there is a splendid "little mountain" in virginia and it's called monticello

on saturday we took a two hour drive to see monticello (it means little mountain in italian!) - home of thomas jefferson - in charlottesville, va.

we toured the grounds first before the guided tour inside monticello. i'm not into guided tours, but our guide was great and was so glad we were in her group. she just oozed knowledge and you could tell she loved what she was doing.

visiting monticello was always on our list of things to do but we kept putting it off. we were almost going to put it off again, but i'm glad we went. {i truly madly envy the vegetable garden there. i wanted to pluck the big head of lettuce just because i thought the feeling of pulling it out would feel so gratifying.} 

there is one jeffersonian era tree on the grounds. there are two stumps from the area (cut down because it was struck by lightening). there are some books from the era as well in the library which was uber neat to see. the architecture, design and layout of monticello is really something to see.