September 3, 2016
First time at SMGB — Hi everyone! Thanks for letting me blog, and where to start? That's what I said 9 years ago as I overpaid for this 4.7 acres, heavily wooded, on a hill, with a wore-out double-wide mobile home (20 years a rental) and a rusty garden shed. Oh, where to start? A smart person would have scrapped the DWMH so of course I spent a year rebuilding repairing remodeling renewing the trailer. For breaks I worked outside, checked what's in the woods, what's down the hill, and figured how to use this place.
Let's look at the map first. The redline is the property line. There's a gate at the northwest corner by Fields Rd. (upper left) where the elevation is about 220'. The 300x600' lot runs down to the east and bottoms out around 175'. That makes the slope about 1:12 — down a foot every 12 feet. Storm runoff from the dirt road in the middle of this clay ridge, farmed till the soil ran out, is a problem.
There were no fences except the antique farm fence along the east and south borders. Well, 2 or 3 fences put up over the decades and the first was off (the dotted blue lines) running 20’ outside the flagged corner marker. None of the fences down in the SE corner, coming from other properties, meet in the same spot — I call it “no-man’s land” but it’s mostly mine by caring.
I've spent days fixing fences, some old enough to have lighter-wood for posts. Where the posts and fences cut across my surveyed line, I moved them (and dang that rusty barb-wire.) Down at the bottom, I kept the extra 20’ while patching and doubling up old fences. New fencing was installed on the north and west sides and bolstered a few years later after feral hogs invaded and tore it up runnelling thru the leaf litter. One fall I chased 7-8 piglets eating hickory nuts by the trailer down the hill and out a break in the fence, them squealing all the way and me behind yip-yipping and wondering “where’s mama? what if she charges? can I make that tree?"
The woods in the top half was overgrown with grape vines and greenbrier and near impassable. The driveway ran straight down the yard and runoff ate thru 2' of clay making a wide trench. Sand from the dirt road was washing down to the trailer. Now the driveway is S-shaped to force water off into the woods and small berms are set here and there across the hill to direct water away. On the map, H is my home, G is the half-sunny garden and PB is the new polebarn. There's decks and walkways all around. Comfortable, low impact and low cost living.
Trees on top of the hill where it's drier: Live & Water Oaks, Loblolly Pine, Sweetgum, Hickory, Southern Magnolia, Red Cedar, Beech, and Black Cherry. Guessing the biggest get 100' tall but it's all in layers, layers of branches, one tree topping the other. Snags abound and some are down like the dead pine I watched fall one Christmas that put 70’ of trunk on the ground. I've cut a dozen big trees around the house (hollow-trunked Water Oaks have to go) and 1 or 2 big trees drop in the woods each year. It's a wild sea of green when the wind blows hard, the way the trees bend, giving just enough, their branches tossed back, tips breaking when needed, culling their weakest.
**writing this Monday with a Tropical Storm due here Thursday, we'll see…
** Hermine forecast as Category 1 sometime after midnight coming right at us.
*** 3 Water Oaks broke off leaving tall snags, 1 top hung up, 1 crushed the south fence. 1 Cherry lost a huge branch and there are 1000s of small limbs and twigs. Scored a mess of Bay leaves.
Smaller and understory trees: Redbud, Dogwood, Arrowwood (Viburnum), Sassafras, Red Mulberry, Flatwoods Plum, Holly, Wild Olive, Crabapple, Gum Bully (Sideroxylon), Beautyberry, Blueberry and Sparkleberry. There's one small Florida Maple, cousin to the northern Sugar Maple.
Vines mixed in and around the trees: several species of Grape and Smilax plus Jessamine (Gelsemium), Virginia Creeper, Crossvine and of course, Poison Ivy.
Wildflowers: These native plants were found growing here - Coralbean, Butterflyweed and Redring Milkweed, Matelea Milkvine, Smallanthus, Hyptis, Mistflower, Wild Petunia (Ruellia), Roundleaf Bluet, Blue Flag Iris, St Andrews Cross (Hypericum), Elephants Foot, Green Dragon (Arisaema), Downy Lobelia, Lespedeza, Common and Primroseleaf Violets, and lots of Lyreleaf Sage.
