SPRING Part 1






Spring is definitely going to be a little late this year. I should have seen these crocus weeks ago.



But then I was still having snow on the magnolias. An article in the New York Times earlier this week said that contrary to what would seem to be true, this has not been that cold a winter if you consider the worldwide average. Even for the United States the average was not all that cold. But Alabama had the distinction of having the fourth coldest January in its recorded history. My propane usage certainly supports that. And the delayed spring flowers.
This late in February , and these are my first daffodils! I should have seen these 3 weeks ago. Sure, sometimes they bloom, a freeze hits, they are nipped in the early bloom, and in a short time here they come again. But never have I seen them so late in getting started. Still, I do have a lot on the way, as you can see. But note that patch of narcissus on the left: all brown at the ends. Narcissus always seem to be the first up and showing, but this year they were seriously damaged before they could bloom. (Actually, I don't really mind that: I am allergic to narcissus, and I abhor their smell. Pretty, though.)
My purple dawn should have been producing blooms as far back as Thanksgiving and lasting, some years, nearly till Easter. Not this year! This is the first halfway decent bloom I've had. Lots of frozen buds on the bush, however. It tried
And here is the first hint of early spring hyacinth peeking through the grass.



The bridal wreath has just started to leaf out a bit. And one of the kiss-me-by-the-gate bushes in a protected place has attempted a few scant early blooms, not enough to show up in a photograph. At least spring is trying to make an effort.

You'll be seeing a lot more of the bridal wreath as we move along.



Let's have one more shot of that crocus, for soon it will be gone until some time next year in the very late winter or very early spring.



Almost 2 weeks into March now. The grass is still as brown as can be. There are a few bulbs starting to appear, and the redbud is making an effort. I fear this may be the last year for many of my redbuds: they are old, and I think in some cases the blooms are simply feeding off the dying trunks. About half of mine have already died. The privet down in the old goat pasture is leafing out, but otherwise the only green is from the evergreens.



The oaks down in the woods should be showing a bit of green by now. But not. The gingko's bareness is no surprise: it always waits a while before attempting to put out a few leaves.

I love my tall pine trees. There used to be more of them in this view, but a few lightning strikes and some pine beetles have done them in over the years.
There are still some red holly berries adding a touch of color to the west side of the front porch. But this is remnant of winter more than harbinger of spring.
The baby's breath on the west side of the house, just outside the dining room windows, seems to have come through our light freeze early this morning more or less intact.



And there are just a few fairly attractive blooms on the Purple Dawn camellia on the east side of the house. This has been the worst year for my camellia since I moved home to Alabama nearly 25 years ago.

The azaleas look like they have suffered. Wait and see. Nothing like what you find in the Huck and Roscoe posts. At least not yet, although that might change.
At the bottom of the east hillside the snowdrops have finally made an appearance. They're a good 6 weeks late. Maybe they tried, got nipped in the bud, and had to make a new effort.
And the narcissus! They're a good 4 weeks behind. I'm certainly not going to have as many as usual this year (a blessing, maybe, since they give me headaches and make me sneeze).
Daffodils, on the other hand, I'm fine with them. As far as I know, they have never excited my allergies!
My mother planted many different varieties over the years. She and her garden club buddies would swap. This happens to be one of my favorites. What I haven't seen yet is the one with the bright yellow center surrounded by a pale, almost white, corona. Maybe later. Or not.
The forsythia in the corner of my neighbor's yard finally waked itself up. It too was late.


There used to be a forsythia in my yard many years ago, but for some reason (not my fault!) it died. Henry never particularly did anything to help this one out, but somehow it just loves that corner and flourishes. Plants do have a mind of their own.
The crepe myrtles, well, they never do leaf out until later in the spring. I wonder if their blooming will be pushed later into July this year. When they do bloom, those to the left of my garage are likely to be spectacular.

And the old oak at the southwest corner of my year: how long will it be with me? I've already had to take down the one about halfway between it and the garage. (You can just make out the old stump just this side of the boxwood in the middle of the photo.) I hope this one and I can manage to totter on a few more years together. We're both trying!
A week later and March is bustin' out all over! Or at least it is down here in west central Alabama. I recall as a child hearing Hammerstein's ode to June and all that "bustin' out all over" stuff didn't mean a thing to me. All that bursting out was over, done with, finished and through a lot earlier than that! By June we were usually into hot summer. Those Yankees! What did they know!

