2. Azalea, Iris, & Dogwood

SPRING Part 2

The main intersection in Beautiful Downtown Sawyerville, as seen from my front yard looking northwesterly through the leafless crepe myrtles. (You'll get to see lots more of those crepe myrtles later, with leaves and blooms.)

In the 1940s Emmet Callahan's filling station was across the highway on the corner, and just to the left of it was Uncle Murray's store. To the west of that was an old store that local farmer George Springer used for a storehouse. You can find more about Old Sawyerville in the "Ghosts of Sawyerville" post under PLACES. I'm still hoping one day to go through old family photos to identify any that show the Sawyerville of my childhood for a companion piece.

Another view of the intersection looking northerly from my garage. This is a good shot for underscoring a sort of hidden theme in these pictures: the incredible varieties of the color green in an Alabama spring.

The observant viewer will spot the old doghouse used by Huck and Roscoe that used to be on my patio and has now been moved to the rear of my father's old country store and post office. The stump is what remains of a beautiful Branford pear that was damaged when a car heading south ran into it in the mid-1990s and was hurt even more when a storm after Tom's death spread sections of it all over the county road. A few years later it had to be taken down. Recalling how the tree had kept that car from crashing into my garage and my car, I decided superstitiously to leave the stump.

I've always liked this slight curve the county road makes as it goes down the small hill behind my garage and up the other side. About 4 miles down this road you come to what we still call the Millwood Road, running from Greensboro to the Millwood Hunting Club. [For more on Millwood, google or bing or check Wikipedia for Millwood (Greensboro, Alabama)]

A view from across the road. My property line comes across just behind that lone tree you see mid-picture. When I was a child, the road was more narrow and not yet paved. When I was very little, there was a small dump of gravel just about where the lower left corner of this picture is. I can recall being warned that something would get me if I went beyond that pile of red clay gravel. It both frightened me and made me curious as to what was beyond. There was more of a dip at the bottom, and the stream that begins on my property and eventually winds through the Walton and Martin pastures and on through lands owned by the Springers and the Colemans ran through a culvert underneath. That branch eventually ends up in the Black Warrior River. On the right side of the road was a tall (or so it seemed to a small boy) red clay bank, and that bank provided many hours of play

This is what remains of the redbud to the south of my garage. It was dying for years, and the last time there were blooms was at least 3 years ago. Already it has shed a few of the larger limbs, but I am letting the dead tree remain for now. You see, clematis climbs it (you can already spot some of the greenery of the vine), and in the summer it will be filled with the tiny white blooms that I love.

I find myself amazed at how much more greenery is appearing in the trees than there was on April 1. Spring was late in coming, and now it is rushing by. Chances are that will be the case for any of you who have had a long and cold winters.

And why do I persist in burdening you with all these photos of a fairly innocuous yard and memories of a fairly innocuous childhood? Well, actually, I am not. As I've said somewhere else on the site, I am doing this for myself. If it gives you any pleasure, that is simply a bonus. I hope it does.

I guess the best answer to the question comes from a poem by A. E. Housman:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow

Actually, I don't have any cherry, but I'll bet in Housman had grown up in Alabama he might well have considered the dogwood!

Almost mid-April, and finally the azaleas have started to bloom. In a few days they should be particularly showy, unless the strong storms threatened for tomorrow beat them down unconscionably.

The pink azalea down in the southeast corner of the yard has begun to escape down into the woods, now that there are no goats to keep them chewed back. The goats loved azalea. Actually, they loved to eat anything I would cut in the yard and throw over the fence. Wisteria may have been their favorite.

My mother, who planted all these azaleas, particularly liked the Pride of Mobile, and she very much liked to mix the colors for contrast, as with the pale and dark pinks shown here. She spent lots of time with her azaleas. Myself, much less. As you can tell.

The purple iris are finally blooming. They follow the white ones by a week or 10 days, and my old-fashioned white ones are almost gone.

But I have these fancy large white ones to look forward to! They keep on coming back beside the old Bradford pear stump between my driveway and the county road. The blooms when they open are so large and so heavy that they should be staked. But I don't do that. Maybe soon I'll have some pictures of these in full bloom.

It has many names: ground-ivy, gill-over-the-ground, alehoof, tunhoof, catsfoot, field balm, and run-away-robin. My mother always called it Creeping Charlie, and that's what it will always be to me. (I do sort of like run-away-robin, though.) Some folks hate it and try to eradicate it. I have always liked it and am pleased to have it volunteer in my yard. I have a special place in my heart for wildflowers. Dandelion. Goldenrod. Black-eyed Susans and her numerous yellow relatives. Ageratum. Joe Pie Weed. Honeysuckle. You'll probably see some of these as the year wears on.

And of course, the phlox, which is all over the east hillside and on the bank to the west of the back yard. It has done extremely well this year. (And like the others mentioned, it requires no attention from me: it just quietly does its thing.)

I didn't do a thing to the bridal wreath last year. I wonder if that's why it has done so well this spring.

