To see Don
Hunter’s Facebook album with photos of today’s ramble click here.
(A small selection of Don’s photos are imbedded in this blog post.)

We came from near and far on this cold morning, with roadsides and
ditches on

Catherine reading

“Four eyes” Dale reading

our journey’s routes blanketed here and there with the season’s
first frost.   Everyone was bundled up as
they gathered next to the arbor to discuss the weather and hear this morning’s
readings before heading out on the ramble. 
We were graced with two readings, one from Catherine and one from
Dale.  The reading from Dale was
particularly appropriate for today’s ramble, with the mention of the season’s
first frost. First,
from Catherine, an excerpt from Bailey White’s Sleeping at the Starlite Motel.

Garden
of Eden

 I know some people who believe that God
created Adam and Eve one mile east of Bristol, Florida, on the Florida
panhandle, and that the Garden of Eden was located in Torreya State Park just
north of Bristol, and that Noah built the ark right near the intersection of
state road 12 and I-10 out of the wood of the now-endangered Torreya tree, also
called Stinking Cedar, which grows nowhere else in the world.

The book of Genesis
says, “a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was
parted, and became into four heads.” 
There’s only once place on earth where four rivers come together, and
that’s near Bristol, Florida.

God told Noah,
“Make thee an ark of gopher wood.”  The
Torreya tree, an ancient and primitive species, has another name besides
stinking cedar:  locals call it gopher
wood.  When the flood came, so they say,
the ark floated all the way from Bristol halfway around the world to Mt.
Ararat, and Noah and his dazed family climbed out into a strange land, with
nothing left but stories of their lost homeland in north Florida. 

(Note: Bailey White is from Thomasville, Georgia and
has written several books, including the hilarious Mama Makes Up Her Mind. She was also a frequent commentator on NPR but
seems to have disappeared.)

The second
reading is from the Oct. 24, 2013, New York Times editorial series The Rural Life, by Vernon Klinkenborg,
and read by Dale.

Waiting
for What Comes Next

The
sky to the west is kettle-gray. The last leaves on the sugar maple in front of
the house are flickering but hanging tight for now. Most of the hickory nuts
have fallen, but sometimes I still hear one clatter onto the chicken-house
roof. Another couple of months and Orion will be visible when the dogs and I go
out for the last walk at night.

The
basil has not yet been blackened by a sharp, cold night. There has not yet been
a morning when the dogs and I get our feet wet on frost instead of dew. We lit
a fire in the woodstove the other day just because the color of the world
outside seemed to demand it, but when the fire went out no one missed it. I
have wood to stack and small engines to winterize, but the weather keeps
telling me not to hurry, put it off, take it easy, and so I do.

There
is still a stand of small, pale blue flowers growing along the fence by the
barn. It has been alive with bumblebees of a kind I rarely see, leaner and
darker over all than the thumb-size, yellow-banded bumblebees that have worked
their way through summer. I can’t help thinking that all of them will be dead
before long, their queen alone alive in the winter nest.

So
we wait, me at the kitchen table, the dogs scanning the deck for chipmunks that
scurry and start, overwhelmed by their work in this year of the prodigious
hickory harvest. The dogs don’t even bother to bark. They simply watch and
wait, full of expectation. 

For today’s ramble, we re-traced the route from last week, heading down
the path to the Dunson Native Flora Garden, then following the White Trail up
the power line right-of-way and into the woods to the Green Trail.  We walked the Green Trail to the service road
and followed it, through the Florida Torreya clearing, finishing up with the
Blue Trail back to the power line right-of-way. 
From here we made our way back up to the Visitor Center.  Before we left, however, Dale teased us with
the promise of a special spider to wrap up the ramble. 

Continue reading →

To see Don
Hunter’s facebook album with photos of today’s ramble click here.
(A small selection of Don’s photos are imbedded in this blog post.) This post was written by Don Hunter with minor additions by Dale Hoyt.

Twenty
three ramblers showed up for the weekly ramble, despite the threat of
rain.  Though it was raining in the area,
the rain, except for one brief sprinkle during the walk, was absent for the
ramble.   Hugh presented the reading for
the day from the work of John Burroughs:

After long experience I am convinced that the
best place to study nature is at one’s home,– on the farm, in the mountains,
on the plains, by the sea,– no matter where that may be. One has it all about
him then. The seasons bring to his door the great revolving cycle of wild life,
floral and faunal, and he need miss no part of the show.

. . .

The science of anything may be taught or
acquired by study; the art of it comes by practice or inspiration.  The art of seeing things is not something
that may be conveyed in rules and precepts; it is a matter vital in the eye and
ear, yea, in the mind and soul, of which these are the organs….So far as seeing
things is an art, it is the art of keeping your eyes and ears open.  The art of nature is all in the direction of
concealment.

(From The
Art of Seeing Things, and Nature Near
Home, by John Burroughs in American
Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, Bill McKibben, ed. (New York:
Literary Classics of the United States, 2008), pages 146-159, and 168-171.)

The ramble
route today was down the hill, past the Dunson Native Flora Garden and over to
the White Trail, and up and across the power line clearing.  We moved from the White Trail to the Green
Trail, then to the service road and then on to the Blue Trail back towards the
power line to wrap things up.