Of course, when I think "Just because its March! March! March!" I can understand why Oscar decided to set the musical in Maine.

The baby's breath has been unusually pretty this year. I wonder if that has anything to do with my not trimming it back so much this fall.


Why baby's breath? Well, if you were named Gypsophilia paniculata, you'd want to be called something else too.

I usually have more overlap between the baby's breath and the bridal wreath, but I'm just starting to see the first buds on that latter.  When you think about it, you'd expect bridal wreath to come before baby's breath. Then again, March comes some 9 months after June . . . Maybe that's the explanation right there!

The two I have were planted by my mother outside the dining room windows on the west side of the house. I can remember no other plant in that location, so they must be pretty old. (Now that is a cue for somebody to sing out "You're not that old, Jonathan!" Or maybe, "You don't look nearly that old!")

The grass, still brown. Any green there is nothing but weed.

You can talk all you want about spring bulb: your daffodils, your narcissus, your iris. The spring bloom I most love is the redbud. Not very attractive plants most of the year, with large but unimpressive leaves, ratty seed pods, and straggly trunks and branches that wander all over the place. But when those branches put on that delicate shade of pink, for me the effect is magic. I love that pink tracery against the spring greens down in my woods.
This shot is toward the southeast corner of the back yard, and you can see the old collapsed goat shed toward the lower right corner. I can remember way back when the "little house behind the house" was situated just beyond that big oak. Long ago that was replaced by a pink "Pride of Mobile" azalea. If it does well this year, I'll probably post of picture of it.

That dead tree trunk left of center I leave standing because the woodpeckers like it. It doesn't threated the fence.
Not that the fence matters much anymore: there are no longer goats to be kept in the pasture and no longer dogs to be kept in the yard.  As you can see, it has already had more than its share of fallen limbs and trees.

That log you see to the right was an enormously tall dead pine tree just across the fence, and when I had a tree team taking down other trees, I had them cut this one as well so that I wouldn't have to deal with it in my yard later on.
The lighter green is, of course, privet. If the goats were still down there, you'd see none of that. The darker evergreen in the center rear is an old swamp bay. It was a big old tree when I was a small child first playing down in the woods. A small sluggish stream seeps along just on the other side of it, so it gets plenty of moisture there. The old picnic table to the right used to be in the back yard, and many a great outdoor fish fry in my childhood made use of that table. It has been down in the woods some 25 years now. The goats loved it. Huckleberry did too.
As I sit here at the computer I can look down the east hillside and see this row of snowdrops at the bottom. Just to the left of it is where my big patch of late spring/early summer black-eyed Susans is located (in the fall they are replaced by goldenrod). I'll put up a post about my black-eyed Susans when that time of year comes round again.

Right outside my window, situated where I can easily see it from the computer, is the old round tin table I use as a bird feeder. A couple of mourning doves and a few cardinals are getting along just fine, but there is one tough sparrow that wants it all for himself. The other birds jump back a little but don't fly off. Just one stray goldfinch: I believe that most of them have headed north already, just in the last couple of days. Ah, one little nuthatch up from the woods!
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The stump is all that's left of the wonderful tall tulip poplar that I had to have taken down when another old tree just across the fence had fallen into it, pushing it toward my house. Hated to see it go, but would have hated to see it cut my house in two as well. I left the stump: it too is useful as a bird feeder.

