the dancers usually have one foot on the floor all the time.  The next photo shows an exception to this rule.  This is one of the top competitive high school teams in the country and they had recently been to Washington DC to perform.

The girls in that group were just beautiful in their red white and blue costumes.

But as we mentioned a few weeks ago, not all the dancing takes place on the stage!  Here are Norris and his mother starting the sit-down-square-dance.

You can't help but smile when you do the sit-down-square-dance!

The next photo shows Ella clapping along with all the audience members from outside the state of North Carolina.  There is a surprisingly large number of visitors in that group.  Ella came to enjoy the Shindig from Georgia.

Hungry, hungry

Norris' mother got to see one of our bear visitors just after noon today.  Cheryl was getting lunch together and spotted this youngster on the back stairs.

Young bear was looking toward the sunflower feeder that Norris just this morning had hung back in place for the goldfinches and mourning doves.  Cheryl called out "bear!" inside the house, which made the bear stop--  providing a photo op through the kitchen window.  Deciding there was no threat, our visitor started coming down to the feeder.  Norris had just replaced the squirrel-proof feeder's broken perches from the last bear visit and he wasn't going to let the bear have it.

 

Norris moved out onto the porch. Just like last time, the bear snorted angrily each time he was encouraged to keep moving by Norris' voice. Ella watched from the safety of the kitchen.  

We have heard that a bear can smell sunflower seeds a mile away.  The squirrel-proof feeder is in the shed until natural food sources for bears are more plentiful again. 

A Visit to the Thomas Wolfe Memorial

With Norris' mother in town for a visit, we tried hard to think of a touristic thing we hadn't yet done in Asheville. We've never visited the Thomas Wolfe Memorial in downtown Asheville, so we headed that way this afternoon.  Thomas Wolfe is the most famous author to have grown up in Asheville and his first book, Look Homeward Angel, was based on his childhood experiences here.  His memories of his youth in Asheville in the early 1900s turned out to not be that flattering to his family and acquaintances and as a result his booked was banned from the Asheville library for a number of years and Wolfe was afraid to set foot back in Asheville for the next 8 years. 

He spent his early years in this boarding house which his mother ran.  The old house dates to the 1880s and is well preserved, even though it is now surrounded by downtown hotels and office buildings.  Tours are given hourly for the bargain price of $1, although it turned out our timing was good as the fee is going to $5 on the first of August.

After the tour, Cheryl and Norris' mother tried out the front porch rockers.  It turns out Thomas Wolfe had a connection to Chickamauga, Georgia where Norris' mother now lives.  Wolfe's uncle was a veteran of the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga and Wolfe turned his uncle's recollections of the battle into a short story.

Day Trip to Tennessee

Norris' sister and family are camping in Pigeon Forge. We were to meet up with them to bring Norris' mother to our place to spend a couple of days with us. We made a detour on the way, stopping briefly in the town of Dandridge.

Dandridge, named for Martha Dandridge Washington, is the second oldest town in Tennessee and wouldn't have been except for how strongly they appealed for this dike, to protect the historic downtown.  The Douglas Reservoir was created in 1942 - the buildings date mostly from the mid 1800's. 

 

This is a view of Main street from the other end of the dike.  The white cupola is the top of the Greek Revival Courthouse and dates to 1845.

 

 

There are a lot of charming buildings, but this one, apparently a private home, was particularly so. It was built in 1848, though obviously, the trim work was added later.

 

But we didn't stay long as we were on our way to meet up with family!

That's sister Marla, recovering from knee surgery but getting along pretty well - then her husband Marvin, their granddaughter Kheley, Norris, and his Mom - standing just outside the brew-pub where we ate too much. This was in one of those areas of a great many tourist attractions, but we had to have a photo of this themed miniature golf course right in the same shopping center.

We had left with three men working on the screen porch expansion project and came home to find the progress.

We also found a goldfinch thistle sack still hanging from the hook, but with a hole in the bottom and muddy prints.  We believe the bear that had a taste of sunflower seeds came back. The bears have never bothered the thistle before.  We guess that's one hungry bear.  Here's a photo we took just after the attempt on the sunflower feeder Sunday.

This bear seems to be smaller than the fellow we show in the photo on the top of the blog.

Deck Expansion Gets Started

The expansion to the screened-in portion of our deck got started today.  Two men showed up and started taking down the screen, railings, and all the exterior trim that had been on the deck previously.  In addition to extending the screened-in portion about 8 feet to the left, they are also replacing all the pressure treated posts above the deck with cedar.  They will also be installing a new type of screening system when they are done.  The first picture is the "before" photo.

This photo was taken this afternoon after they had stripped the screening, trim, and railings.  The cats will not be able to enjoy their open air bird watching from the deck until the construction is complete, so that will be a lifestyle change for them.

The photo below shows the three holes they dug for the new support posts.  On the steps, you can see a small boulder they had to dig out of the hole on the left.  The lower hole is very close to one of the rhubarb plants, so we may have to move or sacrifice it.  It really has not a very productive plant.  The steps will have to be relocated as they will soon be underneath the new deck.

