Father's Day

Now that we’ve been vaccinated and it feels safe to travel again, I decided that for Father’s Day we would take a trip on the Blue Ridge Parkway that I have been longing to complete for some time.  Last year, as noted in earlier posts, we only took two out-of-Town trips the entire year due to Covid-19.

Our daughter sent me Father’s Day greetings, and it is hard to believe that she just turned 35.  I still remember taking her to church on Father’s Day in 1986 when she was only ten days old.  I recall that she was well-behaved for the most part except for a lot of little cooing sounds – we were up in a corner of the balcony where we did not disturb anybody.  Katy has always been a talkative one!

It was raining when we left our house, which was a little disappointing, and the first thing we encountered was one of those big city bus-sized RVs gingerly maneuvering the multitude of curves between Highlands and Brevard who absolutely refused to pull over despite many opportunities and the honking of the 20-or-so cars behind him.  At times he was going less than ten miles per hour.  But I am striving to become a more patient person and it was good training.  On the same road, we just barely missed hitting a huge deer that leapt across the road in front of us, missing us by only a foot or two.  It would not only have killed the deer, but also totaled our little Mini Cooper and gravely injured its passengers.  We were thankful when the rain began to dissipate, and on the other side of Brevard we found a welcome site parked at the place we had arranged to stop and rest:  the Lobster Dog Food Truck, which sets up at one place or another in the Asheville area, and which we have been trying to meet at one of those places.

We have learned to appreciate food trucks more and more in recent months.  They are quick and inexpensive and usually have a higher Health Department sanitation rating than restaurants.  A lobster dog is a toasted split-top hot dog bun crammed with lobster and mayo, warm butter, and special seasonings – an indulgence on Father’s Day and the best we have had since our trip to Maine in 2016.

As we drove north from Asheville through Burnsville and eventually onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, the rain let up and the sun came out.  Our destination was the Switzerland Inn in Little Switzerland – Milepost 334 on the Parkway.  The historic old inn first opened in 1911 but has seen many improvements since then.  We had driven by the Inn several times on various trips on the Parkway but had stayed there only once and for the first time in 2015.

Inside the inn is a large wood-burning fireplace, comfortable seating with game tables, and lots of bookcases.  A person could happily spend many rainy days without even leaving the lobby itself or the dining room next door.

We had a light dinner and then strolled down the broad lawn overlooking Lake James to the south where a fire pit had been lit.  It was a beautiful place to sit and relax.

The next morning, while we were checking out, I investigated several old photos of the original Inn and the inhabitants of the area.  This striking picture of Isaac Hollifield especially caught my eye.  He was an old-timer who used to take visitors to the camp at Mount Mitchell, and he looked like a real mountain man.

From Little Switzerland, we exited the Parkway and drove on many winding two-lane roads through that part of Western North Carolina known as the High Country, which we seldom visit unless we can stay at a place like Switzerland Inn as a base.  We went through tiny places – some of them containing no more than a gas station – along the way:  Ingalls, Roaring Creek, Cranberry, Elk Park, Banner Elk (not far from that famous Town everybody loves named Loafer’s Glory), finally coming down into the lovely valley that is Valle Cruces, past a stone Episcopal Church and conference center, to the historic Mast General Store, ca. 1909 and listed on the National Register, and its Annex just down the road a bit.  With its wooden floors and old-timey merchandise it reminds me of Mitchell's Hardware in New Bern.

From Valle Cruces, we made our way to Blowing Rock for lunch, with plenty of time to walk around and enjoy this Town that is in many ways similar to Highlands, with a vibrant Main Street and many fine shops and restaurants.  Then we made the surprisingly short trip down Highway 221 to Marion and Old Fort, then down to Bat Cave and Edneyville, finally ending up in Hendersonville.  We both had appointments in Brevard with a young doctor recommended to us – our current doctor in Highlands has left – and it made more sense to stay for a night in Hendersonville, drive to Brevard the next morning, and then return to Highlands, which is exactly what we did.

We discovered a new restaurant in Hendersonville called West First, and we also discovered a new place to stay that we had not known about, a historic rock Inn in the Laurel Park area on top of a mountain called the Echo Mountain Inn.  Originally a private summer home built in 1896, the place went through major renovations in the 1930s and the 1970s.  Small, comfortable, and historic – all of the things we love.

We left for Brevard the next day, were pleased with our new doctor, and finally returned to Highlands on Tuesday afternoon, not encountering any leaping deer or slow-moving RVs on the way.  It was a good Father’s Day get-away!  And now I am checking to see where Lobster Dog Food Truck will be located next.

Our Thriving Gardens

Our own gardens are thriving in mid-June thanks to just the right amount of rain and just enough of the limited sunshine that filters through the big shade trees all around us.  The tomato plants are jumping out of their cages, and the ones that Martha planted up on the deck are as tall as she is.  This is the difference that six weeks of ideal weather makes:

The zucchini (left) and potatoes (right) are doing well, too, although the beans and peppers seem to be coming along more slowly.  The potatoes are especially bushy, and I wonder if they will produce a good crop.  It is always a mystery what is going on underground until you dig them, and I am remembering the old saying, “All plant, no potatoes” taught to me by my neighbor 40 years ago.