You can see to the left a bunch of bulbs that got seriously hurt by their coming out before this very long winter's freezes were over.
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One of the plants that burgeon in the spring that I love is the naked lady (or as we would call it down here, nekkid lady). No, not the bloom. That comes in July or August, after a good rain, when suddenly these tall spikes topped with a pink bloom shoot up out of the ground, seemingly overnight. My mother of course called them by their more proper name, pink ladies, because of their color. It happens to be a pink that I really don't like. What we have now is the dark green foliage in masses nearly 2 feet high, and to me it is beautiful. I think the darkness of the green is unexpected this time of year, when so much of the new growth is a much lighter green.
This is, for me, one of the prettier of the daffodils. My mother had planted another variety similar to this but with an even lighter corolla, almost white. So far this spring I haven't seen any of those. Maybe soon. I don't really garden. If it grows, leave it alone. My mother was the gardener, and all through her lifetime here in Sawyerville she loved working in the yard. Through swaps with fellow garden club members she acquired a great number of varieties of daffodils, narcissus, and iris. Some bulbs she purchased from mail order houses. It was the same with the azaleas and the camellia. Once upon a time the original part of the house I still live in sat much closer to the highway, and when I was a toddler it was moved back to provide more of a front yard after the highway was widened. At the time, the yard was a red clay hill that had been scraped flat by a bulldozer, and nothing was growing on it other than weeds. She made the yard. Everything of any attractiveness that grows here she planted. Never a chore. Her great love.
It is still on the cool side here for March. At least we don't have any more freezes in the 10-day forecast, but I know from experience that can change. Luckily I managed to keep warm this winter. About 3 weeks ago I visited my cousin down on the Old May Place and we had a fire in the fireplace and each of us had a glass of 16-year-old Irish whiskey, and he commented that he was sorry to see the winter go. He loves sitting in his man-cave with a great fire going. I know the feeling. I no longer use the fireplaces, but in my living room the large propane heater with its imitation logs does show an attractive flame and really warms the place up. It is company in a way.

But I wouldn't want that all the time. I like changing seasons. It pleases me to see the yard and the woods change during the year.  If you take a look in the HUCK and ROSCOE posts, you'll see lots of change shown there, including the main characters as well as the yard
Here we are on the 3rd day of April. Spring in Alabama, as in most of the United States, took its own precious time in arriving this year. And now that it is here, it seems to be rushing by.
Down in my woods the trees are putting on their leaves,
and leaves are just starting to appear on the gingko in the yard. The gingko always waits until the last minute.
The flowering crabapple was at its peak on April Fool's Day, when I took these pictures. You'll note that it leans seriously to the west. That's because of the trees in my woods to the east that shade it from morning sunlight much of the year.
I noticed yesterday that the petals of the blooms were beginning to fall, a slow pink rain. By this morning the pink display had been reduced by half.
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Same tree, same day, looking back toward the southeast corner of my house. That corner bedroom was mine when I was a child. When I moved back to Alabama, I decided that it would be a good idea to have a different relationship to the house, and I took the next bedroom down the hall, the one that used to be my sister's. That rear bedroom was Tom's for the last 18 years of his life. He loved looking out the south and east windows at the yard and the woods.

Now I tend to alternate, on no particular schedule, between the two bedrooms.
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That chimney to the fireplace on the back porch den is no longer used. About 15 years ago I began to doubt the safety of that chimney, and in addition I had gotten tired of maintaining a supply of cut wood to burn therein. Also we had begun to spend most of our evening time in the living room up front, and why have a fire when you're not there to enjoy it. Actually, the house is warmer without the use of the fireplace.

Behind the house to the east of the pump house is what remains of my mother's Thrift. During my years of growing up, the front walk and the borders of many of the flower beds were lined with this plant. That pipe for many years held a tall pole supporting a martin house. It blew down in a windstorm a few years after I moved home. We hadn't had martins for several years. I think the tallness of the trees in the woods had begun to discourage them. For a while I kept a pan of water atop the pipe, but since it attracted more mosquitoes than birds, I discontinued that. Running east from that Thrift you see a row of the spring greenery of the August lilies (a.k.a. naked ladies). This greenery will fairly soon die down, and in a month I will be mowing over the area. Then, probably in July, depending on the rains, the pink lilies will shoot up out of the ground overnight.

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The crepe myrtle behind the rear bedroom, the crabapple, the row of naked lady greenery, the pot of Thrift, and the corner of my well house. That red light on the post is not for advertising purposes: it was a heat lamp that burned out many years ago, and I screwed it into the lamp socket just to keep the moisture out (long story). During the colder winter months I keep a heat lamp on in the well house to keep the pump and pipes from freezing.

