How Does Your Garden Grow?

The landscaping around our new home is lovely. ("What?!", you say?  A "new" home??? It's a long story and you really don't want to know...trust me! 😂) Suffice it to say that the Mister and I became disillusioned with the community where we had chosen to settle.  We were finding that in our travels the extra 5 +/- hours of  driving to get in/out of Florida to be tedious. And, we wanted a house with some property. We were drawn to the home by the scrub oaks and palms, providing dappled shade in the hot Florida sunshine, and having plenty of sunny, grassy areas in established pastures. 

The previous owners were gifted in creating a few amazing garden areas with unique touches. I think their gardens called to me. I never felt a need to dig into the dirt at our Babcock Ranch home...but here, I'm itching to get out there and trim, weed, remove and replace plants!

Here are a few shots of the garden areas when we acquired the property: 

Limestone boulder, decorative cordyline in background, grasses and ??

Leaf shape concrete bird bath made my previous owners

Inviting walkway around the pool cage

Concrete plantar in a metal stand, settled on a rustic bench

Cordyline in a pot near the pool

Northern Florida winter wasn't especially kind to some of the plants in our garden. We had a few nights below 32 degrees. The cordyline and ferns were hit especially hard. The sword ferns received a trim and they are bouncing back...all over the place. The colorful cordylines are just beginning to show the promise of new shoots. I'm thrilled because their color is very striking. 

As spring has been creeping up on us, We have been adding new greenery throughout our yard. 

The Mister & I have begun to clear out the understory at the front of our property, near the road. It's an area with scrub oaks and pines and a few small trees underneath. 

The view to the road. Oaks and pines, and smilax vine that I'm slowly weeding out. The picture shows three newly planted azaleas that will provide us with bright blooms in future springs.

...and two Corgis who love running and exploring our almost 6 acres!

This is "Elizabeth" (in honor of the Mister's mother).  She is one of 6 or 7 camellias we have planted 

Leopard lily that survived the winter

Butcher's Bloom Plasticus climbing an old pitchfork in the garden.

I felt the pitchfork begged for a vine, but didn't want something that would 

take over the pitchfork and bury it under leaves and flowers. This vine was acquired at Hobby Lobby. 

It is an "always-green", and will last years without changing!

The bench along the path behind the pool begged for a flower basket

What is Four?

Have you ever thought of the meaning of "four"? 

Four is the number of:

• seasons in a year.
• corners and sides to a square.
• virtues.
• wives a Muslim may have.
• leaves on a lucky four-leaf clover.
• legs for most mammals. 
• directions of the compass.
• elements, which include earth, water, air, fire.
• letters in the word "four", the only number with this trait.
• significance to the Pythagoreans, the tetrad, the number of completion.

I bet there are lots of others, but for us, number four is our newest home away from home! 

While being "stuck" at Apple Valley Farm Motorcoach Resort, we moved to the fourth RV lot....one that will be ours in a bit! 

Goldilocks and the Three RV Lots

We began our NC visit to AppleValley Farm Motorcoach Resort by renting Lot #133 for 3 nights. This lot had a huge deck with lots of different seating options and two tables! The only drawback was there wasn't much shade.

We decided to change our plans about moving on to Kentucky, and stay here through Memorial Day weekend. We couldn't stay on Lot #133 as it had been rented for some of that time to another person. So, we moved to Lot #107. 

This was a lovely lot with a screened gazebo that we never used as it wasn't too buggy, and actually may have had more spiders inside than there were mosquitoes outside! The lot had large plantings all around and was shady most of the day. There was a nice table and several seating areas. There were also lovely flowers sprinkled throughout the landscaping. A plus for this lot was that it was closer to the dog park, and since I had hurt my foot, it made it easier to get the dogs out for a bit of a romp. 

Icing my foot after spraining/straining some tendons.
The "shoe" I'm supposed to wear is waiting on the chair!

And then our Jeep decided to go on vacation without us. We needed to stay longer. But, the lot was rented beginning June 5, so we had to move to our third lot. We are now on Lot #112. This lot is a pull-in site and we can see the small lake/pond out of our windshield. It has a lovely deck overlooking the water with a table and several comfy chairs and large umbrellas to shield against the sun. 

I feel so much like Goldilocks, trying different RV lots on for size and comfort! 

Oh, and to go along with the original story, I did see three bears! Actually, I saw Mama Bear and her three tiny, darling cubs! They were coming up a small driveway as we went by on the road. Sadly, I had not time to take a picture.

