Okefenokee Swamp experience

In the summer of 1967, when we were living in Atlanta, we decided to take a trip to the Okefenokee Swamp in south Georgia. I had read about the swamp and the critters and loved the comic strip "Pogo" - which included critters from the swamp. I worked for a Dr. at the Communicable Disease Center (1957-67), who had an artist friend, Athos Menaboni, who painted birds and loved to go to the swamp to see the egrets and great blue herons. Not only did I see the big snowy egrets and big blue herons, but many other wildlife - including alligators swimming in the dark murky waters of the canals in the swamp. Click the green map to enlarge it and you will see the West Entrance and the park area.


My dad came from Elba, AL brought a friend, Frances, to Atlanta and they went with us to the Okefenokee swamp. We stayed in a cabin at the western gate to the park, at the Stephen Foster National Park. Our oldest son Ron is pictured above playing with the tame deer that roamed the area, along with lots of racoons who liked to empty the garage cans. (Note: Daddy and Frances got married in August 1967. He had brought her up for us to meet her.)

We arrived at the entrance to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and were informed that we should make sure that we had everything we needed since the park gate would be locked at 7 p.m. and not opened again until 8 the next morning. We felt safe from people but I wasn't so sure about all the wild animals. We checked in at our cabin and after dark we drove through the park with only parking lights on to observe the critters roaming around in the evening. They were not afraid of us. You could see the eyes of the animals before you were able to identify them.

The next day Jim and I rented a small boat with trolling motor and set out with a map to see the area, aiming for Billy's Island where people used to live. The narrow canal connected the marina to the swamp area. The water was so dark, almost black from the peat and decaying vegetation. The water was like a mirror, reflecting the sky, trees, and things around it. You couldn't see down into the water.

What was to be a two hour trip took most of the day because of problems we encountered along the way. I was not too happy about the movement of the water around us at times when alligators were swimming along with us. Once one stuck his head up out of the water and I dropped the movie camera and screamed. As the waterway narrowed and entered a small canal, all I could think of was snakes dropping out of the trees into our boat (I had seen this happen in jungle movies). We had a map of the area but everything began to look the same and we had no idea where were heading - except to follow the sun for directions. The boat motor didn't work too much of the time since it kept getting tangled among the aquatic plants. Jim would lift the motor out of the water and we would paddle until the water was clear of vegetation. We thought we would reach Billy's Island in a short time but it was more like hours. We spotted the boat landing at Billy's Island around noon. We didn't bring any lunch and all I could think of was there's nothing to eat, and it would take us a long time to get back. But we had come this far and we wanted to explore the island and look for old settlements. Just as we set off on a trail, a sudden shower came up and at least it cooled us off.

We explored the island for awhile and decided we needed to head back. As we came near the boat landing, our boat was nowhere in sight. My heart sank; I would NOT spend the night on that island. We walked out on the landing and saw that our boat had drifted underneath. We got in the boat and started back to the park marina. We got back late in the afternoon and everybody was getting worried about us. The Okefenokee Swamp was a great experience and truly the "land of the trembling earth". It was like walking in a bog; when you walked you could sometimes feel the earth move or tremble underneath you.

I went back 28 years later and things had changed a lot; much more developed, etc. I took an air boat trip to the Suwanee river (and it rained on the way). This wasn't nearly as exciting as the little flat bottom boat Jim and I traveled in earlier. The park is still a remote area, far from civilization. In 2007 there were wildfires out of control in the swamp and I shudder to think of all the wildlife that either died or lost their homes. If you want to learn more about Okefenokee Swamp, go to this website and read all about it. http://ourgeorgiahistory.com/places/okefenokee.html

A step back in time - 1968

In July, 1968, we loaded our new Chevrolet and hitched it up to a small camper and took off from Paris, TX and went southwest to El Paso, then up through New Mexico, Arizona, and on to Colorado for a period of 2 weeks. Our boys were 10, 11-1/2 and 13. This was one of our most fun places to visit, Mesa Verde, Colorado - near Four Corners, the only place in the United States where four states come together at one place. Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet at the Four Corners. Here a person can put each of their hands and feet in four states at the same time. The unique landmark is on Navajo Nation land and is open for visits from the public.