The patch of green between the crepe myrtle and the Thrift is my bed of Dutch iris. In a few weeks  the small blue blooms will appear.
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Well house, side view. Behind the small door you see  is the drilled well with its submersible pump and the water tank. I have my own water supply, which works fine except during power outages, when I must rely on my emergency water supply (kept in old Gallo wine jugs in my den). Friends have tried to convince me to get a gas-powered generator, but the expense and the nuisance (and the dread of theft) dissuade me.  The longest I have been without power is about 4 days, and I can endure that.

The well was drilled by my mother's middle brother, Jimmy. It replaced the earlier open well that had been dug by her father, King David (generally known as Dave or Mr. Dave). I can barely remember when our water came from the ground via the old hand-operated iron pump.





Right behind the house is this little patch of Star of Bethlehem. I have other small patches in the yard to the west of the kitchen, near the front door, and beside the driveway outside the fence.




The wildflower phlox is one of my favorite flowers this time of year. This patch is in the ditch outside my fence on the east side of the county road.

We had no phlox in the yard when I was small.
  My mother found a large patch alongside Limestone Creek some 4 miles south of the house and dug up a few plants to get it started in the yard. It has done well ever since and has spread over much of the yard. I think it must like a mix of sun and shade, for it does not grow in the sunnier areas of the yard.
The dogwood is just starting to bloom. I used to have a wonderful tree down the hill from my office, but gradually it died. Blight? Old age? Now I have only this one, in the southeast corner of the yard, and one down in the woods close to the west fence.
Like the redbud, the dogwood likes a mix of sun and shade, and it does reach out its arms into the sunlight.

My redbuds, incidentally, have lost their blooms and are leafing out now.
As always, my first iris to bloom are the old-fashioned white ones. Later on I will have the old-fashioned deep purple ones. When I was a child, I knew them only as "flags." Is that just a Southern name? I don't know. My mother over time planted many different fancy varieties, most of which don't bloom anymore (I'm not one to get down on my knees and dig about and separate and do the other attending that fancy iris need). These are part of a patch of them down the hill from the office, right where the Black-Eyed Susans and the goldenrod will eventually be growing.






These two are posing prettily against the old oak tree just outside the southwest corner of my yard. My mother had planted lots of iris on the bank outside the fence.
I can see this bridal wreath bush down the hill as I write. The amount of bloom has more that doubled since this photo was taken 3 days ago. A gorgeous mass of white. It is one of those gray spring days, not raining yet but lots of dampness in the air, and the white shows up beautifully.
One more shot, just because I like the plant so much.






The camellia is finally able to produce a few blooms. I should have had a bush covered with red blooms as far back as November, but the constant freezes this year kept on killing the buds. I think we're past that now.






Let's have one more shot of the crabapple. After all, it is now seriously on the wane. No more of this pink until abouit this time next year.
On April Fool's Day I took a bunch of pictures of the yard in bright sunshine and posted them a couple of days later. A week later, the area is also right pretty on a gray day after the rains.

That red azalea in the southwest corner of the back yard managed to bloom just in time to be beaten by the 3 inches of rain we had yesterday. Storms had been a possibility, but here in Sawyerville it was just a spring rain, heavy at times with occasional thunder and lightning, from about 3  Sunday morning until nearly dawn today.
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That yucca in the corner of this shot of the red azalea gave Roscoe the occasional surprise when he lifted a leg, but Huck before him, being a girl, never had that problem.


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The gingko, with just a few tiny green leaves showing a week ago, is now leafing out nicely. But note the flowering crabapple beyond: only a few straggly petals left of the riot of pink of that earlier day. Most of the daffodils and narcissus are no longer blooming.