Of course, I'd be just as happy not to have that vetch growing all over the east hillside straight down from the house. It pulls up easily, but I don't generally take the time and make the effort. Oh well, in a few weeks, when the bulb foliage has begun to die down a bit, I can just mow the whole hillside.

The old goat pasture across the fence is thick with privet. During my first decade and more after my move back to the old home, it was a meadow cropped close by the four goats. I miss the goats, and I miss the meadow, but I have now become fond of the thick privet growth. I wonder what wildlife hides in there. The red fox who showed up, I hope, although I have seen him only the one time. Rabbits, raccoons, possums. And it does provide the smaller birds with a place to hide from the hawks.

It's the Monday after Easter now. Here's my house and yard and the store and the woods behind, as viewed from the post office across the highway. That patch of red beneath the "Do Not Enter" sign is crimson clover. The State of Alabama once planted it along the road, and now it reseeds itself every year. It amazes me that it can grow in that tiny dry dirt patch, but it is a hardy plant. I don't mow that area until after it has gone to seed and turned brown. Maybe that's why it is the healthiest patch in Sawyerville. That store used to have a porch in front, but it was knocked down by a log truck in 2008. The crepe myrtle at the right corner volunteered. I planted the one to the left from another volunteer elsewhere in the yard

Here are a few shots of one of the blooms on that fancy white iris that was just a bud the last time I was taking photos. As I said, I should stake these, but I don't. They fall over and twist toward the sun.

The azaleas are still doing well. This bush is on the east side of my house.

I really do need to trim up this pink one down in the southeast corner of the yard. This is taken from just inside the yard looking down at the dead oak tree trunk down from the corner of the fence in the old goat pasture. The leaves down in the woods are much more abundant now. That old dead oak? If such dead tree trunks don't threaten, I leave them standing. The woodpeckers in particular like them. Time will bring them down. (That suggests a poetic observation but I will exercise restraint.) You can see how this azalea, now that I have no goats, is escaping down into the woods. Not that I have any complaints.

I'd mentioned the view from my computer workstation. Through that left window is my magnolia, soon to be in bloom. Through the right window I can see what remains of the bloom on the bridal wreath. If I lean slightly to the left I can see part of the purple dawn camellia. That round metal table is my bird feeding station on this side of the house (I stopped feeding them a couple of weeks ago: the goldfinches had moved on and the ravens were starting to appear). I did have a couple of doves on the table a few minutes ago, but not finding seed they didn't tarry.

A closer view through the right window taken a couple of days earlier. Here you can see the purple dawn. Yes, there are still a few blooms. Down the hill to the right of the bridal wreath is my wildflower patch. Already you have seen white iris down there, and soon you will get the chance to see the Black-Eyed Susans. If I am up early enough I can look out and see the dawn. This time of year, however, the sun has moved so much to the north that I have to close these blinds after sunrise. I like my workstation with its view of plants and birds and woods and sky.

Let's take one more look at the dark pink azalea.

April 28 already. The month almost gone. And I am wondering if these branches might be gone tomorrow. Heck, will I still be here tomorrow? Well, hope does continue to spring eternal. But the skies are darkening. On Saturday I visited with my cousin who is a regional manager for FEMA, and his best guess at the time, based on available evidence, was that likely Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina will get the worst of it. I don't want to wish them ill, but I certainly hope the worst misses us.

Looks like our best chances for bad weather here in Sawyerville will be tonight into the early morning hours, with another threatening band coming in advance of the cold front tomorrow afternoon.

Maybe this one will be like so many storms around here and will go up the interstate to the west of me. Morning newscasts seem to suggest that as a possibility. Certainly if I lived in the northwest corner of the state I'd be even more worried.

I don't have much in the way of flowers to be blown away by the storms. These pink primroses are blooming on the side of the county road, and they'll probably suffer but likely another crop will come along.

There are a few dandelion blooms in the yard, like this one peeking through the grass.

They will still be here tomorrow, but these seeds will be scattered far and wide.

There are wildflowers and there are weeds. These are weeds. But maybe wildflowers are just weeds that you like to have in your yard. These are all over the yard, and my allergies this past week have prevented my mowing them down.

My English dogwoods have just started to bloom. The old-fashioned native dogwoods have finished their cycle of blooming already.

I'm grateful for the English dogwood, for the azaleas are pretty much done by now. There are a few straggling blooms on some of the bushes, but for the most part we are in that stage of dead brown bloom. Some folks get out with rakes to pull those off. Not worth the effort, if you ask me.

The bridal wreath is way past its prime. The winds tonight will probably take these remaining blossoms off.

I wonder what the winds will do to the magnolia buds. There are lots on the tree, and if they survive* I should be able to show you pictures of them before long.

* and if I survive

But we have learned to take our spring storms and the possible accompanying tornadoes seriously down here. It was 3 years ago yesterday that Alabama suffered its most damaging tornado outbreak ever. Two people lost their lives about a quarter of a mile west of me, two more about 3 miles northeast of me, and two more where that tornado crossed Highway 69 maybe 7 miles north of Greensboro. Hale County would have been big news stormwise except for the fact that so many more were killed in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham and elsewhere in the state that day. It was a frightening day. In skipping about from TV station to station following the storm heading for Tuscaloosa I had failed to catch the alert about the one heading for me. I didn't know it was on the way until I heard the roar. And did I run for cover? Nope. I ran out back to see what was happening. Although I could not see the funnel as it passed to the north of me, I was amazed to see how all the trees north of downtown Sawyerville were whipping about. And yes, it does sound like a freight train screaming through.

