On Saturday Rob and I touched up the paint on the breezeway and repainted the door that leads from the breezeway to the Little House. The breezeway gets lots of wear and tear because it’s open to the elements–and because it’s our cats’ very favorite …
On Sunday Rob and I made a batch of vegan zucchini bread with our first zucchini of 2013. It’s interesting the sense of duty we feel toward our homegrown vegetables. We never want to waste them, so the bulk of the weekend is often spent …
 |
| Buntin enjoying the day in her uptight Buntin way |
 |
| Petunias and caladiums on the front porch |
Rob was out of town on Sunday, so I got to have one of my little “Leslie days.” It was extremely pleasant.
I started it with a delicious breakfast of popcorn popped on the stove. There’s nothing better than eating popcorn at dawn. As I ate, I read a cookbook (The Book Lovers Cafe Cookbook) just like I would a novel, for the pleasure of the language and for the little stories the author included about each recipe. I dreamed of Plumber’s Pasta and Sweet Pea Guacamole.
There were cats underfoot, of course. I turned on the faucet so Carl could play in the sink, his latest hobby. He likes to play with the dripping water, but if the water falls on his head he gets mad and bats at the faucet. Each morning he climbs in the sink and “yells” at me until I turn on the water.
Next I started doing a little unnecessary rearranging of my knickknacks, which is my most favorite pastime. I arranged them one way, and then another. And meanwhile, close by, gigantic Leroy was sleeping in a tiny shoebox. He looked very content. In his mind, Leroy is, I think, a very small animal.
 |
| Staffordshire sheep. He has a sort of wry expression, doesn’t he? |
 |
| Leroy in his shoebox bed |
I had some buttered toast for lunch, and then I babied my houseplants. I trimmed them up and fertilized them and carefully dusted their leaves. I rearranged the plant stands several times and rubbed the wooden ones down with Feed-n-Wax.
 |
| Ferns in the sunroom |
And so the day went, the whole day. At night I sat out on the breezeway and read a biography of Beatrix Potter, with Foxy on my lap. Foxy is our sweetest cat, so soft and babyish. She likes to be held and gently brushed, and she likes lying in sunbeams. Anyway, we were sitting together in the lamplight on the breezeway, enjoying the warm air. We could hear the owls hooting and the armadillos bumbling around among the fallen magnolia leaves behind the Little House.
“Don’t worry, Foxy,” I said, because she always needs reassuring. We were safe from the night but not separated from it. Moonlight striped the meadow, and a frog sang in the rain gutter.
 |
| Foxy |
On Saturday Rob and I went to Dothan to visit Landmark Park, a 135-acre park with nature trails, a living history farm, a one-room schoolhouse, and many other historic buildings. The moment we turned into the entrance …
I have this dream that someday I’ll be able to take a week off of work and do nothing but drive around in the country, on the back roads, and explore. I’ll go to all the little towns near my house, like Whigham and Bainbridge, …
Today I thought I’d tell you a little story and then show you some pictures I took that have nothing at all to do with it.
The story is actually my mom’s story, and I’m going to to use her words to tell it just because she told it to me so well and I don’t want to mess it up. It started like this: She called me on the phone and said, “Do you have a minute? I’ve got to tell you about my bunny!”
I was immediately interested; Mom has a wild rabbit in her yard that she loves to watch, and I enjoy hearing about him.
“Have you ever seen rabbits fight?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I can’t say that I have.”
“Well, there were two in the yard today and they were fighting, I think. I was watching one, the one I usually see, I think, and it started rolling in this patch of sand under the swing. It rolled just like a cat would roll in the sand, except not quite on its back, mostly just on its side. And then another one hopped over and they started fighting over the sand. It was the most interesting thing! They never touched, not one time. They just jumped, over and over, straight up like springs, not going forward at all. They were almost taking turns, it seemed. They jumped real high in the air, too, so high I couldn’t believe it. The birdbath is what, maybe three feet tall, and they were jumping higher than that. Oh, it just went on and on. And that was how they decided who got to keep the sand. In the end, the second one hopped away and the first one just started rolling around again, just rolling in that sand, as happy as can be. Well, I was just fascinated. I was going to go to church at 8:30, but I stayed home and watched the rabbits.”
