Category Archives: nature

Jul6

Nature’s hidden gems

Posted on by
Standard

Some views from new areas (and a couple of already visited) we have just discovered:

Valley Garden Park, Wilmington, DE (above and below) Never been.

Newlin Grist Mill Park, Glen Mills, PA …We were here for a company picnic, Sean and I stopped here for a picnic lunch a few times and Ken and Colleen had their wedding photos taken here.

Harbor area, Atlantic City, NJ (never been-aquarium here and some caches. We also found a great harbor side restaurant). Never been.

Arboretum at Swarthmore College (Penna.) Never been.

Nottingham Park. Been here once and not in this area for fireworks years ago.

Now go and discover some of your own!

Jul3

Heat and hiking

Posted on by
Standard

I was all gung ho to score a few caches today over in Delaware. This ‘first state’ is so close to us and we enjoy it’s tax free shopping too. We went out about 2:30 and it was quite warm by then. We headed down to the Delaware Museum of History and this was pretty easy to find. No problem-o.

We headed a few miles down the road (near Joe Biden country) and found a lovely park there. Geocaching takes you to places like this!

There were about three caches in there. I had a big bag with me-water, the fan/mister bottle, Off!, etc. Brian forgot his water!

Look at those steps. I knew I was going to have climb them again.

I was joking around near the parking lot…ha ha for the time being…

Yahoo-here’s the one in the woods

I had had a baseball cap and and was starting to feel kind of funny after this was taken. As we walked back, I brought up another cache on the GPS and we headed for that. We saw it was way up a steep path and Brian went up it first. I went down a bit and found another less steep path. But after I went up, there were more stone steps and I got myself winded and started feeling sick. There was a cool stone bench and I sat there for a while, but Brian was suppose to find this one and he had no luck. If I had felt better, I know it was within 30-40 feet somewhere down a path, but I was feeling too yucky to look. I want to go back here in the cooler weather as I now know where to look.

Oh well…should be gorgeous in the autumn!

Back to those stairs up there. I had to sit down on them twice and I was feeling crummy. An old man walked by me too! Gee, he must go there for a daily walk! I practically crawled to the car.

So we stopped for gas and a cool drink. Oh, we went to the Winterthur parking lot, but I got out and went right back in the car again. I had Brian looking under trees, no luck. He needs to develop better stealth!! : )

I knew about one at Chadds Ford Winery and we stopped there-easy peasy. We would have bought a bottle of wine, but they were closed.

I bought some trinkets from The Oriental Trading Company for these caches as many don’t have that many goodies in them. I got those rubber bracelets, Pirate maps and ‘Kindness coins’. I added a bunch of these to the above boxes today.

Then we were near a Quaker Friends Meeting and there was a micro in there. I walked down the road near the cemetery and the GZ was a big evergreen tree-huge son of a gun. I looked and looked for the cammo film canister and then Brian looked. We couldn’t find it! Rats.

Saw this-what’s up with this?

And this little lamb…

Didn’t catch the name, but I think it’s on the Geocaching site, so I’ll go look again.

We went through Wendy’s and I got their salad with chicken and fruit-not bad. I mentioned to Bri that there was a cache directly across the highway. First I thought it was near the supermarket (which is changing hands), but it was behind the Walgreen’s! So cute.

First log of this kind! I had trouble getting it out-used a wire from a little flower I had!

So….no more hiking for me in this kind of weather! A nice shower helped, but I’ve had back issues from sitting on the floor (too long) to sort through things. I never learn.

Making a bundt cake tomorrow and some yummy foods for the 4th!

Jun26

One of my favorite beaches on earth

Posted on by
Standard

After we went to the aquarium (on the 20th), we headed to the island of Chincoteague. We had gone last year and loved the hotel (alas it was booked solid this year) and the beach in the park. We stayed in America’s Best which had the door that opened right up to the outside. This isn’t good in Chincoteague as it is known for it’s mosquitoes. The room was a bit tight also. We went right to the beach at around 6 pm.

You drive a few miles through the park, a national preserve where the wild horses and other wildlife live. We saw lots of herons and a few turtles too.

Got to love that a gorgeous beach is at the other end. Of course when you are driving to the island, there are stretches and stretches of marsh and wet land.

I think Sean got a few shots of the ponies, but it takes him a while to upload his pictures….I’ll share if it’s good.

Look at this sunset-that’s their library

Here’s Misty!

The next morning we got on the road to Ocean City, MD and ended up in a little town called Pocamoke City, MD. We went into the museum there and it was like $10 each, so we passed on that. Little did I know there was a big cache right in the lobby! I use my phone a lot for caching and saw this several miles later.

