This Year’s Travels—Shorts Trips
Other memorable, short trips this year included the Bull Run Bluebell Trail, a magical place where you can walk through the bluebells when they are in full bloom, which this year was in mid-April; Chapel Hill and Hillsborough, NC; Longwood Gardens, to see their new light show; and the Raleigh, NC, area for the Labor Day weekend. While in the Raleigh area, we did a garden blitz—J. C. Raulston Arboretum; the Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham; and the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. All of these are excellent gardens to visit and wander through. We had the good fortune, also, to visit my best college friend in Roanoke in October, when we ran up to Floyd, VA, for some bluegrass music; visited Appomattox and Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest; and drove to Blacksburg for a visit to my alma mater, Virginia Tech. Tech’s campus, and especially the Hahn Horticulture Garden, is more beautiful than ever. A trip to Staunton, VA, birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson, where we stayed at the venerable Stonewall Jackson Hotel and ate at the celebrated The Shack, makes for a nice weekend trip from D.C. And the annual Urbanna Oyster Festival, in Urbanna, VA, with a stay at The Tides Inn, in nearby Irvington, VA, is another fun and relaxing getaway. And by the way, the collard greens at The Tides will make you moan with pleasure…
This holiday weekend, I am heading to Washington, NC, for the wedding of my niece and her fiancé. We are all very excited for this long-awaited event.
IN THIS ISSUE:
Lead Story
Preparing Our Gardens for Winter
This Year’s Travels—Winter Trips
This Year's Travels—Summer Trips
This Year’s Travels—Short Trips
In Closing