Spending a Little Time With the Vanderbilts

     Today it has been a one year since my mother-in-law died. Last year at this time, we had a trip scheduled to Asheville, NC and a few other stops. We cancelled the trip because she was so ill. My husband told me a few months ago that he wanted to take the trip this year and he wanted to spend today touring the Biltmore Estate. It is a place his mother would have loved.

     It is currently the Festival of Flowers at Biltmore. The house is filled with fresh flowers. There are more than I've ever seen. The dining table in the banquet hall must have thousands of flowers standing 4 feet tall and running the length of the table. I was so frustrated that they don't allow any photographs to be taken in the house. I did manage to snap one quick one (above) as we entered the mansion.

     The home was completed in 1895. George Vanderbilt's 250-room chateau is as impressive today as it was more than a century ago. Original art by Pierre Auguste Renoir and John Singer Sargent, magnificent 16th century tapestries, a library with 10,000 volumes, a Banquet Hall with a 70-foot ceiling, 65 fireplaces, an indoor pool, and a bowling alley are just a few of the things we saw as we walked through this amazing home. Most of the objects throughout the house are from George and Edith Vanderbilt's original collection.

     I really had the feeling as we walked through the rooms that I couldn't absorb everything I was seeing. With my love of flowers, I couldn't get enough of the massive fireplace mantels that were draped with grapevine and hundreds of fresh flowers. The walls were covered with everything from gilted wallpaper to velvet to massive tapestries. The stonework and the carved wood throughout the house was so detailed. The furnishings were lavish and ornate. I can't imagine living in a space this large, but it certainly was interesting to see. Now I want to read the book we bought cover to cover so I can learn more about the famous Vanderbilt family.

     There will be more pictures to share, but I am going to end this post with some of the gorgeous flowers we saw as we strolled the Biltmore gardens. The azaleas are in bloom and the pictures don't begin to do them justice.

     Our weather here is perfect so far. My son says it may be blowing away at my home tonight and tomorrow. I hope all of you in the paths of the storms have been safe.

Weekend Interrupted-Met Monday

     The above picture pretty much sums up my life since Thursday. A big ugly bug came my way and knocked me for a loop. I'm not 100% yet, but at least I no longer feel as if I have been run over by a very large truck.

     We also had this going on at our house all weekend. Isn't he cute? Don't you just love them right after a bath?

Nothing says "trouble" quite like two innocent little boy faces!

Of course, there was also this little problem,

which wasn't repaired until Sunday afternoon.

     With all of that going on, what I hoped would be a completed Met. Monday project, is still a work in progress. I thought I'd share the early stages of what we are doing. Usually, if you are changing something, you tend to take away something you don't like and replace it with something you do like. In this case, the opposite is true. Our home is in a busy subdivision, but we are lucky enough to be on a field that is still farmer owned. Therefore, we don't have any houses behind us. It gives us a feeling of a much more open space. When we moved into our house almost 7 years ago, the back corner of our house had a small blue spruce tree...nothing else. We watched out little tree grow, we added some fencing around it for some climbing flowers and it became a favorite spot in our yard.

Our little tree last spring.

Wasn't she beautiful in her winter coat the year before?

     Last summer, after a series of drenching rains...our poor little tree died in a matter of days. We found out that blue spruce "don't like to have their feet too wet" and while that area of our yard is usually not under water, the deluge of rain quickly ended the life of our green family member. We couldn't cut her down. She had a nest that we wanted to allow to hatch and she became a perching place for the many hummingbirds that gather around our yard. So we let her stand proud through the summer, fall and even into winter. We filled her branches with suet balls and the birds fed on her during the cold months. But, last week it was time to let her go.

     We looked at other trees for the space, but most that we liked could also suffer the same fate if we had another heavy rain. So, we are adding more fencing and have picked out a beautiful climbing rose bush in a brilliant orange to put on the fence.

We hope the rose bush will quickly catch up with

the flowering climbing plants on the other fences.

     We miss our tree and we don't think this is a "better look" for our yard. It is however something that will hopefully offer us brilliant color throughtout the spring and summer, block a little of the view of the field and still be a haven for all those hummingbirds. I'll post the completed project soon. I had finally gotten caught up reading all of your blogs and then I had a weekend with no computer, so I will be coming around seeing what kept you all busy the past few days!

     I am linking this to Met Monday. Please join our hostess Susan @ Between Naps on the Porch to see all of the creative projects happening in Blogland.