Continue reading →

This
morning, fourteen kindred souls gathered at the arbor for the Thursday ramble,
dressed in flannel shirts and jackets to ward off the temps in the low 50’s
that greeted us as we gathered for the pre-ramble readings.

Don Hunter’s
photos of today’s Ramble are here. Don also did the write-up for walk.

Two people brought readings today; first up was Catherine Chastain
who read Night-Spider’s Advice by
Joyce Sidman, from
the book, The Dark Emporer and Other
Poems of the Night.

Night-Spider’s
Advice

Build
a frame

and stick to it,

I
always say.

Life’s
a circle.

Just
keep going around.

Do
your work, then

sit
back and see

what
falls in your lap.

Eat
your triumphs,

eat
your mistakes:

that
way your belly

will
always be full.

Use
what you have.

Rest
when you need to.

Dawn
will come soon enough.

Someone
has to remake

the
world each night.

It
might as well be you.

Then Dale Hoyt read
the lyrics from Misalliance by the
British musical comedy duo Flanders and Swann (click here to
see the text). This seemed appropriate and should have been read last week
when we were more focused on vines.

After the
readings we all headed off for the Threatened and Endangered Plants garden
before heading down the Purple Trail to the Orange Trail, where we headed down
river to the wetlands area and then  up
along the creek to the upper parking lots. 
The emphasis today was ferns.  We
observed several ferns but, as usual, there were plenty of other things to
capture our interest.

Continue reading →

Events of interest to Ramblers:

Fri., Oct.
4, 2013 9:00AM – 10:30AM

Linda Chafin
on Piedmont Prairies

State
Botanical Garden of Georgia

Our big native plant sale at the
Mimsie Lanier Center for Native Plants is this Friday and Saturday!

Friday, Oct 4, 6:00pm
– 7:00pm  is an SBG Friends Members event – preview party and sale. You
can become a Friends Member at the door!

 Species
list is on the SBG website, http://botgarden.uga.edu/eventdetails.php?id=13

Saturday,
October 5, 2013. 9 AM – 2 PM General Public
Welcome! 

2450 S. Milledge
Ave. Athens, GA 30605

This event is
free!

Don Hunter’s
wonderful photos of today’s Ramble are here.
We thank Don for allowing us to use a selection of his photos for our blog.

Several
people brought readings for today, but we only had time for two. Please bring
yours next time.  Lee read a story of a
revolutionary war soldier who stopped to think about the ways of a mocking bird.  Then Sandra read a very appropriate poem on
Kudzu.

          This morning about two o’clock, as I
was walking up and down past one of my sentinels, in order to keep myself
awake, I was very agreeably surprised by the singing of a mocking-bird. He sang
by himself and continued his notes till daylight. One would have imagined that
he was sensible of the merit of his accomplishments, and that it was in
complaisance to man as well as for his satisfaction that he was pleased to sing
when all was silent, (except the barking of some dogs) Nothing animated him so
much as the stillness of nature; twas then that he composed and executed all
his tones. He raised from seriousness to gaiety, and from a simple song to a
more sportive warbling, from the lightest quivers and divisions he softened
into the most languishing and plaintiff sighs, which he afterwards forsook to
return to his natural sprightliness.

(from: William Feltman, “Diary of the Pennsylvania
Line. May 26, 1781 – April 25, 1782, in Pennsylvania in the War of the Revolution,
Battalions and Line, 1775-1783, ed. John Blair Linn and William H. Egle, vol. 1
(Harrisburg: Lane S. Hart, 1888), p. 689.)

Next was a poem by Oliver (“Ollie”)
Reeves, poet laureate of Georgia from 1944 to 1963, presented by Sandra
Hoffberg:

Song of the Kudzu Vine

The Kudzu vine is a hardy plant

And it grows where other good vines can’t;

Where the land is poor and the clay banks stand

And the gullies run through the tortured land.

Here it spreads its leaves on the wasting loam

And it sends it roots and clusters home.

And it saves the farmer hours of toil

As it spreads these roots to hold the soil.

Ah, you may have watched the black snake run

To the shaded hole from the blistering sun, 

And you may have stood at the old race track

As the thoroughbreds came thundering back;

And you have seen the swallow’s flight,

And the shooting star in the deep dark night,

But until you’ve watched kudzu grow,

You’ve never seen the fastest show,

Over the rock piles, under the brush,

Climbing the hillsides on with a rush,

Down the ditches, into the glade

Shielding the earth with a comforting shade.

There goes kudzu ever in flight,

Swift in the sunshine, swifter at night.

Happy the hog and grateful the kine

Nourished by food that’s held in the vine,

Happy the farmer, happy the day

Gathering kudzu, tossing the hay,

Come join the chorus, help us to sing

Down with erosion, “Kudzu is king!”

Today our
theme was vines.  We do not always have a
theme, but this was a request from Sandra and Joan.  They missed last week when we started working
on vines, so today we went on a vine hunt. 
Our trail took us down the white trail by the Callaway building to the
Orange Cut-off, left on the cut-off trail to the Orange trail.  Right on the Orange trail through the
Powerline ROW, to the big tree by the Privet experiment sign.  We then turned around following the white
trail back to the Lower Parking Lot.

Continue reading →