We also went to Snow Hill, MD. We  actually back tracked! Sean knew I wanted to see the buildings and look for a cache there.

We ate lunch here-very nice.

Snow Hill it one of the only intact Victorian towns left (I think that is what the brochure said).

We went to this little museum to find a nano cache. It was kind of funny seeing three adults looking in crevices and tapping bolts to see if they were fake. We had no luck. A nice side story is that the cache owner (part of a family of 8 who geocaches) answered my email to where it may be. She told me exactly where it was (I had logged it as a didn’t find already) and she said to message her anytime if I am stuck on a cache. Cool.

After we got to Ocean City, I did a virtual cache (photo), a small cache (near the old life saving station) and a web cam one-that last one was too hard to do as it was really bright and you were suppose to save the shot of you to show the person who did the challenge. We walked several blocks in the heat and I think we at least tried to do it! : )

We then headed to Rehoboth and grabbed a hotdog at Nathan’s and tried to do a web cam challenge there-not easy again. We weren’t there long as it’s a pain with the 30 minute parking meters you have to run back to again and again.

That was about the extent of our trip and now it’s time to weed the gardens and get that bathroom finished.

We are going to see the Bacon Brothers (Kevin) on July 10th at Longwood Gardens. We also want to see the night light display there, but we have until September. I’d rather wait a few weeks as the crowds there have been crazy. I made Sean drive past there a few night ago and they were parking in the grass near the parking lot as overflow.

Tomorrow-cache collecting-up to 20!

Jun25

Blog neglect, vacation stuff

Posted on by
Standard

Since my whirlwind of activity is dying down, I can get down to brass tacks again with blogging. I went and got my mom on Saturday for a two day visit. We all went over to the father-in-law’s house to wish him a Happy 89th Birthday. From the get go, I felt pops was uncomfortable having my mom and me there. Brian and Sean were installing his new a/c (birthday gift) in his room and it was a messy job. Well Bri’s dad starts up about something ‘we need for the house’. I’d rather not say exactly what it is (send me a note if you want to know) and I said we didn’t really need it right now. Well he wouldn’t let it go and got mad at me and left the living room to sit in the family room. He’s living in a 4 bedroom split level. Mom and I were shook up and I took the car down to a local shopping center so pops would simmer down. We never did go back in the house again and never sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him. I sure was hoping it would make him happy to have a house full of people (well almost), but that didn’t happen. It was going on 6:30 and we had to go out to eat. Too bad pops wasn’t along, but he got so grumpy that it ruined our visit.

So….we were away from early Monday to late Thursday. Our trip didn’t quite go as planned. Monday and Tuesday we were in Virginia Beach and had a nice time.  We got on the road Wednesday to head to Williamsburg, but got in traffic as the tunnel there had a disabled vehicle. We got off at an exit, tried to go another way, but of course they weren’t letting anyone in. We heard it was a 5-9 mile backup, so we decided to go to Norfolk, VA for an hour and see if that changed. We tried to see the historic society, but that was closed and they were painting. We got to see the nice garden and only a few of the buildings there. We passed by the General Douglas MacArthur statue.

Here are a few Norfolk shots:

The city in the late 1880s

The backup never got better, and we had to go to Chincoteague later, so we headed to the Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach. It’s a neat one!

Turtles sunning themselves in the entrance area-it was very warm here.

Wow, a Komodo Dragon. He was checking everyone out!

 I like this shot

Menacing sharks

Lion fish

Jelly fish-amazing!

A few more shots from Virginia Beach

The King Neptune statue was amazing and had a cache hidden under it-shhhhhh!

Sean and me under him!

Tuesday I got to met Rachael who I know from cross stitching and Facebook. She is from CA, but lived in Germany for a while, now is in VB as her hubby is working out of Norfolk. We went to the Contemporary Art Museum to see an Andy Warhol exhibit. We couldn’t take photos of the Warhol art, but I did think this glass chandelier was fascinating.

I wish I could meet all of you!

I’ll talk about the last few days of our trip tomorrow.

Jun16

Five little Nuthatches

Posted on by
Standard

Five little Nuthatches are living in a gourd in our evergreen tree out front. There were two gourds and one fell down, so I was thankful it wasn’t this nest before they arrived. They must have been born during the short time we were away. And wow are they noisy. The mama and dad are only about 4 inches long and the call is wickedly loud.

I had Cosmo out for a walk on his harness and hooked him up to a trellis on one side of the tree while I ran in to get the zoom. I had a little time focusing on the gourd, but I then stood inside the branches of a nearby Dogwood and waited a few minutes. It didn’t take long for Mama to come back, though she hopped around the branches watching Cosmo and then she hopped around me with this nasty grub or caterpillar in her mouth. 

