Mattaponi Tribe Powwow

As an addition to yesterday's post, the free admission for certain national parks (10 in Virginia) will be in effect this coming weekend, June 20 and 21, as well as the other two weekends I mentioned.

Also this Saturday, June 20, the Mattaponi Indian tribe will have its 14th Annual Powwow at their reservation on the Mattaponi River. The Mattaponi River joins the Pamunkey River (named after another recognized Virginia tribe) at West Point creating the York River. We can see West Point from the decks at the York River Inn.

This is the reservation sitting along the banks of the Mattaponi River in King William County:

The Powwow will begin at 10 am and end at 5 pm with an admission of $5, free for children. American Indian dancing, drumming, food, and arts and crafts will be featured during the day. For more information, call 804 769-8783.

This is an image from the 2008 Powwow.

National Park Service free admission

The National Park Service is offering free admission to over 100 parks during certain weekends this summer.

Colonial National Historical Park which includes Yorktown Battlefield is one of those parks that will waive the entrance fees and some other fees July 18 and 19 and August 15 and 16.

Colonial also includes Historic Jamestowne (the original site of the Jamestown settlement), the Colonial Parkway (no admission ever for that of course), and Cape Henry Memorial, the location of the first landing of the Virginia colonists in 1607 on the oceanfront at Virginia Beach.

The fees usually average $10 per person, so this is quite a savings for those weekends.

You might check your own national park (www.NPS.gov) to see if it offers free admmission also.

Fairy Rings

We appparently had some other visitors night before last---fairies! When I went out to get the paper yesterday, I saw two large "fairy circles" or that's what my mother used to call them when they'd appear in the yard on the farm. These two big circles were made up of cream and brown colored mushrooms--I have no idea what the type of mushrooms they are--and I'm not tasting them to see!

I looked around for the fairies, but they had apparently left before I got there.

I walked by the large magnolia tree and noticed that the seed pods were beginning to mature. They're now sort of pink and beginning to form the seeds which will be bright red when they mature. The tree is absolutely full of these "cones" which are 3 or 4 inches long and a couple of inches across.

This native magnolia (called the "grandiflora") keeps its leaves all year round--well, actually, it DROPS its leaves all year round! You have to rake underneath the tree every day the whole year if you want to keep your yard free of leaves, but we just let them drop and stay there. The limbs grow naturally close to the ground so the falling leaves are not really a problem if you let them grow that way--most people cut off the low limbs and then you have the problem with the leaves. I love the tree so much though, it's really not a problem for me--nothing says American South as much as the magnolia tree does.