FINDING A JEWEL

I’ve watched since the spring after it happened to see what would replace the blackberry bramble, thick weeds and pine tree saplings that were burned by a small brush fire in the Edwin P. Griffin Preserve about four years ago. Fire crews were quick and the blaze, just north of the Cottonwood Trail, blacken no more than a fourth of an acre, but the flames left behind nothing but scorched earth and black ashes.

In Colorado, where I once lived, stands of aspen trees replaced forests that were wiped out in wild fires that burned through high elevation ecosystems. Some people out west referred to aspens as “the tree born by fire.” While I didn’t expect aspens in the preserve behind my house in Spartanburg, I hoped the seeds of native Piedmont grasses and wildflowers that’d been dormant for decades might have gotten hot enough during the fire to spring back to life and germinate.

And I wasn’t disappointed. A few stalks of Broom Sedge (Andropogon virginicus) one of my favorite native grasses, popped out of the ground the summer after the fire. A few more followed during subsequent growing seasons.

This year Broom Sedge grows not only in most of he  the burn zone, but a sizable population of this beautiful grass is now gracing the landscape across a small access road from the site, with other stand-alone stalks throughout the area.

Broom Sedge’s green summer stalks are not very striking because they get mixed in with neighboring plant life around them. But in the winter months, the tan tones of Broom Sedge change with the light. The sheaths appear copper-colored when they’re back lit by late-in-the-day sunlight. Other angles of light give the stalks orange-red or pale yellow hues.

This Broom Sedge population I’ve discovered covers less than just one of the 128 acres in the Edwin P. Griffin Preserve, but in this case, size doesn’t matter. To me, it’s a winter jewel.  - Gary Henderson

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A JANUARY GIFT

There are buds and blooms on the Helleborus plants in my yard. Though I start looking in late December, the Helleborus’ bloom cycle doesn’t  begin most years until mid-January, weeks before the threat of bad weather has passed. Some of our biggest snows in this part of the Piedmont have occurred in March. Weather records show big, March snows fell three Wednesdays in a row in 1960, and patches of it were still on the ground in shady spots in early April.

But Helleborus are stalwarts. They ignore annoyances such as ice, snow and freezing rain. No matter how cold it is their blooms are open like a trumpet call for the daffodils that will break ground and join a few weeks from now. I’ve seen daffodils earlier in other yards, but our microclimate on the bluffs above the Lawson’s Fork is slower. If I'm lucky, there will be a few weeks when the yellow blooms from my daffodils and the Helleborus rose and white flowers will intermingle in my flower beds.

I grow more attached to plants that have been passed on to me from the gardens of friends than the ones I purchase at nurseries because as long as I have them they give me a connection to whoever it was that allowed me to go digging in their flowerbeds. In this case, it was my friends Bill and Kristin Taylor of Glendale. This is about the 10th winter these Helleborus from the Taylors' garden have lifted by spirits on cold winter days, especially this year.  It's also about this time each year that I’m always glad Bill and Kristin were so generous. - GH

Under the Goldfinch Flyway

 

 SIGNS OF SPRING

There are two times each year, usually in mid March and late September, when our yard seems filled with traveling goldfinches, but never as early in the spring as the female I saw yesterday at my birdbath. The bird that’s sometimes called the “wild canary” often shows up in abundant little flocks at our feeders. I counted 14 one late summer morning that were hanging on a backyard feeder, or sitting on nearby shrubs waiting their turn at the trough. The female I saw yesterday showed up before we had our finch feeders out  but she seemed to be getting her fill from the perches on the one for songbirds. I accept all comers to my birdbaths and feeders, but for me the goldfinches are markers of change as certain as the solstices.   GH