Category Archives: nature

Oct26

Chadds Ford Great Pumpkin Carve event

Posted on by
Standard

Since we’ve lived near Chadds Ford and enjoy it’s beautiful countryside, we decided it was about time we went to see the annual pumpkin carve as sponsored by the Chadds Ford Historic Society. I mean, 26 yrs is a long time not to see this artistry event. What piqued my interest was knowing an artist pal was going to carving a pumpkin. She’s been doing it a few years as has Bam Margera’s mom (the guy who does stunts, etc on his own show). It’s been an event since 1970 and it’s almost right across from the Brandywine River Museum and the banks of this river too.

This was down our road a bit. We left close to five as that’s when it started. I know after the rain we are expecting in a few days, we won’t be seeing the leaves anymore.

We got there early, we enjoyed walking around several times, but it did get more crowded.

Follow the pumpkins to the event

They had until 7 pm to carve before judging began. I asked if they got to chose their pumpkins and the artist said they got what was there waiting for them.

Jennifer lives near Lancaster. A great artist and photographer. She won ‘Best Halloween Theme’ this year and last  year.

Clever designs!

Ran into three classmates from high school also! Two from my class and one from my younger brother’s class. The three of them were meeting up here.

It got really crowded too. I drove by tonight (Friday) and got stuck in a traffic back up.

This was outside the carving area where a band was playing. They had picnic tables, picnic type food, t-shirts to buy and raffle items. Brian put a ticket in for Eagles football tickets as he and Sean have never been to a game. I sure hope they win!

I’ll be putting all these up on Flickr.  And thanks to Brian for taking most of them.

I went down today and took my mom to a  shopping center. We enjoy The Dollar Tree and a little thrift shop next to it. She then took me for some Chinese that I was able to share with Sean as I only ate half of it.

We are waiting on Hurricane Sandy to come up the coast and she will probably dump a lot of rain from Sunday to Monday. As I type this, she may be tracking in a somewhat different direction, but it doesn’t look good. I will be making some egg salad, etc to have something to eat. We will fill up something with water outside as our toilets won’t flush if the power is out. Keep us in your thoughts.

Oct7

Caching 3 days in a row

Posted on by
Gallery

This gallery contains 19 photos.

I’m counting my solo trip to Tweed’s Tavern in the trio.  Brian had off on Friday, so we headed south to the Oxford, PA area. Brian use to work out of an office there, but we didn’t go near the town, but another town, Lincoln University which has a college and upper Oxford, more in […]

Sep4

First some Potomac/DC greenery

Posted on by
Standard

Gaylord Hotel and Convention Center-National Harbor, MD

Inside the hotel, an interesting wall hanging

A park near the Capitol with a very overgrown bush. Looks like it has multi-beards.

Outside the Library of Congress

A park on the way back to Union Station

Butterfly weed

Very tame squirrel! There were two of them right outside an office building, so they probably got fed all the time.

Aug26

Turn of the century amusement park ‘almost’ revisited

Posted on by
Standard

Our plans were to go to the Delaware County Community College (where I graduated in 1979) to a flea market. My brother decided to take my mom and I messaged him and he said it was ‘so-so’. Brian and I decided to go south to one of our favorite stomping grounds, New Castle, DE. They also had a flea market going on, so not all was lost in the looking and haggling department.

However-since we found 3 caches last night and were up to 99 in total, we just had to get to #100 today-somewhere. I thought maybe look down the road again. I’ve looked there several times-I just don’t want anyone I know see me look inside a guardrail-lol.

We started to look for one and the parking was in a neighborhood where they didn’t want people really coming in as it said ‘private road’. We then went to a lovely Presbyterian church with a nicely kept cemetery. We had to walk through the cemetery and saw  a few Shakespeares in a few different areas. How unusual:

And  check this out!

Yay for us!!!

We also looked for one in an old electric box near a Sears store and the door refused to open! We had to walk up a hill above the parking lot-it was narrow and there were stones there to slip on. A bit unsafe and we won’t go for those kind anymore.

We then ventured on to the farmer’s market flea market and there were still vendors there. I saw an ammo box I would have liked to have, but the guy wouldn’t come down from $10. Bummer. I bet in a few weeks, it will still be there. Like something I got my mom today in the actual market. I can’t say what as it’s a gift, but we got it down to $10 from $20! We found a vendor who sold really nice books for $2 each. I will tell you about them later.

Inside we got some produce-has anyone cooked with figs? I also got a floppy hat for the event next week. I wanted one and got one for $3. It’s kind of funky.

So we left and headed home, but something on the geocache page caught my eye-Brandywine Springs Amusment park. The navigator took us to a neighborhood again, but we found the park and were with 400 or so feet of  the cache. We started to walk through the leaf covered, bumpy trail- it went down and down 150 feet or so. Then we started to see these nice markers.

