Spring is Really Here!

 We are very fortunate on the island to have the Ocracoke Garden Center.  It is located right behind the grocery-hardware-ABC store and less than a half mile from our house.  Lauren and Gloria take good care of us and the Garden Center gets beautiful plants for us to cheer up our homes.

Trish and I both love color and blooms in the yard.  We seem to take on different parts of the yard without making any plan to do so...it just happens!

She has been planting mostly in the ground and I am planting mostly in Earth Boxes and other containers. We feed things with fish emulsion and that seems to be what the bloomers thrive on.

Our challenge is to see how long into the heat of the summer we can keep things blooming.  It is fun to try and very fulfilling when we have good results.

Ancestors

 Our last stop on our trip to the mountains was to take Doug and Kelly and Jill to the Davis Chapel Cemetery.

Davis Chapel Methodist Church was built by my great grandfather, Francis McGhee Davis, and his sons about 1865 on land he donated.  It replaced the earlier brush arbor preaching place used by the traveling Methodist circuit riders.

Though the church itself is no longer functional, in his wisdom, Francis Davis did not give the cemetery land to the church in1865, but instead gave it to the community where it has to this day its own independent set of trustees.  It is still functional as a cemetery.

Our first relative to be buried there was my great great grandfather, Philip Davis, who died in 1875.  In the following decade my grandfather’s first wife, Nannie, and three of their five children came to final rest there.

As time past it became the final resting place for that grandfather, Joseph Davis, my grandmother, Ellie, several of my grandfather’s brothers and their families, and my Aunt Ruth.  She died  in 1932 of a brain tumor while a 21 year old student at Berea College. Francis Davis, who gave the land was himself buried there in 1903.

Trish and I are making plans to clean the stones as lichen growth has obscured the clear reading of engraving on them,  it was a time of our sons meeting with a piece of their past.

Fun With the Boys

 Our son, Kelly, is in graduate school at Duke and presently doing a project on Family Migration for one of his courses.  Part of his work involved a trip to the family homelands of Haywood County, so, with our being there this past week and weekend, a trip to meet us was planned.

Kelly, his brother, Doug, and Doug’s wife, Jill, met us at the SWAG for hiking the Cataloochee Divide Trail one more time.  This ancient trail runs between lands where ancestors lived on either side.  It was both a Highway for their travel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the trail along which early Methodist Circuit Riders traveled when our family became early Methodists.

We left the SWAG, which is at the mid-point of the trail, and hiked toward Cove Creek Gap.  The trail runs along the ridge here. We then visited the NPS Nature Education Center and the old John Ferguson Cabin.  (Many of our ancestors on both sides of the family are Fergusons.)

Returning along the ridge to the SWAG, we continued toward Hemphill Bald, passing two Cherokee trail marker trees on the way.  These trees were deliberately warped in early growth to make “signs” indicating upcoming intersections on the major trails.

While Doug and Jill went to the Bald, Trish and Kelly and I circled around on another old trail and back to the SWAG.  We all ended the day there with dinner after which I told a story to all of the SWAG guests.  It was a great day!

Ephemeral Wildflowers

 Trish and I have spent several days this week hiking in the Smokies along the Cataloochee Divide Trail.  We have had lovely weather with the first touch of springtime in the air and good sun each day.  It is the brief season the of spring ephemeral wildflowers, those tiny ground hugging wildflowers that come into bloom with the sun they get before they are shaded out as the leaves emerge from the trees.  They are a treasure to behold, tiny, often overlooked, a reward when you find them.

The tiny Spring Beauty is in bloom.  Its little flowers are lined with small stripes running toward the center of the bloom.  It is believed that these little stripes actually serve as guide lines for pollinating insects, directing them toward their goal.

We saw carpets of Trout Lillies, just coming into first bloom.  Their name comes from their leaf pattern seen by many as looking like the side pattern of the native brown trout found in this same part of the world.

Masses of Thyme Leaved Bluets grabbed almost every spot where obvious sunshine warmed the ground. Their tiny leaves do indeed look like thyme leaves, giving them their name.

A real treasure of the day was the discover of Trailing Arbutus in bloom.  It is so very rare to see these ground lovers in bloom.  We were thrilled by this discovery.

Every season in our mountains brings its own treasures of unique life.  We will be back to hike again in late May and by then the entire landscape, including flowers, will have changed.  Our world is truly alive, but... you have to get outside to see it!

The Swag

 On a 5,000 foot ridge above my home town of Waynesville is a lovely country inn called The Swag. Founded forty years ago by Dan and Deener Matthews and now owned by Annie and David Colquitt, The Swag shares its fence line with the boundary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

This is land where I camped and hiked as a child when it then belonged to Dick Moody, father of a classmate of mine, Susan Moody.