Not a Bad Place to be Stuck

 We planned for a few days at the Apple Valley Farm Motorcoach Resort. We'd stayed here, or near here on previous occasions. We have 12 acres on the side of a "mountain" near Lake Lure, NC. (When we moved to Colorado we realized what mountains really were!) The resort is about 4 miles from our property. We used to have a trailer installed near the top of our land, and used that as a camp. The road is too narrow and steep to ascend in our motorhome.

We spent 3 nights on lot 133, and decided to spend 3 more nights, but we had to move to lot 107. 

On. the third morning we had a problem. Our Jeep had gone berserk. It had lights and error messages flashing all over the place. It wouldn't go into gear. We couldn't turn it off. I had to call the owner and ask for an extension of an unknown number of nights....we couldn't leave even if we wanted to with the Jeep parked in front of the motorhome. 

We called the Jeep roadside service number. They would try to find a wrecker. It took 2 1/2 days!!! OK, so it was Memorial Day Weekend, and we are kinda in the boonies! The wrecker came first thing Monday (Memorial Day) morning and took our broken vehicle to the closest dealer in Marion, NC. 

The technicians are scratching their heads. They can't figure it out. The Jeep keeps throwing more error codes, and now it won't even start. Sigh. Here we sit, like anxious parents with a child undergoing surgery! 

But hey, if you have to be stuck, this is certainly a beautiful place to be stranded!

Our home while being stranded

Views of the resort from the Apple Valley Farm Website:

Cute & Durable - Hah!

Cute!

"Pawsome" it says....

"Layered Durability" it says....

"Double the durability and lasts twice as long" it says.....

Two hours later:

Maybe not! says me! 

Definitely not, say Kaitlyn & Vicky.

If I'd simply thrown $15 in the trash, I wouldn't have had to clean up the mess and throw the remains in the trash!

If you'd done that, say Kaitlyn & Vicky, we wouldn't have had as much fun!

If I had thrown it away, says me, I wouldn't have to pick up poop adorned with pieces of "durable" green rubber!

A Weighty Matter

When I see this cartoon, it makes me think of Lesley Gore singing "You would cry too if this happens to you!" (Now I've planted that song in my head for the rest of the day.)

One of our first stops after we loaded up and began our trip was to stop at the truck scales to get our weight.  

As shown on the receipt, our weights: 

Front: 13,960 lbs

Back: 23,820 lbs

Michelin has a chart for every tire that tells what the pressure of the tire should be when cold (65 degrees) based on the weight and size of tire. 

So, now the Mister can get out his tire pressure gauge and make adjustments. This will also make the handling of the motorhome a bit better as we go down the road. 

And, Sew it Begins!

No sewing! Sewing had to come to an end, for now! 

The last few weeks have been rather hectic preparing for our annual trek west to visit with the family. In addition to the normal flurry of last-minute appointments with doctors and dentists, planning and piling things we want to take and those things that are staying home, and finishing up some last-minute sewing projects, I can add the confusion of having a new motorhome and not knowing exactly what can fit on it and where we are going to stash it. 

A few weeks ago I completed the plans for the initial part of our journey:

• First stop: Fort Clinch State Park, Fernandina Beach Fl - 2 nights
• Second stop: Hilton Head National RV Resort, Hilton Head, SC - 3 nights 
• Next stop: Apple Valley Farm RV Resort, Lake Lure, NC - 3 nights
• Final planned stop: Pool Knobs Campground, LaVergne, TN - 3 nights

It doesn’t look impressive. It doesn’t look worthy of the amount of time I actually spent searching maps, planning routes, and contacting and making reservations at campgrounds. Despite all of that time, I didn’t get very far! I am wary of projecting out further in our journey. I hesitate to do that because it seems that every time I have, our plans have changed and I needed to cancel reservations, then search our route, locate alternative camping spots and make new reservations - twice the work!

So, with my plans we will soon reach the edge of our mapped journey. We will reach “Here be dragons” territory. (In medieval days early explorers would draw dragons and sea monsters on uncharted areas where unknown possible dangers could exist.) I don't believe there are dangers here. We know our final destination (California) and we know there’s a lot of miles between Tennessee and there. We know there are rivers to cross, thankfully on bridges, lush green landscape and arid, sandy desert, mountains and valleys. We have Interstates to drive, and secondary roads to explore. But, we’ll take it all one day (night) at a time to determine where we go and where we will stay. We plan to make a few longer stops to explore along the way, and we will just pencil those in as we go. 

What a great way to travel and see the country!