There was once a lovely amusement park here!

All that are left in the area where we were looking were markers that an Eagle Scout had put there.

Some old time shots of the park:

A video about the park.

We did see the slab where the book author is kneeling down next to. It use to have a merry go round above it!

The cache was hidden half way up a hill in a fallen tree. Brian climbed up and didn’t see it at first. I was begging him to find it, it had to be there from the hint. The mosquitoes were a bitin’! It needed some maintenance, but I dropped a travel bug in it. I also wrote to the cache owner to make sure we had the right one and told him about the travel bug.

I came home and made pork tenderloins (from an Amish vendor) with mushrooms and fried rice with a side of cauliflower.

We sure had fun on our treasure hunts and finding #100!

Aug22

Nice bloomers

Posted on by
Standard

Happy ‘Gotcha’ Day and Birthday to our sweet Cosmo kitty who wandered into our yard 10 years ago. I think someone dropped him off all those years ago. We think he’s about 12 though.

I spent a little time outside again yesterday. It wasn’t as breezy and the mosquitoes were testing me as was a chatty Cat bird. The bird was talking to his friend in a nearby tree. The entire time I was lounging about. I did a little work-moved some plants around pulled some weeds near the pond (and waving to the three current residences -two little and one medium size). I got a book in the mail about Christian Sanderson, the man whose museum we had visited on Saturday. It’s a smallish book, but it was just published this year. All the photos looked exactly like the layout of the rooms as they are now. And I saw where Mr. Sanderson passed away on my 7th birthday in 1966.

I also took a few photos:

Happy with these hanging baskets-Chenille and Nasturtiums. There was something else in there with the Nasturtiums, but they over took it.

The Lantana is a hardy plant. Love the Dr. Seuss type balls of flowers:

The petunias are pretty too with their stripes.

And I  have a serious gnome invasion-they are coming out of everywhere!

I took these with my camera phone. I think it’s a nice one.

Hope to take my mom out to a hometown event they have during the summer called ‘Dining under the stars’. Brian has his orientation at the store tomorrow-you all know what that is-videos!

Aug7

Delaware Triple Play

Posted on by
Standard

We are trying to take a little trip a week until the job gods send Brian something. It sure helps us to have something to think about. In ‘the old days’ you ‘most likely’ at least would get a phone call or letter in the mail if they were/weren’t interested in you. Nowadays, if you get an email you are lucky. When I got the store job, I went in and got an application and filled it out, ‘the old-fashioned way’.

Anyway, I thought it would be a great day to go to a pretty park for a picnic. We had been to Lum’s Pond Park many years ago for a company picnic where Brian worked when we first got married. We were trying to remember which area we were in back then and think it was near the entrance.

So we stopped for gas and shorties (hoagies/subs) and headed about 25 miles to the park. We had a few people around, but mostly had the place to ourselves. We sat near the pond and saw so many white herons:

I found this ‘yucky’ cache-it has been there 10 years (Something is eating the tree and it was all over the cache). The lid is broken where the pin goes in and there wasn’t anything good in it…I left some good stuff. We had found one other one (Brian spotted it first) called ‘Wham-o’ as it was near a field where you could use a Frisbee with your pooch.

Like my pigtails-need to keep my neck cool-lol. I thought I looked like ‘Hot Lips’ from M*A*S*H, my favorite show in the 1970s. I appreciated dry humor. : )

So after I got home I noticed that another part of the park had quite a few caches…live and learn. This park will be gorgeous in the fall…we will be back!

After we left here I wanted to do a few along the C&D canal…there’s a ton of them!

I did find 12! I don’t like ‘robot’ caching-they were behind a telephone pole every 500 feet. Helped me to get to 75!

First of 12!

So a guy passed us (it was hard to do on this narrow gravel road) and he looked disgruntled about something. I think he had been in and out of his van 54 times to get these. And he complained about it on geocaching.com. Because of him I wrote it was the 8th instead of the 7th. Why do these and complain?

So next we headed to Delaware City just to check it out a bit. It’s nice there if you can ignore the smoke stacks right before you hit the town. It was a little Victorian style water port at one time. Some of the homes are sweet. Need to go back to check them out closer.

We did see this:

And Fort Delaware…like to go over there sometime as I heard there is a cache there too!

Must take a ferry there

We ate at a place called ‘Crabby Dick’s’. Can’t beat $6.99 Shrimp Poboys and fries. It was one the first floor here. That’s our trusty white Mariner parked there.

And a few parting shots of yours truly and the hubs

And a glorious sunset

Taken from the car

Jul15

Caching in

Posted on by
Standard

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.

Jul9

Hid my first geocache!

Posted on by
Standard

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!