And now for my usual irrelevant pictures:
 |
| Owl statue by the pond |
 |
| Carl relaxing on the breezeway |
 |
| A little carrot harvest |
 |
| The front yard with oxeye sunflowers, Indian pinks, and purple coneflowers |
 |
| We picked our first peach yesterday, a Florida King. |
 |
| It looks like a pretty good year for blueberries. |
 |
| Doesn’t this cat look like it’s crying? |
I make this cake more often than any other simply because the recipe calls for marmalade. I’m a big fan of anything that uses up marmalade. That’s because Rob and I have a whole closet filled with the stuff. See, last winter we made a big batch of marmalade with our own kumquats and Rangpur …
I had so much fun picking the rosemary that’s at the heart of this recipe. I went out at dusk the other day and picked a lovely handful of fragrant green sprigs. I have five rosemary plants scattered around my yard—small, attractive, well-behaved evergreen shrubs—and …
One of my favorite trees in our yard is the American holly (Ilex opaca). There’s a big one, maybe 50 feet tall, growing near the pond, just outside the picket fence. Right now it’s dropping its yellow leaves, replacing them with fresh green ones. I always wanted to have an American holly in my yard, and now, finally, I do.
I remember my first encounter with this native species. I got to know it in the ‘80s when my parents bought a little piece of an old quail-hunting plantation north of Tallahassee. Small hollies grew among the live oaks on our acre, and I was immediately enamored of them. I liked their pale, smooth, lichen-spotted bark, and their rounded leaves, which were so much less prickly—so much gentler—than the exotic hollies that grew around the foundation of our house (and that my father regularly clipped into balls and domes). I just thought the little trees were so classic and classy, and when my father told me they were American hollies, I felt very proud (I was a rather patriotic kid).
It probably goes without saying that along with the bark and the leaves, I also liked the fruits of these little hollies. I’d never seen real holly berries before; I’d only seen pictures and drawings, and plastic representations that my mom used to decorate her Christmas wreaths. (The exotic hollies my father shaped into balls didn’t generally fruit.) Real holly berries–I couldn’t get over it!
When I bought my first house, in Atlanta, I wanted to plant an American holly in the backyard, but I couldn’t find one at any of the nurseries, though I looked and looked. Then Rob and I moved to Quincy, and we were so happy when we discovered we had that beautiful holly by the pond fence, and that the big holly had given us dozens of “babies,” sprinkled all about the yard.
Shortly after we moved in, a former owner of our house, Mr. Stinson, came to visit (he had not been back to the house in a long time), and he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the big holly tree. Apparently he had planted it as a seedling more than 25 years before. I could tell by his expression that he was quietly rejoicing as he looked up at the tree. “It’s joined the canopy!” he said after a minute, clearly thrilled. And I understood his happiness. It’s a great thing to see something you did, an effort you made, come to fruition, pay off, make the world a little bit better. The tiny twig of a holly he had planted so long ago had become a tree, a grand tree—shading us, cleaning the air, providing food and shelter for birds. It had lived, triumphed.
Rob and I are very grateful to Mr. Stinson for planting the holly. And I think the birds and other animals that visit our yard appreciate it too. American holly is a great wildlife tree.
The berries are an important food for birds, food that helps them get through the lean times at the end of winter. Apparently the fruits are bitter, not delicious (they’re actually poisonous to humans), and birds won’t generally eat them until late in the season, when they’ve been made more palatable (milder) by repeated freezing and thawing. (Or at least that’s what I’ve read.) Here are a few of the birds that use the fruits: mockingbirds, robins, catbirds, bluebirds, brown thrashers, and blue jays. Raccoons will eat them too, I’ve heard.
American holly is a good tree to plant if you want to support pollinators. The tiny white spring flowers are visited by bees, moths, and butterflies in their search for nectar, and the Henry’s elfin, a small brown hairstreak, lays its eggs on the leaves. (Dahoon and yaupon hollies also serve as host plants for the Henry’s elfin.)
American holly is native from Massachusetts to Florida, west to Texas and Missouri. It’s slow growing and long-lived. Plant it in partial shade in moist, well-drained, acidic soil. Water it during dry spells until it’s established. Then just enjoy it. There’s no maintenance involved. Mature trees reach heights of about 20 to 60 feet.
You’d think with all the hollies I have now (the big one and all its offspring) that I’d have my house decorated to the nines at Christmas. But no. Not so. I can never bring myself to cut even a single leaf or branch, though I love the idea of natural decorations. I guess when it comes right down to it, I’d rather see the branches on the trees than on my mantelpieces.
 |
| Rob standing by the holly showing off some carrots |