That day, by some miracle I managed to keep power during the storm itself (although it did go off for about an hour after midnight), and I was able to follow events on my television. I don't have a generator, but I do keep an emergency water supply and I have a battery-operated Walkman. Alabama Power Company is noted for charging high rates to customers, but I must say they do a great job in getting us supplied after storms. The longest I've been without power was 3 days, following a hurricane in the early 1990s. Usually an outage has been remedied in 3 to 4 hours. I don't have a storm shelter or basement either, but there is one closet on the east side of the house that backs up against an unused brick chimney, and maybe that would be a somewhat safe shelter during a minor tornado. But a direct hit from one of the present-day big ones? Probably not. One does grow a little fatalistic in one's more mature years.

A week into May, nearly. The storms passed us by (although other areas were not so lucky). Starting to look a lot like summer. Feels like summer too. Hit 90 on my patio in the shade midafternoon. And there I was outside trimming the 2 boxwoods by the side gate! Yes, I know I should have done that months ago, but matters (like cold weather and rain) intervened. I follow my mother's logic: you should cut things back when you are supposed to, but if you don't get around to it you do it when you can!

The trees in the woods are filled with green now. Most of the color in the yard is gone (but green is good too). You can see just a touch of pink left on one of the azaleas. The blooms are tired, and I suspect by tomorrow they will be dead and brown like their sisters.

This bush below is in bloom now. Dootsie. That's how I heard it as a child, and I'll bet that is how my mother spelled it. Deutzia is the correct spelling. A good friend recently asked me where I learned the names of so many plants. From my mother and her 2 sisters, and they from their mother and all their aunts from down in Lower Peach Tree, Alabama. (There once was a Peach Tree, but it got blown away in a tornado more than a century ago.) I know that most of the plants have better names, and certainly all have their Latinate monikers for when they are being fancy, but I still get a kick out of the old-timey names I learned as a child. So dootsie it is for me, and dootsie it will remain every time I see it in the late spring.

And here's some yellow honeysuckle winding its way through the dootsie. I don't really mind: I cut this plant back along with such extra growth every year or so. It's not like the azaleas, where the honeysuckle can entwine and kill the branches

More white! The privet across the fence in the woods is in full bloom now. Some folks are terribly allergic to this, but I think I am not. I have had a major allergy attack lately, beginning with Easter afternoon on the screened-in porch down on the May Farm. I think some tree in profusion there that I don't have in my own woods overwhelmed me. I suspect it was some unusual variety of oak. I'm over the allergy attack, but not the deafness caused by the opportunistic infection that set in.

And these tiny white flowers. I don't know what to call them, and I'm to lazy to research it at the moment. If you know, you can always tell me. I have a small patch down near the back gate into the woods.

My first well-developed magnolia bloom of the season! (That's a fib: I saw one more bloom high up in the tree, but I couldn't get a good shot of it.) It's not fully open, but maybe by tomorrow. Actually, I like them best at this stage.

The tree is laden with buds at just this stage. Maybe in a few days they will all open up at the same time. But these buds have their charm too.

I do have a bit of color after all! My mamma called this oxalis and I'm going to call this oxalis even though a much more knowledgeable friend swears it is not really oxalis. I assume it is related to the clover, judging from the greenery.

And just today the first bloom in this iris bed. My mother called this Dutch iris. I'll bet that's not its real name. I'm always glad when these have come and gone so that I can mow over the area without guilt.

This adds a nice bit of color as well. It is a pink spirea, some sort of kin to my bridal wreath spirea. Anyway, I do have a clump of it in the back yard.

But mostly this is a time of green with accents of white. This mess is my wildflower garden (a.k.a. the patch of ground where I don't mow). Soon if I'm lucky again this year, the area will be filled with Black-Eyed Susans.

I mowed this hillside yesterday afternoon, that is, except for the "wildflower garden" at the lower left. That English dogwood down the hill to right of center is still showing a bit of white.

Lots of honeysuckle growing on that fence at the bottom of the hill. Every year or so I get ambitious and pull lots of it out. I know it will come back, but I do want to exercise some control!

The greenery of the naked ladies is dying back now. I like it when it is fresh, but it really looks ugly at this stage. I'll be mowing over this growth after it has died back a bit more.

My poor grass! So many patches where I'm not sure it will ever come back. Stress from too many hot, dry summers and the past winter's extended cold, I suspect.

The gingko is as filled with leaves as it will get. Doesn't look like much in the spring and summer. It will come into its own when its brilliant yellow leaves accent the area in the fall. (Luckily it is a male plant and doesn't drop the smelly fruit that the female does. Still, I have been informed that they can change sex.)

The leaves are thick over the country road heading south. The two crepe myrtles beside my garage have finally leafed out.

Southern summer is definitely on the way!

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