Our oldest son took this b&w photo from high up on the rim of the canyon. In the lower left hand corner of the photo you can see a people looking at the Indian cliff dwellings. The park was not very well developed in 1968 and certainly was not handicapped accessible. I know because we had a hard time getting down the narrow path from the top of the canyon down to the cliff dwellings. Little did I know that the trip down was easy compared to the way out! We had fun weaving in and out of the little houses and observing how they lived. The Pueblo Indians had to be very short people since you could hardly stand up in the small rooms that had been carved out of the side of the mountain. Jim was exploring with Ron and Bill and I followed behind with our handicapped son James. He had difficulty walking and was afraid of things along the way. We were far behind Jim and the other boys. They finished looking at the area and decided to go back to the top of the cliff. They scaled up the cedar ladder to the top and were soon out of sight. When James and I got to the end of the road leading out of the area, we discovered the only way out was to climb straight up a ladder to the top. There was no way James could climb that ladder. So.... I put him in front of me and helped him place his splindly little crooked legs on each rung of the ladder and pushed him up, step by step. I didn't dare turn around and look back down into the canyon until we got to the top. We were warned that the trip was difficult but nobody mentioned climbing out of the area by the way of a ladder.


This colored photo was taken recently (got it off the internet) and while the houses look pretty much the same, I dare say you will have a better trail leading to and from the area. We camped at the National Park Service campsite, along with lots of wild animals. At night there was a big campfire (it gets cold there at night) and someone played a guitar and we all sang songs and roasted marshmallows after going for a hayride, all provided by the park rangers.


The next day we visited the museum and the boys saw their first mummy. Her name was Esther and she still had hair on her head and teeth in her mouth. Ronnie bought a post card to take back to show his friends. That card is still around in a box with other momentos someplace in our house. When I hear the word Mesa Verde or Four Corners, I always go back to that hot summer day, trying to get up that ladder with James!


Go to this link if you want to know more about this great archilogical site: http://www.nps.gov/meve/

Making stones

When we moved to our little cottage in the county near Elba, AL in 1996, we had to do a lot of landscaping. I wanted a small English country garden in front of the house and a stone walkway. My sister Carolyn came to spend a week with us and helped put up a picket fence, plan the garden, and to plant the flowers. I wanted a walkway and she brought her plastic form and she showed us how to make stones with cement.


You could make about 7 or 8 stones at one time. You put the mold down, pour cement into the openings in the mold, and then lift the mold off. Voila! There were big stones. She showed us how to sprinkle coarse sand on the cement after rounding the corners. They looked just like rive

r rocks! This was not an easy task as one small bag of Sakrete would only make 3 or 4 sections. we worked for several days to have enough stones for the walkway. Jim and I were so proud of our "creation" and it really added to the country garden look.

So if you want a rock pathway, just go to Lowe's and get a mold and some cement and go to work.  You can even get colored cement.  We chose natural color cement and it darkens as it ages.  

Coming down the hill

to the house, which has
a lake behind it.

Remembering our family cats

Over the past 50 years we have had several cats for family pets. I think the first one was a Siamese female we got from my sister Christine who sent it to Atlanta from Washington, DC in the early 1960's. I remember going to the Atlanta airport to pick up the tiny kitten and it was in a small cage, and frightened to death. I think the boys went with me to get the cat; can't remember that far back.

We brought her home and decided on a name. She was so happy to be held and started purring. The boys decided her name was going to be "Purry". And so that's what she was called. Most of the time she stayed inside or in the basement. We discovered she was going to have kittens just as we were getting ready to move to Paris, Texas in 1967. Jim, the 3 boys and I, and a cage with a pregnant Siamese cat set our for Texas in our station wagon. I think Purry yelled most of the way to Texas and if you've ever heard a Siamese cat "yell", it will drive you crazy. We gave her a tranquilizer but it didn't help much. Purry had her kittens and we gave them all away. i don't know if that upset her or if the move to a strange place was why she meowed all the time and didn't want us to pet her. We gave her to a lady in the country so she could get outside and catch mice and roam around.

Not much time elapsed before we acquired a solid black cat. I think one of Bill's friends gave him the kitten. He thought it looked like a black panther and decided to name the cat Malcom X, leader of the Black Panthers at the time. The cat liked to chase Bill through the house and he enjoyed him so much. Then we were transferred to Minneapolis and of course we had to take Malcolm X with us. Remembering the trip to Texas from Atlanta, I made sure we had tranquilizers for Malcolm. Once I thought he was dead he was so limp and sedated. He loved living in the cool climate after living in the hot Texas country. That is until it snowed. He did not like to go outside in the snow and would sit at the window looking out at the birds eating at the bird feeder. I'm glad he didn't like the snow! Once Sunday while we were at church, we left the cat in the garage and he ventured out and was attacked by the neighbors big Chesapeake hunting dogs. He died a few days later, just after Bill came home from Texas for a school break from college. He went to the vet to see him and made the decision to have his cat put to sleep.

