HOOVER AND FALL CAMELLIAS AND AZALEAS before the deep freeze hit! (Front Yard)

 

Last Wednesday, the hand writing was on the wall, tho it was hard to believe. We have not even had a frost yet but the weather people were telling us it was going to be down in the 20s by Saturday morning! Really???? The yard was beautiful. Several camellias were in full serious bloom. These are huge camellias now, well over 15 feet, a couple over 20 feet tall and diameters on some of them of over 10 feet. Many of them have been trimmed back for years.

For the first time ever, Hoover decided to follow me around the yard close enough that she was not hidden. Her coloring makes for a perfect natural camouflage. She has always followed me around but has managed to stay out of sight. But not now… perhaps because her buddy Spook is gone so she is lonesome. 

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy seeing the flowers from Wednesday that are now drooping in the cold, the ground covered in red, pink and purple petals. I have never seen Yule Tide look this good. It is huge. It was a first Christmas-in-my-new-house gift from Sabra when I moved in- 1987, I think. It has been moved twice. Yule Tide is not a thick bush, but tall with a 10 foot diameter. The flowers are small but the red color is rich.

My “birthday” camellias have filled the bushes. I have one on each side of the house.

Several pink camellias are in bloom. These are some of the fall azaleas out by the street. These flowers are large for azaleas, the spring only variety being much smaller.

This is only a fraction of what is in bloom here now. And, as usual, Blogger will not allow me to place them where I want them... so, sorry for such a sloppy looking post. Enjoy the flowers anyway!!!!!

TAMING THE WILDERNESS

Its that time of year when many of us plan our gardens, leaf thru seed catalogs, plan new flower beds, wonder if the old mower will make it thru another season… some of us wonder if we will make it thru another season.

For a long, long time I have wanted to clear out the thicket on the acre east of the house. It has been a slow job, doing almost microscopic sections at a time, then watching the jungle grow back when I would have a summer with too much pain to do any work out there. Though actually, summer is probably not the right word – most of the work outside gets done in the spring or autumn, sometimes in the winter if it is a mild one, but summer is usually too beastly hot to get much more done than keep things watered and the basic grass cutting. Tree cutting is best done in the winter when the sap is not running. That is also a good time to not get into poison ivy as it is dormant unless you decide to pull its roots. Late fall, winter, and early spring are also the best times to work outside because there are no mosquitoes and ticks are fewer except on those really warm days when they wake up and decide they are hungry and you are delicious. Last year, a friend bought an old house to fix up. I gave him a load of camellias and another friend, an azalea grower, sold me a bunch of azaleas, at wholesale, for him. The only catch was, John had to dig the camellias up. So, while he was digging, he dug up more than he could use and we planted them out on the edge of my “thicket” and another friend put a park bench together for me in the middle of it all. Preston brought me a big piece of slate for under the bench, and things started to look good. I didn’t even mind the other half acre of junk trees and bramble that much. The middle was cleaned and slowly getting planted in baby camellias.

   

A couple months ago I posted a couple pictures from the bench toward the thicket. The cedar tree and the trees with yellow leaves are still there, but the jungle behind them is now gone.

Then I asked Charlie to cut down a 20 foot camellia for me next to the house as it was where the generator is going to go. It broke my heart to have it cut down, but, it had to go. I remembered it wasn’t much more than a twig when I planted it. But Charlie, chain saw in hand, decided to keep cutting. He headed out to the thicket and kept going. I never knew when he would be out there, or how much he was going to cut, but in a couple weeks, the jungle was cleared, his bush-hog chopped down the miles of vines and bramble and I could walk across that acre for the first time since I moved here. I could always see a beautiful old tree in the far end, but could never get even close enough to it to touch it. Now Charlie has even driven my truck around it! I lost count of the truck loads of wood he took out of there, much of it locust and cherry.

     

In the middle of this jungle, there is a tree that fell, rooted and kept growing, looking like the Loch Ness monster coming out of the earth. Charlie saved that, too, tho he cut the sucker branches off. It is sort of a built in bench out there. Used to ne that Punkin would follow me everywhere I went, but, he is gone. Imagine my surprise to see Spook, my scaredy cat keeping his distance, but exploring the “new” territory with me.

  

We kept a bit of jungle around the edges until I get Preston or someone to plant some evergreens as a wind break on that corner and slowly fill the lot with azaleas and camellias. My goal is to create a meditation garden, a place of Peace, perhaps prayer, contemplation… perhaps a couple redbud trees, a dogwood or two, maybe another fringe tree if I can find one… a beautyberry bush or so to round things out. I think I will sprinkle some digitalis seed here and there, see what grows. Maybe I will put in some daffodils next fall when I have a better sense of the form it will take. Of course, the big challenge will be keeping it clear as the jungle will try to reassert itself come spring.

