Shindig 2012 kicks off

The weather is setting unpleasant records and wreaking havoc all around the country. We set off for the first Shindig of the season anticipating a sweltering experience. But we had to go - the quilt Cheryl worked on was to make its public debut.  Before the program started the members of Mountain Circle Jam headed over to the sales tents to see how it was displayed.  Here are Cheryl's colleagues Alice and Ann.

You can see the quilt wrapped up on the table between them. (The organizers also have the quilt pictured on the Shindig website.) Studying Alice and Ann, you may detect there is a little breeze even in downtown Asheville, so the evening was not as uncomfortable as we feared.

Here's a shot of the vending area - with Norris bringing our dinners back, unaware he's being photographed.

The program kicked off as usual with a couple of numbers by the Stoney Creek Boys. They aren't getting younger - there's Leonard Hollifield on guitar, supplementing his lung function with portable oxygen.  He can still entertain!

Then we were treated with a clogging performance by an All-Star group made up of members from various teams that perform at all the Shindigs - 

They mainly danced to Glenn Bannerman's calls.  But here's a look at the men showing off their fancy footwork. Akin to how bluegrass music is played with each picker taking a turn at soloing, in traditional clogging there are places where the dancers get to show their virtuosity. In this case, the dancers approach the audience in a line, but each one is doing his own thing.

There are always two regular dance groups at Shindig - and usually one of them is made up of younger dancers. The Cole Mountain Cloggers are a very skilled group with a big range in age.

There's good music all evening, but there's also audience participation. Glenn Bannerman has invented the Sit-Down-Square Dance, so even the less mobile can dance at Shindig - 

Cheryl's quilting doesn't show from the stage - but we hoped the colors and piecing design would and the quilt is successful that way.

 

Cheryl's friend Earl is interested in the hand-made guitar donated by local luthier Caleb Smith. This guitar would retail for about $2500-$3000.  They had Jerry Sutton play it for just a few seconds - the sound was heavenly.

This is what the crowd looked like  - lots of folks who didn't have any special reason to attend showed up in the heat.

 

Study the above shot closely and you can find Norris - just right of center in the foreground.

Here's a view of the stage from the other end of Pack Square after the sun set. You can see the interesting contrast between the classical County Courthouse on the left, and the city's  Art Deco design by Douglas D. Elliott. 

The original plan had complementary designs by Elliott for these two buildings that anchor one end of the park - but this look was too radical for the more conservative County. This view of the decorations at the top of the city building was taken earlier.

Nearby at Asheville City Fire Station 1 were a couple of other listeners.

Buzz

Dorry asked about some of our other flowers and specifically mentioned coneflowers.

 This next shot shows a few other flowers in the foreground, tucked lower in the masses of plants. Unfortunately, you can also see signs of what's to come: towering plants of no special appeal which are bound to take over before long. A local garden blogger calls this "the lush."

This photo was taken in the hopes of showing the bright flowers against the trees - but what really glares is on the lower left - a young tulip poplar is trying to grow out there where we can't have trees. We have problems maintaining this area once the plants start to grow in the spring. The lush takes over quickly.

Dorry also speculated about pollinators - 

You really notice their noises near the front door more than in the meadow.  These yellow flowering shrubs are St. John's Wort.

These plants have more buds than blooms right now. We'll be hearing the buzzing for a while.

Last Good Week for the Wildflowers??

Our wildflower meadow is still peaking, but usually by the first week in July the weeds start to take over.  Cheryl was trimming the flowers on the edge of our steps, so Norris took a few pictures while the flowers are still holding their own against the weeds.  The cut flowers ended up in a bouquet in our kitchen.  Click on the pictures for a bigger view.

Cheryl smiles for the cameraman...

The weather station is still higher than the surrounding flowers in this shot, but only because we have trimmed the tallest flowers that tried to swallow it up.

This shot shows the raised bed garden on the left.  You can see how the zucchini are overflowing their territory.  To the right you can see the new bench at the end of the path.

What goes up...

Earlier today, we took a drive to meet up with a friend of Cheryl's who did the favor of bringing back quilts that were recently shown in Northern Virginia.  We met at the Books and Beans in  Little Switzerland - a cluster of businesses making not quite a town north and east of Mount Mitchell from us (Norris' navigation system  recognized neither the place name, nor the addresses on the highway.)

 

Notice the quilt block in the top middle of the picture. According to the Quilt Trails of Western North Carolina, the block is "Books and Coffee Cups", and I would guess it to have been designed for the shop as part of the Quilt Trails project.

Here is Cheryl, with young Jack, Sarah, and Sarah's mother outside the bookstore.

There's another block from the Quilt Trail behind us.  It is a traditional pattern the Quilt Trails project calls Dream Ship, though it is known by several other names. 

