Home Care in Ball Ground, GA

November 9, 2023 0 Comments American Winery Guide, Ball Ground- Georgia, Fainting Goat Vineyard, Gibbs Gardens, Three Sister Vineyard & Winery in Dahlonega

Two autumnal wonders await those willing to journey north of metro Atlanta, but time is running out to experience either.

Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground, Georgia—approximately 60 miles from DeKalb County—is a 300-acre public garden that is awash in color year-round but showcases bursts of fall shades during autumn.

Ball Ground is located in Cherokee County at the foothills of the North Georgia mountains and is currently putting on quite a show with it surrounding hills and mountains exhibiting brilliant fall hues.

However, within weeks Gibbs Gardens will close until spring, and area trees that were highlighting dramatic shades of red, yellow, and orange will be bare.

Recently I combined a visit to Gibbs Gardens with an afternoon of leaf peeping and wine sampling at one of the area’s many wineries, Fainting Goat Vineyard and Winery. It was the perfect way to enjoy and appreciate a sunny fall day.

Leaves are still on the trees at Gibbs Gardens, but many are falling fast creating a constant shower of color as one walks along the meandering paths.

While it’s too late in the season to view the 500-plus crepe myrtles, 30,000 tulips and 3 acres of day lilies and hundreds of dogwoods in full bloom, there are still plenty of other trees, flowers, shrubs and art to see.

An all-season highlight at Gibbs, which features five main gardens, is the Japanese Garden that stretches over 40 acres with seven spring fed ponds and 50-plus-year-old bonsais. Another garden that’s worth exploring before Gibbs Gardens closes Dec. 3 is the 15-acre Inspiration Garden with azaleas and Knockout roses, dwarf Japanese maples, ginkgos and conifers.

The 30-acre wildflower meadow, a mix of perineal and annual pollinators, is past it’s blooming prime but was still attracting butterflies including Monarchs migrating to Mexico during my late October visit.

A few of the garden’s 1,000 hydrangeas are still in bloom. I came across several of the plant’s delicate petals in soft shades of blue in different locations on the grounds. After leaving Gibbs, it was time for lunch and then on to taste local wines.

Fainting Goat Vineyard in Jasper is located 10 miles north of Ball Ground, giving visitors another opportunity to view the surrounding mountains’ vibrant color change.

For $13, Fainting Goat offers tasting flights of three selections dry and sweet wines as well as single pours of its wines and light snacks. I chose the sweet wine trio sampling muscadine, muscat canelli and blueberry wines and my husband elected to try their chardonnay, pinot gris and dry rose flight. Ending our afternoon on the winery’s outdoor wraparound deck with panaromic views of the mountains was ideal.

Explore Georgia, the official state travel website, notes in an article on vineyards and wineries that “there are dozens of award-winning, family-owned vineyards lining the back roads of North Georgia, with grapes ripe for the picking. These vineyards offer tours, wine tastings, and glasses and bottles of wine that you can purchase to sample there or take home to enjoy later.”

It cites five award-winning vineyards: • Wolfman Vineyard & Winery in Dahlonega • Habersham Vineyard & Winery in Helen • Frogtown Cellars in Dahlonega • Tiger Mountain Vineyard in Tiger • Three Sister Vineyard & Winery in Dahlonega

According to the American Winery Guide’s website there are 40-plus wineries in north Georgia, most within a two-hour drive of metro Atlanta.

For more information on Georgia’s wineries, go to exploregeorgia.com and search for vineyards.

Tickets to Gibbs Gardens are $10-$25 and more information can be found at gibbsgardens.com.

BALL GROUND, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - A local animal casting company is looking for new talent to add to its roster. Animal Casting Atlanta in the tiny Cherokee County town of Ball Ground is holding an open call on Sunday.

Greg and Carol Tresan started their animal casting business back in the 1990′s.

Since then, hundreds of their pets have been cast in hundreds of commercials, TV shows, and movies. Carol says there is never a dull moment when you’re on set with a pet.

“It was a big Clydesdale, and he was playing a rhinoceros because he’s really wide so the actor could sit on him as if he was as wide as a rhinoceros. They switched him and CGI - and I was told oh nothing’s happening, it’s just a boring scene. Suddenly hundreds of warriors from Wakanda come racing down the hill, screaming with swords and shields, and my horse was like mom you told me that nothing was going to happen! "

Despite all the distractions she says her horse still managed to hit all his marks. Some of their other horses appeared in the first five seasons of The Walking Dead, which was filmed in Georgia.

