American Country Music Awards 2011, originally uploaded by DianthusMoon.
I try not to miss an opportunity to snap a photo of my favorite singer of almost 40 yrs when he is performing. James Taylor was singing along with the Zac Brown Band on the 2011 American County Awards and looks like he is really enjoying it.
This was the perfect day for a little trip down to Delaware. After learning about the Colorado theater shooting, for some reason I needed to get out of the house instead of keeping myself cooped up. I had read about the Goodwill outlet store through a blog where the lady is into thrifting locally. She scores big on kids’ clothes and toys all the time. I look for old books, novels, name brand things and craft stuff. It’s an interesting place-rows and rows of big blue bins. I try to avoid clothing-you just don’t know how clean it is. If something catches my eye, then I will investigate more. I scored an American Urban Outfitters sweater, some Disney stuff, Wuthering Heights book from 1940 something, a galvonized bucket with a pumpkin face cut out, 2 plush Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer, a ‘singing’ Hallmark bear couple, a John Denver songbook and lots of novels. They change out the bins every so often and they did that while we were there. After they put the new bins out, people went nuts! A few people were scooping the books in their baskets like crazy. I think they did that so they could price them later with their cellphones?
After we left there, we went a few miles down to historic New Castle. It’s a smaller version of Old Philadelphia and Williamsburg and not at busy! I didn’t bring my bigger camera as it was rainy today. These are all phone captures.
The first place we stopped at was the George Read house. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence
Below is the front of the George Reed House dating from the 1700s
Cobblestone stones are still here on this strength of road called ‘The Strand’
A cute pooch was barking at us along the Strand.
So were down this road looking for a ‘virtual’ cache-a hole in the wall. The GPS lead us to this,
…but the Cache owner said it was a bigger hole and closer to the water. He let us post as a find anyway. We are going back to this area because of the following photo.
This is the ‘first’ part of the cache (that was the hint-to look in the window). We were looking in the rose bushes and around the mailbox. And the courthouse was closed too.
I poised with William ‘Billy’ Penn who founded this area first.
There were a few quaint shops and restaurants. We went into a New Orleans style one and both had Jambalaya-Brian with chicken and me with crayfish-really spicy! I brought half of mine home. We went into a gift shop and the lady said that they use to be in Ridley Park, nearer my mom. I happen to have eaten in that one many years ago with my mom and the ladies she worked with. Small world.
The lady in the gift shop told us how to get to the New Castle Farmer’s Market, just down the road. We found a produce place with a dozen lemons for $3 and 99 cent bundles of asparagus.
This area is under 20 miles away and we’ve never been to the historic area.
And we found 4 other caches on the way home. Brian starts to sigh, I knew he was tired. Found three lamp skirt ones and a rain gutter guard one-lol.
We stopped at Rita’s Water Ice and got swirl cones to cool the fire of the Cajun food. Yum.
Brian happen to catch this hungry Goldfinch couple munching on the forming Zinnia seeds through the backdoor . I had to grab the camera and was happy with these shots. So sweet….
I’m glad they like these as I like to help wildlife.
I saw that the local school district needed a ‘full-time’ instructional assistant for the elementary where Sean went to school. I’m a bit nervous about working full time, I’d like to get my feet wet with part-time. I haven’t worked around kids for several years, but of course I raised a fine fellow. They only want you to have a high school diploma. The pay is decent too. I dropped off my resume today.
Oh my oh my…another place to play online. This is more like a scrapbook type of website. Below I just dragged items over that came up under ‘tops’, ‘jewelry’ etc. You can chose backgrounds and templates also. Also like Pinterest, you can have a bullet in your toolbar to click to your page. Looks like a fun thing to do on a hot day like today! Thanks to Scrappy Jessi (side bar) for the link! BTW, I did this in about 15 minutes just to try it out.
I decided to share a few photos of my flowers ‘up close’ as the garden long shots aren’t worthy of shares as they are so weedy. We had wonderful rain Saturday and also Sunday night. It’s great how things as small as grass blades perk up. Many of plants are from seed too. I love that.
