What a great few days!  Dianne went with me on a trip to Ellijay, where I was doing a program about pollinators and native plants for the local Gilmer County Beekeeper Club.  What a great and friendly bunch of people.

We drove up Sunday night and spent the night at Leslie and Bradley’s house, so we wouldn’t have to fight the Monday morning traffic into Atlanta.  Early Monday morning we headed up I-75 to north Georgia.  We went straight to downtown and stayed there all day, with a delicious lunch at a little restaurant right off the square- the tomato basil soup was probably the best restaurant soup I’ve ever had!  And the chicken salad sandwich was nothing to sneeze at either.

We must have visited a dozen antique shops (two dozen if you count each revisit as a shop).  I found some great Christmas presents, along with a couple of things for my new home office.  Dianne bought some great pictures for her kitchen.  She just loves chicken ‘stuff’, and the shop owner said having chicken ‘stuff’ in the house would bring good luck.

After lunch we checked in to a motel.  Our first choice was closed for repairs, and the second one (which was recommended by one of the club members) looked nice, well off the main road so it was quiet.  But boy can looks be deceiving!  The phone wouldn’t work, the internet service wouldn’t work and the drink machine was out of order.  At the continental breakfast, I too a big swig of my glass of milk, only to find that it was spoiled.  Ugh!  So, needless to say, my next post will be a review of our stay.  If it hadn’t been so late, and the only other motel we knew about, we would have left this place.

At least the beds looked good, until the spring poked me in the rigs all night.  So much for looks, once again.

But we were treated to dinner at a meat and three place, which didn’t look so great, but was very clean and service was wonderful.  The food was delicious, and the company of bee keepers were a delight.

After the program, I got a basket filled with their fresh honey, some lip balm made from their wax, and some books about pollinators.  They were a very gracious audience, and I think enjoyed my program.

This morning we got up early and headed back to Cartersville, where we went on a native plant rescue in some really cold, windy weather.  But it warmed up nicely, and we got a ton of great plants for new areas of the Buffalo Creek Nature Trail, as well as our own yards.  (Check out the West Georgia Chapter of the Georgia Native Plant Society facebook page for the progress on the trail, as well as some timely information about gardening with natives, and for the wildlife.)

The dear folks at the Dallas Chik Fil A have come to overlook our mud spattered clothes, and our rubber wading boots, and our outrageous digging outfits, and welcome us hardily to lunch.  It’s our routine to enjoy lunch together, since we don’t do a lot of visiting on a rescue-too busy digging.

Now, I have dozens of plants to get in the ground, along with two meetings tomorrow morning.  Hopefully, I’ll get some planted on the creek bank that we specifically dug for that purpose.  Then it’s off to Dianne’s to get some of hers in the ground before the cold weather predicted for Thursday.  Too much fun to to had, too little time to have it.

So now, off to fix some cornbread and veggies for Scott, who is such a dear about not fussing about all my running off and leaving him to fend for himself.