{"id":723,"date":"2011-04-15T11:29:15","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T15:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthegy.com\/?p=723"},"modified":"2017-05-20T15:13:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-20T19:13:53","slug":"spring-inspiration-at-earthegy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/?p=723","title":{"rendered":"Spring Inspiration at earthegy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love living in the south.\u00a0 I have lived at some point in just about every coastline state between North Carolina and Maine, and most of my later childhood through college was spent in Connecticut.\u00a0 But nothing compares to the country pace and friendliness of Virginia for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s a state of big breakfasts, dripping with sausage gravy, biscuits, and grits.\u00a0 It\u2019s a state with a vineyard<\/a> around every corner, open daily, waiting for you to drop in and taste some of their fruits.\u00a0 A state with great diversity\u2026with beaches and mountains and lakes, with kite flying competitions and tractor show and country fairs.\u00a0 I admit, I used to be a Yankee.\u00a0 I never knew what a \u201cbarbeque\u201d was at a street festival until I was offered one.\u00a0 My response was \u201cbarbeque what???\u00a0 Chicken?\u00a0 Pork chops?\u201d\u00a0 Followed by, \u201c Oh my God, they put coleslaw in the sandwich!\u201d<\/p>\n

I promptly recovered from my shock after eating my first barbeque, and now I know well enough to ask for extra napkins.<\/p>\n

My first house in Virginia was a monstrous thing, built back in 1870.\u00a0 It had low ceilings, a maze of additions added on with no logic or order, and a overgrowth of boxwood hiding the paint peeling siding and broken porch steps.\u00a0 But it also had heart pine floors, a huge kitchen, three fireplaces, and a big barn in a field showcasing two mulberry trees.\u00a0 The trees offering our horses some daily shade, perhaps placed there to feed the birds their sweet fruit.<\/p>\n

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That first house taught me how to turn a house into a home.\u00a0 It taught me to cook and garden and paint.\u00a0 It taught me how to be a hostess for visiting family.\u00a0 It taught me to slow down from the fast northern lifestyle, and appreciate the slow rocking of a porch swing on a hot summer day.<\/p>\n

I ripped out the boxwood and replaced it with daylilies spilling over a rock wall.\u00a0 I gave away all my northern contemporary furniture and found a new appreciation for quilts.\u00a0 I went strawberry picking and soon discovered that I was a master of strawberry pie making.\u00a0 I made ice tea with mint and drowned it with sugar, in true southern style.\u00a0 I planted an herb garden, carefully at first\u2026trying to emulate the formal gardens of Montpelier<\/a> and Monticello <\/a>that I\u2019d visited nearby.<\/p>\n

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And I promptly gave up on trying to maintain its sense of order and renamed it a \u201ccottage\u201d garden, planting rose bushes and tulips everywhere they would fit.\u00a0 \u00a0If there was a bright flower to be found, I bought it, and planted it, and crossed my fingers it would live.\u00a0 Some things died, I\u2019ll admit it. \u00a0 I have a black thumb, and houseplants are doomed in my care.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know anything about zones and shade and sun when I first planted my gardens.\u00a0 I just liked the plants I saw and wanted them.\u00a0 But I learned each time, and found out what works and what doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 And I was always surprised when the next spring something I\u2019d completely forgotten about or given up on came back to life to bless me with another season of color.<\/p>\n

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I am long gone from that house, and although I miss it tremendously, I now have a tiny yellow cottage on 5 acres with a creek.\u00a0 I gave up the horses for pet chickens, and I gave up the maintenance of an older house for one that I can manage to afford to repair.\u00a0 My gardens are small, and better planned now, though equally colorful when in full bloom.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Deer roam my back field, and the neighbor\u2019s guinea hens often visit, strolling around the yard eating bugs, chattering to each other the entire time. \u00a0\u00a0My home now better suits my informal cottage style, with glass bird feeders and grape plants winding up my pergola.\u00a0 Rose bushes are still planted, but I\u2019m more discerning with my choices now, and I buy for color and hardiness.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s been a long, cold, never ending winter, and I have spring fever.\u00a0\u00a0 And I hope to bring you the bright colors of my favorite flowers in my upcoming work.\u00a0 I have a hankering to see fuchsia pink and lemon \u00a0yellow\u00a0together. \u00a0Peridot\u00a0and \u00a0jade\u00a0will be my foliage, garnet\u00a0and chalcedony\u00a0may be my beloved tulips. \u00a0Amethyst may be my iris, and coral agate\u00a0may be my \u00a0cosmos. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s time for spring.\u00a0 And I\u2019m feeling inspired.<\/p>\n

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I love living in the south.\u00a0 I have lived at some point in just about every coastline state between North Carolina and Maine, and most of my later childhood through college was spent in Connecticut.\u00a0 But nothing compares to the country pace and friendliness of Virginia for me.\u00a0 It\u2019s a state of big breakfasts, dripping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-info"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1973,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions\/1973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.earthegy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}