Sarah and Jack are visiting her mother in Shelby NC and no, Little Switzerland is not in the middle, it was a similar distance for both of us and a place Norris and I hadn't been. We enjoyed lunch right next door with them after shopping, but then headed back to Weaverville via the Blue Ridge Parkway.

We didn't stop at all the beautiful scenic overlooks but we took a few photos.  Norris monitored the temperatures as we drove - we started at 79 degrees in Little Switzerland, which is at a higher elevation than our house.

 

There's a lot to see along the parkway in addition to the scenic vistas at the overlooks. It's fascinating to drive under the bridges and through the tunnels when you remember the Parkway is 75 years old and much of the labor was manual, done by the CCC in the 30's and and the conscientious objectors during WWII. 

 

 

Conditions were not perfect today for long range visibility, but everything is green and lush.  There were also some beautiful Flame Azalea and Mountain Laurel still in bloom as we climbed. These are the Black Mountains, part of the Blue Ridge, and they are the highest range in the Appalachians.  

 

Most of these photos were taken looking to the north side of the parkway.

 

Though this was taken looking south. 

As we went up, Norris noted the temperature was dropping.  By the time we got to our last stop, just outside the entrance to Mount Mitchell State Park and 1700 feet higher in elevation, it was only 69 degrees.

But it was all downhill from there to home - where the weather station tells us the high for today was 82 at 2:00.

Know Your Vegetables!

First of all, sorry for the confusion, as far as we can tell, these really are Eggplant Millionaire and not beets.  The blossoms look just like the ones in the seed catalogs and we can't find any beet plant photos with this kind of flower.

Cheryl mistakenly labeled a photo of zucchini as cucumber.  A new photo today of the actual state of our cucumber plants shows we have many weeks to wait before harvest.

Something we never anticipated - we are now likely going to be faced with the Dreaded Squash  Surplus. We ate one yellow squash on Sunday, one yesterday, and I picked these today. We won't be able to keep up.  Last year we had hardly any squash at all but thought we could try again and see if we could do better. We're digging out the recipes and How to Freeze books today.

But what's with the mutant fused Summer Squash-- two blossoms, but the fruit and stems seem to have merged?

Our garden in June

Our vegetable garden has really filled out this year with almost no effort on our part required. 

 Everyone has been asking if the plants in the near corner are beets.  They were labeled eggplants when we bought them, but of course they were very tiny then.  All the guesses started to make us wonder.  Norris can't eat beets, so if these were going to make beets, we were not going to be happy. 

 But we had planted the plant identifier with them, and these are Eggplant 'Millionaire,' looking just like they should. If you believe what you read about them, they should make some nice tender fruits with fewer seeds that even Norris will appreciate. 

We've already harvested a pair of summer squash that got almost too big when we weren't looking. 

We also have zucchini on the way

and cucumbers will be ready to harvest in no time.

 
We spent time yesterday weeding.  The Wildflower Meadow may be at its peak for this year.  In a couple of weeks, we can predict that the less desirable plants will start to tower over the flowers.  But for now we have daisies

 

coreopsis

 

and father from the house some coneflower.

 

The back steps

Weren't we just saying how everyone seems to like the path and steps we had put in back when we moved here? 

 

This is a male turkey we've been seeing around for several weeks already. You may remember Tina Turkey who had Avian Pox and trouble with her feet.  This turkey seems to have an injury to one leg - he hops around, and takes long breaks, which is how it happened that Norris could approach with the camera.  We've been surprised to see this guy after not seeing him for a days at a time, but we aren't feeding him.

 

Today, while Norris was in the studio with Lily, Cheryl was sitting at the kitchen island and couldn't help but notice this new visitor coming down the same steps, then come to check out the feeder situation.  

 

While Cheryl was picking up the camera, she phoned Norris on the intercom so he could witness from the windows downstairs.  The bear was extremely close to the feeder and we really should not be feeding the bears so after just a few clicks through the door ....

 

... Cheryl quickly threw the door open, and that was enough for this bear.  It's incredible to watch how swiftly and gracefully such a large animal climbs up such a steep slope.

 

Cheryl did not go outside immediately to remove the bird feeder, and the bear kept turning around from the stairs to make sure we were still there, so we kept talking on the phone.  This is a smart bear:  it does not want to be a nuisance, but their food sources are not plentiful right now.  The birds are just going to have to do without sunflower seeds as well for a while.

 

Are we going to bore our reader with bear stories?  They may not last long - we have arranged to expand the screened porch on the house.  Our contractor might start this week.  If that's not enough, Norris learned a builder is about ready to start work on a new house in our cul de sac.  As long as there was construction on the street, we saw nothing of our bear neighbors.