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Looking back toward the southwest corner of the yard. The old barbecue pit was a fixture of my childhood. A metal plate a few inches down supported the source of heat (for us, mostly wood, although occasionally charcoal), and above that an iron grid provided a support for the big frying pan. I do not recall the pit ever being used for barbecue. For us, it was a place to fry catfish and hushpuppies outdoors. My mother's helper, Viana Rutley, usually did the frying. Two big tables (like the one now down in the woods) each provided seating for about 8 people, with the overflow sitting around card tables brought out or simply in lawn chairs with their plates in their laps. There would also be deviled eggs, potato salad, coleslaw, sliced tomatoes, and of course light bread (as we called sliced white bread in those days down here). Homemade pickles and relishes. Bottles of catsup and jars of mayonnaise. And at the end, Viana's apple pies, probably the best apple pies ever cooked, and usually homemade (and if I had my choice, vanilla) ice cream. It was, let me tell you, fine dining! How I'd love to be able to experience that again! Where are the fish fries of yesteryear!
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Here's that remaining table down in the woods as it looks today. If you have explored the HUCK chapters, you have seen this table covered with goats. I remain amazed that this table is still standing and has not been crushed by a falling limb or tree.

The dogwood in the southeast corner of the yard is filled with more blooms than a week ago, and the blooms are more mature and larger. Back in my early childhood the privy was down in this corner, and maybe that has something to do with how well this dogwood and the pink azalea that will soon be in bloom  have done over the years.



My other remaining dogwood is this one in my woods down from the southwest corner of the yard. Note the road: you will soon see it again. That tall pine stump? Well, it was once a beautiful tree pushed slightly to lean to the west by, if memory serves, Hurricane Andrew. Over time, it began to lean more, and finally in 2008, fearing its collapse onto the county road on top of perhaps a school bus or cars filled with Sunday churchgoers, I decided it was time to take it down. I left a tall sump, thinking maybe I'd get some flowering vine to cover it. Not as yet. I've tried. They haven't cooperated.



We're just inside the woods looking toward the southeast. A few years back, I embarked on the task of clearing this area to make it more meadow-like, as it was back in the goat days. After about 3 years I gave that up. Let the privet take it. One has only so much energy and so little time. Sometimes it is best to like what you have instead of try to get what you want.
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That patch of fungus on the tree above has been there as long as I have been back in Alabama, some 25 years now. It will probably still be there when I am gone.



A few spring ferns are starting to emerge.

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The row of bridal wreath running down the east hillside from the front of my house is hanging low because of the rains, and some of the petals were beaten off by the raindrops. Although this was taken outside the house, this is the view I have from where I am sitting at my computer in my office.
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This oak tree growing amidst the bush at the top of the hill volunteered, and I decided I wanted the tree instead of the bridal wreath. For years I tried to cut away the flowering plant. It outran my best (or worst) efforts. Now it is the healthiest bush in the yard. I wish I had cut down the oak: I had no idea it would grow so much and so fast and loom over the main power line to my house.

In the distance, beyond the camellia, is the line of bushes that used to run down from the rear of the house. Now the rear back bedroom, where I usually sleep these days, extends beyond that. My mother had planted row after row of daffodils and iris on his hillside, and in the old days this slope was a gorgeous sight to see.

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This shot of the bush at the top of that rear row really shows how low the branches hang after a rain. That stump you see was once a popcorn tree, beautiful all year round and especially in the fall. But it too leaned to the west because of the tall trees in the woods to the east, and it had begun to pose a serious threat not only to my power line but also to the satellite dish by which my computer connects with the outside world.

The popcorn tree is not a native species and is highly aggressive. It can take over whatever portion of the universe is left after kudzu and wisteria. Years later after I had it taken down I still get volunteer plants coming up from the old root system. So far I am the winner in this particular ongoing battle.



I have only a couple of blooms so far on my tulip tree (not to be confused with what we call the tulip poplar, which my mother always said was neither a tulip nor a poplar, which has green and yellow blooms). There are lots of wonderful trees this time of year in Greensboro and Tuscaloosa, but the most magnificent one I have ever seen is on Highway 14 between Eutaw and the interstate. It is old, totally white, gorgeous, and if you are fortunate enough to pass by when it is in full bloom you'll be so excited you will almost run off the road.
This is the first of my mother's fancier iris to bloom this year, just in time to be beaten up a bit by yesterday's rains. Not a great shot, but at least the greenery on the ground looks nice. I saw my first purple iris this morning, but they were so bedraggled from the recent weather that I elected not to take a photograph. Maybe next time.




I think it's time to take a break here, and then we can move along to Spring Part 2. See you shortly!