Exploring the Camellia Collection at Columbus Botanical Garden

January 25, 2019

I have been bored out of my mind because I could not do any work at the Aquarium during the government shutdown. I mostly seemed to lay around and read or play on my computer. I was scheduled to go help my friends, Jim and Debbi on Saturday so I decided to run into Columbus, about forty minutes away, for groceries to bring them lasagne. I also decided to walk four miles and decided that the walk in the woods of the Columbus Botanical Garden would be a fine place to start.

This is a small garden and doesn't have much to see in winter, but it does have vegetable garden with winter vegetables and a nice long set of  through the woods.  It also has a wonderful camilla collection which is starting to bloom now.

I enjoyed about an hour of the collection and walked a mile.   The camellias come in many shades and combinations of pink and white and red.  Some are single flowers while others have double or even triple blooms. They were not at their peak because the area had gotten a hard rain a few days earlier and many blooms had fallen off or turned brown on the bush.

One of the few shrubs in bloom

The vegetable garden is in six beds, three on each side of the steps leading to the barn which is used for classes and meetings

I loved the clear red of this downward hanging camellia and how it looks like a flamenco dancer's skirt 

A pink and white camellia

This pink had more rose in it

Many of the bushes were mostly in bud - but I found them pretty as well

This camellia looked a lot like a rose

These are probably species camellias, before the plant breeders got hold of them

This is a triple bloom

Another single flower

Some of the flowers seemed to be thicker than others.  These were some of the most delicate ones

I liked the way this pair seemed to be part of one flower

This is one of a group of camellias that have very prominent and numerous pistils and stamens

I loved the line of buds terminating in a flower

How could you not be happy looking at this

I think this is an old variety as I've seen very similar flowers for many years across the south

Another sweet thing

I like the white flowers with streaks of color better than I like the dark flowers with streaks of white

I was struck at how much this looked like a dancer's skirt

The arrangement of these petals gave this bloom a mysterious aura

I decided to go on to Flat Rock Park.  I'll save those pictures for another time. On the way, I learned that Trump had agreed to reopen the government.  I decided to treat myself to a seafood meal.  When I got to Rosehill Restaurant, famous for its fried catfish and oysters, I found the oysters were $10 a dozen.  I had two dozen in the oyster bar. I chatted with my shucker and he ended up giving me the biggest oysters, while saving the smaller ones for the restaurant orders.

Very good oysters from Florida -  I ate 26 

Altogether, a very good day.  And I was supposed to work today and got to reopen the Aquarium. I'll probably be working almost every day between now and February 5 when I pack to leave.  I spent the day volunteering with Jim and Debbie, bumping up plants and digging out thornless blackberries that had wandered out of their bed.

How to Make a Long Trip Longer

January 16, 2019

I started my six hour homeward bound trip from Laurel around noon after we had another wonderful sunrise walk on Botany Bay Beach. As I got just outside of town, I remembered I needed to fill my gas tank up.  This necessitated turning around and driving back a few miles. I got the car filled up and turned the car back on.  I reached for my ipad to turn the podcast I'd been listening on but found the iPad appeared to have suffered an electrical surge. It was flashing a black background with white lines and I could not force it to turn off. I shut it up, and checked it every few minutes to see if anything had happened. Finally I could stand it no longer, and pulled off and called Apple Support.  As I was talking to the lady who was helping me, I finally got it to turn off. But when I turned it back on, although I could see the screen, it was washed out and I could see flashing in the bottom, which would have made it impossible to read on it. We decided I needed to have it on wi-fi and she sent me a work order number to commence fixing it when I was on-line. I realized I could still listen to podcasts, so go underway again.

Then it seemed I had to stop more than usual to take breaks.  I decided to take another break at Savanah National Wildlife Refuge. I had visited my volunteer friends who had arrived there one day after the shutdown, the last time I'd come through there, but the day was rainy and I hadn't explored the driving loop. I remedied that, getting there just before the best light.