The Cataloochee Divide Trail, an ancient pre-Cherokee native trail runs on the Park side of the fence and was a favorite hiking trail when I was a teenager.

Each week The Swag has an Expert in Residence here for the pleasure of the guests. The Experts are people who know a lot about something here: bears, birds, wildflowers, music, hiking, etc.  They have me here for two or three weeks each year.  I lead hikes in the mornings and tell stories after dinner each evening. I grew up knowing every square foot of this land.

This week, Annie and David have had all of the Experts here together for a pre-season retreat.  It is a time when the staff here can practice and warm up before the paying guests arrive this weekend to open the season.  It is also a time when we can meet with one another to each see what the other does and to exchange ideas and talk about ways we have dealt with problems in the past.  

Trish and I have had a wonderful time and now look forward to our first Expert week of the season when we come back in May.

Window Boxes

 Today is our last day in Charleston, so we have had a beautiful walking day around the city to finish our time here.  We have gone back past our favorite places so we could see them again.

One of the things that are most impressive in this early springtime are the myriad lovely window boxes all over the city.  They are at businesses, churches, and homes. There are such mixtures and combinations of both foliage and blooms to be seen.  I do not remember this from being here before. Maybe this is the prime season.

Of course this gives us ideas about things to try once we are back at home!

Charleston

 In order to feel a little more southern warmth of springtime, Trish and I decided to come down to Charleston for a few days.

We found a very nice little VRBO studio apartment right at the east end of Broad Street.  It is just behind St. Michael’s Church and a perfect walking location for the whole city.

We put the car in a garage for the duration and are spending our days walking and eating.

The flowers are really getting into spring bloom here and fill us with the joy of the season.

Of course the homes are lovely and the streets are calm and with very little traffic.

Yesterday we took a carriage ride to get another view of everything.

We have four days here in all and by now are choosing places we want to see again before our time runs out.

Island Neighbors

 Trish and walk and bike a lot on the island. There is so much to see and the best way to check things out is by moving more slowly than you do when riding in a car.

For example, just over on the next street from us there are neighbors you would drive past many times without noticing.  They are very quiet and don’t make much fuss, but, if you are walking past, they are friendly and love to visit.

Meet our goat neighbors.

They live all over the yard around their house. This is a yard that never has to be mowed or fertilized! That is all done free and naturally!

They come up to the fence and converse quietly as long as we will stay with them.

One day we were at the Post Office when their owners were there.  We thought they had a new puppy in their car, but, it was a tiny baby goat!

We love all the varieties of life on our little island.

Easter Joys.

 Trish and I had a wonderful Easter Week.  Kelly, Erin, and Frank arrived on Tuesday to spend the rest of the week with us.

Frank loves to go to Springer’s Point, which he calls “the little beach.”  Wednesday was a beautiful warm day, so, we had a good walking adventure there.  He waded in the water up to his middle and we did not!  Everyone was happy.

Each night there is reading time before bedtime, and, I got to be the reader for some of those times.  We even read one of my books!  

They had to leave on Saturday afternoon so they would be home for Easter morning. After all, the Easter bunny might not leave things if it knows that you are not at home and sleeping in your own bed.

So, Easter Sunday morning Trish and I were just ourselves at home.  Several days ago I had heard her mention Hot Cross Buns in a conversation, so, I started the dough on Saturday night so we could have fresh Hot Cross Buns in bed for Easter morning. It was a wonderful warm celebration.

Christ is Risen!

The Power of Water

 If you fly over the Outer Banks in an airplane, you will be immediately impressed at how very frail are these barrier islands.  Situated between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pamlico Sound we are totally in the hands of the power of water.

The ocean brings us new sand with every storm overwash.  It also takes sand back when it decides to and moves sand around at a whim.

When there is rough water we hear the power and then we see the results at every turn.  A ride to the Sound side of the island on a windy day shows us the smacking of the waves in the wind.

One day recently Trish and I went out to the beach to look at where the Highway department had been doing repair work after a big recent overwash.  You can see several things here:  the Atlantic Ocean behind Trish, then you can see in the sand of the beach remnants of where the Highway used to be about thirty years ago before it was washed away and replaced by the present Highway, next comes the huge sandbags being used in an attempt to stabilize the dune and protect the present road, last comes Highway 12 as we know it now.  

It is obvious that this location of the Highway does not have long term permanence.  The ocean is gradually moving the island to the west and, the ocean will win!

One of the fascinating things about living here is that we are on very living land.  It changes and grows and reminds is that nature is in charge and nothing human is ultimately powerful and permanent.