My Mom and I drove back to her house and I spent a week with her helping around the house as I could. She is trying to decide if she wants to sell the house and move (I am hoping closer to me). We worked in her garden, visited with my niece and sister and found some time to go on a trip to Longwood gardens and Winthru (A Dupont home on the scale of Biltmore we were told)
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| I made this stain glass lantern for my parents and was planning on giving it to them when I visited in March but with my Dad getting very ill very quickly I left it at home and forgot about it. When my Mom stayed with us I found it in the stain glass room and give it to her and we took it to her house and lite it up one night. Such a shame my dad couldn't see it:( |
We visited a Dupont home called Winterthru--It is a home with over 175 rooms, we saw about ten or twelve of them.
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| View of the house from the trolley to the front door |
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| Dupont was forced to open his home to the public due to how he was financing his collection he built a smaller house with about 15 rooms across the road where he lived out his last years. |
While there there was an exhibit on the costumes for the series the Crown.
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| Coronation dress |
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| Another dress worn by the actress for the series. |
Dupont's museum was very interesting and the overwhelming wealth exhibited is breath taking. He would often find old homes getting ready to be demolished or sold and buy it and then bring it piece by piece home and rebuild the house or rooms onto his mansion.
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| This old wooden Eagle was found in an old tavern and was once housed near the swimming pool. Due to weathering it was brought into the conservatory |
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| There are over 50 sets of dinner ware within the house, one is George Washington's dinning set. |
The next day we did a tour of Longwood Gardens. It is absolutely beautiful. I doubt we saw more than 1/2 the gardens and I definitely want to go back.
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| Another Dupont built these gardens and the garden conservatory is massive. You could spend all day in there. The flowers were in bloom and the lay out was incredible. |
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| They are well known for their massive fountain show. I only saw the day time show but I am told int he evening they add lights and music. |
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| We decided to attend 3 different guided walks that day -- so informative. While my Mother has been here before she had never done a guided tour so it was a bonus for her plus she saw parts of the garden she hadn't seen before:)! |
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| This is the The Pierce- Dupont home on the garden grounds. |
I took dozens of flower pictures all with my cell phone. I won't bore you with them all but here are my two favorite one:)
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| My Mom by one of the conservatory fountains. |
While home I helped my Mom in the garden as her garden is going to be on a garden tour in her town. She has a beautiful wildlife garden and while she was with my family the weeds had gotten out of control. So we spent 3 days raking, pulling weeds, planting and sweeping.
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| I added up with a nasty blister LOL, I am a light weight when it comes to manual labor:) |
My niece and sister came over one night for a barbeque and I got to meet the new dogs. My niece has 2 corgis and a German Shepard and my sister now has 6 dogs although she only brought over the newest dog.
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| Firedrake really wants a corgi so I took pictures of the dogs to show her:). This is Louie and Brody |
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| and this is Grace and Colby |
It was hard returning home and leaving my Mom, but I feel like we got a lot of things accomplished. I am hoping either she will be back out to visit in Sept or I will be back out there. Trying to convince Mom to spend Christmas with us but she isn't sure where she wants to be right now.
It was hard to say goodbye and head home to my family. We are hoping she will fly back out over the holidays, or the family and I will go out to see her soon.
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