We didn't have another cat for awhile until we were living in Winston-Salem, NC. James wanted a cat but we kept putting him off. A neighbor had a beautiful calico long hair cat and James would go up the street to their house to play with their cat. One day he came home and said they wanted to give him the cat since they were moving away. So that's how we became the owners of Pôpoki (POH' poh kee) which is Hawaiian for Cat. The little girl in the family had brought Poki home from Hawaii when she went to visit her grandmother. We shortened her name to Poki and when we moved to Haleyville in N. Alabama, Poki went with us. She was an outdoor cat and a great hunter. She liked to sleep on the carport on a table or on top of the car. One night she disappeared and we never found her. For days we rode about in the neighborhood looking for her. I think maybe somebody kidnapped her. She was so friendly and very beautiful.

Several years went by before we adopted another cat. We were living Albany, GA and traveling to our farm in AL on week-ends occasionally. My cousin who lived near our farm had 14 or more cats and James saw a white one he wanted. Betty gave him the cat and we took it home with us. He named that cat Poki, Jr., calling him Poki. When we left Albany and moved to the farm permanently, the cat didn't want to go with us. We had a hard time catching him to put him in a carrier and he was not very happy. Poki developed throat cancer a few years later and had to be put to sleep. He was a great hunter and kept down the field mice population as well as rabbits, chipmunks, and other critters. He stayed outdoors. We buried Poki under a big oak tree in the yard and put a stone on his grave. James was so sad when he died. He didn't mention wanting another cat for awhile.

Then when I was visiting our son Bill the next summer and returning with two of the granddaughters to spend a week with us, we brought their family cat back home to James.
They didn't want the responsibility of taking care of the cat and Bill wanted to get rid of the cat.
So they wanted to give the cat to James. We made the trip from SC to AL ok but it was rather noisy with the cat yelling a lot.

We named the cat Poki, Jr. and called him P.J. He was a great hunter also. He was also an outdoor cat and had a cat door so he could come and go to the back porch and sit on the soft chair cushions all day. I think this was our favorite cat or at least the most friendly. He loved to sit in your lap and purr. He would go walking with us and when we left home and returned, he could hear the car coming down the dirt road and would run out to meet us.

P.J had a hard time adjusting to living in town when we moved to Elba in 2003. Other cats didn't want him in their territory and he was always getting in fights and having to go to the vet.
After awhile he too developed throat cancer and had to be put to sleep when he was about 15 years old. At the present time we don't have a pet and I feel so bad when James sees cats on TV and talks to them and tells me he would like to have another cat for a pet. Neither Jim nor I want another animal right now so we just keep putting him off. James and I are both allergic to cats and can't keep one inside. We'll just continue looking at them on TV for awhile.

Scuppernong Vine playhouse

Today when I was pruning our concord grape and bronze scuppernong vines, my mind drifted back about 65 years to when I was growing up on the farm and we were living with my Mama and Papa Wilson in their big farm house. In warm weather, mother would send us outside to play during the day .
One of my favorite summer childhood recollections is recalling times spent in our playhouse under our scuppernong vine. All of our friends had “scuppernong playhouses”. It wasn’t an unusual sight to see a large squarish or pointed framed-up scuppernong vine standing a little bit over 'head tall' in everyone's back yard. We made a playhouse under ours. The lovely thick-leafed vines made a perfect shade overhead and the long runners hanging over the frame offered a lot of privacy. Our playhouse had only one door (opening). It was dark inside. Our playhouse even had bench seats you could really sit on. Made with wood blocks or old bricks and old planks - our little tables were old buckets or pans that had holes in the bottoms or the handles torn off. With all of our ideas we'd furnish all the laid-off rooms and then we would make mud pies and “bake” them outside in the hot sun. We made brooms from straw to sweep the dirt floors. We would decorate our cakes (made from mud) with green china berries or little flowers we would pick. Or we would just play with our Sears-Roebuck paper dolls (individual dolls cut from the catalog and furniture made from paper). This occupied our time for hours.



'During the late summer, when the scuppernongs were fully ripe, we'd take our friends to our scuppernong vine for refreshments . Standing inside our playhouse, you could just reach up or out to the side and eat juicy fruit.


