Annuals

After more rain last night, Cheryl took a photo of the annuals we planted along the entry sidewalk. They had a very slow start this summer, and the marigolds perished early for no apparent reason. They don't get very much sunlight on our slope with all the trees, so we experimented to see what would work. This year was so different, we didn't learn very much.

Impatiens, Dusty Miller and Coleus in the foreground, red salvia over Chester Bear's shouder. Begonia on the other side of the walk in the background.

guided tree walk

This morning, after Norris came back from a fire alarm call (no fire, just an alarm), we went on a guided walk around Weaverville's Lake Louise, led by one of the owners of the nursery that put in most of our landscaping. It promised to be a rainy day, but it was worth the hour under umbrellas. The walk was part of the Weaverville Tree Board's efforts to keep Weaverville's "Tree City USA" designation. Our guide spent most of the time describing the trees the Tree Board is responsible for planting, and the people they were planted in honor or in memory of - so there was some recent local history in the information.

Our guide explained about the effects of this year's abundant rains after the last few years of drought and all the fungal damage we're suddenly seeing on trees. She also talked about which types of trees are good landscape specimens and how they serve the native wildlife - like the berries on this Amelanchier - known as "Serviceberry":


We saw a marker today in an area we had not previously visited, on a small knoll that juts into the lake near the picnic areas.

Asheville Woodworkers meeting

Norris attended the Asheville woodworkers meeting Sat, which featured a shop tour and talk by another of Asheville's internationally-known woodworkers, Brian Boggs. Brian is known primarlily for his chair making. Although Brian just moved his shop and woodworking school to Asheville from Kentucky and many of his machines aren't set up yet, he was glad to give some demonstrati0ns of his techniques. Here is showing the group how he uses his industrial-grade overarm router to cut mortises in chair legs.

He also had a sampling of some of his recent chair designs to show off as well.

update on banjo

Cheryl has created these two banjo videos for some friends on the other side of the world.
We learned these songs several months ago, but Cheryl has spent the last few weeks working on speed with these.

The first song is "Ain't Nobody Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone"




And not quite as strong is her second number, "Fireball Mail"

Chester II

Norris' mother recently asked how Cheryl was doing on the quilt she's making for the master bedroom - this was how it looked yesterday morning. She was going to post this but the bear Norris saw trumped the quilt photo -



Progress continues but there are always customer quilts to work on.

Bear on the road

Norris had an encounter with a small bear on the way home from work today, about a mile or so from our house. The bear was actually pawing at the grill of the car ahead of Norris for a minute or so while the car was stopped, but he got bored with that and moved away from the car.

The bear isn't very large, so was probably born earlier this year. His mother was no where to be seen.

Norris stopped his car to get a good picture, but the little bear didn't want to cooperate and gave a quick grunt and headed off down the embankment.

At least one hummer still here

We thought they might all be gone, but Cheryl just took this picture of a young male perched on the feeder, not being harassed by any of the other birds.

We know this is a young male because he has a little dot of red on his throat where, as an adult, he'll have a bright band to merit his Ruby Thoat name.