Spring has Arrived

The Virginia weather all winter has been beautiful and nothing to complain about. We had 2 snowfalls, can you call them snowfalls down here? It snowed for about an hour and this is about as much as we got. No snowman building for us.

Well now that spring is here we need to deal with all those leaves on the edge of the property. Mike decided to try to mulch the leaves and see if we could use it in the flower beds. He started under the Eastern Redbud Tree which I am sure will be my favorite tree in the yard. It has heart shaped leaves after it is covered with purplish little flowers. Our tree is a little sparse but hopefully over time it will be thicker and fuller.

The mulching was a success so we decide to continue with this project.

As we raked out the leaves on the edge of the property we found many a different shrub like plants. They were thin thin stocks of I do not know what but I was excited to find out. Turns out they were azaleas! This is one of the almost finished mulched flower beds. Oak leaves are great for the soil and will help them become fuller.

Here is the left side of our driveway where you can see the mulched section versus our neighbors.

We have forsythia bushes as well that we were able to free from the leaves. They were beautiful but I forgot to get a photo of them.

We have several random clumps of Variegated Hosta that are also one of my favorite plants.

Periwinkle, creeping myrtle, or vinca vine is covering the other side of our fence. My favorite color is purple so I am thrilled. Not so much about the ivy all over the place.

I believe these are Dusky Challenger Bearded Irises. I thought they were going to be purple based on the color of the stock but then the bud looked black.

They are a royal velvet purple. Looks like they have a fuzzy caterpillar in the middle. Purple again, wicked excited. They are scattered around the yard so I am going to move them come fall and ring one of the trees we still by often.

Life is good!

Joys of Landscaping

We moved in October and the beautiful oaks had started to shed their leaves. Did you know there are 600 different types of oak trees? Neither did I until I moved south. Having lived in Massachusetts and Maine for most of my life I am familiar with Red and White Oak.

"The white oak is a large, strong, imposing specimen. It has a short stocky trunk with massive horizontal limbs. The bark is light ashy gray, scaly or shallow furrowed, variable in appearance, often broken into small, narrow, rectangular blocks and scales.The leaves are dark green to slightly blue-green in summer, brown and wine-red to orange-red in the fall." (Arbor Day Foundation)

Red oak have bristle-tipped leaves and acorns with hairy shell linings.

As kids we used to spend hours hollowing out acorns to make pipes and collecting wheelbarrow fulls to create scarecrows from the acorns found in our neighbors yard. I never thought much of them. I did not know the difference between the two types. The leaves all fell in the fall after turning pretty colors. We raked them and they were gone.

Move to Virginia and I start paying attention to oaks. We spent the first 2 weeks cleaning the house and unpacking the boxes. Then on to the leaves. We spent an entire day removing the foot or so of leaves in the yard. Felt very accomplished and enjoyed seeing the lush green moss now that they were gone.

Blue jay on the feeder and a red wing black bird on the ground! Birds seemed to like that we cleaned up too.

We had a good rain the next day and night and a woke to another foot of leaves in the yard. What! Did they blow in from someone else's yard? Not likely we are fenced in the back and half a mile from the road. They are only supposed fall once as in my childhood.

We spent another day cleaning up leaves. Not as satisfying as the first time. We had moved the first batch into the area behind our fence so it would be out the way. The area was about 3 feet high with the collection of leaves from the first raking, after this one it was about 5 feet high. Again the bright green moss greeted us again.

We spent the next day looking at the property and noticed that the tress still had more leaves. Ugh! We asked family members who said that Pin Oak shed their leaves slowly and possibly over months. Looks like we have Black Oak as well.

Mike took this picture to give you an idea of the size of the leaves we were dealing with. Mike wears a size 12 shoe.

We raked about 7 more times before Winter actually arrived. We got lazy and no longer moved the leaves to the other side of the fence which was now full. We started to rake the leaves just to the edge of the property instead. We would deal with it in the Spring.

Welcome to Chesterfield

Mike and I have been technically homeless since we moved to Taiwan in 2010. We sold our house in Centennial and moved to Taipei and then to Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The last 3 years we lived in Jubail and I decided I want a place to call my own. We could pick anywhere we wanted as we had no jobs to determine the location. First time ever that we were picking a location.

We had some criteria of not too hot and not too cold. Someplace close enough to the ocean that we could go for a weekend. A place close enough to a major airport for easy travel. A home that was private but close to basic needs.