The Tresans also operate a pet boarding facility Dog Works, which allows them to scout talent. In fact, one of their dogs named Slate plays Cosmo in “Guardians of the Galaxy” volume 3, which is in theaters right now.

“Through our boarding kennel, a lot of people bring their dogs to board with us. We have a pickup and delivery that runs all the way to Atlanta. They’ll bring really neat animals here. We train them up for the movies and put them in the movies,” said Carol Tresan.

Many of their animal actors live on their farm, but they’re always looking to add to their roster.

“The best film animals are the most relaxed animals. The ones that can deal with the different scenarios that occur. All the different things that happen on set. There’s so many people, so much equipment,” said Greg Tresan.

If you think your pet has what it takes, you’re invited to stop by their farm on Sunday for an open animal casting call from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Animal Casting Atlanta is located at 1690 Julius Bridge Road., Ball Ground, GA 30107. You can also learn more about animal casting by visiting their website here.

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BALL GROUND, Ga. — A former employee of a metro Atlanta HVAC company said he had to share videos of workers releasing a pollutant into the air from old air conditioners.

Channel 2 consumer investigator Justin Gray took the videos to three different HVAC companies and the EPA.

They all said it looks like clear violations of the Clean Air Act.

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Cell phone videos show Freon being vented from old HVAC units into the air in a Cherokee County neighborhood.

“Just like Old Faithful going off in the yard where they just cut to copper. I’ve never seen that,” Charles Rife said.

He recorded the cell phone video.

“This is not the way you’re supposed to dispose of this?” Gray asked. “No, you’re supposed to recover it,” Rife answered.

He is a former Fritts Heating & Air employee.

The video shows other Fritts employees and Fritts trucks.

“There was hundreds of units stacked up in that pile. I mean, hundreds. And they’re all gone,” said Rife.

He said he saw this happen on two separate occasions when he was sent by his supervisor at Fritts to help scrap old units so they could be sent to a recycling center.

“I was told by the owner that their employees know what to do and just do it,” Rife said.

But venting refrigerant is against federal law. It’s a violation of the Clean Air Act.

Channel 2 showed the video to licensed technicians at three different HVAC companies. They all had similar reactions.

“It was atrocious, to be honest with you. These are the kind of things that our industry ends up getting a black eye for,” Andrew Navarro, the HVAC Service Manager at R.S. Andrews said.

Navarro showed the proper way to release freon.

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“What we do is we turn on the machine here, and we evacuate the refrigerant out of this unit into the recovery tank,” said Navarro.

An EPA-certified HVAC technician would normally recover the Freon out of the unit before ever leaving the home or business where it had been installed. That can take more than an hour.

“It takes a lot of time to properly do it. The recovery machines that are used, I mean they’re pretty expensive. Every one of our trucks have them,” Navarro said.

He said venting is a time and money savings shortcut.

“It was obvious disregard for any kind of EPA regulations or our environment,” Navarro said.

Those regulations are serious business.

A Clean Air Act Violation could lead to fines of up to $37,500 a day for venting.

“In the end, it’s up to the company to train your workers,” Rife said.

Gray first tried calling Fritts Heating & Air. They hung up on him twice.

Gray went to their Ball Ground office, but they had locked the doors and turned off the lobby lights.

A house was listed as a secondary address. A man who responded through a doorbell said, “You know there’s always two sides to every story of course.”

“Of course, which is why we are trying so hard to reach out to them,” Gray said.

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Eventually, the owner of Fritts did refer Gray to their attorney who emailed us this statement:

“Fritts Heating & Air has learned of allegations made by a former employee regarding potential EPA violations.

As a company, we absolutely deny that we have knowingly violated any EPA regulations. Fritts Heating & Air has been serving Metro Atlanta for over ten years. Our company has always taken great pride in providing quality service to our customers, with a resolve to be stewards of the environment that we all share. Fritts Heating & Air provides regular training, and environmentally-friendly equipment to our employees that both exceed industry standards. We are disappointed that a disgruntled former employee would come forth with these false allegations against our company.”

