by Elsa Johnson
I recently took a driving trip to visit friends and family in the South – Clover, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; and DeLand, Florida (a little northeast of Orlando), with half of a day stop in St. Augustine (where we happened upon a Celtic Festival parade). Frankly – too much driving, but the stays in the actual places – lovely.
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A highlight was a daytrip on the St. John River, which I never even knew existed. It is 310 miles long, flows north to Jacksonville, with a drop of less than 30 feet over the length of its fall, so it is very lazy and winding, and links with many, many lakes and loops — a very watery environment that would be easy to get lost in. One part of the St. John River looks pretty much like another (hence, no pictures to entertain you) – but we saw all kinds of animal life: several species of herons, ospreys, kingfishers, egrets, yellow swallowtail butterflies, alligators (looking like someone threw out an old tire, lying there amid the foliage of vegetation), and manatees. Manatees! Hard to see in the black water unless they swam up close to the surface. We cut the motor way down and watched, and did see them, the big lumpen bodies with their spatula tails that make a characteristic pattern of ripple in the water as they move.
The other highlight was visiting the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden in North Carolina (just over the S. Carolina line). This is a relatively new garden, dating to 1999, which I’ve visited before, in showier seasons. This time the main gardens weren’t much to look at, there wasn’t much in bloom – a Chinese Fringe Flower tree, hellebores, daffodils, a magnolia that had been burned by the cold – but I was charmed by the addition of a children’s garden, opportunely sited on a hillside that might actually wear active little bodies out. What a good idea! I also enjoyed the conservatory, which I had not visited previously.
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Sorry to report Bradford/Callery pear is growing everywhere, both in urban areas and in the wild, in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. It is the street tree of downtown Clover (two blocks long – blink and you’ve missed it) – nobody loves it.