Adventures in North Carolina!

We have had a few crazy, adventurous, relaxing, stressful weeks here in NC and we've adjusted well. We are SO enjoying the chance to be out in nature without a 17 floor elevator ride and lots of concrete and pavement. We're working on all the spring gardening still and like all good horticulturalists I've learned that "special event" gardens need to be planted months in advance so they have time to establish themselves. Check out my 4th of July garden. I'm sooo EPCOT right?

Poppy Duck meanwhile is working on his castle hedge. It's coming in thick and looking good!

The kids have their very own garden! They planned it out, wrote a map to what they planted and are watering it every day. American Gothic eat your heart out!

Their garden is right near the log cabin that Grammy and P.D. made for them last year. They have a blast in that cabin!

Here it is! They are taking good care of the flowers in their window box as well!

What a set-up! We will sure miss this when we go back to Korea.

Uncle Timmy meanwhile is busy working on the 2nd floor of his barn/distillery. It's a gorgeous building and it's coming along really fast!

There will be many, many good memories made in and around that barn I have a feeling...

Meanwhile is has been an EPIC snake year! They seem to be everywhere and we have been killing them left and right. We always show the kids and they have been through several rounds of "snake school" so they know what they look like, where they might be, how to avoid them and when to really be on your guard. We killed more than this but birds keep stealing them off our snake trophy fence.

I spotted 3 in one day and was awarded my VERY OWN snake shootin' pistol. It's very rad and I am now a gardener who's packin' heat. Snakes better watch out! (I would also like to say that I find it very appropriate that I am wearing my new Zombie T-shirt in this pic. Because the gun's for snakes but you know I'm always on Zombie alert as well. Just sayin'...)

Everything here is green and lush right now. Here's a view from Bob Singer's lower barn (pig roast central) back towards the cabin. You can see the roof of the gazebo:

The kids love to relax in the hot tub at the end of the day. What a view!

Here Sasha was weeding the mint garden for Grammy first thing in the morning. She said it smelled awesome!

My garden. I work in it every day and it's coming along. We're already eating lettuce out of it!

Another view of the main garden. Timmy planted all these wildflowers on the berm below and they are gorgeous!

A view of the wishing well and the cabin up the secret staircase through the arch in the hedge.

Every day is full of wonderful little country living moments. One morning we were all our having coffee on the front porch and we taught the kids how to eat honey suckle. They loved it!

And then there's our nest in the fern. I was watering all these big hanging plants on the front porch and noticed that a bird kept shooting out of this one fern. Took a look and sure enough, there was the cutest little nest and 4 tiny blue eggs!

Another shot of the nest in the fern:

The kids are busy from morning till night. They do school with me in the morning, then we're either helping Uncle Timmy down at the barn....

.... or having a lesson with our AWESOME summer Suzuki teacher. Her name is Morgan and she is great. Teddy is even playing and he loves it! That's how awesome she is!

And she has this ridiculous cat named "Rimski" that is fat and lucious and just loves all over you the whole time you're at her house.

So that was last week. At the very end of the week I peeked in on the eggs in the nest and instead saw 4 little bundles of downy fluff. They hatched! We are watching them every day to see how they grow!