Antique Roses in our yard

This photo was made today, March 27, 2008, after I weeded the flower bed and added pine bark mulch.


This antique rose can be traced back to Savannah, GA, in the early 1800's. An 80-year-old friend in Albany,GA gave me a cutting from her rose bush to root in 1992, and I have rooted dozens and given them away. My friend said she got a cutting from her great grandmother's homeplace in Savannah many years ago. That's how old it is.


I rooted 5 rose bushes when we moved to our present home in 2004. Can you believe these 5 big bushes were 12" cuttings only 4 years ago. They are just beginning to leaf out.


In this photo you see the same bushes in bloom on May 1, 2007. They look like cabbage roses when they open up, and smell so sweet. The stems are covered with "fierce" thorns that can really stick you.


The third photo is a close up of the flowers in bloom last May. I like to cut bouquets and give them away and also place some inside our house.


And the nicest part about these roses are that I am reminded of my friend Sara who is now 96 and living in Jupiter, FL. We got to know her very well during a flood in Albany, GA in 1994 when we were assigned (by our church) to help her with her flooded house, etc. Her husband had died just 3 months before the flood and they had no children. We spent about a year helping her get her beautiful home restored, filling our paper work, etc. She was a golfer and played regularly until the flood and the death of her husband.


So you see why I smile when I look at the roses in bloom and memories of my friend come back to me.

Weeds are popping up all over!!

I don't know how they manage to grow and survive the cold, freezing temperatures but we have a "bumper" crop of weeds this spring. Jim sprayed with weed killer to try to rid the lawn of some of the weeds, but new ones have come up since he sprayed. I took advantage of the nice, cool weather today to divide hostas, pull weeds in flower beds, and prune some vines that died during the winter. Jim thinks it's remarkable that I know where every flower in our yard came from, when and where I got them and all about the characteristics of each particular flower or shrub. After all, I am a certified Master Gardener!

We got rid (dug up) our monster banana bush and planted an azalea in its place. Planted an Orient pear tree in our "orchard" at the back of the yard. Cleaned the bird bath and added water. It was a sunny warm afternoon and there were so many birds splashing in the bird bath today. It's fun watching them and there were so many different ones. My favorite is the little blue bird and we have some nesting already in the back yard.

I bought a "weed book" to help me identify weeds. Now I have go find out what to put on them to kill them and when to apply the chemicals needed. Mostly we just mow them down. Our bermuda grass lawn is so late turning green that we need the weeds to have green in our yard.

I wanted to share something with you tonight so I will post some photos of weeds in our yard. See if you recognize any of them.  

#1 - henbit
#2 - wild onions

#3 - dandelion
#4 - wild geranium

Easter Sunday March 23, 2008

L TO R: Nerissa, Katie, Caroline, Nell, Jim, James, and Bill Gilmer

We took a trip to NC and SC during Easter and it was very cold. I'm glad we added jackets as an after thought when we were packing spring clothes.

We had fun visiting with relatives and seeing our granddaughters for the first time in almost 3 months. They were in England during Christmas holidays. One is in college, one is a Jr. high school and one in the 6th grade. They are sweet and beautiful young ladies and are very smart. In this photo they are hugging each other as the older sister is getting ready to head back to Clemson, a long drive. She wasn't happy about leaving her family behind since she had been with them for 10 days during spring break from school.

Nerissa, Katie, Caroline

Palm Sunday at our church today

Elba United Methodist Church http://www.elbaumc.org/

Today we attended Palm Sunday services, morning and evening, at Elba United Methodist Church were we are members. It was a nice sunny day and flowers are blooming everywhere.

As we stood to sing "Hosanna", the little children started coming down the aisles of the church waving palm branches and placed them at the base of the large cross on the left side of the front of the sancuary. The dark black cross has been in the church since the beginning of lent, and is draped with a bright purple length of cloth. On Easter Sunday, the children will again march down the aisles of the church and place fresh bouquets of flowers at the cross, completely covering the front part of the cross. Easter lilies will be placed along the railing in front of the altar. I am posting a picture for last year of the lilies. We won't be here for Easter this year since we plan to visit Jim's mother in NC on Thurs and Fri, and on to SC to our son Bill's Fri. afternoon for the week-end. We will attend the catholic Easter mass on Sunday with Bill and family.

One of my favorite Easter's was in 1986 when we were living in Haleyville, AL (Winston Co. in north Ala, near the Bankhead Forest). We bought a large house in the country near the forest and there was a small lake on the east side of the house. We had only been there about 4 months. Several of my family came to visit us that Easter. We decided to have an Easter sunrise service near the small lake, under the big oak trees with azaleas and bulbs blooming all around. I invited nearby neighbors (many I had not met) to come share with us and have breakfast. Several showed up, either walking or riding bikes, and some came in cars.

We had met a retired Methodist minister earlier and invited him to come and be our speaker. He was confined to a wheelchair and he and his wife joined us for the service. Rev. Gus Buttram lived in the Bankhead forest and had a camp meeting facility there where people came every summer. His sister lived nearby and helped cook meals there. They became our best friends. Gus had a brother in California that used to play Mr. Haney on Green Acres (Pat Buttram). We never got to meet him.