Cosmos from seed just beginning to open
Zinnias-they have been taking a beating-wilting daily (seeds)
If you want flowers that will welcome you from 25 ft away with their amazing scent-plant some Starglazer lilies! The Sweet Bay Magnolia has been scenting the yard on the side of the house nicely too.
The Coleus are hanging in there nicely.
The prolific tomatoes are popping out of the fence. Hope I get these before the deer or groundhogs.
Very nice to have a few gourds on the vine. I am not seeing any pumpkins or watermelons. I was hoping that they would take off in this space. Maybe I’ll be surprised.
So…we geocache usually coming and going from places lately. Today we tried for 4 and found 2 though we were right in the correct spot for all of them. The one was a park in my hometown named after a man my grandfather worked for. : ) We went down a steep path to an open area to see that the coords wanted us to ‘bushwhack’ about 25-30 feet. I was wearing a dress and sandals, so no. We’ll go back. Then we took my mom to dinner and one was suppose to be behind a Target store. There’s this long metal ‘barrier’, I think so trucks can’t go to the edge of the parking lot. We were right where it was, but it was hot and sunny. We couldn’t find it. We had found one behind a Hooter’s on the way to my mom’s house.
On the way home (I had gotten my hair done too), I asked Brian to stop at the local mall. It lead us to a fire hydrant next to a Kohl’s and lo and behold…Brian found a ‘nano’-the tiniest cache you can find. We didn’t sign the log-too tiny.
I have hid 3 caches now myself. I had trouble getting the 3rd one accepted as the name was for the local businesses near where I put it. A no-no. I changed it. The first person who found it said the box had been opened and the stuff spread all over the ground, even a travel bug! We are thinking a raccoon got into it. It’s not far from the restaurant dumpsters, so maybe. Wow!
We are so zonked from last week, but on Saturday night, I asked if we could get to church a few minutes earlier as I wanted to place a cache near the parking lot area. It’s way in the front and they have twice the needed space for parking. I had a lamp post in mind, but it had a ton of overgrown bushes in front of it. I tried another post, but it was too much in the open. So I went back to the first one, walked around the corner and it wasn’t hard to reach in and put the key holder on the metal part. There is a wide open space there and what’s funny, the barracks for the township police are in sight. It shouldn’t take long to locate….I hope. I am waiting for it to be approved. I looked at the preview page and the map there has the church in the incorrect area. It’s located a little away from a main intersection-but not according to the map. I hope they just follow what I have as coordinates.
After church we went to the little park where my first cache is. I wanted to add a mini pencil, plastic bag for the log and pencil and a travel bug. A little down the road, a policeman was in his car shooting the breeze with a local. I don’t think he even saw me get out of the car, look and retrieve my cache and sit and put the stuff in it-lol.
I took a few shots of this sweet area-
We headed to Perkins as we all felt like having breakfast for dinner. I am still waiting to get a really good meal here. We don’t eat here often. Oh, before we went in, I thought it would be fun to hide a cache behind the place. It’s between a kid’s recreational place (kind of like a Chucky Cheese), so I went under some pines and hid it behind the furthest one. It shouldn’t be disturbed-I hope. That has a travel bug in it also.
So after dinner, I said-let’s go out to the next town and look for a cache. The guys both said yes, but I put the incorrect cache on the phone and we headed down a few back roads. Opps! Funny thing, we were driving down this road, and there was the former dental receptionist pulling a grandbaby down the road in a wagon! Wow, small world. And down another road, Brian had to swerve a fallen tree-just got the antenna with that one. The three of us got out and it didn’t take long to find it off the road. Sean wasn’t crazy about sticking his head in the brush. Brian and I said that was nothing! I am bringing my Oriental Trading stuff with me to restock these caches-most are so empty. For $15, I got big bags of plastic bracelets and coins.
That’s what I added underneath-even the pirate map!