Channel 2 turned the video over to the EPA who told us:

“The Clean Air Act prohibits the venting or releasing of ozone-depleting substances (ODS) or their substitutes (including refrigerants) into the air. ODSs damage the stratospheric ozone layer and ozone depletion means less protection from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet (UVB) radiation. EPA has shared the information you provided with our enforcement programs, however, our policy is not to comment on enforcement activities. Anyone can report suspected violations of environmental laws on our website: Report Environmental Violations | ECHO | US EPA”

Rife said he also reported this to both federal and state officials after quitting his job at Fritts.

“I mean, that’s just flagrant. Like we don’t care, I would say,” Rife said.

Any HVAC technician working with Freon is supposed to have an EPA certification. To get it, they would be trained in the proper disposal of Freon.

Channel 2 asked Fritts if all their techs are EPA certified, and their attorney said they are.

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A bull got loose in Paulding County, Georgia

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Ball Ground, Ga. — Perhaps it was inevitable. When Margaret Gibbs gave birth to a son, Jim Gibbs, at Murphy General Hospital in 1942, she was already a blue-ribbon winner of the Murphy Garden Club.

She was so good, in fact, that after winning another first-place ribbon one year, she overheard one of the ladies from her garden club say, “If Mrs. Gibbs enters next year, there’s no sense in me entering. She’s going to win it.”

The following year, Gibbs’ mother did not enter, but instead taught other women in town about gardening. However, it wasn’t just Gibbs’ mother who had a passion for flowers. His grandmother and great grandmother were both avid gardeners, as well as his four aunts.

So what was a young boy to do but learn how to build and grow flower gardens? Eventually, Jim Gibbs would grow his family hobby into a world-class, award-winning 327-acre floral garden.

But first there was the weeding.

“I grew up in a household talking about gardening,” Gibbs said, “you take it all in.”

‘Enjoy it like I do’

His grandmother raised his mother and four aunts on a 1,000-acre Antebellum farm just outside of Spartanburg, S.C.

“She let them cut flowers and bring in to decorate the rooms,” Gibbs said with a laugh. “They lived out in the country and she said it kept them busy.”

As a young boy, Gibbs grew up outside playing in any number of the family gardens, as all five sisters planted gardens in their homes as well. His mother taught him gardening from the basics.

“Nobody likes to weed,” Gibbs said. He often grumbled to his mother about all the time he spent weeding her garden.

“She would say, ‘Jimmy, you’ve got to learn to weed so you don’t pick the flowers.’ ” He swore he’d never had a garden when he grew up.

“I would work in my mother’s garden and complain,” Gibbs said. “I told her, ‘I’m never going to have any garden or flowers at my house.’ ”

His mother took it all in stride. “Remember,” she told him, “when you have your own house you can do what you want to do, install and maintain what you like; you will enjoy it like I do.”

A mother must know best, because Gibbs knew by high school that he wanted to be a professional gardener.

‘Just full of color’

Gibbs said he loved growing up in Cherokee County.

“We had a summer cabin at Hiawassee Lake, near Great Creek just past Hanging Dog,” he recalled. “Murphy was a beautiful place to grow up.”

Except for the winters. In the 1950s, many houses were heated with a coal stoker that burned into a big furnace, but the system was inefficient and Gibbs was often cold.

“I didn’t care much about the winters in Murphy; it could be pretty rough,” Gibbs said, then laughed. “The insulation was not as thick, back in those days.”

But how he loved spring and summer.

“In the spring, when the perennials bloom, it’s just full of color,” Gibbs said, adding, “The lavenders of Russian sage, the yellow daffodils, with their warm colors, it is just beautiful.”

Before he left for the University of Georgia, his mother told him that there were two types of gardening.

“If you’re very creative,” she told him, “you’ll go into more of the design and planning of gardens. But if you want to know how plants grow, you’ll need to learn horticulture.”

Gibbs said his family knew early on he had talent for the creative side. But he wanted to know all aspects of gardening, so he studied both landscape architecture for the design side and horticulture for the knowledge side.

He stayed in Georgia after graduation.

“Georgia is a big, big gardening state,” Gibbs said. “There are more gardening clubs in Atlanta than in any other city.”

With his degree, he opened his own business, Gibbs Landscape Co., and over the years earned more than 300 awards for excellence in design.

‘World-class garden’

Gibbs began traveling the world to learn more about gardens, flowers and design.

