Getting gorgeous here! Oh, mountain autumn, how we love you so. We’re being treated to a brilliant fall this year thanks to Mother Nature. Sourwoods and dogwoods are in full color mode. And it seems like some trees in our neck of the woods are changing earlier than the past three years, including hickory, beeches and sassafras (one of Brigette’s favorites):
| Forsythia |
Our second week of fall foliage started off a bit chilly (highs in the 50s!) and a return to fireplaces and hot chocolate (yay!). Now we’re heading back into warmer temperatures and noticeably more color change at higher elevations, 4,000+ feet. {For example, check out this stunning photo from Grandfather Mountain taken by Helen Moss Davis…wow!}
| The beautiful work of EAST artist Rebecca King |
The East of Asheville Studio Tour is a great way to meet local artists as they invite you to the studios where their art is created. The free self-guided studio tour takes place twice a year, in Spring and Fall. You can visit as many of the studios as you like over a two-day period.
Our 2011 leaf reports for our neck of the woods in the western North Carolina mountains have begun! Hope you’re all enjoying autumn so far. We’ve had some rain for the past few days, but today was sunny and beautiful and we hope for more of that Carolina blue sky as fall really gets underway over the next several weeks.
It’s no secret that we’re big fans of small towns. We can rave for hours about the charming, laid back small towns near our Bed & Breakfast — Black Mountain, Montreat, Chimney Rock, Old Fort, etc. Our small towns are one of the reasons we love living here and one of the reasons people love coming to visit our area.
We’ve reached a sort of milestone with our four-year Kiva experience. Drum roll… 30 loans! For those of you unfamiliar with Kiva, it’s a non-profit organization that helps people to participate in microloans (usually $25 per lender) to small business owners who typically live in developing countries (and Kiva now allows loans to American entrepreneurs as well). Your $25 gets pooled with lenders from all over the world to fund a loan that can be hundreds or thousands of dollars. {For more about Kiva, visit www.kiva.org and for more of our experiences with Kiva, check out our previous blog posts.}
| Mountain Made gallery in the Grove Arcade (www.grovearcade.com) |
Since we love being in western North Carolina, which is full of talented people who make hand-crafted items, and being that we’re big believers in supporting our local artisans and craftspeople, we’re excited to share what will be going on in our area during American Craft Week, October 7-16, 2011.
Our latest recipe is a super easy and great-tasting fruit side for breakfast, and you can modify the fruit depending on what’s in season. For example, the photo above is our mid-summer version with strawberries, blueberries, peaches, cantaloupe and green grapes. We tend to use 4-5 different fruits in our cocktail for variety and color.You can also vary the kind of honey. We tend toward our local sweet stuff — sourwood honey — but wildflower honey and orange honey and just plain honey honey work great.
Oh, Biltmore Estate, how we love visiting you! On this most recent visit, we were enchanted by the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass traveling exhibit,Tiffany Lamps: Articles of Utility, Objects of Art, and all the things at the Estate that are just pure Biltmore.
