The 36th annual Sourwood Festival is right around the corner! This fun street festival, presented by the Black Mountain-Swannanoa Chamber of Commerce, is the quintessential awesome small town event, featuring hundreds of arts and crafts vendors, food that ranges from vegetarian to BBQ, as well as ice cream and festival fare, kids’ activities and rides, live music, and the part we like best — honey and bee demonstrations.
The Arrowhead Artists & Artisans League (A3L) is a group of local artists who are dedicated to promoting the arts in Old Fort, NC. If you like art, you’ll appreciate their efforts to preserve the art culture of the mountains in our fabulous little town. This year, A3L opened an art gallery and studio space — Arrowhead Gallery & Studios — on Catawba Avenue in Old Fort, complete with a gorgeous painted quilt block.
“Can Dave make his Soda Bread Muffins for us?” That’s a question we hear a lot from return guests at the Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast. Soda Bread (or its equally delish counterpart, the Soda Bread Muffin) is like the food version of the color white — it goes with everything. And it can be served at any meal, although we’re partial to breakfast for obvious reasons. The best part about this beautiful baked good is that Soda Bread is really easy to make. You probably already have most, if not all, of the ingredients in your kitchen.
Busy day at the Inn on Mill Creek birdfeeders today! These three photos were taken in the span of about four minutes. Just a taste of what you might encounter in the summertime at the Inn on Mill Creek, which is a site on the North Carolina Birding Trail, Mountains Region.
In the seven summers that we’ve been here at the Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast, we’ve noticed from time to time in the pond a dark object just below the surface of the water, a submarine-like being, which occasionally sends up its periscope to check around, only to quickly sink back beneath the depths when spotted. OK, maybe Innkeeper Brigette has been reading too much about the Hunley Submarine in anticipation of a little innkeeper R&R (roadtrip and relax) vacay to Charleston later this year… But our resident snapping turtle had yet to make a real appearance, other than sticking its long neck out of the water. Until this week.
The daylilies, shasta daisies, butterfly bushes and hydrangea shrubs are out in full force at the Inn on Mill Creek, welcoming summertime to the mountains of western North Carolina. (And just FYI, since we are daylily-crazy here at the Inn, we have several varieties that bloom at different times in different garden areas.)
| Blue-gray Gnatcatcher building a nest in our apple orchard |
A resident of the neotropics, the blue-gray gnatcatcher migrates to our neck of the woods for the summertime and thus gets a spot as our June bird in this year’s 12 Months of Birding at the Inn series on the blog. The gnatcatcher is a tiny gray bird, with a long white-edged tail and dark streaks above its eyes that make it look like the gnatcatcher flew straight out of the Angry Birds game.
In 2009, we constructed a seven-circuit walking labyrinth on the southern end of the property at the Inn on Mill Creek, near black walnut, tall tulip poplar and maple trees. The Inn’s labyrinth is a classical style labyrinth based on one in Visby, Sweden – a shout out to Innkeeper Brigette’s dad’s Swedish heritage. It has a 2-ft. wide grass walking path bordered by white granite pavers.
| View from Mt. Mitchell, highest peak in the eastern U.S. |
You really can’t beat summertime in the mountains of Western
North Carolina. The average highs are in the low-80s at the hottest point of
summer. And that’s just our elevation. Drive 20 minutes to the Blue Ridge
Parkway and hop on for a scenic drive up to elevations of 5,000+ feet and
you’ll often experience high temperatures in the 70s, and sometimes even the
60s, in July and August.
| Rosco E. Walters |
Our innpugs, Csaba and Bugsy, have a new little brother: Rosco! We were fortunate to have the opportunity to adopt this cutie-pie from Southeast Pug Rescue & Adoption (SEPRA), based in Suwanee, Georgia.
