Peony Pink

The peonies are popping!

So are the iris and climatis.

After the last heavy rain fall, I clipped a bunch of peonies that had been bent over to the ground, and now the blooms are as big as dinner plates in the dining room bouquet.

Gardening in the Heat Wave

We had several unseasonably hot days this past week, getting up to the 90s. I don't know why I decided that these would be the best days for gardening in the full sun, but I did.

One of waitstaff has a second job at Story's Nursery (my favorite place to buy plants) and she sometimes gets "plant rejects" - those plants that just didn't make the grade because they are too small or have gone too root bound. So she offer some of them to us. She gave us two flats of yellow and red onion starts recently. I don't really have a vegetable garden started yet, but how could I turn down these plant orphans. So I decided to plant them in our herb garden, spacing each one between the marigolds that I planted a couple of weeks ago.

The chives are doing great, as usual, but we keep the trimmed in use for the Goat Cheese and Chive with Scrambled Eggs breakfast dish and the Steak Diane dinner dish that we are going this year. The clive flowers look lovely in a vase on the tables!

The Peony patch is just about to burst out in pinks and whites.

This year I have a bird buddy that sits on this lilac branch outside my office window. He is there most of the day. Sometimes his bird partner joins him. They have a nest in the Bayberry bush that is on the the side outside my window. But this bird will sit there and stare at me, or sing, of groom his feathers for a good part of the day.

Spring Spiffing-Up Projects

We took advantage of some days between inn guests to tackle some Spring projects.

I did the annual planting of marigolds in our herb garden. The garden had been doubled in size last year, so now I plant one half in marigolds and the other half in herbs. The marigolds are eatable and make lovely color accents in salads.

The old steps leading from the front lawn to the lower side lawn was repaired.

Next the painters arrived with this big hydraulic lift. This year they were painting the 3rd floor of the main inn, the cottage, and also power washing all the moss off the roof. They did a fabulous job and everything looks so fresh and new.

And then since they had the lift for the week, it only made sense to finally cut down the one dead and one dying 50 foot plus spruce trees that were next to the main inn. It was amazing how quickly and efficiently they cut down the trees and carted away the logs. See the size of that log that the one guy is lifting?!

Of course, we stopped to smell the flowers, too! All the lilacs around the property are scenting the air with the most wonderful aroma.

The river birches were also trimmed back. Several years ago as the result of a really heavy snow fall, several of the trunks were completely bent over and were practically touching the inn.

Marvelous Views Back Home in Greenville

I love to stay at B&Bs when we travel, and I'll admit to getting a little "innkeepers" envy when we discover such wonderful B&Bs as the last two we discovered.

But then we come home to our inn, the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn, and I fall in love with it all over again and remember that we've got quite the nice B&B, too!

Each week bring new flowers blooming all over the grounds.

We always get a lovely display of dandelions before the first mowing of the season.

The magnolia in the front side lawn is an amazing waterfall of blushing pink blossoms. Last year it was hit with a late frost and had hardly any blooms at all, so I think it is making up for that this year.

Another gem hidden amongst the tall lawn grass.

The dogwood tree out by the pool gets more beautiful every year.

Horses, Marvelous Views, and Hospitality Plus!

Returning from our recent trip to Virginia, we stopped for a one night stay at the Inn at Westwynd Farm in Hershey, PA. What a wonderful place! I could have moved in at once and stayed forever! But, alas our stay was to be all to brief.

I'm definitely marking this inn down for a repeat visit. I want to hang out on the front porch swing watching the sunset and the horses. I also want more of those "fudgey cookies!" The inn is also only a short drive from the Hershey chocolate center of the world, with fine dining (we ate at Devon Seafood Grill - excellent!), a huge amusement park, and historic tours.

Below are some photos from around the inn.

Unexpected B & B Discover in Harrisonberg, VA

Mark and I took a week off to go visit Mark's mom in Danville, VA recently. We had planned to do the 10 hour drive in one shot, because we had done it that way before. However, after being about 9 hours on the road (including a marvelous lunch break at Emeril's Italian Table at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, PA - an expected discovery, too) we pulled into Harrisonberg, VA to look for somewhere to eat dinner.

Using the handy feature of our GPS to find restaurants nearby, we decided to eat at the Joshua Wilton Inn & Restaurant.

Wow, what a find it was! A beautiful Victorian inn, but what was even better was the restaurant. For starters, I had the AUTUMN OLIVE FARMS PORK BELLY - with a.m fog mushrooms, grilled bread, poached egg and a truffle-chive buttermilk dressing. Mark had GRILLED QUAIL - turner ham-cornbread stuffing, fire roasted corn salsa and ancho chili vinaigrette. For the main course, we both had GRILLED DUCK BREAST - creamy polenta, pan roasted green beans and a maple balsamic glaze.

After a meal like that, enjoyed on their outdoor patio, we just weren't ready to face another 3 hours of driving. So we asked about rooms at the inn and were lucky to find that they had a couple available.

Harrisonburg is in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia and is home to James Madison University. The town's nickname is "The Friendly City" and they weren't kidding with that. When we took a walk though town after breakfast the next morning, everyone we passed greeted us with a big and friendly hello.

The Virginia Quilt Museum is right in downtown, just a short walk from the inn. Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to wait until it opened that morning, but it would be worth taking a look another time.

I love mosaics and this one is in the downtown area.

The unexpected discoveries on a road trip are what make road trips so appealing to me. We always stay at B&Bs for the unique and special experience that each one has to offer, which is something we've done since way before we became innkeepers ourselves. It is definitely the "Better Way to Stay"

Using Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs

This year we decided to try using natural dyes for coloring some Easter Eggs. We always have on hand various fruits, vegetables, and spices that can be used to create dyes, so it was easy to get started.

We started by hard boiling a bunch of eggs.

Next up was preparing the ingredients, in this case, we selected blueberries and beets. You need about 2 cups of each. The blueberries were mashed up a bit and the beets were roughly chopped.

Then in separate saucepans, you boil the blueberries and beets in 2 cups of water for 10 minutes. When done, strain the colored water into bowls. The remains of the blueberries and beets can be thrown away or eaten!

Add 1 tsp of white vinegar to each bowl of dye, stir and then allow to cool to room temperature.

Now you are ready to dye the eggs! We poured the dye into two glasses so that we'd have a nice deep well to cover the eggs.

What was surprising with the results was that the blueberry dye was much more intense and fast acting than the beet dye. This was unexpected because the beets colored the water the instant they were put in, even before they were boiled. The blueberries didn't color the water until they were boiled. To get any serious color with the beet dye, we had to leave the egg in the dye at least 5 to 10 minutes, but with the blueberry, it took a minute or less.

This was a fun thing to do in between customers coming to our Life By Chocolate shop to buy up all of the chocolate rabbits and bunnies!

Next year we'll try some new colors.