Home Again, Home Again

Well, we made it to Nashville and back--tired but glad to have gotten away for a while. I know I promised that I would come back with pictures, but I'm sorry to say I didn't. I made the mistake of buying the Show Program and actually reading it. It said that you could take all the pictures you wanted for personal use but had to get the permission of each quiltmaker whose quilt you wanted to post to the Web. Since that would have been next to impossible, I didn't even take my camera into the showroom. I will say that there were some very wonderful quilts there and I came away inspired by what I saw. There were also great vendors and I bought some hand dyes and thread. I like to look at all of the threads in the Superior booth but this time I focused on Bottom Line thread (from Superior). I REALLY like to use Bottom Line in the bobbin when I'm quilting. I seem to have a lot fewer tension problems with it. I also bought 2 large spools of Blendables. And I was drawn into the Hobbs batting booth and bought a Silk batting to try.
We ended up leaving a day early because Smokey just gave out. This was his first real trip since his heart surgery and it was not a restful place. The Opryland Hotel is quite a place--full of wonderful plants--many of them orchids--and waterfalls and beautiful gardens. The problem was that it was so noisy everywhere you went. One thing that we really enjoyed was the evening show of "Dancing Waters" with lighted fountains of water. We liked it so much that we went both evenings. The first night we watched it from a position above the water and the second evening we watched it from the water level. And the different perspectives resulted in two completely different experiences.
It was nice that we would go back to Hendersonville before we came back to Charleston so Smokey could get a little rest before hitting I-26. We did walk downtown that morning but that was it for the day. He slept and I sewed (a good combination)
One thing we did on the way back to Hendersonville was to stop at the Farmer's Market in Asheville to buy peaches.I can't even begin to tell you just how many baskets of peaches they had there! Too many to count. I bought two so I could bring some back to the family and neighbors who watched out for our house & mail while we were gone. ( And now, I'm just hoping that they're GOOD peaches).
One of the first things gardeners do after coming home after a trip if to look around the yard and see what's grown while they were gone. I was glad to come home to some ripe tomatoes--lunch is looking good for tomorrow--but the okra was another story. The thing about okra is that bigger is NOT better. The plants were filled with pods like this one that measured almost ten inches. Boy, you could make gumbo with only 5 or 6 pods like that! That is, you could if you could get a knife through the pod to slice it. The bigger these things get, the tougher they are. I guess I'm going to have to figure out some kind of yard art out of them.
I can tell you that the cardinals had a field day while we were gone. All of my sunflowers had drooped over with their burden of seeds when we left, but when we returned every seed was gone and the cardinals were fussing at us for not having any more! I'm sorry I didn't get to see the show but I'm very glad they had such a party.
Sooooo, these are the pictures of our trip. Not great, I know, but we did have a good time. I wish I had captured the image of the Dancing Waters and I wish I have taken a picture of all those baskets of peaches at the Market, but I didn't. I'll have to do better next time.