I was very happy with these shots! If you’d like to use them, let me know first. Thanks.

I have more to tell you about our little trip tomorrow.

Jun5

Cache #5 found!

Posted on by
Standard

So this was the third time we went looking for this cache, and some nice people or critters made a trail through the weeds, so it was easy as pie this time to spot. An animal had left a ‘gift’ right at GZ (ground zero) and I am so glad I didn’t touch it, but I came close to it! Can’t get away from animal poo. At my mom’s we walked into her house finding her trying to clean her fairly new vacuum as she rolled over some from the older dog-he’s getting old and can’t hold it anymore. We ended up taking the machine outside and using the hose on it-ugh!

So anyway…here I am with the cache. There wasn’t much in it, so I will bring back a few buttons and things for the next time I take a walk in the park.

Notice I am wearing my camouflage shirt too! And make-up (we were going to the grocery store later).

Thinking we were on a roll, we headed out to an ‘open area’ find. It was off an housing development (gorgeous homes) and I thought, oh how far could it be down there? Well the compass started at 600 and a lot of the trail had mulch, but it was really steep too! We walked along the White Clay Creek, so pretty. We read that a train use to go by near here from Newark, De to PA.

I sure wish I had my Canon  with me so I could have shown you more awesome nature shots.

Brian took some photos on his phone too!

We get to the middle of these woods and both my phone and GPS device decide to quit on us! Rats. I sent Bri down to a ‘beach’ area near the water as it seems that other cachers saw that beavers had chewed on wood in that area. It was just too wild to see anything with the naked eye and there weren’t any good hints to help us. I think the people who live in this area donated nice benches along the trail. Of course we saw other animal gifts, but no animals. Brian mentioned snakes and I crossed my fingers. As more people find this one, there will be more hints. It was a good hike. I think between the two areas, we walked at least 2-2.5 miles today! Woo hoo! Good exercise. We have to remember to use OFF! on us or I need to mix up a tick deterrent formula when I get some tea tree oil. You mix that with water and spray on your clothes. I should be more weary as I have had Lyme disease or still have it. I don’t know if you ever really get over it fully.  We rewarded ourselves with some steak, corn on the cob and baked beans for dinner. : )

May31

Scored two geocaches!

Posted on by
Standard

I had to get Brian away from the sink for one day. He needed some other pipework, but he is having trouble with the plumbing part. I wanted to go to a park where Brian use to take Sean fishing many moons ago. It’s so pretty there! We walked around a pond, went down to a lower level and through the woods, past runners and a couple smooching. : )  The ‘key’ to finding these seems to be reading over past logs. When the clue said look for a ‘beech’, well I knew I’d have to go to the one identified by the marker about 10 feet or so off the trail. There were old tree limbs leaning against the tree-very unnatural! I moved them and lo and behold, I found cache #3!

I think I’m getting the hang of finding the larger caches, though the second one was in a sandwich sized box, so the micros have to be easier to find soon…I hope!  This one hardly had anything in it and the log book was soggy! I had won some geocaching buttons from eBay and left one. It was suppose to be a music CD share, but there were none in there. This ones been around for 10.5 yrs!

We were very close to another cache in a cemetery. We pulled in and didn’t I get out to a fairly new grave next to me-dirt piled high and just a paper name tagged at the end. Luckily, you aren’t allowed to put caches right in the graved area, so we walked to the back of the cemetery where the hint said to go. There was a pile of old gravemarkers in one area and vault covers in another. We were thinking the spouse passed and they got a larger marker-maybe, right? So the clue was it was under a tree and a white stone. I sent Bri in to look….and he looked. I decided to come in the weeds and right in between some old markers was the next cache! Yay!

I was glad to get out of there. I saw later there was a micro in there-some other time, but I don’t think in the same area where we were.

We walked at least 2 miles at a the park There’s another one in there and we’ll go another day-it’s only 3 miles away. I still need to find the one in my other walking park. So glad we went as I like ponds, etc. and this is a nice place to walk. BTW, I used both my phone’s GPS and the Magellan-still getting the hang of the later one.

We later went out to dinner with Sean to Friendly’s. A lady next to use gave use a $5 off coupon! We went to Kirkland’s, like a Pier One kind of store, and I got a pretty ‘collage’ picture for the bathroom ($10-marked down from $25) and some jeweled shower curtain holders for $5. I got a shower curtain yesterday. I have a striped plastic one and got a solid Wedgewood blue. The jewels are green like the sink. I figure my accent colors will be sea glass green, blue and white.