It’s funny, you live in an area for over 25 yrs and you don’t see how pretty some of it is. Thanks to Geocaching we are seeing lots of ‘hidden’ beauty.
We then went down the road to a research area. It was called ‘Pony Express’ as some ponies are fenced nearby. They must have been in for the night. Sean and I got out and found it rather quickly under a tree. Again, I stocked it with some more swag.
I felt I was on a roll, so I went to the one near my house and gave it a good look-small area, but so many hiding places-trees, bushes, fence, guard rail. I just can’t see it! I emailed the CO for a hint-nothing. His was the first one we went to last night. Meanie-lol
More hot weather this week. I haven’t shown much of my gardens as there isn’t much to see except for dried up flowers and lots of weeds. The coleus do look pretty and I will photograph it. I may go see if I can pull some out-but they were saying how thick the air is-think that was my problem at the park a few weeks ago.
Playing the hunt and did a search in my photos. These are little mannequins of Irish girls from the 2009 Philly flower show with the Ireland theme.
I got my mom on Wednesday and wanted to treat her to dinner at Texas Roadhouse. I’ve been to the one in Lancaster and found some of the sides a bit salty. This one is halfway between mom and me, so we stopped. Lucky for us we got the ‘early bird’ special for $7.99 each. We got a 6 oz piece of sirloin, two sides and roll for that. We also got onions and mushrooms-$2 more (each). Very good steak. We like deals like that. I think it’s Monday-Wednesday, but double check. And were the sides salty-the green beans had ham in them and they certainly were.
Yesterday I took mom down to the Habitat resale store and she enjoyed looking at the books for 10 cents each or 10 for $1.00. I only bought 3 books, a stainless steel serving bowl and a Birthday bear. I will buy a bear once in a while if it’s really cute-and it was $1.
We went over to Longwood Gardens around 6:15 or so and Brian came too. We got mom a chair and we headed over to the little cafe. She couldn’t decide what she wanted. I knew I wanted the cream of mushroom soup and I got some cold lo mein which I didn’t care for. Bri got half a large ham and cheese and mom finally got mac and cheese and a hot dog (from the kid’s menu). I didn’t know she had eaten a Hershey bar until I found the paper left on the sofa! She had eaten it beforehand and I think it killed her already weak appetite. We all nibbled a chocolate pecan tart.
We then went over to the main Conservatory and saw this:
Well that’s the lovely Conservatory
Part of the Bruce Monro light show exhibit…I’ll have to come back to see the Conservatory when it’s darker outside
They like Proven Winners plants here-that’s a big thumbs up!
The lake lights were starting to look pretty-we saw them a few days ago when it was pitch dark, so neat.
The Italian Water Gardens looked neat at night-sat this on a wall.
They also had CDs made in water lily shapes
I sat this on the side of a life preserver case as the shutter was getting so slow
It was a hike to ‘The Meadows’ to see this display:
These are plastic water bottles!
The last part was really hard to photograph without a tripod-it was the woods to a tree house dotted with lights similar to the lake lights. Someone said it looked like ‘The Wizard of Oz’
I think my mom enjoyed being pushed around! It was about a 2 mile walk.
Brian and I took mom home and we headed to a few geocaches on the 13th. This was after hitting Chick-fil-a. We didn’t know it was free sandwich day if you wore a cow costume! So… I knew where one was as a fellow cacher told me. We got to it and it was basically out in the open. The other one, which we tried to find a few months ago was right were I thought it was. We then went to a ‘new’ one and that was so neat! We were near trash bins-ugh!! A cache would never be on one of them. There was a fence there and I leaned over and saw a wooden thing in the extreme corner. I touched it and it moved-it was so cool-
I was so pleased with myself!
We skipped dinner and headed to the Maria Muldaur concert up in Kennett Square. She is a spunky, sassy and bluesy 68 yr old now. I don’t think she enjoys singing ‘Midnight at the Oasis’ that much, though I think it was her biggest hit. Afterwards she went to a counter to sign her CDs and didn’t act too thrilled with having to do so. I have seen a few other artists smile and thank people-not her. I didn’t buy one. We went for some pizza and had the place to ourselves.
