A Little Adventure

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 Wigham and Bainbridge, and see what there is to see. I’ll poke around in dusty antique stores, buy peaches and watermelon at roadside stands. I’ll take pictures of ancient live oak trees and tin-roofed houses and stop at homey, decrepit convenience stores for Cokes and boiled peanuts.

I dream this dream all the time, when I'm driving to work, and when I'm waiting to fall asleep. And then yesterday I guess I just got tired of dreaming. At 11:00 I asked for the rest of the day off and I drove up to Thomasville, a town about 45 minutes from Quincy, for a mini vacation. I puttered around in the antique stores and had little conversations with the owners, conversations that usually started like this: "Oh, this is so pretty!" Then I strolled around in an old cemetery and read the gravestones in a leisurely fashion. It was brilliantly sunny, and warm yellow light flooded the streets and yards and parks. I got myself a nice cold Coke and walked down bumpy sidewalks while taking pictures of mildewed mansions.

Thomasville is famous for its rose gardens (it’s known as the City of Roses) and its 330-year-old live oak, the Big Oak, at the corner of Crawford and Monroe streets. Another attraction is the Lapham-Patterson House, which is open for tours. It’s a wonderfully eccentric, asymmetrical Victorian house with fish-scale shingles, gingerbread trim, loads of stained glass, and 45 doors.


Thomasville has a thriving downtown, with brick streets and lots of cute, fancy shops.




There are so many historic houses.


The First United Methodist Church was built in the 1880s.


The oldest grave in the Old Cemetery dates back to 1842.


I bought a couple things on my little trip. I got this plaster urn at Relic's.




Another treasure I found was this clay candelabra from Mexico. It's now part of my beloved "bird collection."

A Bunny Tale

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?

Easy Vegan Marmalade Cake

Marmalade cake. I found the recipe here and tweaked it just slightly.

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 limes, and though it’s delicious, we’ve had a bit of a hard time keeping up with it. There’s just so much of it! The best way we’ve found to make a dent in our vast supply is to bake this cake quite frequently. The recipe yields two 9-inch cakes, and I can use a whole jar of marmalade “frosting” the tops.

Easy Vegan Marmalade Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups orange juice
2/3 cup canola oil
2 Tbls apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp orange extract
Orange or kumquat marmalade to spread on top

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two 9-inch round cake pans and set aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix the orange juice, oil, vinegar, vanilla, and orange extract. Then mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Pour the batter into the pans and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

Let the cakes cool for about 20 minutes, then turn them out of their pans onto cooling racks. Heat the marmalade in a pan on the stove to melt it so it will spread better. Top each cake with melted marmalade.


I had some marmalade cake by the vegetable garden last Saturday morning. This cake makes a good breakfast.




No, this picture doesn't have anything to do with cake. It's just a birdbath with a Rev d'Or rose floating in it.

White Bean Dip with Rosemary

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 I picked from my biggest one, near the “barn” (really our garage). Just brushing up against the plant caused its famous piney scent to float up on the air; the air was full of fragrance. And when I was done picking, my hands and even the scissors smelled delightful too.

I’ve been reading a little bit about the health benefits of rosemary, and there are many. Rosemary contains potent antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents and is a good source of vitamin E. It’s believed to aid the memory and digestion, boost the immune system, and even improve your mood.

All these benefits have me scheming to plant more rosemary--and to make this great dip more often. I found the recipe long ago in an issue of Cottage Living, and I think it's just perfect, full of so many interesting flavors--lemon and rosemary and hot pepper and garlic. . . . It really is delicious. Cottage Living was always my favorite magazine in the old sweet days of magazines. When I was young and poor, I'd read it from cover to cover and dream about fancy picnics and the far-off day when I'd finally have a garden . . . full of rosemary.



White Bean Dip with Rosemary

Ingredients:

3 Tbls olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can navy beans, rinsed and drained
3 Tbls fresh Meyer lemon juice
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 Tbls minced fresh rosemary

Directions:

Sauté the onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Cook until the onion is soft and slightly golden. Set aside to cool to about room temperature. Put the navy beans, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt, pepper flakes, and rosemary in a medium-sized bowl. Add the onions and garlic. Use an immersion blender to blend until smooth. Serve with grilled pita wedges.


Morgan's Spring rose. (I always have to include some irrelevant pictures.)


My favorite bench

An American Classic: American Holly

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

The Magnificent Ashe Magnolia

One of the plants I’m really marveling over right now is the Ashe magnolia (Magnolia macrophylla ssp. ashei). I have half a dozen in bloom in my backyard, and I must admit I feel almost tortured by their beauty these spring days. You see, I can’t stop smelling the flowers and trying to take pictures of them. And I can’t stop scheming to buy more of these great little trees.

