Longwood gardens

Rain, Art

Wayfarin Journey Home   Rain, Art Gardens  June 27

In Shenandoah it rained, In Ohiopyle it rained and here at Branches of Niagara, Grand Island near Buffalo it has rained.  Wind off the Great Lake of Erie and the Niagara River spew out very dramatic clouds, huge cumulonimbus white and then turning dark heavy with rain (see photos on blogg).  The wind is blowin according to my calculations on the Beaufort Wind Scale close to near gale force…no tornadoes though like in Nebraska and Kentucky, chasing us out of both states. So what do you do when it is raining hard and you are camping? Well, first you get outside in your rainjackets and get wet. But, truthfully, it is one of the reasons we gave up tent camping when Toby was less than a year old in the cold rainy National Park of Acadia in Main, no hot showers and so cold, I kept baby Toby next to my body worried I would turn over in the night and squash him. We turned to Pop-Up camping, which worked ok unless it rained really hard and then we found that as I aged I needed an inside toilet and they needed a table to play games on, color maps, a dry over the cabin bed where the two little boys listened to their father read Lord of the Rings (my goddess, Toby was only 5 years old when we had our first cross country journey and Pat read one of the trilogy books.)

So to honor those days remembered with rains, the bright sunshine, feathers which are symbols of found fossils, shells and rocks, I made ART out of a pizza stone plate which I was going to have to throw out (who would want a greasy old plate?)-see the photos on blogg page before. It will go on the porch at Olele Point when the home is finally built.

We are in phase 1 of the build, waiting on permits to be oked.  It will take at least 3 months for that at my estimate.  Pat wants to be more optimistic, but things work very slowly in PNW. We will keep everyone posted.

I am going to publish more photos on Longwood Gardens-see next blogg.  Best Stefani

June 26 , Niagara

Wayfarin Journey Going Home  June 23, 2017

It isn't that we haven't had adventures since 2015 we just haven't had time to blogg, but now ...Note all these bloggs will be called"Going Home" because we are going to our NEW home in the Pacific NW-Washington, the Olympic Pennisula, Port Ludlow.

We probably have a roaming gene(s) in our blood because we do like the gypsy life, always have.  It is much simpler without hours of house cleaning and no responsibilities to each other and to our sons.  We also know it will get old and we will want a stay-at-home place to make a garden and grow new life. 

We always knew that my side of the family was mostly Irish and British and the Scotts came to Britain sometime from Scotland, but Grammy Scott who wasn’t a Scott probably had some Scandinavian ancestry and Pat’s father’s side was Hungarian and mother’s British, but that was from the immediate grandparents and great-grandparents.   Then Ben had his DNA checked and found that he has .1% Yakut Indian genes which means one of his great, great, greats (born between 1720 and 1810) was 100% Yakut.  The Yakut were nomadic hunters, herders, fisherman in NE Russia near Lake Baikal for part of the year and stay-at-home at others, maybe that explains it (Ben is now a hunter, dairy and horse person.) Another one of his greats was 100% Ashkenazi Jewish.

His X-chromosome from me contain one great born between 1840 and 1900 who was 100% French/German.  All Interesting.  It means we are more diverse than we think we are doesn’t it!

The last day at West Meadow Lane Ext. was just crazy, but we did have a minute to watch the deer eat the big elephant ear hostas.  They usually leave them alone??? Pat had to chase her out of the yard. Can you find the deer?  

One of the stops after dropping the car off for transport in NJ on the way to see my Uncle Bobby and the Cousins in Va. was Long Wood Gardens in PA.  The conservatory was just beautiful and we were very interested in their Vegetable Intercropping Plots and how they used cut tree limbs and bamboo to make trellis for their beans, squash and cukes.  It was Pat’s birthday.  We had the best icecream sandwhich ever…lemon berry. 
On the very last day on Long Island after the closing of the home we lived in for 37 years, we stayed at Indian Island in the RV and walking along the trails to the Peonic Bay where we walked many times with the boys we found the feather.  I think it is from a Cooper's Hawk. What a gift from the sky animals.

On the way to see Toby in Buffalo we stopped in Shenandoah National Park and walked 6 miles of the Appalachian trail, one of our to-dos-before we left the NE.  Last time was 21years ago, on our first cross country trip, Toby was mostly carried on Pat’s back.  It was a lot harder this time, though, definitely all the packing and lifting for the move did not get us into enough shape.

But the best was finding Ohiopyle State Park in PA (above).  Very nice little town, lots of history with Frank Lloyd Wright homes and inspired architecture, white water river rafting which we did not do because we were both still hurting from the move..but we rode the bike and did play on the natural river water slides…got more bruises.  Also so far in all of our travels this park has the best hot showers!  And that my friends is luxury when camping even in an RV.

So here is the last photos of NY and the East.  Niagara Falls in all its power. The only other place so far in the US with the same feeling was Mt. St. Helen's.