A gift (it was originally intended for an On The Road post) from commentor Frosty:
We just returned from a trip to the newest National Park: New River Gorge, followed by a trip to Southwest Virginia. The weather was perfect and except for the last day we had sunny skies!
I didn’t schedule it for prime leaf peeping season but that’s how it worked out.
New River Gorge – Grandview Overlook
Little Beaver State Park – Near our campsite
Damascus, VA – Trailhead, Virginia Creeper Rail Trail
Virginia Creeper Rail Trail
On the road, southwest Virginia
Totally by accident we were at New River Gorge for Bridge Day, when they close the bridge for pedestrians and continue the over 40-year tradition to allow BASE jumpers to parachute off the bridge! One of the conditions the NPS had to agree to when they made it a National Park was to keep the BASE jumping day.
Coming in for a landing
***********
Many of us have wrapped up our gardens for the winter, and that’s a good time to take stock of what worked, what didn’t, and what we’ll do differently next year. If you’ve got even one or two photos of your harvest bounty, send them to me, and I’ll set up a potpourri post next week!
What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
Steeplejack
So I guess this is the open thread for now.
Nice pictures!
One might think from this post that New River Gorge National Park is in southwest Virginia, but it’s actually in West Virginia, about 50 miles from the state line.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack: That’s why it says ‘West Virginia Edition’ in the post title?
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
Oops, missed that. Time for coffee!
eclare
Very nice! Just watching people parachute like that would give me a heart attack.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
eclare
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
satby
Good morning and well done Frosty! Nice pictures.
Our first frost was a really hard freeze and I feared I had lost all my outdoor potted plants (cannas and begonias). But it’s going to be great fall weather for most of next week, and as I started clearing out the freeze-bitten foliage it looks like none of the tubers were affected. So they’re going into storage in the basement tomorrow. Today I have a holiday market, Out &Proud, that I hope will be well attended. My late friend started it and a good turnout would be a nice remembrance of her.
LiminalOwl
Lovely pictures, Frosty. Thank you.
HinTN
My garden has been converted, relegated to a wildflower patch. The deer decided last summer that the zinnias and Mexican sunflowers, which before had not interested them, looked yummy. I scattered the seed on 13 October (Luna in Libra is supposed to be good for flowering plants), tamped them down and watered them in. They came up like gangbusters and survived that hard frost. 🤞
MagdaInBlack
Monday evening I hauled all the balcony plants inside, and they’ve been lounging around the living room ever since. Ruby the Giant Geranium is patiently waiting for winter placement in front of the patio door. I think this all will happen today. Maybe.
Yarrow
So glad the New River Gorge is now a national park. It really deserves it. Such a gem.
Thanks for the photos. What a glorious time to visit the area.
Jeffery
@HinTN: I think seedlings have a natural antifreeze in them. I use to plant coriander seeds in the fall. One year I was very late doing it. The first pseudo leaves came up. There was a hard frost. They were flat on the ground in the morning. Thought they had died. Later in the day I noticed they had stood up again. They did this all winter. The first true leaf didn’t appear until spring.
Van Buren
@HinTN: We’ve been growing Zinnias for decades and this is the first year the rabbits took a liking to them. Kinda weird, if you ask me.
BretH
Stunning, beautiful country!
HinTN
@Van Buren: I really missed my butterfly garden this summer. I might try pots on the deck next year.
Geminid
@Yarrow: The South Fork of the New River wanders into Morth Carolina. There is a New River State Park about 30 miles northest of Boone. I stopped by about 10 years ago to check out the camground.. It is set between a parking lot and the river, and people carried their gear to the tent sites in a meadow. There were few people there at midday; I think the rest were out kayaking on the river. A very pretty area.
OzarkHillbilly
Wonderful pics, Frosty.
Yarrow
@Geminid: One of the interesting things about the New River is that it flows south to north. One of the few in the US.
OzarkHillbilly
@MagdaInBlack: I was taking a break from the world yesterday, so I missed the news until now (deleted and reposted in the new and improved AM open thread).
OzarkHillbilly
Nothing much to report about from my garden, other than it is a disaster area. For now, I am busy with other projects.
lowtechcyclist
Ah, the Virginia Creeper trail! That was a great trail to ride.
There was a pull-off next to the road outside of Damascus, and if you headed east towards Whitetop (which I always did), it was a moderate but steady uphill all the way, not too taxing if you were in decent shape, but you’d be going slow and have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery. And then when you got to the top (or wherever your legs got tired), you could turn around and coast right back down to the bottom.
I biked that trail a lot when I lived in Bristol, because SW VA is not an area where the drivers are tolerant of cyclists on their roads, so the Creeper Trail was practically my only option.
