Steam Cliff Farm Winery......

We visited several of the southern Indiana wineries while on our trip.  Apparently the southern Indiana area is very similar to the Rhine Valley in Europe and we have lots of German heritage in the southern Indiana area.  This winery....Steam Cliff Farm Winery....also had a tea room, farm market, plants for sale and gardens.  A beautiful place!  Unfortunately we arrived at the same time as a big bus load of tourists and could not get in the tea room for lunch :-(  Maybe another time.

Some of the roses around the tasting room.

I enjoyed sitting on this rustic porch.

Notice the quilt square on the side of the building.  I was looking at it when I became aware of a lot of noise and activity at that gourd you see hanging there.......

Papa House Sparrow has arrived with food for the babies! 

The minute he would land, two very hungry little beaks would stick out of the hole awaiting whatever he had!

This one was very impatient!

You can just see the other one behind it.  I only saw two.

"Feed me!  Feed me!  Feed me!"

Poor Papa....he looked worn out.  I never saw a female anywhere around.

The barn had two quilt squares, but there were so many cars I couldn't get a good photo.

This was a nice suprise!  A Quilt Designed Garden.  I wandered through and will admit that I could only recognize where two of the quilt gardens were.  Mike spotted the Grandmother's Fan and I think the Log Cabin is around the statue below.  You would have to be overhead to really tell what was what, but it was a very peaceful place.

Some mossy rocks in the water feature.

A statue in the center.

Vine covered arches.

Plants for sale!  Another reason for the crowd....it was opening day for selling the plants or something like that.

A bunny

A miniature house in one garden.

This area is where the Grandmother's Fan garden is, but you can only tell by the shape of the beds.

Lovely garden ornaments everywhere.

Beyond the Herb garden.....goats!

Belinda knew just how to make this goat really happy :-)

"What about me?"

A beautiful place to visit and relax and taste some wines.  Maybe next time we can try to food in the tea room.

Blogger problem?

Is anyone but me having trouble leaving comments on the blogs that have the embedded comment form at the end?  I have tried on two today.....Grammie G and Roy's (just so you know that I am trying!)  It tells me to sign in.....then still calls me "anonymous" on the comment.....and won't leave the comment.  It just keeps taking me back to sign in.  I don't understand it, but I may not be commenting on that type of blog for awhile.

Meyer Cabin and barn at Muscatatuck......

Located on the Muscatatuck property is an old log cabin and barn that have been kept up nicely.  There are displays inside the cabin behind plexiglass, but hard to take photos.  I took a lot of photos wandering around the outside area.  This is just a bunch of them.  I have little to say about them.  The family that lived and farmed here was named Meyer and it hasn't been that long since the property was turned into part of the wildlife refuge.  I've misplaced one of my brochures with the info about the cabin.

The view of the cabin walking back from the barn.......home at the end of a long days labor.

More from Muscatatuck.....

Here are a few more images of animals we saw while at Muscatatuck.  I would love to go back now that I have my other camera back!  Probably not this year, unless later in the fall.

We saw lots of swallows swooping over the waters.  This one was resting.......

......I hope he has his handicap sticker with him.  I believe they are Tree Swallows.

We saw several large families of Wood ducks.  I was surprised that they didn't immediately start swimming away to hide from us.

None of the photos with the male are very good.

Here you can see two families.

And of course, there were lots of Red-wing Blackbirds around.

The female was harder to see.  I saw her disappear into these cattails after I snapped this and figured her nest was in there somewhere.

Great Blue Herons........here and there and flying over at times.

This one was the closest one we saw for a photo.

Somehow the day seemed perfect for a tree full of Vultures......drizzly, misty, gray.

One of several deer we saw.

We also saw Kingbirds and the common songbirds that I see at my own house.  It would be nice to live near there and be able to just park your car and wait to see what wildlife happens to come by.  We didn't see any otters this year, but remembered where we had seen them last year. 

Waterproofing the nest??.......

While Mike was getting a motel room arranged for us, I was sitting in the car watching this Robin.  It had found a piece of plastic trash that it wanted.

It was a rather large piece and he was having trouble getting a good grip.

Sometimes the plastic was "winning"......

.....sometimes the Robin was winning!

It finally separated a nice "handle" to grab hold of.

But the wind gave it a lot of trouble.  Where was all of this leading???

Once the Robin got a good grip and took off, it went to the top of the motel sign where it obviously has a nest behind the "T" in Suites.  Doesn't seem like good nest material, but maybe with all the rain we have had, it wanted to waterproof its nest :-)

Can you see the Robin sitting on the plastic and looking through it?  Nesting materials are hanging down from behind the T.

A video of part of the "great battle of the plastic".