I got to see the first ducks I've seen, other than a couple  each day in South Carolina. Surprisingly, most of them were ring necked ducks. In Texas they are often the last to arrive and the first to leave.  I also saw a few northern shovelers too  far to photograph and possible other species, too far away to identify.

There were lots of coots about, but maybe only 100 total

I probably only saw a dozen of great egrets

I think this is a female ruddy duck.  I saw non I identified while there

Ring necked ducks were by far the most numerous - maybe fifty

I got the female grackle, but the male was right next to the car. 

I was excited to to see several pie billed grebes. Didn't find the in South Carolina

These were the only white ibis I saw

The last bird I saw was the only tri colored heron I'd seen there.  It was in the middle of the road.  I stopped about fifty feet away and quietly opened my door and shot it through the crack. 

Then I stepped out around the door and starting moving towards it, taking pictures. He stood up and gave me a cop glare. Guess he thought he was in charge of the road.

I approached even closer,  and this was his response.

When I got to about twelve feet away,  he just looked determined to hold his ground. I had to shoo him out of the road to continue the drive.

Then I drove another few hours before I detoured to find a Chinese buffet, which probably set me back another hour. The last two hours were miserable, but I finally arrived at ten o'clock, a mere ten hours after I had left Edisto. And I promised Laurel I'd come back if the shutdown continues another few weeks.  I'm going to have to figure a way to get there more efficiently before I attempt this trip again.

Finding Gold in Botany Bay

Because of the shutdown, I have no work to do.  So when my friend, Laurel, who is currently renting a house about five and a half hours from me, invited me to visit, I jumped at the chance to go have a LOT of fun, because that is always what Laurel and I do.  We are both avid photographers and birders and Laurel tries her best to keep me active all day.

One of the best places to enjoy birds is Botany Bay Wildlife Management Area, only a few minutes away.  Today the tide was low enough at sunrise for us to walk on the beach - it has been mostly destroyed by Hurricanes and the land is subsiding, so there is only a beach at low tide.

We managed to be the first ones in, sliding into our parking space just ahead of the several cars of a photography group.  We were on the beach for the first chance  of sunrise, which didn't seem like it was going to be much.

I thought this little cloud would be the entire sunrise - took this mostly as a joke

But were we delighted to find ourselves wrong.

Come along.

The light did improve a little and a little color spread out, helped with taking the pictures in supersaturated mode.

Beach view before sunrise

Laurel's favorite tree made for a lovely scene

This is where I was when the sun came up

I fell behind Laurel as we each lost ourselves in our pictures. Just as I caught up with her, a rainbow appeared. It started up with only one side but soon spread to a full one. A second full one tried to appear, but we could only see the two sides near the ground.

You can barely see the second rainbow forming here

Photo by Laurel - She changed to her 10mm lens to get this marvel

I loved watching the big pillows of foam float around and form sculptures with the stumps out in the water 

I love the weathered textures and colors in the fallen trees

While walking back to our car, on the boardwalk over the marsh, Laurel found me a wood stork to photograph, in the now gray light.  We spent the rest of the morning catching some good light and finding great birds, sometimes even at the same time.  We took the driving tour for the fourth time this visit, finding new and different scenes and birds. 

Wood stork

We had been looking for this red headed woodpecker for three visits - that big white T flying across
 the road caught my eye. In my best posed pictures, he doesn't appear to have an eye. 

One of my favorite views from the driving tour - a typical low country view

I watched one of these great egrets fly in and walk towards another bird.  This was the middle picture
of them walking toward each other, then walking away.

There were several yellowlegs in the area, but I was only able to bag this one

This view is on my side of the car.  Every time we go around the loop, I have to look back up this little creek to check for birds.  Today the light was so beautiful on the resurrection fern, she made me take this picture.

We found five turkeys near the end of the loop today.  Laurel was able to grab this shot before the tall grass hid them. 

I only have two more days here but I expect to have lots more pictures.  We have two days of photography lined up. And I think we'll be seeing much more sun than we did for the first few days.  I  will post some of our other finds in my next blog.