SOUTH GEORGIA SPRING

The last pear bloom



The dying ornamental peach


Pruned grapvines on the arch















Pink Rose Camelias



The last pear blossom
Chinese "gooseberries" with my sculpture studio in the background.
Azaleas beginning to bloom

SOUTH GEORGIA SPRING
Camellia buds in March

This has been a really strange winter here in South Georgia. It has been much warmer than usual and the flowers and plants have reacted in strange ways. My camellias usually blossom between Thanksgiving and Christmas, often, if not usually, staying in bloom until well after the azaleas bloom in early March. This year, they didn’t even bud until Christmas and the blooms did not begin until late January and early February. It is now March sixteenth and azaleas are barely beginning to bloom as are the dogwood trees.

My poor peaches are just blooming, but I doubt that the fruit will set on them since there were very few nights during the winter when the temperatures reached below freezing. (peaches usually require at least thirty “chill” nights during dormancy) and my favorite peach tree, an ornamental which usually is a mass of deep red flame by now only has blooms on three small limbs. It appears to have died over the winter. (I wonder if trees die of old age? I transplanted that tree from our previous residence in 1974.) I already miss it.

That said, I doubt that there is a more glorious place to live in the spring. The dogwoods are white or pink in solid bloom. My pear trees are just setting fruit after having imitated giant snowballs for two weeks (Now the petals on the ground make a blanket of white.) One pear tree especially is attacked by a flock of migrating birds (I am told that they are waxwings) on almost the same day every year, and the birds eat all the petals off that tree (never damaging the fruit). My grapevines (pruned almost to the bone every winter) are showing tiny buds that will become a tangle of impenetrable foliage by next month that, by August, will hide vast quantities of Muscatines in black, yellow, and red. The azaleas, welcomed by the still blooming camellias are becoming virtual walls of red, pink, and white. The dormant lawns are spitting up small clusters of dandelions and wild turnip while, hanging over the patio, the Chinese gooseberrys (that never have fruit, they are actually a form of rhododendron ) are bursting with clumps of small white blossoms and the holly bush still is covered with red berries. All of these are presided over by an enormous magnolia which, having gone through a blooming cycle already, is dropping a carpet of enormous boat-like leaves under which are hiding tiny gnoles (a lizard resembling, in miniature, the gecko who sells insurance on TV) waiting for the unwary fly, mosquito or scuttling earth bound insect to come within range. The pine trees are just beginning to pollinate, and within a week every car will have a deep yellow coating, and each rain storm will be followed by yellow rivers down the storm gutters.

My pride of feral cats hunches on top of the lawn furniture looking wistfully at the birds around the bird feeder that is hung out of their reach, but pouncing on the unwary robin coming to scratch for worms, or squirrel that is just coming out of the nest to survey the tulip beds for tasty bulbs. (or meowing impatiently for me to put some cat kibble in the frisbee on the patio, for which they will then scramble unless I attempt to pet one or scratch its ears. That one will hiss and spit, notifying me emphatically that I am allowed to feed but not to touch.)

Living in South Georgia from the beginning of March to the end of May is a joy that will be paid for by living with scorching heat and swarms of gnats and mosquitoes, relieved only by the occasional afternoon thundershower which, in providing momentary coolness spreads pools of water for the new birth of more gnats and mosquitoes. It is a high price to pay, indeed, but right now, it is worth it.