Nearly Wordless Wednesday: 5/9/12

Once ripe, they made the best homemade peach ice cream ever.

Tiny green "baby peaches" on the ancient peach tree in my mother's yard
Heard County, Georgia—25 April 2010

Previously featured in "The Little Peach Tree That Could"

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: 4/25/12

The blemished ones made excellent plum jelly.

An early summer harvest from the plum trees surrounding my mother's house, with some fruits looking a little better than others.
Heard County, Georgia—7 June 2010

Every place is a sacred place

Beauty, calm, and peace.
(Near Blue Ridge, Georgia—19 May 2010)

Oak, hickory, dogwood, mountain laurel, sassafras, tulip poplar, elm, sweet gum, locust—I wished I'd brought my tree book along on the hike. New fern fronds carpeted the forest floor with frothy green, but not so much so that I couldn't easily identify the poison ivy leaning out onto the trail. Leaves of three, stay away from me.

Sycamore lace

It's amazing what a change in perspective can do.

Here's looking up the trunk of a sycamore tree in my mother's yard on Easter Sunday afternoon. When I sat down on the earth beneath it and pointed the lens upward, I was amazed at how the leaves started to resemble fine green lace. The branches radiate outward at just the right angles for the photo (and photosynthesis). The trunk's randomly-peeling bark echoes the leaves ever so slightly.

Heard County, Georgia—8 April 2012

The Little Peach Tree That Could

Peach blossoms on the elderly tree in my mother's yard
Heard County, Georgia—4 March 2012

I like trees because they seem to be more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
—Willa Cather

My great-grandfather planted this dwarf peach tree in the early 1940s. By the late 1950s, when my mother was old enough to remember the family's yearly trips South from Michigan, the tree was bearing heavily every year.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday: 4/11/12

Like miniature cabbage roses, no?

Deep pink blossoms on my mother's crabapple tree
Heard County, Georgia—11 April 2010

That "grape soda" smell means wisteria

It's springtime in the Deep South, and the air smells like grape soda. Not name-brand grape soda, but the cheapest-of-all-cheap-store-brands grape soda. Or maybe it smells more like year-old grape bubble gum, the wonky kind that nobody will even shoplift off the clearance rack at Big Lots.

Whatever sticky grape confection it smells like, that smell means wisteria, also known as the Other Vine That Ate the South. Say what you will about wisteria, but I always look forward to its glorious Pointillist creations draping the trees.

Greens, purples, lavenders, smokes...wisteria's got 'em all.
(LaGrange, Georgia—21 March 2012)