It’s been a productive couple weeks in the garden. We’ve been tending to our new raspberries and pawpaws, and pulling tons of ivy each weekend. Last weekend we scored two white oaks and planted them. This weekend, we went on our first native plant rescue with the Georgia Native Plant Society. We had a lot of fun, a decent workout, and scored some cool plants – some native azalea, cranefly orchid, spotted wintergreen, aster and Carolina jessamine. We’ll see if we can’t keep them alive.

Cranefly orchid. Photo from Georgia Native Plant Society plant gallery.

There’s also some interesting stuff going on in the yard. There are tons of crocus and daffodil leaves poking up, I expect we’ll have plenty of them very soon. We have five or six camellias, and they all seem to be on their own schedules. The first has been absolutely covered, and I believe it is the Professor Charles S. Sargent cultivate. Here are some mediocre photos of it.

Apparently this type can have ore than 300 petals per flower, wow! It’s a great plant to have placed so close to the house – we have a great view of it from the living room. I look forward to attempting to identify our others as well. We have an even larger one loaded with buds, that appears to be a white camellia.

We also have a ton of hellebores (lenten roses), in both green/white and slightly purple. I haven’t been able to identify them yet. They are so beautiful, even the ones that got inadvertently mangled by the removal of our cherry stump. We need to move them into the shade soon, so they don’t get burned.

That’s about it on the garden front. I’d show off all the things we’ve planted lately, but sticks don’t look very impressive, ya know? Hopefully spring is right around the corner and everything will be popping, growing and blooming soon. Hope everyone is enjoying the warmer, more pleasant weather!