Our first take on being here was the fact that it was really winter, as in a real season. The trees were all dry and bare, we could see forever into the trees, and there were very few birds.

That all changed immediately. We spotted bits and pieces of green popping out here and there in the bushes. The trees were blooming and leafing out. By the time we were on our field trips with Jim the scenery was absolutely breathtaking.

Jim has a master gardener’s certification from Clemson University, but he’s so knowledgeable in gardening that I’m not sure what came first, all the knowledge he’d acquired over the years, or if it was the masters certification that brought the knowledge.

I suspect he simply topped off a few areas in his extensive knowledge base by doing a master’s certification.

He’s a walking encyclopedia of plant, flower and tree knowledge. At the bottoms he’s got quite a good space set aside for natural/organic farming and he plowed a space for us to have a garden over near the chicken shed.

Farming

Chelsea worked with Jim off and on over a few months, first planting seeds, then separating out and repotting the strongest seedlings at Jim’s direction.

The seeds were planted in flats down at the pump house, then transferred to Hop Sing, a clever wooden garden cart, to be stored at our house till the frosts were through. More than one night I was out loading up Hop Sing, bringing all the flats into the mudroom so the seedlings wouldn’t die.

Jim later gave Chelsea some sunflower seeds to plant in the back garden. I wanted to track the sunflower garden’s progress, but as of now it hasn’t gotten off the ground, nor has the main planting area at the bottoms, so perhaps it won’t happen this year.

One day that big diesel engine rumbled down our way. Jim handed us a bag of peanuts with instruction on how to peel the peanuts and which peanuts to peel. We spent several hours filling a quart-size baggie.

Jim assured me we’d done a “gracious plenty” in the amount of peanuts we shelled, getting them ready for planting. The expression brought back instant memories of Miss JoAnn in Oak Grove quoting her aunt, “This is an elegant sufficiency. Anything more would be a super-abundance”.

The peanuts are still in the freezer awaiting their time to flourish.

Before we left, Jim brought us his potted lemon tree so we could water and fertilize it. Chelsea and I would sit out on the deck deeply inhaling the smell of the lemon blossoms. It already had a sizeable crop of tiny green baby lemons.

Local Joys

Chelsea and I spent many cumulative hours sitting on the front porch, just smelling the air and watching the birds. We gradually saw an increasing number of birds, including our favorite scarlet tanager, and identified many, many others. A few we still haven’t identified.

We love the differences in squirrels here. They are incredibly fast and agile, smaller than we’re used to, and their acrobatics are spectacular. We’ve actually seen double-twist back-flips as the squirrels leap from one branch to a branch in another tree

The mushrooms are amazing. No plain vanilla kind here, though we’ve seen all shades of beige and brown. Best of all, we’ve spotted bright yellow mushrooms on the path down and red-pink ones around the house.

I saw a flash of deer the first few days here, but it took until recently to have the full experience. We saw three does wandering down the dirt road one rainy morning. Another morning Chelsea got some great photos through the windows as the deer wandered up to the house, looking in through the sliding glass doors.

Just last week the same three does wandered out of the woods right next to my office on a dark rainy day, happily munching their way through the wild berries. We were thrilled.

Jim says that there’s a bear down the hill and that we’ll see him as the berries get riper. If we look up we can see him sleeping in trees during the day time. We haven’t seen him yet, though we’ve been looking.

We see rabbits down at the bottoms. One night early in our stay we saw a rabbit bounding furiously to shelter as a pileated woodpecker flew shrieking overhead at sunset near the barn. We figure the rabbit thought the woodpecker was a hawk and was playing it safe by hiding.

Hummingbirds

Chelsea and I both love birds of all kinds and we’ve always wanted hummingbird feeders. Pat has a feeder down at the river that is populated night and day.

After an irritating few rounds with an old feeder Jim gave us (it kept leaking), we bought two inexpensive bright red feeders. We’re happy to report that it was a rousing success. We got to sit for hours watching and reading on the deck after the days were over.

Fireflies

I’ve already told you about our lack of curtains or blinds. We gradually got used to it, but we were still a bit jittery. One night we couldn’t get to sleep. We lay awake chatting and laughing.

