How we weed the front slope

Early on, we tried keeping the portion of our property directly in front of the house weeded by climbing up the slope, but with the Weeping Love Grass providing a nice slick surface and not much to stop us, we'd soon be slipping and sliding, or even tumbling downhill. And then there was the time Norris was attacked by yellow jackets. We have since found a system that helps us to do the work.

Norris does a lot of the ladder wrangling from the lower end, and in several places as we work our way across, we need someone standing on it at the bottom for stability. Norris winds up with that job,  leaving Cheryl to do the climbing, digging and pulling - and occasionally helping to move the ladder from the top end when there's a good place to balance.

At the point pictured above, we're both getting hot and tired.  We have to do this early in the season - later on the yellow jackets will get aggressively territorial.  This link will take you to our story of one battle with them, in August, 2009. We have not had to do that since.

A small survival story

Last spring, we posted photos of a small native Flame Azalea that bloomed near our bird feeder.  That was prior to the screened porch expansion project, which also required the removal of the tree just in front of the baby shrub - see photos from last year at this link.

The tree came down in pieces, dropped from on-high.  Because the tree-remover was working with the house and landscaping on one side, the pieces were being dropped from 40 feet up, right on top of the azalea. I was sad to lose this pretty shrub, but between the house and the azalea, the azalea was going to be the loser.  Then we had the landscaper come in to add the new stone retaining wall, ferns and winter-blooming jasmine, working right on top of the azalea's area. Finally, this winter our deck stairs were removed and there was a lot of trampling about to add in the dry stream bed and water retention area.

But we have good news!  This week we have yellow-orange azalea blossoms between and behind the bird bath and tree stump.

 

Yesterday was the first day that two of the three buds were fully opened - a good three weeks behind last year's two-flower showing.  

Entertainment

The cats and I were rather startled early this afternoon when birds kept coming up to our front windows, fluttering and beating against the glass.  These were larger than our usual hummingbirds, but in flight, I was not sure what they were.  But, a bit later I witnessed these scenes:

A female goldfinch clings to the window frame from the outside.  There's not much of a sill to these casements, but goldfinches are known for their perching and balancing skills.

She was completely oblivious to me and my camera, just a few feet on the other side of the glass from her.  The afternoon sun must have been creating good reflections, so it was as though I was looking at her through one of those surveillance mirrors.

A male goldfinch showed up on the hummingbird feeder and she flitted up to join him.  

The hummers were rather disturbed by these goldfinches perched on their feeder, and flitted about in panic - too fast for me to capture with my camera.  But one of the hummers got brave enough to use the feeder two windows over, and eventually, as the goldfinches carried on their little conversation, the hummers started to use this feeder as well.  You can just see the tail of one of them on the far side of the feeder in this next photo.

All of this activity captivated the furry members of the house.  Lu watched patiently for a while....

Then he slowly approached.  He was very, very stealthy, and again, they were oblivious...

 

...until he leaped up at them.  Then the male flew into the nearby sourwood and eventually left altogether.  But the female kept hanging around, letting me continue to photograph her in her breeding season plumage.  Here she is on the other feeder.

We've had hummingbird feeders on these windows since we moved here almost five years ago.  This is the first time we've seen the finches on them.

Charleston part 3... Fort Sumter

We had tried to take the boat to Fort Sumter island on Saturday, but all the boats had been cancelled due to high winds and waves.  Although it didn't seem that bad to us in the center of town, once we walked down to the waterfront area of Charleston (known as the Battery), we saw some of the wind and waves that the boat operators were concerned about.  In this video, Cheryl gets blown around a little, but just after Norris stopped the video, a big wave broke across the sidewalk getting us both a little wet.  Click here to link to the video on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUQnGrMf_Dw

We had wanted to visit Ft. Sumter during the 150th anniversary of the battle that started the Civil War, but we didn't make it there until this year.  As most people know, the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Ft. Sumter from various forts around Charleston in April of 1861.  The Federal troops had refused to abandon Ft. Sumter and the Confederates unleashed a ferocious cannon attack that eventually led to the Federals abandoning the fort 34 hours later.  There were no deaths on either side during the battle, but two Union troops were killed during the a gun explosion that was part of the surrender ceremony (the first two casualties of the Civil War).  The Confederates then occupied the fort for the rest of the Civil War, but Union forces continually hammered the it throughout the rest of the war as it was the key defense point for Charleston.

This is the view of the fort from the boat as it approaches the dock.  The fort is a shadow of its former self, as it used to be 3 levels high.  The constant bombardment of the fort throughout the war reduced most of the walls to rubble, but the bottom level survived pretty much intact as the fallen rubble covered and protected it. The entrance gate visible where the pier meets the man-made island on the right is the only entrance. It was moved from its original location further around to the right.

Another big difference in how the fort appears today compared to its appearance in 1861 is this huge black concrete building that was constructed in middle of the fort in 1899 as part of the defenses of the coast during the Spanish American war.  This hunk of concrete was officially known as Battery Huger.  The fort continued to serve our coastal defenses through the end of World War II. Today, the interior houses a museum.

A view of the inside of the fort as taken from atop Battery Huger, showing some of the original guns.  You can also see the boat at the dock waiting to take us back to Charleston.

Another view of the interior.

This shot was taken inside the walls of the fort and show an array of original guns in their emplacements.

After an hour on the island, we were herded back onto the boat for the 35-minute ride back to Charleston.  At that point, we jumped in the Jeep and started the 5 hour drive home.  We'll go back some day when the weather is nicer.