Back to our sunrise service- my nephews Andrew and Alex, made a cross our of some lumber and planted it in the ground. Andrew insisted that we drape the cross in purple, a royal color. I managed to find some purple cloth for him to use. They gathered fresh flowers and placed at the foot of the cross. We sang some Easter songs and then Mr. Gus read the Bible and talked about Jesus' rising from the dead, etc. What a beautiful service. It was cold and we really appreciated the hot coffee and homemade biscuits with ham and sausage after the service. My sisters prepared the food and we had a table in the garage where we served breakfast. This is a good way to get to know your neighbors.

After lunch we all gathered around the little pond and were soaking up the warm sun and some of the kids fishing and running about. Our neighbor's son passed by on his way to visit his parents (next farm over) and asked his mother about the new neighbors. He said they were lying ourdoors, all over the place. She had been at the breakfast and explained to him that they were visiting the Gilmers, and not all were living there!

Trip to Auburn University

Lucy Luck, Nell Gilmer, Jane Jesson

Today I traveled to Auburn University Conference Center with two of my DAR friends. We attended the National Defense Luncheon at the Alabama State DAR annual conference. I have been going to the Ala. state meetings every year since 1997. It's fun to renew old acquaintances that you only see once a year.

My first visit to Auburn University (it was called Auburn Polytecnic Institute or API back then) was in July 1949 when I went to a 4-H summer conference for county winners. I don't remember why I was selected to go. There were 3 of us 4-H members who rode to Auburn with the Extension Agent for the 3-day event. I had never been on a college campus although Troy State Teachers College was only 36 miles from home. I never had an occasion to visit a college campus. When we arrived at Auburn, we stayed in a dorm on the quadrangle. I remember going to the dining hall and to an auditorium and I really don't remember any other buildings on campus. You can see the clock tower in the picture here, behind the chemistry building. One day we went to a picnic and swimming at Lake Chewacla. I remember thinking that it was rather crowded in the small dorm room with twin beds and small closets. There was no air conditioning and I remember how hot it was in the dorm room at night. I don't remember if there was even a fan.

One evening we walked across the campus to a reception at the home of the college president. I wonder if they still invite students to come to their home?

The college is so big now that it must really be intimidating to incoming Freshmen. Lots of new buildings. But some of the old buildings are still there and are beautiful. One such building is Samford Hall with the big clock tower. This was across the street from the convention center where we were today.

It's Fertilizer Weather

Today I spent some time fertilizing 36 trees at the new Elba playground. The man at the nursery told me what to buy; a time release nursery fertilizer: 14,7,7. What he didn't tell me was that the price has almost doubled since the last time I bought it. A small bag is now $15! And I had to buy two to have enough for all the trees.

All my life I've know about the virtues of fertilizer. And all the different kinds, etc. When I was growing up we had organic fertilizer, not the synthetic kind that runs off the soil and poisons lakes and streams.

Daddy used cow manure, horse manure, chicken manure, rotten sawdust, to count a few. They used to make compost heaps, adding lime to layers to make the materials go through a heat. Now I go to the nursery or farm coop store and actually buy cow manure in a yellow bag. I was reluctant to do this a few years ago but found it is a great thing for roses.

Daddy used guano (nitrogen) to put into the soil when he planted peanuts. My job was to open up the big bags and take buckets of fertilizer to dump into the big "hopper" which was in front of the planter. Then when the corn was about knee high, we had to carry bags on our shoulder, hanging in front of us and filled with soda (ammonia sulfate) - tiny white pellets that made the corn grow. It's no wonder we didn't die from over exposure to all those chemicals since we handled them with our hands.

Daddy's vegetable garden thrived on the animal manure spread over the area and turned under with a plow or disk. When we first moved back to the farm, our neighbor gave us a load of chicken house fertilizer and it was fine until it rained and the sun came out and that was the worse odor I've ever smelled - hot ammonia scent filled the air. It finally went away. No more of that!

Jim put too much nitrogen on his pea patch one time and the vines grew like kudzu. I don't think he had many peas; all leaves. And then the Japanese beetles discovered them and had a good meal, eating the leaves and leaving the pea stalks sticking up into the air.

Planting a community flower garden

Yesterday I helped some members of the Magnolia Garden Club in Elba prepare and plant a flower garden in one of the old flower beds left on the site after the old school was demolished in 2006 to make way for the new playground. They chose the smaller flower bed in the background, nearest the playground.


First the flower bed had to be cleaned out and debris and weeds and grass removed from inside the planted to a depth of about 20 inches. After this was completed by volunteers, a load of good topsoil was donated and delivered to the site on March 3, 2008.

Several garden club members met at the site on Friday, March 7 to begin spreading the topsoil and leveling it inside the planter. Then a white Natchez crepe myrtle tree was planted in the center of the flower bed. As a certified Master Gardener, I was the advisor to the group and furnished the tree that I had propagated in the summer of 2006. I also furnished some yellow coreopsis plants to put in the center of the flowerbed underneath the tree. They will plant lantana shrubs in the outer part of the circle and let them casdade over the brick on the outside.   Below is a photo of the new playground and the 36 trees planted.