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.