A subspecies of the much larger big-leaf magnolia, Ashe magnolia is a small deciduous understory tree with huge leaves and flowers. It’s a rare plant (endangered, actually), with a natural range that is limited to just 10 counties in the Florida Panhandle, including my own county, Gadsden. My favorite place to see it in the wild is Torreya State Park in Liberty County. The park is located on the east bank of the Apalachicola River, and walking along the high bluffs overlooking the river is almost like hiking in the mountains. It’s a nice surprise to be ambling along in those big woods and to come across the large, soft familiar leaves of an Ashe magnolia, a plant I grow in my own yard. It’s just so neat to see it in its natural habitat.

Ashe magnolia doesn’t get much taller than about 20 feet, and lots of times it’s just as wide as it is tall. To me, the habit is almost bonsai-like, the branches becoming full of interesting bends and turns as they reach for the sun. The leaves can grow as long as 2 feet (they kind of remind me of banana leaves), and they might be as much as a foot wide at their widest point.

Lavish, creamy flowers open in April and have the most irresistible lemony scent. The thick, leathery petals make me think of kid gloves. If you peer inside the cup of the flower, you’ll see purple accents at the bases of the petals . . . and beetles, lots of beetles. That’s because the flowers are very primitive (magnolias are some of the oldest plants on earth), and though they don’t produce nectar, they do produce plenty of high-protein pollen, which beetles like to eat. So beetles, not bees or butterflies, pollinate Ashe magnolias.

Rosy maraca-shaped fruits contain dozens of fleshy, bright red seeds. The seeds ripen in early fall and provide high-energy food to birds migrating south for the winter. In October or November the leaves turn yellow and drop off, but the pale, crooked branches and giant leaf buds provide winter interest. (Sometimes I think the bare branches look like elaborate candelabras and the buds look like flames.)

Ashe magnolia is pretty easy to grow. Just plant it in partial shade in rich, moist, acidic, well-drained soil. Some people say you can grow it in full sun, but in my experience this hasn’t been the case. You’ll need to water new trees in summer and during dry spells, until they get established.

Oh, and you won’t have to wait long for flowers. Ashe magnolia will bloom when it’s just a few years old. In fact, Rob and I have had trees that were only waist-high when they bloomed, which makes the flowers very easy to see and very easy to photograph . . . obsessively.


My biggest Ashe magnolia. I planted this one about eight years ago.


The house as seen between two enormous Ashe magnolia leaves


A new flower opening

Quincy Again

Last Sunday night I went for a little walk around town, around my beloved Quincy, and took pictures of a few more of my favorite houses and other buildings. It was a delightful spring evening, and I had fun peering into the gardens, seeing pale, angel-like fringe trees, and satsumas and lemons in full bloom. I strolled down the quiet streets around the courthouse square and all around the historic district, and the whole time I was walking I was feeling pretty lucky to live in such a charming small town, a town with so much character.

Below is the Leaf Theatre, built in the 1940s and named in honor of Quincy’s main industry at that time, shade tobacco. For decades it served as one of Quincy’s two movie theaters, until single-screen theaters fell out of favor. In 1980 the Leaf closed its doors, sitting unused and forgotten for years. Then, in 1983, the building was purchased by a group of private citizens who restored it to its former glory. The Leaf became home to a musical theater group, the Quincy Music Theatre, which is still active today. In fact, my mom has season tickets, and she says the shows at the Leaf are always top-notch.




Standing by the Leaf Theatre, looking west toward the courthouse

Next up is the E.B. Shelfer House on North Madison Street. It was built in 1903 by E.B. Shelfer, a shade tobacco grower and the owner of a general store located on the square. In 1993 the house was restored and renovated. Additions were built, lots of stained glass was added, and an elaborate garden was planted. I often walk by this house just to peek in the garden. It’s crowded with roses, crape myrtles, and camellias, and it has fountains, and a pond with a little bridge arching over it.



This is the Centenary United Methodist Church on North Madison Street. Completed in 1918, it was designed by distinguished Atlanta architect Hal Hentz, who grew up in Quincy. The church is known for its beautiful stained-glass windows. The most famous window was created by Louis C. Tiffany and is based on a well-known painting by William Holman Hunt called The Light of the World. The window shows Jesus knocking at a closed door symbolic of the human heart.




The Tiffany window. This photo isn't mine. It's from the church's website.





Finally, we have an adorable Tudor cottage (on 14th Street) whose history I know nothing about. I’m including it anyway, just because I love its fanciful arched doorway and the little round entryway with its roof like an acorn cap. The whole structure makes me think of a dollhouse or a gingerbread house or a cottage in a fairy tale. Plus, it has the prettiest garden in the back, with white and yellow veils of Lady Banks roses, and birdbaths, and rows of flamboyant red amaryllises.