If you are ever in the area and want to wander by, come on it, sit a spell and be refreshed. Or grab a shovel and plant a camellia!

RAKING SHATTERS

SHATTERS are a valued commodity here on the Shore. To inform you folks from other places, shatters is the local name for long pine needles. Further down the county, they are sometimes called Shatts. They are used as a mulch or ground cover, for weed control and also as a ground conditioner for acid loving plants like camellias and azaleas, daffodils and even strawberries. In the Old Days, one could buy a shatters rake at the local hardware or farm supply place. They were hand forged and set in a special way on a long handle. Today they are a rare find. When our old place was sold, I grabbed our old shatters rake and brought it home. I wish I had grabbed the hand plow, too and the old wooden wheelbarrow. They were real treasures!

 

The tines on the shatters rake are longer, further apart, and angled. When I needed a new handle (the old one was older than I and actually in worse shape) I had to find someone who had an understanding of the value of the old tools. The first guy that looked at it told me they didn’t have those things in New Jersey, where he came from, they used “normal” rakes. Well, that told me not to let him get his hands on my rake! Phew! He said, along with putting a new handle on it, he would straighten it, “See how crooked its got?” (Yeah, it was made that way!) See the difference in a “normal” rake and a shatters rake? My shatters rake is close to 100 years old dating back to around the time the old house was built, 1914.

My Uncle has been talking lately about carving new tines for his hay rake. I have another friend who makes (carves and assembles) his own hay rakes, too. I am so impressed. I would love my Uncle to get a picture of his rake. I wonder how big it is. Another friend made one to go behind his garden tractor to rake shatters as well as hay. It is about 5 feet across. Impressive. That must be on my project list, but when would I have time? I guess that is one advantage of having long cold snowy winters… nothing else to do. That doesn’t ever seem to happen here.

  

Anyway, I found someone who was as impressed as I at the age of the rake… it took him about a week to put a new handle on it. He was so careful to not damage any more than he had to since the old rake had a metal piece go right thru the old wooden handle and was welded in place. No wonder it never came off! So, the other day,  I happily got it out of the barn and raked up a few loads of shatters and bedded down the newly transplanted camellias and azaleas. I discovered the late December camellias were starting to open. Well, it was 70 degrees. The bees were happily buzzing along in the open camellias, it really looked and sounded like springtime. I also noticed the new miniature holly bush is in bloom! Go figure that! Someone suggested I decorate this camellia (with the first white bloom) for Christmas since it is shaped so perfectly.

Then, this morning… well, you know, every once in a while the light is just perfect, there is that special glow things get first thing in the morning… I am so glad I am not one of those folks that lay in bed half the day – mornings are so magical! Anyway, the little maple out front was just glowing… I guess it was showing me that we really could have red maple trees here! That is Yule Tide next to it on the left. Those green spiky things on the right are yucca.

As I walked back to the house, I noticed some bright yellow out at the edge of my woods… I am not sure what these trees are. They get pink flowers in the spring, but I never see any nuts or fruit. Any idea what they might be? Tomorrow it might be even prettier! Stay tuned!

the COLORS OF NOVEMBER

The leaves changed suddenly this year. One day they were green, 2 days later the yellow was blasting away from the tree tops making people stop and look as if they had never seen those colors before.

Personally, I love the contrasts that we have this time of year… with the camellias starting to bloom, the deep, deep green of their leaves and the bright yellows of autumn on the Eastern Shore. We have very few bright red leaves. Generally bright red warns one of poison ivy here. The red maples of the Poconos and New England are few and far between. So for reds, we seem to have a plethora of berries. Old wives tales tell us that this many berries mean a bad winter. Well, we shall see. The birds definitely will have plenty to eat here! Of course, not all berries are red… the beautyberry bush is loaded with rich purple berries, branches so full they are all the way down on the ground.

   

The St John’s Wort continues to bloom, 2 or 3 blooms at a time. I liked this view with the golden carpet of leaves behind it. Next to the St John’s Wort is one of the few reddish leaves from a young dogwood. A new azalea is in bloom as the pink and lavender azaleas start to fade.

 

The sidewalk is pink from my birthday camellia, the hosta is changing color.a different pink camellia is in bloom, and Ice Angel made the camera take her picture again this time with a yellow tree in the background.

 

With all this color going on in Mother Nature, we started coloring up the old Train Station. We had several days with temps in or near the 70s, so we took advantage of that and finished priming, then painting the track side of the Station. On Saturday then, Niall and Tom climbed up and began to paint our trim. Another coat will be awesome! Paul started the door… Between taking pictures and passing buckets of paint around, I played inside with an N scale train that will be going in the old showcase. See how tiny it is? I can get an entire layout in this 2’x6’ showcase. I just need to decide what I want to do. (A note for Ginnie, it is perfect height for laying it out from a wheelchair!)