32nd Annual Sourwood Festival in Black Mountain

Like honey? How about street festivals? If you like either one, then you'll love the 32nd Annual Sourwood Festival in Black Mountain on August 8 and 9.

The alcohol-free festival will include 200 vendors, plenty of food (and awesome locally made Sourwood Honey) and great entertainment. Black Mountain is quite the charming small town and its festivals reflect the hospitality and friendliness that comes with being known as the "Front Porch of North Carolina". It is also known for its local art and you'll be sure to see some great art while you're there as well.

Interested in learning about the sourwood tree? Check our Sourwood Festival 2007 blog post for information about this beautiful tree with white flowers that turns blazing red in the fall.

Extreme Makeover: Eastern Phoebe Home Edition

We've had an Eastern Phoebe couple living in a nest above the Front Porch door since we arrived in 2007. Eastern Phoebes (one of ours is shown above, hanging out in a hemlock) are small, brown and white birds. They do a lot of tail wagging, which we'd love to capture on video. Phoebes eat insects and like to build their nests under bridges and eaves of buildings.

Our Phoebes have done some great renovations to their nest this year, adding moss and other nice little touches. This year, they also had two babies...unfortunately, having two new little ones seemed to make it a challenge for the Phoebes to keep up with their home repairs.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, one of the Phoebes began frantically flying in front of the solarium windows before breakfast, so Brigette went to check on the nest. The top of the nest had cracked off and was hanging down along the Front Porch door and two little Phoebe chicks sat huddled together on the stoop.

While guests had their breakfast, Dave and Brigette came up with a plan to do some quick home repair. Dave put the top back on the nest, and hammered a piece of plastic gutter guard (which looks a little like netting) into the door frame on each side of the nest, securing it in place. Phoebe chicks were placed gently back in the nest while the parents looked on.


Phoebe parent gives Dave a happy nod of the tail


One of the baby Phoebes gets settled in

After about 20 minutes, mama Phoebe checked on the kids and all was again right with the world.

Every morning for four or five days, Brigette checked on the babies, and then one morning, she saw a flying lesson going on. It was so great to see the Phoebe kids fly off on their own.

Now we have empty nest syndrome. Wonder if the Phoebe parents, do, too...

If you'd like to come see the Phoebes and the many other species of birds at the Inn on Mill Creek, we're a proud site on the North Carolina Birding Trail. The public can visit the property by phone or e-mail appointment.

Old Fort Farmers Market

A few weeks ago, the charming small town of Old Fort kicked off its first ever Historic Old Fort Farmers Market. Every Thursday at 3pm at the yellow train depot on Main Street, you can find fresh food and flowers grown by local farmers. It's still brand new, which means as a visitor to a smaller market, you have the chance to actually meet and get to know the farmers, you don't feel rushed or bogged down by crowds, and you don't have to sift through tons produce before you find something you like. Small town farmers markets are the best.

Brigette stopped by the Historic Old Fort Farmers Market last week and picked up some fantastic fresh lettuce, white cucumbers and a bean she'd never seen before (pictured above). It's commonly called a cranberry bean, but further research (thank you, Google), shows that it is likely a hybrid of the original "true cranberry bean", which is deep red, and a white bean. In Italy, it's called a borlotti bean. Nonetheless, it's a most beautiful and artistic looking bean. The taste is similar to, but better than, a pinto bean.

Even the shells are artsy, perfect for an area with such a rich local arts and crafts history.

New art for the Great Room

UPDATED with artist name!

In our Great Room, there's a spot near the windows overlooking the Inn on Mill Creek's apple orchard that we call the Bermuda Triangle for houseplants. Being surrounded by 125,000 acres of Pisgah National Forest, we have a soft spot for nature and we love plants. So we have quite a lot of houseplants, but unfortunately, this one spot in the Great Room will not let any of our plants thrive (and we apologize to the latest two, lush ferns to be sucked into the Bermuda Triangle).

Instead of allowing another houseplant to go into the abyss, we decided to try artwork in that space. We headed to one of our favorite galleries, The Appalachian Artisan Society Gallery in Old Fort (about 15 minutes from the Inn), and found the perfect piece of art to hang on the wall. It's called The Mighty Oak by Cecilia Gilliam:



We think this one will survive the Bermuda Triangle!

Now Blooming at the Inn

Our summer blooming plants are making quite a show at the Inn on Mill Creek here in the Black Mountains of western North Carolina. The Pool Garden (once a pool, now a garden) has a variety of bee balm, daylilies, coneflowers, roses and herbs like lavender and thyme, plus russian sage, a butterfly bush and garden phlox (photo above taken in our garden this week). The Well Garden (once a well, now...well, it's a garden, too) has coneflowers just starting to bloom in bright fuschia with black stems.

As the summer gardening catalogs begin arriving just in time to order for fall planting, we're taking advantage of a great online resource for all things green and floral. The website is called Dave's Garden -- not our Dave, but that's OK -- and it has not only a very comprehensive user-driven database of plants but also a section called Garden Watchdog where you can read customer reviews of over 6,800(!) mail order gardening companies. The 30 companies that are most highly rated are given the collective title of the Watchdog 30. One of our "perenniel" favorites, Bluestone Perennials (located in our home state of Ohio) is on the list as are a few others that we will definitely be checking out for plants that we can't get from our local nurseries.

Kiva Update

Ndeye at her shop

We are officially halfway to our goal to be involved in microloans to 10 small business owners in developing countries through Kiva as part of the Inn on Mill Creek's 10th birthday celebration.

We, along with 38 other Kiva lenders, have chosen to fund a microloan to Ndeye (pictured above), who owns a clothing store in Senegal. Ndeye is a widowed mother of six and being able to expand her business with this loan will help her to improve her family's living conditions, and in the bigger picture, Ndeye will be helping her local economy. And we get to help in the global fight against poverty. We wish Ndeye the best of luck with her business!

Links to our blog postings for our other Kiva loans for 2009 are available at our Inn Turns 10 page.

Additionally, Brigette (the busy body who is always looking for more ways to help) has begun a volunteer stint as a Kiva Editor, editing the loan profiles/descriptions that are part of each loan request, after they've been translated into English from the business owner's country's language. What better way to put that journalism degree and editing background to use?

Harold the Asian Mandarin Gets a New Do

As you may recall, Harold and Nelva are our Asian Mandarin duck couple that has decided to live here at the Inn on Mill Creek (named after a super couple -- Dave's grandpa and his wife). We were concerned when they were away for a couple of weeks this month. We figured that they must be on vacation at a higher elevation since the temperatures were reaching into the 80s at our elevation in mid-June. However, we learned the real reason for their absence when they returned.

It appears that Harold has a new hairdo (featherdo?). Actually, he molted -- in other words, he shed his beautiful bright plumage. We're told that during molting, ducks generally lay low and might not be able to fly, which would explain why Harold was not making his daily and evening commutes across the Pool Garden. Not to worry: Molting is a normal process in Asian Mandarins and Harold will grow more colorful feathers for us and our guests to fawn over.

HAROLD BEFORE...


Yes, I look good, thanks for noticing

HAROLD AFTER...


I said, just a little off the top!