Maybe the construction noise will keep the bears away.  We had another bird feeder raid yesterday.  The bear was convinced to leave before destroying the feeder, but he left under protest as he snorted all the way up the mountain until he was out of sight.

Hummer Babies have joined the party

Until recently, we had just been feeding a small handful of adult hummingbirds this season, which we could accommodate with just one feeder.  Starting around the first of July, many other hummingbirds started showing up.  This is the sign that the first batch of baby hummers have left the nest and are ready to suckle from the feeders along with their parents.  This is pretty much what happened last year too.  This year we decided to document the date as July 1 when the population first exploded (we forgot to note the date when it happened last year).  We now have dozens of hummingbirds, so we have had to put up two additional feeders to handle the crowd.  We are already going through 1/2 gallon of sugar water every other day, which was the same as our peak consumption last year.  Hummingbirds can have two batches of babies every year, so who knows what will happen to our sugar bill if we get more birds later in the summer (we have a fourth feeder on standby).  We hope some of the new crop move on to other territories so the job of keeping our feeders from going empty doesn't become a full time job for us.  Norris and Cheryl already schedule their daily events so that they aren't both gone for more than a couple of hours at a time to make sure the feeders don't go dry

These videos were taken with a cell phone, so they aren't the highest quality, but this first video shows a feeding frenzy at the two feeders furthest from our deck.  The feeders are mounted on our second story windows, so we don't have to worry about bears trying to make a quick snack of them.  You can click on the square brackets at the lower right of the You Tube frame to get a full screen view.

We got a more close up look at a couple of birds in this video.

You'd think the birds just hang around the feeders all day sucking sugar water, but in reality small insects are also an important part of their diet.  They also spend a lot of time collecting nectar from the wild flower garden and from the St John's Wort shrubs that bloom along the front of our house (seen below), although their flowering season is about over.

The Gardens in the Heat

We've had some hot days, but nothing like what some other areas are experiencing. The vegetable garden is still doing well.  Here's an update on our "beets" -

The eggplant looks bigger than it really is in the photo because the photographer was so close to one end of it. We'll probably pick this one and another later today or tomorrow.

The Cherokee Purple tomato plant has a lot of these heavy green fruits..

... while our Mountain Pride has produced two edible tomatoes so far - though we were not the first to get to one of them.

The Brandywine still has only small hard little tomatoes.

Lu, like all cats, is a "strict carnivore" - meaning all his nutritional requirements can be found in meat and fish.  Cats don't have the right enzymes to process plant-based proteins, and can't extract much from grains or vegetables in general.  Although Lu will eat a more varied diet than many of his species, he's really not very interested.  (Well, whatever you smother in butter or cream or cheese, that's another matter!)  He now grudgingly accepts the pumpkin we add to his meals to help his digestion. We can't leave it on the counter to warm up anymore though - Lily will get up there and eat it before it's mixed with the cat food.

Our landscape plants generally have not been discouraged by the heat. This view of the back yard shows the ferns almost hiding the rain barrels. Our landscaper says are these are best crop of any of his clients.

 

For comparison, there's a view of them in Spring 2011 at the link. A few yards away bordering the steps, we have the same type of ferns that were planted at the same time.  These seem small, but they are just more the expected size.

Sorry about the fake rock insulating our well head.  It was put in by our builder, and we haven't come up with anything better.

L is for ...

.... Size Large - starting with Lu who has always been a good sized cat.  Then there are the vegetables we missed the last couple of times we picked:

That will be our second cucumber of the season in the middle - the first was one of the best we've ever had.  The brickbat in the foreground became the star of a zucchini corn bread for our meal last night. Lu just hopes we'll him find something with more protein.

Beech 4th

This is our fourth annual Fourth of July Beech Parade report!

As you can see by the banner that follows the U.S. and NC State flags to lead off the procession, this is the 128th consecutive parade.

As usual, there were kids on bikes and people walking dogs and riding decorated horses....

...and a few modern cars.

There seemed to be more decorated vehicles of various sizes and shapes than usual.  This picture is included for the very young patriot in the front seat.

This group must have been organized - at least just before the parade started.

This was the first horse drawn vehicle we've seen in the Beech Parade.

The Veterans have the only real "float" in the parade.  Behind it are members of the Beech Presbyterian Church in a truck and trailer, with hand-made signs advertising their Vacation Bible School and the Youth mission trip to Joplin Missouri later in the month.

As usual, the Reems Creek Fire Department made up a big percentage of the parade.

Unlike last year, Norris is not wearing sunglasses so you can tell it's really him in that tanker.

But we had a surprise - the Fire Department was not more than half the parade, and they did not bring up the rear.

There was a large group of antique cars, including several of these decked out Model A's.

 After the parade the RCFD Vehicles line up on the ball field next to the Community Center.  There's Norris just getting out to join the crowd.

And right on time, the MAMA (Mountain Area Medical Airlift) helicopter dramatically swoops in.

They land in the same ball field, while fire department personnel keep the crowds back.

But you can see that as soon as they step aside, the younger parade goers are running for their chance at a closer look.