At one point, the town proposed putting in a bike path on city-owned land along the large creek running through town. Great idea, huh? People showed up in droves at the public meeting to express vehement opposition – they believed a bike path would bring youth gangs and who knows what. So no bike path in town.
I miss the Creeper Trail, but I’m glad to be out of that part of the world. The back roads of northern Calvert and southern Anne Arundel counties may not be quite as scenic as the Creeper Trail, but I don’t have to toss my bike in the truck to drive somewhere to go on a bike ride; my rides all start and end at my driveway because it’s safe to ride the back roads where I live.
OzarkHillbilly
I just now came across this, haven’t read it yet, But her book looks to be well worth the money: ‘On the brink of extinction’: a food historian’s hunt for ingredients vanishing from US plates
Myself, I don’t grow fruits and veggies I could buy at Walmart. I prefer the old, forgotten, and perhaps exotic stuff you can’t find anywhere else except maybe a farmers market.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly:
That does sound interesting.
Gvg
Seasons are different. I have spent the last few weekends putting in my fall winter garden and ordering plants. Yesterday the nicest nursery in town had the seasons camellias in. About 60 kinds. Best selection now before they are picked over. I am probably going to join the local society though so I can order through them for some rarer ones. Also time to renew North American rock garden society membership for seed exchange soon. Fun to get really unusual seeds to try. Now is when I have to sow most of my seeds. Wild types scattered. At least 20 trays under hardware cloth cages so the squirrels won’t dig in them of bedding out types. I try to do many perennials but always end up with some annuals. Snapdragons, alyssum, blue lobelia and coreopsis mainly. I also do cuttings.
I took camellia cuttings from my deceased uncles garden a year ago and hope to soon have plants to give family members.
I have also been planting out the various shrubs I have propagated this summer. It’s been too hot this summer to risk baby shrubs but now the weather is nice and they have good weather for month to grow bigger before cold arrives. I also need the room in my propagation area with the mist set up.
I will be busy till it get really cold about late December and even then I will have to check on them now and then.
kalakal
Not much happening here, the Tampa Bay area is not renowned for it’s display of Fall colours. Or the concept of ‘Fall’ come to that. We have an exciting few weeks in early spring where every Live Oak decides to dump its leaves but that’s a monochrome event
dr. luba
I drove through WV to get to my cousin’s house in Lynchburg VA two weeks ago. Looking at the map, I noticed the New River NP–had never heard of it before, but figured it warranted a minor detour (I love national parks).
The colors weren’t at peak yet, and it was drizzly all day long (and for most of my 8 day road trip), but it was a lovely park, and the overlook was amazing. I also stopped at the Hawk’s Nest SP just north of the park, also with lovely views. The Sandstone Falls, however, were quite underwhelming. The New River bridge, OTOH, was amazing!!
StringOnAStick
We spent the week of the first hard frost here in Maui, so before we left home I picked half a fruit box of green mini Roma tomatoes, which are ripening nicely. I cleaned out the frozen veggie garden yesterday and started planning the configuration of next year’s garden.
My big news is that at age 65 I took a surfing lesson last week and stood up on my very first ride, and everyone after that too! I can see how it’s an addictive sport and it helped a lot that I’m an old backcountry powder skier so I understand not having a stable base under my feet. My husband is a super athlete but I have to say the look of shock on his face as I surfed right by him and waved on my first try was so, so worth it!
JAM
I harvested all the tomatoes and peppers last weekend because we had two nights of freezing temps on Monday and Tuesday, made jalapeño jelly. I covered the plants in the east-facing front bed with blankets so I can have a few more weeks of flowers. Yesterday, I cleared out the dead tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and bean vines and all the weeds that were hiding underneath. The strawberry plants I put in this spring have doubled and completely filled the bed where I put them–I need to figure out how I’m going protect them this winter. I faithfully removed all the flowers this summer, so I should get a good crop next year
I’m going to try winter sowing native perennials outdoors this year for the first time, but I still need to buy all my seeds. And dig the new bed.
StringOnAStick
I bought some extremely xeric native seeds for the neighbourhood roundabout and will be planting those soon. Seed for Sphaeralcea munroana (Monroe’s globemallow, also called cowboys delight) aren’t easy to come by, but they handle extremely dry conditions. Planting them now so they can take advantage of the fall and winter moisture. I got them from Nature’s Seed online.
way2blue
@eclare:
Exactly! Looks like all they do is go straight down to a rocky landing. Eesh.
way2blue
@Jeffery:
They must have been wondering what they did to deserve such a fate of repeated near death…
Anyway
@StringOnAStick:
Woo hoo! That’s so exciting, you go!! I remember the rush the first time I stood on a snow board and came down the (nursery) slope — had never done any skiing and it was so cool.