I checked the zucchini the night before last and found four large ones that seemed to blow up from blossom to full-size overnight.  There was enough to share with our neighbor, and the other two (see below) provided enough for a dinner of spiralized zucchini with grilled chicken one night, parmesan zucchini rounds the next night, and Martha’s zucchini lasagna the third night – delicious!  They are a prolific vegetable, and the joke is that in zucchini season, you have to roll your windows up tight when you go to church to prevent your neighbors from putting them in your car.

I have seen what looks like deer footprints between the garden beds, so I erected some deer netting around the beans topped with a strip of yellow tape.  I couldn’t find POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS at the hardware store, and besides I suspect (but am not entirely certain) that deer cannot read anyway. 

The perennial flowers are doing well, too, day lilies and clematis in full bloom along the walkway to the back door.

I think I mentioned that we were waiting for a second estimate for painting our house.  It came promptly and under budget, and when we asked the genial Lupe Gonzalez when he could start, he said tomorrow or the next day.  In four days time, two men painted the entire house and garden shed, working long hours.  

When that was done he came by and gave us an estimate on building a carport (also under budget), and when we asked when that work could start, he hesitantly replied, “Next week?” as if we might think that was not soon enough.  Sure enough, a team of men showed up early in the week, cut big square holes through the asphalt driveway for the footings (something I would have been unable to do) and poured the concrete.  The next day, work began on the carport, and in four days was completed except for the metal roof, which had been back-ordered.  What a work ethic these men have!  It is top-quality construction, and they worked long hours, one day working nearly 12 hours.  They walked gracefully around on the roof trusses like mountain goats, unafraid of heights, competently whipping out tape measures and circular saws and power nailing guns.  It is always a joy to watch the effortless motion of competent, skilled men at work.

Work stopped for several days until the metal roof arrived, and we were not sure when it would be installed after it appeared in the driveway one day.  Three nights ago, a Latino laborer showed up at 7:30 p.m. and worked until dark, and the next night he did the same.  He could not speak English very well, but we communicated, I think, our appreciation for his working so late.  Last night, he finished up, and in the dark started to carry my ladder around the house and hang it up before I went outside and gestured that I would put it away tomorrow.  Like the carpenters constructing the carport structure, he was fearless on the slick metal roof.

 We like to take photos of construction projects at our house, and it is always interesting to go back and look at them months and even years later.  Martha found a wonderful program on her phone that transforms a photo into something that looks like a water color, and she has been using it to record these new projects.  Here is the house after it was painted.

And here is our garden shed, which I constructed several years ago and which we normally refer to as a “folly” because it is more a place to sit and relax than a place to pot plants.

And here are two photos she magically transformed of the plants on our back deck – her garden, the one that is safe from predators and gets as much sun as anywhere in our yard.

One of the many things that Martha inherited from her Mom is a little sign that Jane Lewis always had in one of her gardens, and now it has been placed in one of the planters on the back deck.  It’s a famous quote, and I discovered only today that it is by the poet Dorothy Frances Gurney:

 The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

Gardens in Bloom

This weekend was Garden Weekend, with two back-to-back garden tours, one of them right here in the Highlands area as part of a CLE (Center for Life Enrichment) program we had signed up for.  “Gardening for Beauty and Nature” featured a visit to the private gardens of Florence and Tom Holmes, located in the Flat Mountain area of Highlands, presented by local garden professional Canty Worley, whom we know very well (he is also a talented runner) and Florence Holmes, whom we also know.  Many of the participants were familiar to us, too, from previous CLE events.  The home and gardens were new to us, though, and we spent the better part of the morning strolling through the property and getting ideas.

This little area was located down below the house and the main garden, and it looked inviting!  Martha has tried to do something similar with our own property, where you will find old chairs scattered here and there – very nice touches in a garden landscape.

Only two days later, we drove to Asheville, where we spent the night in a motel for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic struck.  The event was the Historic Montford Garden Tour, which consisted of a dozen gardens scattered through the historic Montford District of Asheville, where we enjoyed the fine old homes – some of them 120 years old – as much as the gardens.  There were live musicians at several of the homes, and there was so much to see that I soon despaired of taking photos of everything.  As with the event on Thursday, we came away with many ideas for improving our own gardens.  I found this small decorative pebble feature in a stone patio especially interesting and may try to incorporate it in some of my future stone work.

 We ended the tour by having dinner at a little sidewalk table at a restaurant we were not familiar with called Nine Mile, right in the heart of the Montford district, where we enjoyed Caribbean cuisine.  

Restaurants!  Garden Tours!  It is hard to believe it, but we seem to be emerging finally from a year of quarantine, a year when we very seldom went out of Town.  The requirement to wear masks has been dropped in North Carolina now that much of the population has been vaccinated, and it feels a little odd, and yet very exhilarating, to be cautiously returning to events like these garden tours.