Alive and Kickin’

June 11th, 2010

True Confections

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to just wander downtown Asheville, something I haven’t done in several months. I must say…I was surprised at all of the new businesses that have opened up. True, some have closed, and there are a few empty shop fronts, but all in all, downtown is ALIVE and KICKIN’.

The Chocolate Fetish

We started out visiting one of my favorite pastry shops, True Confections, for a piece of fudge and a latte’ (decaf of course). While we paid, the friendly cashier and I shared recipes for a cucumber salad…typical Asheville, friendly folks and never know where you’ll meet a fellow budding chef. It would be easy to eat my way around downtown but today wasn’t a foodie trip, just wanted to stroll and see what was new. Chocolate Fetish has expanded, looks as though it doubled its retail space and it was still crowded- not surprising since it has won all sorts of awards…I get weak in the knees just walking in the door. Several doors down on Haywood Street is the new

The Tea and Spice Exhange

Spice & Tea Exchange. If you grew up like I did, thinking salt always came out of the blue container with the little girl and the umbrella- you are in for a surprise…there are rows and rows of different types of salt, as well as spices, teas and custom blends of each and wonderful specialty items.

Lexington Avenue Brewing

Ok, I promised it wouldn’t all be food, but it is getting hard to bypass all the new restaurants. We did stop in Urban Outfitters, also on Haywood, which has the distinction of being the only downtown chain store. We have proudly preserved our “independent” reputation up to this point, but I honestly don’t see UO as a “big box” contender. Plus, it may well draw a younger age group to our downtown who may have only thought of shopping at the mall….time will tell and I’m all for bring new faces (i.e. shoppers) downtown. Across the street at is an organic cotton clothing store. Unfortunately, it was closed but there was a really cool dress in the window that may require further investigation. Down College to Lexington…wow, has that changed. The Green Light Café- an organic café, Edge- a new high end hand crafted furniture store, a new brew-pub-The LAB, the list goes on.

On of my favorite pastimes are vintage clothing stores- and Lexington Ave has a great selection- my favorite is Hip Replacements- I could spend hours and plenty of money in there and the owners were kind enough to let us wander even though it was past closing time. Her comment…”we have plenty to do, so enjoy”…and we did!

More to come….

Suzanne

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Hike along the Parkway to Craggy Gardens

June 2nd, 2010

Catawba Rhododendrons

Species Unknown?

Blueberries Anyone?

It’s been awhile since I’d been up to Craggy Gardens so with a few free hours over the Memorial Day weekend, I headed up with a friend. There was plenty of parking, as apparently this wasn’t on many peoples “must visit” list this weekend.  Lot’s of picnic tables, and even a real working toilet facility makes this a great place to start the hike. It was considerably cooler up here and the first thing we both noticed was how winded we both were, after just 10 minutes of walking. It’s easy to forget that altitude affects more than attitude around here…it greatly affects your breathing. So we paced ourselves and continued on and I am so glad we did. One of the few things I really miss in leaving New Hampshire are the plethora of wild blueberries and I felt as though I hit paydirt here. Granted, the fields weren’t completely filled with blueberry bushes, but there was more than I’ve seen in years. The flowers just starting to close up and turn to berries, but I plan on going back up in 4 weeks to see how they are progressing…can’t wait to bake my first batch of blueberry muffins! Just as a side note- there are dozens of varieties of blueberry plants- some tall bushes, other are lower and there are some that actually look to be more like grown cover- these appeared to be the talker bush variety. The Rhododendrons hadn’t bloomed yet, but we did notice an odd bush, probably a small tree. It appeared to be bared except for interestingly shaped red-dish leaves that are well spaced- I have included a picture ifanyone recognizes it, please let me know. As we reached the Bald area of the gardens and read the informational plaque- we tried to envision herds of Elk and Bison grazing in the open field at an altitude of over 5300 feet above sea level. The tall, lushly green, wavy grass helped add to that vision, but what I really kept coming up with for a vision was Julie Andrews with the Sound of Music playing in the background. From there we wondered through a tunnel of Catawba Rhododendrons, coming out to a breathtaking view of what I call mountain echoes…with the parkway snaking along in the background.  We spent several hours just wondering, taking pictures of birds and plants and the views- how seldom do we just wander down a path, with no where in particular to go and no need to watch the clock. As we headed back to the car, I said a quite thank to Mr. Roosevelt for acting on his the vision back on 1935.

Mountain Echoes

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