Let’s start with ridiculous. This is day 1 of unpacking Pandora–utter chaos, and NO fun!
It’s hard to pack things when you don’t even have room to move….
I thought packing up a boat would be a piece of cake compared to the three houses we have packed up in the past few years…..but in some ways this is harder!
Bob put boxes in the rented van while I tried to straighten up the main salon so we could have dinner without too much clutter. The van is now 2/3 full, with the back seats folded down, and we still have a long way to go!
At the end of the day we decided to go for a walk. First we passed this other example of living small. I bet it wouldn’t take any time at all to pack up your belongings from this little abode–but I wonder how many people think that about our boat! I guess there is always something smaller!
And always something larger….
Of course, if I lived here–Tryon Palace– I certainly wouldn’t be doing my own packing, would I?
Tryon Palace was the Governor’s Palace of provincial North Carolina in the 18th c. before the American Revolution. After independence it burned to the ground just before the end of the century. This reproduction was built in the 1950s and is now a museum. I thought I was done taking photos of gardens, but I guess I just never will be!
Walking through the gardens at Tryon Palace is rather difficult on a Sunday afternoon at the height of spring. I can’t speak for other times–but it would not surprise me if this place is popular all year ’round. There were two brides, each with her own camera crew, and a newly engaged couple with a crew of camera toting family. Everywhere we moved we heard sighs and saw gestures–frustrated gestures, not rude!–that we were invading someone’s Kodak moment. In trying to get out of the way of one bride we were always moving into the way of the other!–or the engaged couple!
But I would not have missed a walk through these gardens for anything! What surprised me most were the anemones and batchelor buttons. You expect to see tulips and daffodils, but anemones are such a happy surprise! This is not a great photo, but I love these iris which were in gardens all over town–mixed with batchelor buttons.
Tryon Palace is in a residential part of town that has houses from all the architectural periods since this town was settled in the early 18th c. Since each house has a formal garden I wonder if you have to prove your gardening skills before you can move here.
The daffodils, tulips and wisteria are already past their prime…but en masse they still have a vivid impact! I have been seeing tiny yellow rose like flowers on a climbing vine everywhere, even along the highway climbing up trees. I just learned it is a climbing rose named Rosa Parks.
I can just imagine these homeowners picking their colors to coordinate with the azaleas.
Now it’s the morning of day 2. I am going to have some coffee, or rather Bob’s amazing latte, and get back to packing. We hope to end each day around 4pm this week so we can take a walk through this pretty town!