We stopped off at Whole Food Market that just opened in April. It was nice, though pricey. I prefer Trader Joe’s and Fresh Market more. There was a ‘micro’ cache right near the store, but though we were in the right spot, it was dusky and the security guy decided to park near there. I should have read the log better as a guy said exactly what it was and where. At least we know now. ; )

 

May14

May Blooms and Victorian Flower Swap

Posted on by
Standard

This is the front little walking path under my very tall, messy, shedding and kind of half ugly evergreen tree.  I am wishing it wasn’t there anymore to tell you the truth as it was allowed to get too big. I guess I’ll have to live with  it for a while.

I still get some lovely irises coming up, but I think many aren’t blooming as they need to be separated. I’ve done it before and it’s not an easy task. I know there’s about 15 varieties hiding in that garden.

Brian dug up another round garden, which I may have mentioned and recycled some old plastic fencing. He’s not sure how sturdy it will be, but hopefully it will do it’s job of keeping critters at bay.

I really like the Victorian cards I sent off. The hostess was inspired by old seed packs, and I found some cute images on a Flickr group. I hope the people I sent these to aren’t expecting seed packets, because that wouldn’t be original.

Back to gardening… I have lots of seeds to put in soon. Of course we are expecting rain and I may be delayed. That will give me time to figure out what goes where. I want to try pumpkins and watermelon this year. I have plenty of room for them.

May10

Waiting on the weather…again

Posted on by
Standard

It’s been a rather slow week here. We’ve been getting April showers in May. The most exciting thing I did was go food shopping…and go to the dentist….and go to TJ Maxx where I got a little retail therapy in. We finally got some health insurance which eases my mind somewhat. Of course that’s an added expensive.

When I went out to get in the car to get the chip in my front tooth fixed I found this fella sunning himself:

We’ve been seeing a few of these garter snakes in the yard this year. I’ve also seen a bunny, which I prefer to see. Brian took this for me.

Our snowball bush is mighty bushy this year:

This is way too big as are most of our trees and shrubs. Here’s a Mt. St. Helen’s azalea we planted in place of the hedge:

It’s quite striking, isn’t it?

We have so much to do inside and out. We haven’t had a chance to go to The Home Depot for the new vanity and toilet I’d like to get too. We tend to drag our heels on things like that. I think if I had new things I’d revamp the bathroom decor! I sure know how to add glass tiles from doing them in the kitchen.

I think we’ll get busy with the gardens again tomorrow and Saturday. There’s always switching clothes from winter to summer too. That’s an involved job too!

May7

A job that is never finished

Posted on by
Standard

Brian and I were out in the yard Friday and some of Saturday. I did more Friday and then did a little of this and a little of that on Saturday. Today I am zonked and having some lady issues, but we both think I overdid the leaning over and using the edge tool. I love that half moon shaped tool. It can make a sad looking weedy edge look lovely in a matter of minutes.

We now also have two corral gardens! The second one didn’t cost us a penny as Brian moved an old plastic fence we had in the old garden. We like the round gardens  as they are easy to maneuver the mower around them. The one from last year will be used for zucchini, watermelon and other vine plants so they can spread nicely. I can’t have tomatoes and green peppers in the same area as zucchini, etc as it’s too hard to get to them through the vines and big leaves. The circle is nice again as we plant the veggies around the perimeter of it. We don’t plant more than 10-15 of each kind anyway.

I replanted a border garden I have under my Japanese Maple tree. I needed to add more Sweet William/Dianthus there. I also decided to add more ferns behind the flowers to fill in the space directly below the tree. I have plenty of ferns, hostas, vinca vine and Lily of the Valley this year. A pal from high school is coming for some of the Lily of the Valley and Hostas. I edged that area, under a hedge and down the side of the house. Then I planted flowers in front of our huge evergreen where I already have Bleeding Hearts, a ground cover, ferns and a Clematis. I added burgundy Salvias and pale pink Nicotiana . I have my squirrels decorations in there too. (I know, I know-where are the photos? )

And then I started on the fairy/gnome garden. It’s getting taken over with ferns and Lily of the Valley there.  I added Snapdragons and other tiny flowers. I will have to write down the names of them.  These are from my camera phone…. before the garden was planted

With a few flowers

This Clematis must have 30 blooms on it right now. I should get a couple more plants for this garden as they love it there in my Lily garden which is about a 1/4 cleaned out-oy.

I am hoping my PT Cruiser’s tire is finally fixed. It was getting flat in 3-4 days and we just kept adding air to it. We had it at the service station thinking it was a valve, but it wasn’t. I was reading on a Facebook fan page for PTs where a lady left the same message about her tire losing air. A man said to have it rebeaded, so Brian took off the tire today and just had that done. I think the rim gets fixed. So between the $38 valve and the $23 rebeading, I better not need a new tire!