Hiking in the snow, dead bats...and other stuff!

Last weekend, we went hiking on Saturday up at Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia. Imagine our surprise when we turned the corner and saw this! There was still quite a bit of snow hanging around up there, and it was windy and cold. But we found 4 geocaches!

As for the Roost, look what we found on the dog's porch.....a dead bat! We have no idea what happened to him. He'd been dead for awhile, and the dogs (fortunately!) didn't seem interested in him.
Tom is so brave.....

It was quite chilly on Saturday morning - this was the smoke from "Mommy's" chimney drifting down the valley.

I went for a long walk and found what I hope will be a woodpecker nest. He (or she) was busy inside pecking away. I waited for a pretty good while, but they never came out so I'm not sure what kind of woodpecker it is. But I'll be checking back each weekend to see if there's more activity.

Inside, we did a few more things....

First we hung our chicken clock in the den.

We hung our rooster trivet on the porch.

We hung our "weather stick" (Those of you who have been up, know what it's real name is!)

and I brought up some new pillows for the sofa

I found them at World Market - aren't they great?

Spring...maybe????

OK...maybe, just maybe, spring is right around the corner! We finally got back up to the Roost for the first time since just after Christmas. The pipes made it through the winter, and everything else survived!

The weather was so beautiful....I had daffodils that I had dug up at home that needed to be planted....so I planted,

and planted....

and planted 120 bulbs!
(Can you tell how thrilled I am to be photographed!)

The Parkway Foundation got some new glasses, so we took a pair up to the Roost and christened them

And we finally brought our NC map back up and hung it in the twin room.

Suzie is having a really hard time settling in up there.

No really....

Can't you tell how distraught she is?

Snow, snow and more snow!

We finally got back up to the Roost last weekend. There was still LOTS of snow in the pastures!Our wonderful neighbor, Donald, plowed our driveway so we could get up and check things athe house.

We still had some trouble - as you can see the snow was still pretty deep!

Icicles were growing from the roof...

But once inside, the views were breathtaking!

The snow on the deck was at least 2 feet deep!

We weren't brave enough to turn the water on and see if the pipes held up - maybe next time!

Christmas weekend

We headed up the weekend after Christmas, and here is what our driveway looked like... It was fairytale beautiful...

We had several visitors during the weekend...

We had a monster snowdrift on our deck from the snow that melted off the roof - we couldn't open the screen door!

So we stayed inside most of the weekend, and did some redecorating. We rearranged the twin room and hung some pictures...

We also hung some pictures in the queen room...

And I had to add this picture of the old house that my cousin sent me...who knew what happened when snow started sliding off the tin roof!

Lots of stuff!

Lots of miscellaneous stuff this week...First of all, the screened porch. You can see we still need to stain the door, but it looks great! And you can hardly tell from the inside that it's screened!

We also painted the bathrooms this weekend - here's the hall bath

And here's our bathroom - looks a lot less "cavernous" with some color on the wall!

And, if you've been up, you'll remember the "Pizza Hut House" up on the mountain across the pasture. We called it that because it had a bright red roof. But lo and behold, they have redone it, so we don't know what to call it anymore!

We had some visitors on Saturday morning...

Oh, no! She heard me

Painting and Farewell? to Beatrice

Last weekend, we decided to paint the kitchen - needless to say clearing off the counters was a real pain... Tom cuts some corners...

and stretches to get the far corners...

When it was all done - it was beautiful, but I forgot to take a picture! Next time, I'll show you the finished product. Along with our new beautiful screened porch, which I also forgot to immortalize digitally.

Now on to Beatrice. Most of you know that we have a cow, Beatrice. The man that grazes his cattle on our land keeps her over the winter, breeds her, and sells her calf for us every fall. Well, we came up and found that he had taken all of the cows off for the winter except for Beatrice. He stopped by that weekend and said he was getting out of the cattle business - couldn't find any good help and it was just getting to be too much for him....What did we want to do with Beatrice? After some discussion, he said he might want to keep a few cows and maybe use our pasture again. He'd let us know the next week. If he didn't want to use the pasture, he'd take Beatrice to market for us.

So we came to the Roost thinking that this might be Beatrice's last weekend. We brought a bag of apples so we could feed her one more time...

Of course, the pig was right there as soon as she heard the plastic...

Now where did he hide them?

There they are!

I need another one...NOW!

Oh no....they're all gone!

Well, the good news is that John has decided to use our pasture again, so Beatrice will be back next year!

And...totally unrelated, there are some gorgeous red berries this year!