Sunday, October 27, 2024

October Celebrations

Acknowledging birthdays and anniversaries are important.  I take none of them for granted.  I know being married for 57 years is one of my greatest blessings.  Grayden and I both have always set aside time to recognize these milestones.  We both also have birthdays during October.   Some years we are able to get away for a few days.  This year we went to a favorite place that both of us love, Colonial Williamsburg.  If you have visited here before you are aware we visit often.

Being close to home it never gets old for us to visit.  Going in Autumn is always a treat.  This year we enjoyed beautiful weather.  A few of the days it was quite warm,  but always great for walking.  Since I've had knee issues I was especially happy to be able to walk relatively pain free daily in this lovely town.






I have many favorite spots in this lovely town, but this Compton Oak is at the top of my list!


The day before we left home a lovely flower arrangement came for me.  Our daughter that lives in New England sent it to me for my birthday.  Since it was a week later she had asked the florist to deliver it on my birthday.  Luckily they delivered it a week early!


So I was able to take it with me to the place we were staying in Williamsburg.  I enjoyed it so much so thank you Punkin!


Noel was not happy to hear they had delivered it early, but I told her no worries I would take them with me to Williamsburg.  A lucky mistake in my opinion.  Otherwise they would have been older by the time we returned home.

We always like visiting the gardens that are behind or beside most of the homes.  This one was loaded with color and many pollinators!


The lovely Gomphrena is a genus of plants in the family of  Amaranthaceae.  You may know them as Globe Amaranths.








Notice the sign about the home and the garden has quite a history even though the home is reconstructed.


As most of you are aware Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum.  They are working on projects to present history in more meaningful ways.  An archeology museum is under construction near the Abby Aldrich Museum.  It's really coming along.


The Campbell Archeology Center will benefit scholars and visitors to some of the artifacts that have shaped the understanding of Williamsburg.


On our anniversary and my birthday we enjoyed a lovely dinner at Shield's Tavern.



On other days we had car picnics.  We prefer eating outdoors, but the yellow jackets were quite bad this year.  We've even had them in our front yard this year.  They made their home in the stump of an old tree. It's made for interesting mowing by Samuel and Grayden!  Both of them were stung this year by them!  Yellow Jackets love to be where there is food.  That is certainly why we observed them at food stands in Williamsburg.






Bumblebees were enjoying the Cockscomb and certainly aren't aggressive.


It was fun identifying this Common Checkered Skipper!  He certainly appears to be one.


It's always thrilling to see a monarch!  He was in the garden with all the pollinators in the garden behind the St. George Tucker home.


Considering we've been coming here all of our lives, we had never visited behind this home.  I'm so happy we did as it was quiet and full of surprises in the garden! 


I'll stop my photos here and hopefully will share more.  Thank you for coming along to Colonial Williamsburg with us!