I had to take a bio break, so I hopped off the bed, walked across the front room to the bathroom in the dark (the three stove and microwave lights act like a nightlight for us), and headed back to the room when I was done, still in the dark.

As I crossed the doorsill into the bedroom I happened to glance out the window. “Oh my God, Chelsea!” I hissed. “There’s someone out there crawling around with flashlights! I shot backward so fast it’s a miracle I didn’t singe my hair from the speed of my retreat.

She of course flattened out on the bed. When I recovered my nerve, I tiptoed back out and watched, hiding. I gradually realized it wasn’t a person, but probably some kind of animal. Chelsea figured we were seeing its eyes glowing, but there wasn’t any light, even moonlight, to reflect off the eyes.

We watched those glowing eyes for an hour. Whatever it was, was either looking for something, or was really loopy. It would wander in circles, climb a tree, come back down, wander some more, then disappear.

It eventually moved slowly towards the other end of the house, so Chelsea and I tiptoed through the house and looked out the sliding glass doors in the small bedroom. Suddenly it came right at us! Though we knew it couldn’t get us inside the house, we instinctively ducked.

Those glowing eyes headed straight at us, then lifted skyward to cruise over the top of the house. It took a few seconds for me to make the connection. We’d been seeing fireflies! It was a long time later that night before we stopped laughing.

Since then we’ve seen our fair share of fireflies. We love them. We feel like little kids when they come out. We hope our new location will have fireflies!

Coyotes

I told Jim in the early days that I’d heard the eerie howl of coyotes during the night. He told us they were definitely around, and that we had to be careful of the chickens.

A few weeks ago we were headed off the bed when the most god-awful keening and howling began, right in back of the henhouse. We froze in place. We were both intimidated and very worried for the chickens.

I opened the sliding glass door facing the henhouse and wow, were they ever close! Not knowing what to do, I flicked the outside light switch, flooding the area with bright light.

Just as fast as I’d flicked the switch, the keening and singing stopped. There was no sound of them crashing through the woods, no sound at all.

A few minutes later we heard them, but they were farther away, maybe fifteen yards farther. I flicked the light on again. Again they disappeared with no sound.

Chelsea quickly downloaded a recording app for her phone in case they came back. We didn’t hear them again, but we’ll never forget that sound!

Our Favorites

The nature here has been a miracle to us. The weather has been cool and spectacularly pleasant. The storms are impressive and frequent. One night we had a lightning strike so close it took out phone service at the Big House. The crack was loud enough to cause hearing damage.

We love the cooler temperatures and the smell of the air. We don’t like the smell of the chicken shed when it rains.

We love the deer and scarlet tanagers. We love the hummingbirds, the water, and the wild turkeys, especially the blue one. We love the profusion of green and flowers and trees.

We will always look back here and love this place for the nature. It’s a lifetime memory for us.

Notes:

For those who like lists, here’s our bird list for the last three months. Following it is a very shortened version of the trees and shrubs and flowers Jim named for us. We got lost in no time…I couldn’t write fast enough to keep up.

Check out our photo albums to see more of them. I’m going to get Jim to sit down with me and name the photos I couldn’t name.

Birds
Tufted titmouse
Scarlet tanager
Hawks
Ravens
Rock doves
Vultures
Carolina chickadee
Carolina wren
Robin
Wood thrush
Pileated woodpecker
Red-bellied woodpecker
Downey woodpecker
Hairy woodpecker
Whip-poor-will
Chuck-will’s-widow
Great blue heron
Cardinals
Ruby-throated hummingbirds
Wood ducks, male and female
Indigo bunting
Mallard ducks
Wild turkeys
Eastern bluebirds, male and female pair
Brown thrasher
Belted kingfisher
Pine warbler
Black and white warbler

Trees, Bushes, Flowers
Forsythia/golden veil, tulip tree, bright gold/yellow
Red tips (disease)
Red buds have purple flowers
Weeping cherry
Cherry trees blooming
Thrift – ground cover, purple flowers
White blossoms are serviceberry trees, plums, pears, peach (good for distilled wine/moonshine)
Princess tree
White pines
Yellow jasmine
Ornamental plum
Poplar
Columbine,
Periwinkle,
Peony
Bullshair yucca,
bleeding heart