To Bent Tree With the Torres Family

March 31, 2012

We headed out early to Bent Tree to open the house and check on everything. Noe and Maria Torres with sons Noe and Angel went with us. Usually nothing much is out on this date, but with this year's early spring, the trees had all sprouted lush green leaves. It was notable that there was almost no ground cover, and it usually precedes the leaves. This is a strange spring.

The new green leaves were delightful, giving the unmistakeable feeling of new life.

Actually, some of the new life was not desirable. Finding that an amazing amount of green moss was growing on the asphalt of the driveway, Noe, Angel and myself headed off to Jasper to get some bleach to try to discourage the moss.

On the way back, this wild turkey strolled across the road in front of us and Angel got these pictures of her as she moved off into the woods.

By the time we returned, it was lunch time and again, Angel was the photographer. Noe, Maria, Rod and Brenda and Noe, Jr.

After lunch we tackled the driveway with a sprayer loaded with bleach to discourage the moss that was eating the asphalt. Angel is still experimenting with photography and took this picture of the house from down below on the driveway. Finally we got a picture of Angel as he takes a turn with the sprayer.

We went up the hill behind the house to give Angel some practice at shooting closeups of flowers, but it was a bit early. The only flower we found in any abundance was the faithful rue anemone.

Everyone had worked hard on the process of getting the house in shape, so I was pleased to get us out to explore a bit.

Angel and Noe get in a bit of ping-pong, and then we decided to call it a day on the process at the house and take a short tour.

On the way to the lake we encountered this yearling fawn and two does beside the road. We had wondered at not seeing any deer before, but we realized that at our house, there was almost no growth on the ground, the leaves having come out earlier than the ground cover this year. But at this location, there was a good bit of nice grass, so we could see why the deer were there.

It was very nice at Lake Tamarack, so we gathered at our traditional picture-taking spot on the dam.

Noe and family enjoyed playing around the edge of the water for a bit, and then we bid farewell to Bent Tree for this trip and headed back toward Atlanta.