Mountain Musings

17th Year of Gardening!

It's hard to believe this begins our 17th year of gardening in this location. Those years equal a lot of weeding, planting, mulching, harvesting, canning and freezing (and enjoying!)...and starting the whole process over again!

In almost 40 years of marriage we've lived in many places across the state of Virginia...Hampton, Newport News, Richmond, Charlottesville (Afton Mountain), Williamsburg, and Staunton.  The first year we started a garden was in Afton in 1990...it wasn't productive with very poor red soil. I was told it was quite pitiful actually. But it was special because it was our very first.

Fast forward to 2002 when we moved here to the Shenandoah Valley. With space for a garden finally, we decided to try again! Hannah was our Garden Girl and loved helping get it started.

Here's an old picture I pasted in from March, 2010, when the picket fence was first installed. The garden had already been established for several years, and the chicken wire around it was old and rusted.

This was one of my favorite days of all time....so many spring chores were getting accomplished, and I was getting a picket fence! Jonathan and his friend, Erich, helped a lot.  It's 9 years later, and that picket fence is now peeling and looking quite dilapidated (as you can see below)...and needing a new paint job. That's next on the list. 

Here's a view of our two fenced gardens taken this morning...the picket fence garden and the larger two-board fenced garden which I've been priming and painting for the past two weeks. Three sides are done with the fourth yet to go. What a job!  This year some of our raised beds needed replacing so Tom got busy making a couple of new ones:I love having a retired husband and a woodworker ready to do anything when needed!

Below: one of those new beds is now installed here in the picket fence garden, and Hannah just yesterday planted lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, radish, kale, sugar snap peas, and turnips (only for the greens)...all in this one 15 x 3-1/2 foot bed! The other replaced bed was here in the bigger garden for the blueberry bushes. It's 16 x 4: These blueberries hopefully will love their new borders and produce well for us this year. Additional soil, some amendments, and weed pulling still need to be done in this bed:
Tom also re-installed the birdhouses that were taken down when I started painting. I hope I didn't keep any bluebirds waiting to build a nest!

I see some rhubarb ready for picking in the distance in the photo below. Hannah mentioned making a rhubarb dessert for Easter.

So much work still to be done out here...the strawberry and asparagus beds are an absolute mess! Just being honest.

My goal is to be done with the garden clean-up, painting, and maintenance projects by Mother's Day. And then comes mulching all the regular flower beds. Hannah's goal is to put in all the warm weather transplants and seeds by our area's frost date of mid-May.

I'm looking forward to seeing all the flowers grow up around the picket fence garden again this year.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him;  and with his stripes we are healed. ~ Isaiah 53:5

Have a blessed Easter weekend! 

~Deb

Birthday Outing and Adventure at Appalachian Piecework

A week ago my sister came to visit us on her spring break and to celebrate her birthday with us here in Virginia.

We started planning the birthday meal: (Sweet & Sour Chicken from Mel's Kitchen blog), the cake (Lemon Bundt from A Pretty Life in the Suburbs blog), and the outings (The Factory Antique Mall and Appalachian Piecework, which I've written about before when we've shopped there).

Come along with us to our favorite local shop, Appalachian Piecework: Right inside the door we spotted this shaving pony setup -- she was in the process of crafting wooden bracelets: Granny was feeling well enough to go with us this time and gravitated towards the baskets, of course! There were many different ones!

Here's the write-up describing this particular basket: Here's Laurie, the owner and folk artist, talking to us about her wares: Absolutely love this egg basket holding spindles! I gravitated to the antique quilts you see on the back wall. Laurie rescues them, mends and launders them, and displays them for sale. The striking red one had a price tag of $750: Quaint and primitive wool coasters displayed in a handmade basket: Another photo of the handiwork displayed throughout the shop...a special method of dying the wool was used on these: Laurie is at work on her loom, demonstrating her weaving. We all thought everything was so fascinating: The scarves were amazing. My sister actually took a weaving class years ago and learned how to do this...so she could understand the work involved and the prices attached! She gave me one of her woven masterpieces back when she made one, a beautiful purple scarf which I use as a long dresser scarf: Appalachian Piecework also carries Hannah's soaps, and here's the display for those: A spinning wheel was also in use in the shop: And here's the black wool waiting to be spun: I thought this custom order below was very special. A person had brought in a variety of old shirts which had belonged to her parents and which were then torn into strips as shown in this photo: Laurie was weaving them into a rug so the customer would always have this display item in their home as a memory of the parents' clothing. That's different!: Here's a picture of the four of us together before we left: What a very, very enjoyable excursion! We all loved it!

Time to head home to celebrate:

My sister, Betty, the birthday girl, is ready to blow out the candles: Let's light those candles! Granny is patiently waiting for her piece: Thanks for joining along on our outing. So glad that my sister spent part of her spring break with us!

~Deb