Abundant day

Gillen and Nicolas came home this morning with three Bass this time. With so much going on today, they were put in the fridge for another night. We spent most of the day at the annual Hummingbird festival, held every year on Gillen's birthday weekend, at a local plantation.

We brought Gillen's friend Aaron with us, money for fun treats like shaved ice with syrups, moonwalks, homemade ice cream made in a giant motor powered churn, a gift for Nicolas' mother, Helen, whose birthday is today, and of course - more plants. I also brought my camera, so there are an abundance of photos and they were uploaded in a much bigger size than I intended and take up an abundance of room! And I didn't even get to the ones from dinner at our favorite Thai restaurant for Helen's birthday tonight.



















The shaved ice man is Ed, the man who lived in our hundred year old house before we did. He repaired it, added stairs and a second story and built a deck and a side porch. He is the reason our house is so cool. He and his wife (whose landscaping and frog pond are what made me want this home) are also from Mass. and that may be the reason that we could afford it. He now runs an ice cream shop that he created out of a train caboose. The Caboose is being used in the filming of a movie with Luke Perry and LeAnne Rimes, called Good intentions, later this week.















Ewes Full Acres was there, run by an amazingly energetic and talented woman we've known for years who spins virgin wool collected from her own sheep. She had a huge array of variegated, hand painted colors. I bought some called grape hyacinth, that is a mixture of purple and green. Gillen's variegated green syrup tongue may have inspired my choice.

This is a goat from the animal petting area; no wool was spun from this guy. But he was quite the model.












Gillen was given a Butterfly Bush by a nursery owner who was impressed by his knowledge of the plants. How generous. Once home, he and Aaron immediately planted both this one and the ones Gillen had bought. Gillen always gets enthusiastic volunteers for the shovelling. Yesterday, another friend, Andrew, shovelled the burial hole for the neighbor-dog-slane turkey chick. Today, Gillen watched Aaron shovelling a hole for the Butterfly Bush. The butterflies already found the blooms before it was even planted. Hummingbirds soon followed. Life in the country, today, has been abundantly good.