This weekend Rob and I were so busy. We did so much hard labor that I went to bed at 9:30 Sunday night and I’m still sore today. In addition to keeping up with our usual cooking, cleaning, and cat-parenting chores, we also managed to …
Right now the star of our vegetable garden is definitely our 5-foot clown pepper “tree.” It’s loaded with shiny green, orange, and bright red bells that dangle from the branches just like Christmas ornaments. It’s really a sight to see. I call it a clown …
On Saturday Rob and I stopped by Dudley Farm in Newberry to do a little agritourism (we were spending the weekend in nearby Gainesville). In case you’ve never heard of Dudley Farm, it’s an authentic Cracker farm that’s been preserved as a state park. It’s got historic buildings, gardens, and gentle farm animals—everything I like.
Three generations of Dudleys farmed the place before Myrtle Dudley donated it to the state in 1983. The farm was active from the 1850s to the 1940s, and Myrtle Dudley continued to live on the property until her death in 1996.
A sandy path took Rob and me through the woods to the Dudley Farmhouse. We walked along under our dumb twin sun hats, watching birds and saying dorky things (mostly about cats). I wanted to pretend our cat Carl had come with us on our visit.
“Carl was begging for souvenirs at the commissary,” I said. “I got him a popgun and a coonskin cap and everybody was telling me how cute he was.”
“This is getting kind of nerdy,” Rob said.
The farmhouse was surrounded by a traditional “swept” yard with little pocket flower beds here and there amid the hard-packed, silvery sand. The beds were crowded with ginger lilies, milk-and-wine lilies, irises, and old-fashioned roses. On one side of the yard sat a tiny limestone house called “The Flower Pit,” once used the same way a greenhouse or a cold-frame would be, to protect tender plants in winter. It was a curious, very cute little structure, only about waist-high.
The farmhouse was cute too, nestled in among the flowers. The tin roof was tall, like a Pilgrim’s hat, and the boards that made up the exterior walls were arranged in such a way that the house wore natty vertical stripes. Fragile, faded lace curtains hung in the big windows behind wavy glass.
We stepped inside and peered around in the dimness.
“It’s like Snow White’s cottage,” I said. “Or maybe it’s like a tree house without the tree. The brochure says it’s made all of longleaf pine, and the furniture actually belonged to the Dudleys; it was donated along with the house.”
“Well, I like it,” Rob said. “I approve.”
The backyard was full of fruit trees—peaches, figs, oranges, and even a shady grove of bananas. There were grape arbors, too, and a big garden full of sweet potatoes and okra, the rail fence draped with gourd vines.
Behind the backyard lay a pasture and some shady pens. The animal inhabitants included turkeys, chickens, Cracker cattle, a horse, and a mule. We wandered over to the chicken run and kneeled in the grass. The chickens (nice fat Barred Rocks, black with white stripes) all came up to greet us.
“I wish I had something for you,” Rob said to them. “By the way, those are great striped pajamas you’re wearing.”
We touched their soft feathers through the wire fence.
“They sound so mournful all the time,” Rob said. “If we had chickens, I’d probably always worry about them being sad.”
“I’m sure you would,” I said.
Today I’m talking up starry rosinweed (Silphium asteriscus), a native perennial that’s at the height of its bloom season now. The bright yellow daisy-like flowers are about 2 to 3 inches in diameter and make me think of smiley faces. They’re just so dang cheerful, …
I wanted to show you one of my favorite places in the whole world, the Tallahassee Museum. It’s a quiet, peaceful little spot under the oaks, with exhibits on native wildlife and local history. I’ve visited hundreds of times (I’ve been going there since I …
I always try to leave some space in my yard for pokeweeds that pop up, from seeds sown by the birds. This year I have one by the picnic table, one by the arch that leads into the vegetable garden, and one by the bird feeders next to the Little House. Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a terrific wildlife plant—and it’s quite handsome too.
Pokeweed is a native plant, found throughout the eastern United States in pastures, fields, fencerows, vacant lots, and open woods. It’s drought tolerant and grows in a variety of soil types, in full sun to part shade.
A big, colorful herbaceous perennial, pokeweed grows anywhere from 4 to 12 feet tall and usually about as wide. It often resembles a small tree. Its large, lance-shaped leaves are bright green, and its smooth, stout stems are magenta or even bright red. In late spring and early summer, tiny greenish white flowers bloom in 4-to-8-inch clusters. In August and September, shiny purple berries ripen, turning so dark they’re almost black.
