With Spring just a week away, we’re daydreaming of warm breezes, verdant mountain vistas, wildflowers galore, spring songbirds and…well, we thought we’d go ahead and make a list of ten reasons to visit the mountains of Western North Carolina in springtime. What is there to see and do in Spring in the NC mountains?
| Azaleas usher in spring |
Springtime in the mountains of Western North Carolina… there’s nothing
quite like it. While we always suggest late April through the month of May as
the prime time in spring for maximizing your enjoyment of the area’s colorful flora and
fauna, the season really does magically kick off each year right around March
20, with daffodil and forsythia blooms, among some other early spring flowers.
And Biltmore helps out, too, with its Biltmore Blooms celebration.
Mother Nature, let’s do this. Twenty days and counting…crocuses are starting to open at the Inn!
| Black-throated Blue Warbler [Photo Credit: Joe Kegley] |
Heading through our “neighborhood” of Pisgah National Forest in the North Carolina mountains on its way to its winter abode in the Caribbean, the Black-throated Blue Warbler is a fairly common visitor to the Inn on Mill Creek B&B in the early fall. Thus, this beautiful songbird earns the September spot in our 2013 Birding at the Inn series on the blog.
| Our favorite rose bush at the Inn in bloom |
Spring is always beautiful in the North Carolina mountains, but this year, we’ve seen the mountains gradually wake up to Spring, which is different from the past two years when Spring sprung right out of the gate in mid-March and quickly headed into summer by May. Since springtime has been more normal this year, guests of the Inn on Mill Creek Bed & Breakfast have been thoroughly enjoying the weeks of vibrant green leaves on the trees and gradual blooms as springtime makes its way from our neck of the woods around Asheville and Black Mountain to higher elevations along the Blue Ridge Parkway nearby, just in time for the Parkway’s official opening this weekend.
This year at Biltmore Estate in Asheville, the tulips and azaleas are battling it out for everyone’s attention! We have never been to Biltmore — located 20 minutes from the Inn on Mill Creek — when the azaleas and tulips were in full bloom at the same time. Just, wow.
April is a great time to visit Biltmore Estate in Asheville if you love flowering trees and shrubs. As promised to our Facebook fans, here are some photos we took on April 12, just before the 80,000 tulips stole the show…enjoy!
| [Photo credit: Painters Greenhouse] |
Time to get your thyme! The 9th annual Painters Greenhouse Herb Festival is the weekend of April 13-14, 2013, at Painters Greenhouse in Old Fort, NC. Painters is one of our favorite places to buy plants and the herb festival features not only a variety of herbs on sale, but also local crafts, great food, live music and other activities. So while you’re walking among all the sage and rosemary, you can also check out the work of more than 25 local artisans and listen to fabulous music, featuring Lee Entrekin and Friends opening on Saturday followed by Mean Mary, then jazz and blues artist Linda Mitchell on Sunday morning followed by Jay Brown One-Man-Band performing American roots originals and classics.
| April marks the return of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail |
Reason #348 that we love Spring…the return of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail to the Inn on Mill Creek, our Bed & Breakfast near Black Mountain and Asheville, NC. Lovers of nectar producing plants, these beautiful butterflies flock to our phlox as soon as the phlox start flowering. The creeping phlox, low to the ground (hence its name), blooms in early April and then the tall garden phlox bloom in the summertime, keeping the Eastern Tiger Swallowtails very happy. And they make us happy. Happiness all around.
| Azaleas at Biltmore bloom in late April / early May |
Azaleas. Do you like them? If so, then you should check out the thousands of amazing azaleas at Biltmore Estate in nearby Asheville, NC, during late April / early May. They have an entire garden — at 15 acres, it’s more like a park — dedicated to this lovely spring-blooming shrub.
