Providence Canyon

  • March 30, 2008 8:45 PM

Providence Canyon

Yesterday, Thomas and I joined our friends, Catherine and Brian, to explore one of Georgia’s Natural Wonders – Providence Canyon. Actually, the canyon isn’t a natural wonder. It was created by erosion in the 1800s when farmers planted in the soft sand and clay without terraces.

Posing for the Earth Cache

I’ve been wanting to go there for a while because it’s an Earth Cache, which I recently heard about from Lisa. There are 17 in the state, and this is the first one we’ve logged. We’re adding some of the others to our list so we can check them out — or recheck them out for some that we’ve seen before we knew they were Earthcaches. I’m really amazed that Stone Mountain isn’t one.

Textured rock

The canyon is 150 feet deep and lined with white sand and red clay. It really looked like Sedona, Arizona. I loved looking at all of the texture and colors in the walls – red, white, yellow, purple, wavy, stacked, and drippy. The trail at the bottom of the canyon was very muddy with red clay. We liked crawling into the crevices where it was at least 10 degrees cooler, like a cave.

Thomas in a crevice

At the entrance is a park with a little flower garden. It was a warm, sunny day, and the flower fragrance was wonderful. We spent some time there photographing the azaleas, dogwoods, wisteria, and bees. We got our fill for the start of Spring.

Dogwood Flowers

As usual, I’ve posted our photos online:

Comment Luv

  • March 30, 2008 6:04 PM

Carolina ChickadeeI added a new plug-in to my site today called Comment Luv. When you leave a comment on my site, you can check the Comment Luv checkbox, and then my blog will search the Net and add a link to your most recent blog post.

And I’ve activated Gravatars on my comments. They’re free avatars that you can sign up for that show up when you comment on WordPress blogs. They’re supposed to be default for the new version of WordPress, but my theme didn’t include them. Thomas has fixed that.

So, if you don’t mind helping me test the new plugin, leave me some Comment Luv. Just click the checkbox under the comment entry form. And if you need topic…tell me about a product you’ve recently discovered that you really love.

The entry photo has nothing to do with the post – he was just a cute bird in our front yard.

Earth Hour 2008

  • March 29, 2008 9:57 PM

Candle in Kitchen Window
We celebrated Earth Hour tonight. It’s an event sponsored by the World Wildlife Foundation that encourages people across the world to turn off their lights for one hour. This year it was today from 8-9PM.

So what did I do in the single hour of candlelight?

  • Fed Clover
  • Unloaded the dishwasher
  • Watered the houseplants
  • Swept the kitchen floor
  • Folded and put away laundry
  • Showered

Watering and sweeping were a little harder without lights, but the other items were fine. We’ve actually continued going by candlelight the rest of the night.

Did you participate in Earth Hour? If so, how did you spend it?

Two Years Ago

  • March 26, 2008 9:38 PM

Okay, this is the last milestone post, at least for a couple of weeks. :) Two years ago today, Thomas proposed to me. I’ve got the original blog entry, and photo of the handmade ring Thomas made for me on my site.

There are two items that I forgot to include in that post:

First, I had suspected that we were getting close to getting engaged, so I was being an obnoxious girlfriend and suspecting that every fancy dinner or holiday was going to be *it*. I kept getting disappointed when it wasn’t *it*, so when he didn’t propose on our three year anniversary (the day before), I got pretty grumpy. What I didn’t know is that he had planned to, but because I was being a grump, I didn’t want to go for a drive in the VW Bus, which is what he was waiting for to propose. Oops.

Also, when Thomas proposed, he showed the weirdest nervous behavior. His eyebrows started spasming – rapidly twitching up and down. I’ve never seen him do it again, but they wouldn’t stop moving. It was really weird, but kind of cute too. :)

The photo in this entry was one of our engagement photos.

Another Five Years Ago

  • March 25, 2008 6:38 PM

Five years ago, this past Sunday, I received an email:

Take the year that LiveJournal (our old blog host) started.
Two months past your birth month.
Translate the word “sju” to get the day number.
Visit Userfriendly. The entry should have the text “better if we talk in person”.

To make the target specific, it will not be influenced by any continents that currently have ground troops in Iraq.

Let’s see.. 1999, December.. I checked the word in Swedish, but nothing came up, so I just started at Dec. 1st. One week’s worth of comix later, I found it…


Click image to view full size.

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Yes, this was how Thomas asked me out on our first “official” date, which occurred five years ago today.  Once I agreed, he sent me GPS coordinates, which I followed to find an envelope holding a red and yellow rose, a sketch he made, more coordinates to the restaurant, and directions to bring the flowers however I’m feeling.  I am not poetic, and so instead of picking up on his symbolism of red flower meaning love and yellow flower meaning friendship, I dropped the flowers off in water at home before meeting him for dinner.

Despite my flowerless arrival, and a nervous first date, the night went well and started off our relationship.  I’ve got another milestone story to share tomorrow, and then one more in three weeks.  We do a good job of keeping our events spaced out evenly. :)