Charleston part 2...Architecture

Here are some architectural photos from our walk around Charleston last Saturday.  These pictures were all taken with a cell phone camera, so some of them are not really professional grade.  A lot of these houses date from the 1700s and early 1800s.  You can see a blend of Colonial, Federal, and Victorian styles, as well as some that are just unique to this part of the country.  A lot of them look like they could be in New Orleans.  You can click on the photos for a larger view.

A lot of the side streets are still paved with cobble stones.

We took the picture below to illustrate the sideways-front doors.  A lot of houses don't face the street, but instead face a courtyard with a formal-looking front door on the street side that really just goes to the side of the front porch.

Homeowners keep nice flower boxes in the windows.

Many houses had very lush looking gardens or landscaping in their courtyards.  Almost all of them had gates, so you mostly had to glimpse these gardens through the iron doors.

We really just took the picture below because of the cool looking old tree.

Below is one of the "single" houses, as they are called in Charleston.  Just the width of one room, but usually pretty deep.

We took this picture to capture the fruit tree at the right side of the house. We saw a lot of these trees in Charleston.  They might be orange or tangerines, as both do grow in downtown Charleston.

The house below features the scary looking "chevaux de frise" fences (French for spiked obstacles), which we saw on several houses.  This fence was topped with two different kinds of spikes along the top to discourage intruders from entering your property at night.

 Another of the sideways front doors to the porch.

Charleston Visit - Part 1

We spent 3 days in Charleston, SC this past weekend.  It's something we had wanted to do for some time, but every time we planned a trip, something would come up that forced us to reschedule.  So we were glad we finally made it.  When we arrived Friday, it was already after lunch, so about all we had time to do was a one-hour carriage tour of the historical part of Charleston.  This was not actually our tour group, but another group from the same company.  This company featured mules instead of horses for their carriages.

The houses that we saw on the tour were very photogenic and a lot of them dated from the 1700s, although many have been rebuilt after earthquakes, fires, and the Civil War siege.  We have a lot of photos of these buildings and houses, but we'll post those in a separate blog posting.  For now, we'll just skip on to the walking we did after the carriage ride.  We spent an hour or so walking around the Market District.  The center of the Market area is this building, the City Market, also called the Old Slave Market.  It's not a market where slaves were bought and sold, but rather the market where the slaves did the daily shopping for their owners.  The upper level is now a Civil War museum, but the lower level extends on back for at least 4 more blocks and was full of booths where food and craft items were sold.

After that, we walked to one of the nearby restaurants (Hymans), had dinner, then walked to our hotel and settled in for the night.

The next morning, we had planned to take the boat to Fort Sumter on an island in the Charleston Harbor, but after walking to the departure point, we found the boats had been cancelled that day due to high winds and waves.  So we instead spent most of the day walking around Charleston.  We started with the weekly  Saturday Farmer's Market that is held in a park next to our hotel.

The market featured a lot of vendors selling produce and other food items.  Charleston is in a much warmer climate than we are, so their market had a lot of colorful local produce that we don't have in the Asheville area yet.

From the market area, we had a good view of the outside of our hotel.  The hotel was the original location of the Citadel military college, but before that it was an actual fortress.  It was built by the residents of Charleston to protect themselves after a slave rebellion in 1822.  The small holes you see between the windows are actually gun ports.  We had two of the gun ports in our room on the second floor.

The gun ports are a small opening on the outside of the building, but are much larger on the inside of the 12 inch thick walls.  Here is a picture of the one of the two gun port holes that we had in our hotel room (the white square to the right of the window).

While walking around the market, we were surprised to run into Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who was running for Congress in a special runoff election against former Governor Mark Sanford, who famously lied about hiking on the Appalachian Trail while he ran off to Argentina to be with his mistress.  Sanford then resigned his Governor's post, but was now running for a seat in Congress hoping the public had forgiven him.  Here Elizabeth is talking with a TV reporter, but moments before that she had been chatting with us even though we told her we were from NC and couldn't vote for her.  While on camera, we told her we regularly watch her brother's TV show (The Colbert Report), so we knew about her campaign. The reporter took Cheryl's name and hometown, but since we didn't watch the local news, we don't know if she showed up on TV.

As it turned out, the voters of this part of SC had forgiven Sanford for some reason and he defeated Elizabeth in the election that was held this past Tuesday.

There was a lot of local specialty food available in the Farmer's Market.  Here we snapped a photo of Muffaletta (a sandwich on round flat bread with Italian sausage, olive salad, salami, mozzarella, ham, and provolone), Beignets (a fried dough pastry), Po' Boy shrimp sandwiches, and Jambalaya.  The local cuisine here is a lot like the cuisine of New Orleans, but with more biscuits and grits !

One vendor we couldn't resist was the nut lady.  We bought a big bag of the praline pecans.

After enjoying the market, we started walking the streets of Charleston.  At one point, we stumbled onto the Heyward-Washington House.

The house was built in 1772 and is pretty much in its original condition.  We decided to take the tour of the house since George Washington stayed there for the week when he visited Charleston in 1791.  We didn't take any pictures inside, but here is a photo from their official website, showing some of the spectacular antique furniture they have.

Here is the view of the back of the house from the formal gardens in the rear.

After about 4 miles of walking, we headed back to the hotel, but stopped back by the City Market area for an afternoon snack of pralines.  They were freshly cooked and still nice and warm.

Food is a big part of the culture in Charleston, and we did our part to sample as much as possible.

After our walk back to the hotel, we had an excellent dinner at Virginia's on King, then back to the hotel to end our day.

More posts to come tomorrow.