Up by the gate, the sunny spot, I am converting from Bahia sod to a meadow. It's never been mowed by me so the grass grows tall runners and when they seed, it's easy to pull up. Wildflowers include Goldenrod (Solidago), Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron), False Foxglove (Agalinis), Desert Chicory (Pyrrhopappus). On the edge under a Loblolly is a colony of Ladies-Tresses orchids. Despite the meadow looking so wild, it takes hours of year-round hand labor. Weedy non-natives like Rattlebox get pulled before seeding (but till then it’s a host for the Bella Moth.) Pine seedlings grow a foot in the summer and hardwoods are always a year from taking over. Now the whole meadow is like a giant sponge for soaking up rainfall, but then ya know, there's the barren yards outside my fence. It's a constant battle being downhill, the immediate and eventual low point from those folks up the hill and up the road.
When I tackled the fence and vines on the south border, one of my first finds was a Southern Crabapple in full flower. Too bad the vines had dragged the top down, breaking the trunk, but it lingered a couple years and scattered enough fruits to leave me new saplings. It was tough work to finally get a path along the south fence over to the west side - all by hand, cutting with a brush blade or axe, pulling vines up & down, chopping with a spade. I rescued a lot of bigger trees that are looking good now and gave some shrubs a chance to flower. There’s still a few spots where I pull up grapevines each winter but it’s a pleasant walk on the trails that circle the top of the hill. One trail tunnels thru Beautyberry and then Sparkleberry, and the new Crabapples will bloom any year now.
The polebarn, sheds, DWMH and garden sit a little above the property midline. My “backyard” is a little bit sunnier so I add native wildflowers like the 50 Coralbean seedlings I put out this summer or local roadside flowers such as Liatris, Monarda and Coreopsis. Going down the slope to the wetter areas, the trees change. On the map I marked a 6' drop-off -- running south from there and defining the bottoms is a band of shrubby trees called Horse Sugar.
The big trees in the bottom where small seasonal streamlets flow thru to the old pasture: Sweetbay (Magnolia virginiana), Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), Spruce Pine (Pinus glabra), and Swamp Chestnut and White Oaks. Smaller trees and shrubs include Sourwood, Red Maple, Redbay, Holly, Blueberry, Sweetspire (Itea virginica).
The same vines from up top but not as thick, just here and there. Wetland fav, Climbing Hydrangea (Decumaria) is common but I've yet to see it flower - somewhere way up there in the treetops. Goodies on the ground are Cinnamon and Southern Lady Ferns. Grape-ferns (Botrychium biternatum) are everywhere. Tiny Twayblades (Listera australis — with several photos from Wolf Creek Trout Lily Preserve) pop up each spring in a couple wet places interspersed among the native Azalea, Wax Myrtle and Coastal Doghobble.
Here's the thing -- those Twayblades and the Southern Lady Fern are listed as Threatened Species in Florida (pdf). And the main reason is loss of habitat - like around me where the 200 acres to the south that used to look like my woods, it was clearcut in 2007. Where the 24 acres on the pond to the southwest is being cleared for a 4,000 sqft estate. Where my neighbors next door cut most their trees and scalped the earth. Where the guy up the road cleared his bottom trees to put in an illegal pond. Loss of habitat - I imagine when I leave this place, I might as well take my pretty plants with me because I doubt they survive the next resident or developer.
Meanwhile I have a great time caring for the property. It's vigorous exercise - digging and chopping with my long-handled spade is daily fun; pulling vines is a whole body activity; endurance in 90° heat a challenge. Certainly I’ve learned a lot in my attempt to spot and maybe ID all the plant species. Studying plants leads to bugs as I discover their interdependent cycles. And birds like it here - lots of cover, seeds and bugs, plus the big satellite dish birdbath. At times it’s scary to realize I've lived here longer than any other place in my life. So many, all across the state and country, and we moved annually for years, how'd I end up here?
OK, one more flower and I'm off. Thanks again for letting me share what I do, or think I want to do, or as it goes, watching it happen on this 5 acre garden.
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