We created a pros and cons for different states that meet the criteria and Virginia seemed to win. We moved back to the states at the end of May and thought our house hunting would begin shortly there after.

Well we all know that life has a way of happening right smack dab in the middle of your plans and we ended up postponing the house hunting for months. We helped my dad move to Maryland in June to live with my brother. We helped my sister move out of her house in Massachusetts and then into her new place in Virginia in September.

In the middle of all of this Mike and I took master level courses to renew our licenses.

We closed on our place the first of October and are finally feeling settled in. The storage unit is gone and the boxes are all unpacked (a future post). While the house is not fully furnished nor decorated it is ours.

These are the photos from the listing not taken by either of us. The yard does not look exactly the same but you can get the idea. The front yard is filled with trees and you cannot see the house from the road, ideal for privacy.

I love the porch and cannot wait to chill out in the summer reading a book.


We have a 2 car garage and a sun room. The sun room is my favorite place to be right now as I can see the birds in the feeders they left behind and the deer that bound over the fence to eat.


We have loads of trees so we feel like we are in a canopy forest. The squirrels are also fun to watch as they chase each other and drill acorns into the ground all through out the yard.

Cannot wait to see if there are more flowers in this bed.




We are not used to oak tress so the raking of leaves has been an on going battle. We rake or leaf blow every 2 days and still cannot get rid of them. We have recently learned that they will not actually lose all their leaves to spring! Ugh!

So we will continue to rake and work on the yard. It does not look like it needs a great deal of work but there are dead trees, grapevine and English ivy and other strands of invasive plants that need to be removed. Also we need to get some color into the yard. I am looking forward to planting come spring.

Once the house is picture ready I will post those.

Parque Metropolitano

Today we went to the Parque Metropolitano for a little stroll and hopefully to see a sloth. We have been hiking several times but had seen no sloth in the wild.

The land the park is currently on was given to the USA in 1903 as part of the Hay-Buneau Varilla Treaty that gave the US 5 miles of land from each side of the interoceanic canal.

Jimmy Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty which promised to give the canal back to Panama by the year 2000. The canal was actually given back to Panama in 1999.

The park is now home to a diverse population of mammals, birds and reptiles and also serves as a rehabilitation center to orphaned animals.

Michelle drove as Ted was at work.



We arrived around 9:45 and parked the car. While Michelle was getting PJ out of the car a ranger was pointing to something in the tree closest to us. So naturally I wandered over and they wandered away to begin their hike. I looked and looked and looked for a sloth in the mango tree.



and then I saw him!!



I was so excited to see one in the wild even if all the rangers knew exactly where he was always going to be.

We then proceeded to check in and pay the entrance fee. $1 for residents and $4 for non, great price for the ability to hike several trails and see wildlife within the city limits. We were with PJ and we were not sure how far along the trail he was going to make it before they had to turn around and go to the playground for food but we were optimistic.





We saw a hummingbird as soon as we started on the trail.







We moved on the lagoon and spied loads of turtles...





and some spied us too.



A gentlemen who was leaving the park told use there was a sloth in the tree so we went off to look. We looked and looked and looked. A park ranger happened by so we asked him where he was and he brought me back to the lagoon and pointed one out. Mike said that is not the one the man was referring to and he kept looking. Mike found a sloth



who was climbing down the tree...







and then sadly fell off the tree and landed on the ground.



We watched him for a minute and he did not move so Michelle went to get the park ranger as she speaks Spanish.When they arrived back the sloth was moving and the ranger said he would be ok.

So we watched the sloth cross the road.



The ranger decided he was taking too long so he stuck a branch under him and lifted him to a safe zone





where his friend was already snoozing.



Mike a little leery of getting too close to those claws.



So 4 sloths in less than an hour. I could not have been happier!!!

We continued down the path to see what else was out there. Makes you think of all the animals that are watching us that we cannot even see unless they choose to fall out of a tree or make enough noise or motion for us to see them.



As always I love the different textures in the forest





and Mike finds all the things that hide so well.





At the top of the path you could see Panama City.



We descended at meet up with PJ and Michelle and relaxed in the shade of the picnic area. Mike found some monkeys and headed off to photograph them.



but found them quick footed.



 and Michelle went to amuse PJ so I wandered to the banana tree



and was surprised to see the ground cover moving and then spotted an armadillo.

He was kind enough to make a clear showing and walk out across the field.

We walked out of the park and saw a squirrel bird, 

birds eating





and perching



I think we all had fun even if we were a little hot and tired!!