We had a busy week! More heat expected too. My flowers are just shriveling up. : (
Our concert ‘finally’ came up. Don’t think we weren’t worried about it being a warm night, but it turned out fairly nice with lower humidity. Wow, it was pretty cool to see an actual movie star like Kevin Bacon, and he’s quite a musician. He came out playing the bongos, but switched to guitar and also harmonica. His brother Michael (age 63) not only plays the guitar, but he played the Cello in a few songs-what a treat.
Sean’s Instagram-really good! We were about 9 rows back, but you can see the view I had of the hugging couple. I also had a 40-something Madonna like lady who couldn’t sit still and had gotten up right at this moment.
The show was about 75 minutes (one encore-Bob Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’).
This was a song about being a mummer’s son-called New Year’s Day. It’s a Philly thing, but what happens is the mummer’s who are in the New Year’s Day Parade, go around and recite the part of this song…
After the show was over, we went to the left through the gardens instead of to the right near where the exit was. Well little did I know, we were ‘allowed’ to go see the Bruce Munro light display down by the lake! It was so magical and like a fairyland. I am taking my mom to see the rest of it on Thursday night.
This was one of the teaser displays out front.
We got some ice cream on the way home, so it was a nice evening for the three of us!
I asked Brian if we could go look for some caches on Sunday as I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this again after the way I felt on the 3rd. Looking back, a lot of that was the heat and the steepness of the hills and stairs (still out of shape in dealing with that stuff). I had gone on other hikes without all that uphill terrain and I fared much better. I also had put together a little plastic box, added a log, filled it with ‘swag’ (goodies) and had camouflaged it with tape that was ready to hide. I wanted to go to the park where I walk all the time but then something happened. We headed over to our town. It’s further away than Kennett Square with a town in the middle. We go to the first area and park near this sweet garden there. We had to walk a bit to the one we were looking for and then it’s a ‘let’s go….no just look once more…let’s go’ kind of thing.
Leave it to Brian to run his hand along the top of this abandoned announcement board and find this most unusual cache log!
We were feeling pretty good. The cache owner said people could email him for additional hints. I am so sure we can now find that elusive one down the road-hee hee!
Going back to the car I told Brian I wanted to check out this little memorial garden for a man named Fred. I thought Bri was taking more photos than he did as the landscaping and everything was just perfect. There was a stone in the middle of the ‘patio’ area and it said ‘I love you to the moon, I love you to the stars, I love you beyond, beyond’. There was also a moon and star whirligig. I found the perfect cache location! We are told on the website to put a cache where you want people to visit and this certainly was deserving of more people seeing it.
I said it could be a night search with all those solar lights there.
So when I got home, I saw that this man was a borough council member for our town. He passed away last year at only age 59. He has two little grandsons. They would love my cache!
I got approved right away and then people found it already today!
A group of us actually work within walking distance to this cache. Got the notification last night and considered making an early morning work trip to GZ but decided against it. Gave this cache a look with two other cachers at our morning break to no avail. At lunch I returned with ‘Y’ and we made the find very quickly. Not sure how we missed it in the morning. I actually eyed this spot before to place a cache, nicely done. SL, TFTC
Very cool.
The trains down from here have graffiti all over them
See how the grass is dying? It’s dry beyond dry.
People will see this too-right near the garden where my cache is.
We went on to find a few more and not find one. The one we couldn’t find was another one of those cammoed film canisters that we walked through a field to find. We each found a tick on us. There was a road right near the cache. Bri doesn’t have much driving stealth yet. Of course last night, I found yet another tick on me! I had changed and showered twice. I think the critter was in the pile of dirty clothes in the bathroom that I picked up and put in a basket.
Being a bit lazy today. Tomorrow night is the Bacon Brothers (Kevin Bacon) at Longwood Gardens!
One for the road…our little harvest…hand watering helped a bit!
Collages & Creative Goodness 