Home | Life of Pat and Nat

Happy Halloween

Beware the beasties that lurk in the garden!

Room in the garage

garage with room for two cars — We FINALLY made some room

Nat and I finally got the upstairs garage more under control. We’ve stashed and stacked stuff and now can easily fit two cars in the garage.

One of the things we wanted to do was get the T-Bird out so we can drive it some. Bob wanted to see inside the “trunk” which is really just a storage space for the top and very little else.

Antiques Roadshow comes to Knoxville

Nat was given two very nice tickets to the Antiques Roadshow in Knoxville. She deliberated over her stuff and we took four items. We stood in lines and met interesting people. Finally it was our turn. They don’t show our kind of results on the show. Not good. Still it was interesting and fun. Maybe next time.

Kayaking on the golf course

The lake levels are very high once again this year. I decided to try to get up to the golf course. We went up earlier in the year but only after lake levels had dropped a ways.

Starting up the channel it looks nice.

kayak nose on the lake — Looking up the channel from next to our dock

As I cruised up the channel I decided to hug the right side to get some shade. Doing so disturbed several blue herons and a white one that kept going up the way I was going. I disturbed him several times.

kayak nose on lake — Farther up the channel past Brian and Anne

The humidity was definitely up. I know I was over places that normally don’t have water.

I’m past Bob and Kate’s place looking at the house next to them for sale. Some people were out there and I might appear in photos of the listing showing that you can kayak out back. Normally there’s not this much water here though they may have a channel they can use.

kayak nose on golf course at cart path bridge — Getting close to the bridge on the cart path

I’ve been sparing in my photos because my camera’s battery was low. I didn’t want to get to the bridge and not have a working camera. I’m almost there now. Some random weeds I’ll cross then a bunch of mint growing as well. I didn’t realize it until I went over it and broke it some.

kayak nose touching cart path bridge — Paddling up to touch the cart path bridge

Proof that I got to the bridge.

Getting through the trees between this point and the main channel was a very buggy experience. I should have remembered to take some shots coming back down. I was covered with spiders and various flying insects. I was being escorted by a pair of large dragonflies for a while looking for bugs I disturbed. I think they got their fill quickly behind me.

On the way back to my dock I encountered a cool looking piece of tree floating and pushed it up to our shore with my boat. It’ll make some good natural art when waters recede. I also spent a while unclogging my dock only to look out and see it covered today.

Just go ahead and smile

Our bird feeders are filled with nothing but black oil sunflower seeds. Turns out those seeds are very viable and the ones that the birds drop and lose grow quite well. This spring/summer has been incredibly wet. We’re closing in on 20″ above normal for the year.

We didn’t plant any of these.

Just another sunset

It was just too pretty not to go out in the kayaks. Beautiful weather that day.

Nat makes this look good.

Biltmore

Nat and I visited the Biltmore as part of the BMW RA rally there. We even managed to carry Sammie along.

The pool has been filled in to restore things to original.

It was fun looking for critters in the garden pools.

This is Nat taking pictures on the roof of the Biltmore during the Architect’s tour.

Flowers blooming

With all Nat’s care and lots of rain the gardens are doing great.

Including the mystery flower.

And lots of sunflowers from feeding birds.

Another day another raccoon

For the third day in a row we woke to a raccoon in the trap. Too bad we have to return the borrowed trap. There may well be more of them that run in a pack.

Also again we saved a box turtle. Two in fact. We have them in a box to show the kids before we place them into a garden to feast on worms and such.