GARDEN FEST

We went to a festival at the Botanical Gardens last month. Despite the cold weather, people turned out to see (and participate in) demonstrations of making apple cider, butter, doughnuts, and other fun things.

This was a working spinning wheel:

And a weaver on a loom

And best of all were the musicians. There was much foot-tapping and singing going on!

The gardens are a neat place to spend a couple of hours, even without festivals going on.

FORT KING GEORGE

Fort King George, Georgia's oldest English fort, had some of its reenactors, or living history performers, last weekend. I love going to these exhibitions! Not only do we learn about how our ancestors lived, but we can watch displays of things like musket drills and spinning.

Here's a photo of the officers quarters from the open area inside the fort:

This is a spinner, showing how they spun wool back then. Those settlers must have been miserable, wearing wool in our tropical heat!

Here are the cannon lined up waiting for the Spanish to come. They overlook what in 1721 was the main branch of the river:

Here are some soldiers showing off their musketry skills. I can't believe they wore those hot uniforms all the time! Surely they stripped down in the summer!

And here, like the soldier, we're all covering our ears as the cannon fires!

Adding to the activities, the weather was not too hot and we had a most enjoyable day!

LIVING HISTORY

They used to call them reenactments. Now they call them living history. But it's the same thing: people dress up like people did in colonial, revolutionary, civil war times and make believe for a few hours/days. I've been trying to get my guy to join the group around here but so far, without success.

Last weekend, they had the reenactors/living historians at Horton House on Jekyll Island and we went over to see what was going on. There was the obligatory Oglethorpe (illustrious founder of Georgia) naturally, along with some firing demonstrations of muskets (loud). Oglethorpe is the one on the left--the one not hidden by the woman's mob cap on the lower right.

Thirsty? We got water in mugs made of the stoneware stuff that they used back then. But of course, with real dishes, you have to have someone to wash them. You can't see it, but she had a pan of soapy water on her left and a clear pan on her right. Guess this one was the first rinse water.

There were also spinning wheels. We got to see women spinning yarn, then we got a lesson on dying yarn. Another lady had indigo cakes and showed us how she dilutes them in water and dips the yarn for varying shades of blue. Dying her hands blue at the same time! See the blue stuff hanging up in the back? That's dyed yarn skeins.

There were also rope makers (twisting palm fronds/other plants to make ropes and then using the ropes to braid seats for stools and chairs), tinsmiths (kids were allowed to hammer designs in ornaments), rag doll makers (kids/adults were happy to put together the simplest rag doll design I've ever seen!), a butter churner (he made great butter), bread cooked in iron pots in the coal (with the homemade butter, talk about good!), and lots of other things.

Oh, and there was a colonial toy booth, featuring toys like sticks and hoops and other games. It was fun seeing today's electronic age kids trying to play with them.

All in all, we had a great time.