Pokeweed dies back in winter but returns in spring from its big thick fleshy root. Spring is the time to sample the tender young leaves—if you dare. All parts of the plant are poisonous to humans, but if you boil the young leaves enough times you can eat them (supposedly). They taste kind of like asparagus or spinach, I’ve read, though I’m probably not going to try them since I don’t think I’d ever be sure they’d been boiled enough. Juice from the berries makes a nice pink ink (it fades to brown over the years) and a lovely rosy dye for yarn and cloth.
Maybe when I retire I can start raising sheep and spinning my own yarn and dyeing it with pokeberry juice. That’s a nice dream. But right now I’m mostly growing this plant for the critters. Foxes, raccoons, possums, mice, and over 20 species of birds eat the berries, I’ve read. In our yard, the biggest pokeberry fans seem to be cardinals, mockingbirds, and mourning doves. Last year Rob and I cut down a grand, berry-studded specimen because it was too close to our beloved Rangpur lime. We cut it in September, when the berries were at their most luscious, which was probably not a very kind or thoughtful thing to do. The mockingbird that visited it daily kept coming back and looking for it. We could tell by the way he was fluttering about that he was confused, bereft, lost. We felt terrible.
So yes, wildlife value is the big reason I save room in my yard for pokeweed. But there are other, smaller reasons too. For one thing, pokeweed is just plain pretty, with its flamboyant red stems and jewel-like berries. And for another, it fills me with the most pleasant nostalgia. Pokeweed is a plant that serves, for me, as a sort of magic bridge to the past and my childhood. See, when my sister Kris and I were kids, we always played with pokeweed, even though we knew it was poisonous. We’d dig up the huge taproot and pretend it was a ham. We’d slice it up and serve it to our dolls. We referred to the berries as “grapes” and we’d squeeze them for juice, which our dolls enjoyed in dainty green glasses with gold trim. Next to our fort in the backyard, there was a little table made out of a pine stump covered in oil cloth, and in late summer we’d sit there having ham and grape juice and listening to the cicadas buzz. Maybe it wasn’t so smart to fool around all day with a poisonous plant, but it certainly made for some happy memories—memories that come flooding back almost every time I see a pokeweed.
Every weekend Rob and I try to make some small improvement to our house or yard. To me, that’s one of the requirements of a good weekend: it ought to involve a beautification project (no matter how tiny). I always want to make things better. …
I thought I’d show you some pictures I took after work this week. “After work” is my favorite time, especially in summer when it’s light ’til 9:00 and I can do a little weeding when I get home from the office. For me, weeding is …
I actually took these pictures in early June, but I never got a chance to write about them until today. I took them on the sleepiest, quietest Sunday evening, when the square was totally deserted except for me and the mockingbirds. First I meandered around the courthouse lawn and admired the magnolias, which were in full lemony-scented bloom, and then I crossed North Madison Street and peered into the windows of the dark, peaceful, closed shops.
We have some pretty interesting businesses around the square. Here’s one that sells ladies’ church suits and hats.
And here’s the Divine Grace Café. I’ve never eaten at this place, but I’ve heard it has an awesome Southern buffet. People rave about the fried chicken and cornbread. The reason I haven’t tried Divine Grace is that I’m a vegan, and I must admit vegans do sometimes feel a bit deprived.
I roamed a little farther and checked on some of my favorite houses. I like the house below because it has such a big, shady, accommodating porch and because it has a genuine tin roof, artfully mottled with rust. It also has a really romantic, jungle-y yard, festooned with moss and dark with black-green sago palms and tree-size camellias. (Unfortunately, I didn’t get the really lush part in the picture.) Big clumps of crinum lilies fill the summer evenings with fragrance.
This Classical Revival gem, the Stockton-Malone House, is another favorite of mine. Isn’t it the tidiest, most immaculate house you’ve ever seen? It was built in 1849, and the perfectly symmetrical little wings (you can only see one in the picture) were added in the 1870s. The boxwood hedges are always expertly groomed, and the lawn is like a carpet (I often see its proud owner out front, carefully removing offending pine cones).
This house, the Henry Davis House, built in 1892 and located on North Jackson Street, was originally a one-story structure. The second story was added in 1906. Amazingly, the grand columns were an even later addition, not making their debut until the mid-1970s. The house came up for sale in 2004, just after Rob and I had closed on our own house, so I used to wonder, What if we’d waited and moved there instead? Well, one thing’s for sure: We wouldn’t have had as much yard work to do. The yard around the Davis House is tiny and very tame, decorated with a few hydrangeas and a little tea olive in addition to the boxwood you see here.
The New Revelation Church of God is on my street, North Adams. I like its balanced, clean design and its snowy white paint . . . and the rosy glow that seeps through the shuttered windows on revival nights, and the music you can hear if you happen to be passing by on such a night. To me, this is what a church should look like. This is beauty in its simplest, purest form.