There was a major problem in the fall; in the form of winged creatures known as wasps. They liked to build nests in the vines and drink the nectar of the ripe scuppernongs. And when we would reach for the ripe fruit, we would get stung. Papa Wilson chewed tobacco and would apply some spittle to the stung area to “draw out the pain” so he said. Our grandmother lost her sense of smell when she was aging, and once applied Watkins vanilla flavoring to wasp or bee stings on my brother and cousin. She thought she was using linament instead. The bottles looked alike.


I remember how much cooler it was under the scuppernong vine and there were always gentle breezes blowing through the leaves.


No one ever seemed to know to spell scuppernongs, and I think it was because we called them something like "scupplins". I learned the correct spelling when I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" many years later. I wonder when school children read that book, if they have any idea of what a scuppernong arbor is.


Maybe I will go outside and “square up” one of our scuppernong vines to create a playhouse for children to play. Not a bad idea except it would ruin my carefully laid out landscape. I have to maintain my reputation as a “Master Gardener”.

Flowers I have propogated

Last fall I took a Master Gardener course for 10 weeks. I learned a lot and one new word was "propogate". And the correct way to prune, fertilize, plant, etc. In the past I just cut off small limbs and stuck them in the ground or a pot and rooted them. Now with my "new found" knowledge, there's no telling how many plants I will have this time next year! Jim is going to help me build a green house this spring. Actually we will enclose my potting shed and turn it into a green house.

Gladiolas

Lady Banks 

I am posting some photos taken in our yard this past summer. Some were planted from seeds from friends (pink and lavendar hibuscus). The glad bulbs were obtained from Fred's (our local department store). The bulbs fell out of packages and were scattered on the floor. I asked if I swept them up, could I have them and they said "yes". I had the most beautiful gladiolas last summer. I took several bouquets to church and to shut in's.


The yellow Lady Banks rose bush was so top heavy it fell to the ground last spring and we left it on the ground until it finished blooming, and then pruned it heavily. I rooted this rose when we moved to Elba. It was given to me by my cousin Joe and his wife Martha. She died from pneumonia soon after we moved here, so I call it "Mott's" rose.

The pink climbing rose dates back to Savannah, GA over 200 years ago. I have rooted so many from my root stock which I got from a friend in Albany, GA many years ago. The Autumn clematis came from a neighbor's yard.

The lavendar and red hibiscus plants came from seed I planted last spring. I have a bag of seed to plant this spring and share with others. The little yellow coreopsis are so easy to grow.

Coresposis

They come back every spring and bloom all summer if you keep them "dead headed".


The Autumn Clematis vine starts over every spring. I cut it back to the ground in the winter. The blossoms fill the air with perfume in the fall. The blue hydrangea came with us from Albany, GA. I have rooted so many from this bush. The white gardenia was rooted from a small limb I broke off of a bush at my brother's house in 1997. I broke a limb from the bush pictured here at our farm and planted it in our yard and it is almost 5' tall and so many blooms on it last year.

Gardenia

Autumn Clematis

Yes, we have no bananas!

Remember the Chiquita banana jingle of the 50's and the Banana lady? I love bananas and thought our banana tree would produce big stalks of the sweet yellow fruit. But alas, all we got were giant green leaves. We could almost see the tree growing as it towered over the porch this summer. We had to cut the lower leaves to walk underneath the bush. We planted it just 3 years ago from a small bulb that Mr. Lawford gave us. Banana plants look like giant onions with the same root design, just a lot bigger. The trunk of the plant is mostly water and can be cut across easily with a sharp knife. The giant leaves make a nice sound when the wind is blowing through them. I felt like I was in the tropics when I stood on our back porch and looked up at the giant banana tree. It made a nice shade underneath.

Today we decided to dig up the giant tree and replace it with a smaller plant that likes to grow in the shade and damp soil. Haven't decided yet what that plant will be.

Digging up the massive tree was not an easy task. We dug dirt away from the base of the tree but the roots were so intertwined we couldn't move it at all. Jim finally got an ax and cut the stalks apart and then we were able to dig them up. The stalks were killed back by the frosts we had this winter and we used a kitchen knife to slice them off to the ground. Then we piled the water filled "tree trunks" out by the street to be picked up by the city.  We placed the tree roots in containers and dumped them in a gulley behind our property. I tried to give them away but no offers. People pay a lot of $$$ for banana bushes at the plant nursery.

I think the secret of our giant banana tree was that the soil was always wet because there was clay soil underneath and when it rained, water drained on this site and the clay soil held water for a long time.


I lived out my fantasy of the little Sambo story of my childhood of tigers chasing each other around the banana trees until they melted into butter for little Sambo's many pancakes.  I have a copy of that book someplace. It was one of my favorites.