Blooming Appalachia
My Aunt tells me this is Pinkster Flower. It's near an old rail road bed of The Gloucester Lumber Company, now National Forest. I wonder what it's like up in there after last Sunday Nights wind.
I've been through some storms and wind on this Mountain. Last Sunday was one f the fiercest I'd seen. While I was in Iraq last April I'm told the wind ble constant for three days. From what I see here on this Mountain, Sunday Nights wind did more damage than those three days. The ind ravaged the leaves of a Maple Tree and they now hang there dead, A Chinese Chestnut lost every limb of it's top and three trees as big as my truck tires lay broken at the bottom. I know the winds hit 80 MPH.
A place I had hunted last fall had had a down burst from last April. Large trees, Oaks and Hemlocks lay in three different directions. They smashed down on the Ivey crumbling them up like blades of grass rolled into a ball.
This year everything is blooming but us. At the lower elevations white blooms hang from the Locust, the Iveys are putting their pink blooms out. every little flower showed it's colors. The Wild Azelias stand orange off in the deep woods and the Dog woods hang onto a few of their white blooms. Blossoms hang from the Dog Hobble. I appreciate it more than I did before.
It comes back every year, some years more than the others. But it comes back, no matter what happens. The Honey Bee's took off and left or just died. The Keepers brought more back and those flowers shine for them like they did for the others.
The Appalachianist
posted by Hill Billy Rave | Thursday, May 15, 2008
13 Comments:
Somewhere in all that prose lies the heart of a poet. Isn't life a wonderful gift and the mountains a blessing. Years ago I bought a mountain rhodendrem (spelling?) and took it to lower and hoter elevations (my former but still mother-in-laws house in Woodruff) where it blossomed and grew until it caught the attention of some local theives when my in-laws died. Of course, it was taken. When do the Pink Beds bloom? Is that time in the fall? I did notice a great many dead or dying trees going into the Smokies. Bill
Bill, at one time I would have slammed the term poet. And, I still feel people will use it to dote on something for their love of drama...But, anymore, I can take it as a compliment. There is nothing poetic about what I said. What is poetic is what is happening. It's not the pretty colors the flowers show, but what they are doing. The color and shapes are icing on the cake.
Someone stold that bush? They could have gotten ne for not a whole lot.
The Pink Beds will bloom come June. The Black Berrys (their getting there Ed) are blooming and the Locust at my house are putting out in full blooms.
Bill, you're not saying which trees, but, I suspect your talking Hemlocks and Firs?
I agree with Bill. It was quite poetic.
OK, Murf. If you'll say so.
I spent forty-five minutes typin' and re-typin' a reply on poetry and managed to lose my reply to a baulky computer. I just thought it was good writin. I didn't mean to start nothin' . . . but it is good . . . an the flower is pruttee' too. I don't know what to think about a mountain man who takes such pruttee' pictures . . . must be talented and smart. You know Ben Jonson was in the army about the time of Shakespeare. He was in Flanders and was called out to fight the Spanish champion to the death as I understand it. He did. He lived to write poetry. Read the Best part of Ben Jonson . . . a poem . . . I am not sure of the title though. I ws going to look up your post on the trees of Cades Cove. I thought it was the usual culprit . . . acid rain. I heard on PBS that there is a new bug, Emerld Ash bug. As the name implies, it eats ash trees. I don't know if it has gotten to the Smokies yet. At any rate, the post reminded me of a favorite memory of mine from long ago and not so long ago either. My son and daughter and I were going from Canton, North Carolina by car driving to the Blue Ridge Parkway during autumn. My daughter looking out the car window at the colorful tree leaves remarked that the leaves looked as if they had been painted by an artist. How many people have said that common expression, but I have remembered her comments ever since and attempted to write about it in a way that presented the memory and emotion of that moment. It has always been very special to me. How do you bring to life "what they are doing?" It is very difficult. BTW it was a well meant compliment, but then I aim to be polite anyway, if I didn't like it I would not have said anything, and the flower is pretty, but it must have a name beiside "pinkster" I bet ya. Bill
A true country boy just naturally has a poets soul. Some show it and others don't, but how can you live in such simple beauty and not have the ingrained appreciation.
At least that's the humble opinion of the man with the caffienated eyes. And no, I'm not calling you boy.
Bill, about acid rain. I've personally measured rain water at a 4. (1 Acidic to 14 Basic, 7 being nuetral) But, a 4 won't burn you. Ground water around here is about a 6. Standard NPDES Permits state waste water must be between 6 and 9 to be discharged. Appalachia is on the acidic side. So question is, how acidic is too acidic?
Acidic ground gives you briars. The darn things will take over, like that wild rose that's blooming now. I know where it came from. I saw it while passing through Shannon Ireland. But hard wood ash works like lime. It will raise the PH of the grond.
Like anything else it needs balancing out, and surprising to most all threats to foilage are not just chemical but biological too...That's too much like NBC.
Joyce Kilmer was killed in France during WWI. He never saw the place named for him.
"Poems are written by fools like me, but only God can make a tree".
Ed, I was writing and you were too...Small world this internet thing is.
People call me boy all the time. They don't tell me I'm a boy though. Boy is a good word in these parts.
You all make me sound ignoranter and ignoranter. Boy . . . referrin' to myself . . . I got to look up ph and acidic and all that. I used to know it better . . . and I am trying to be a gardener . . . Rambin Ed is righter . . . as my young son said when he was young . . . he liked it because it was "funner." Miss Gregory, my sixth grade teacher made us remember and say "Trees." Some say its all hokum now, but I don't. It is the only thing I mostly remember and Kilmer is right . . . an old man talkin. Thank you very much. Bill
You all make me sound ignoranter and ignoranter. Boy . . . referrin' to myself . . . I got to look up ph and acidic and all that. I used to know it better . . . and I am trying to be a gardener . . . Rambin Ed is righter . . . as my young son said when he was young . . . he liked it because it was "funner." Miss Gregory, my sixth grade teacher made us remember and say "Trees." Some say its all hokum now, but I don't. It is the only thing I mostly remember and Kilmer is right . . . an old man talkin. Thank you very much. Bill
Bill, it was worth saying twice. I put the PH Scale up for the general audiences benefit. I had a run in with the higher end of the spectrum today so I have blisters on my arm.
It's been a while since I heard someone say hokum.
Bill, I can't see ho you grow anything down there in that ground. I know you keep a garden, so you must be good at it. I was tempted to put a little Indian garden behind the house. Some hills of corn and let the beans run up them with a little squash around.
Speaking of, time to get my ass to work.
You have to be full of BS to grow anything around here . . . actuall, I have brought a lot of cow manure and bags of potting soil in. There are patches of good soil here and there around the Columbia area . . . remember it is called Richland (county) and noth (ruined by slavery and cotton) is as Lord Cornwallis called it (yes, that Cornwallis) Fairfield) but a lot of it is like Fort Jackson . . . just sand.
the southern appalachians are beautiful in spring with their flowers--and don't forget the ramps
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