“When I was studying in Japan, I told my wife that I wanted to find a piece of property and begin to build a world-class garden,” he said.

Gibbs wanted that garden to be his legacy. So they moved back to Georgia, purchased 350 acres and built a Manor House on the property. Then he got to work digging 19 ponds and multiple waterfalls, while designing 16 gardens, each with its own specialty.

Gibbs Gardens won the national award for the Garden of Excellence in 2019, only to top that in 2020 when it was named one of the 13-best American botanical gardens.

“I have hundreds of springs that flow through the gardens,” he said. “All that water ends up in the Cherokee County Reservoir.

“I turned 80 years old in June. Every morning, early in the morning, first thing I do is go out into the gardens.”

Gibbs said he walks about 45 minutes through the springs and ponds.

“I like seeing the changing light on the plant materials” he said. “I have a huge Ferndale shade garden; it’s so peaceful and restful with the waterfall. I do that every morning. I get so much joy from it.”

Gibbs said gardening continues to teach him patience.

“Weather is unpredictable, labor is unpredictable, put the two together, and you have to have to learn to have patience and to deal with it,” he said.

He wishes he had learned patience early.

“When I was younger, I did not have the patience. Today, I accept so many things that are out of my control,” Gibbs said. “Why do I worry about this or that? I know it is out of my control. Today, I have truly accepted that fact that I don’t have control.”

Gibbs’ favorite time to enjoy the gardens is in the cool of the morning.

“The garden is at peace then. Everything is fresh and alive,” he said. “There is nothing to see but the beauty of it. I’m not disturbed there.”

Construction progress continues with major milestone

ATLANTA, Aug. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Atlanta Gas Light today announced the placement of its second LNG storage facility rooftop August 2 at its liquified natural gas (LNG) facility in Cherokee County. Weighing 444 tons, or as much as 11 humpback whales, the domed roof is approximately 200 feet in diameter and 36 feet in height. The air raise of the roof took approximately 4 hours to complete. Construction of the inner LNG containment shell within the outer wall will begin in the coming months. Once complete, the new LNG tank will store an additional 2 billion standard cubic feet of natural gas onsite to meet Atlanta Gas Light natural gas supply needs.

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Construction of the LNG storage facility has been underway since November 2021 and will be completed in phases over the next three years.

"Placement of the LNG storage tank roof is a major milestone for the project, reflecting the hard work and dedication of our team as we transition this facility closer to operation," says Atlanta Gas Light President and CEO Pedro Cherry. "This LNG project is critical natural gas infrastructure necessary to continue providing fuel to our customers safely and reliably in the decades when demand is at its highest."

The project will allow Atlanta Gas Light to double the facility's capacity, store gas when it is most affordable and then have access to that supply during periods of peak demand in the county and surrounding regions.

Liquefied natural gas is natural gas that has been cooled to a liquid state, at about -260 degrees Fahrenheit, for shipping and storage. The volume of natural gas in its liquid state is about 600 times smaller than its volume in its gaseous state in a natural gas pipeline. While stored as LNG, it's returned to its gaseous state, or regasified, for use by customers.

This facility is part of Atlanta Gas Light's first-ever Integrated Capacity Development Plan (i-CDP), which was approved by the Georgia Public Service Commission in November 2021. The i-CDP provides insight into the company's long-range plans for initiatives that will enable it to meet increased demand and deliver superior customer service while continuing to serve the energy needs of the state safely and reliably.

Check out Atlanta Gas Light's YouTube channel for video of the roof placement.

For more information about Atlanta Gas Light, log on to our website or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

About Atlanta Gas LightAtlanta Gas Light is one of four natural gas distribution companies of Southern Company Gas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO). Atlanta Gas Light provides natural gas delivery service to approximately 1.7 million customers in Georgia. In operation since 1856, the company is one of the oldest corporations in the state. For more information, visit atlantagaslight.com.

About Southern Company GasSouthern Company Gas is a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Company (NYSE:SO), America's premier energy company. Southern Company Gas serves approximately 4.3 million natural gas customers through its regulated distribution companies in four states with approximately 666,000 retail customers through its companies that market natural gas. Other businesses include investments in interstate pipelines and ownership and operation of natural gas storage facilities. For more information, visit southerncompanygas.com.

SOURCE Southern Company