The Season's Best: The Gardens at Monticello

Okay- just one more and I'll be done with my travel-blog.
 I just can't NOT write about Monticello in the spring!




We'd visited twice before- in the dead heat of summer and the rainy chill of winter.  This time, we dropped in just in time to see the gardens, orchards and vineyards in all of their glory.





 I'm such a novice at gardening that the sight of these perfectly plowed and bursting beds and terraces took my breath away and left my heart fluttering.  Can you imagine conceiving of and producing something so magnificent?!.  Thomas Jefferson was brilliant.  A little background on the design and maintenance of his gardens amazed me.

A few more pictures of Jeffersonian genius:

 















 And we mustn't forget an observatory...to watch the sun rise and set over our masterpiece...

 

  Did I mention the exotic tulip gardens?...

 

THOMAS JEFFERSON

President of the United States

Author of the Declaration of Independence
and
Statute For Religious Freedom

Father of the University of Virginia

And

Gardener.

 At heart.

Inspiring.

The Season's Best: Historic Jamestowne

The Jamestown Settlement Museum is a great place to take the family, but I'd long been wanting to visit Historic Jamestown, the actual site of that ill-fated colony. 

After our visit at the living history center, we drove the two or three miles through swampland to the National Park Service site.





 For me, it was absolutely fascinating:

 

These graves mark the Starving Time, the desperate winter of 1609-1610. When a load of new colonists landed in mid-August 1609, the situation was dire. They brought few provisions: their supply ships had run aground in Bermuda. Indians were besieging Jamestown. The colony's leader, Captain John Smith, left for England in October for treatment of a gunpowder burn. Food supplies were exhausted. The settlers feared to leave the fort to fish or hunt. By the spring, more than half the colony had perished from disease and famine. (exerpt from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)

In the 1950s, archaeologists located an early unmarked cemetery. It lay under the ruins of a statehouse that was built at Jamestown in the 1660s. Now called the Statehouse Complex Burial Ground, it holds victims of the Starving Time, as well as later graves up to the 1630s. (Image courtesy of: APVA Preservation Virginia/Historic Jamestowne)


I know.  quite the yawner for a blog post, BUT- definitely one of the season's best for me.

Jamestown Settlement & Powhatan Village

We made our second visit to the Jamestown Settlement while my sisters were in town in April.   Our first visit was the day after Christmas, which also happened to be the day after a major snow and ice storm.  Because we're just that crazy.  This visit was much much nicer, and far more fun!  Here's a little peek of our day:

Abby, Olivia, Luke, Miriam, Caroline, Kaitlyn, Heather, Jessica and Emily paddling away.

The Season's Best - Mt. Vernon

Anyone who lives in the South will tell you that the best time to do summer...is in the spring.  Summer is too darn HOT and WET! We figured that out pretty quickly and made sure we did it right this year.  The highlight was a week in April spent with both of my sisters and their families.  The next few posts are my picks for the best of the season.

Bike Ride to Mount Vernon

I did this ride years ago with friends and always wanted to do it again.  It was so great to be able to repeat it with family- all fifteen children and six adults of us!  We rented bikes in Old Town Alexandria...






and rode 20 beautiful miles round trip to Mount Vernon, home of George Washington. 











Abby took the prize for Trooper of the Day.  This is not the easiest ride, but she held her own without a single whimper, the entire 20 miles!



Creighton towed the twins in a trailer...





and I had Miri with me on a sort of tandem...




 Wow.   Huff and puff.  I started feeling reaaaaallly old, and had to keep reminding myself I was towing 70 extra pounds up all those hills!  So so worth it, though.

Mt. Vernon.

View from the back-- Virginia in all it's pastoral glory

View from the front-- over the Potomac River. 

Taking it all in on the porch...

Somehow, I missed a picture of the Tolmans, but here are the rest:

The Baros Family

and us!

 

Definitely one of the season's best.