Purple mountain majesties

I spent this past weekend with two good friends, camping, hiking, and sightseeing in the Great Smoky Mountains near Gaitlinburg, Tennessee. Taking in the majesty of the mountains, the awe-invoking vistas, the peaceful meadows, the bright green tree-canopyed forests, the burbling brooks, the clear rushing streams, the graceful waterfalls and the tiny trail wildflowers, was refreshing to my soul, indeed!

Just peachy

I love peaches. They are one of my favorite summer fruits. Especially really fresh, sweet, juicy local peaches.

Now that I live in the South, I am much closer to "peach country." This weekend, I decided that it would be fun to visit a peach orchard and pick my own peaches off the vine. Although trekking to Georgia to get the full "Georgia Peach" experience wasn't really an option, I figured that finding an orchard in south central Tennessee was my next best option.

Hence, this Saturday, my friend Manda and I found a delightful pick-your-own-peach orchard just an hour south of Nashville. Manda is a native Southerner, hailing from Alabama. So she was able to add to the authenticity of the experience, along with sharing tidbits with me about peach preservation and peach recipes from her 'Southern Living' magazine.

The afternoon was just lovely. The weather, although quite hot, was sunny, blue-skies, and there was a nice breeze in the air.

I never realized peach trees were so pretty! I had just trying to capture the scene on my camera, although my cheap-o camera does not begin to do it justice!

After we arrived at the orchard, Manda and I strolled through the orchard with the provided wooden baskets and joyously plucked the peaches off the branches. We harvested two different varieties - Red Fury, a tarter, large peach, and the Contender, a sweet, smaller peach.

I think I gathered about 20 peaches or so. Some ripe, some still a bit hard so I can space out the use.

After we finished with our harvest, we sat out at one of the picnic tables, took in the beautiful rolling hills of the Tennessee countryside, and each enjoyed one of the warm, sweet juicy peaches. There is nothing like fresh fruit, sun-warmed and straight off the vine!

Now I get to experiment with ways to use the peaches. Yesterday I made a "Peach Crumble" which I took in to work with me and seemed to be a big success. I am excited to find creative ways to use the peaches, and perhaps even preserve some so that I can enjoy their deliciousness in the coming months.

Hope you enjoy some of the photos of my little orchard trip!

~ Yum! ~

Springtime impressions

The honeysuckle are bursting forth in bloom here. The greenway on which I often walk is teaming with bushes of honeysuckle. During my evening walks, as the sun pours through bushes and branches, I drink in the sweet, tender aroma that permeates the path.

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The hillsides are bright green now, well-watered by all the rain we have gotten in the past few weeks. Since I moved here in the fall when the leaves had already started to change, this this my first experience of green Tennessee rolling hills. It's really a lovely landscape. Unlike the long, continuous hills of Pennsylvania, Tennessee's hills are truly "rolling", like large bunny hills, rising and falling across the horizons. One can also see the"ranges" of hills, each slightly higher than each other, in variations of green.

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There is an owl that lives in the trees above my house. I noticed this sound the first few nights that I moved in. Nearly every night, I hear the "whoo-ing" of the owl. It has become a comforting, rhythmic sound in the evening hours. It makes me feel cozy, like I live in a forest or something. I still haven't seen the owl, but I am on the lookout.

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This afternoon there was a violin concert under the magnolia trees in my neighborhood. It was in someone's front yard a few houses down from me. There were probably 100 people in lawn chairs watching the elementary school age violinists. Very quaint.

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One of the things I love about my neigborhood, besides the fact that the majority of houses are darlingly cute cottage-style 1930s houses, is the prevelance of delightful front porches. Long wooden swings and rocking chairs line these porches, and I can just imagine people sitting on them in the summertime, drinking their sweet tea. Perhaps some of them end up being mainly just decoration when the folks opt for the air-conditioned living rooms rather than sticky front porches. But simply the existance of front porches creates a warm, neighborly feel, methinks.

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Unfortunately, I am not one of those with a cute exterior house or a front porch. But I do have some flower pots. And a large magnolia tree which canopies my yard. At least a little quintessential southern flair graces my yard.