My third day of exploring the Glendale Shoals and neighborhood. I have noticed that there is a second blooming season this year for the Japanese Magnolias as well as some the traditional azaleas. Wildflowers are abundant: Rose moss on the shoulder of the road, Joe Pye bush in the tangled woods ( Some say the name derives from the name of a Native American madicine man who used the plant to cure fevers), Wild Blue Plox, and on the shores of a small tributary to Lawson's Fork Creek, great bushes of Jimson Weed (Datura Stromonium) rising five feet tall. The Jimson Weed large white flowers are faded and drooping now. The name is a corruption of Jamestown Weed where the early colonists first noticed it. All parts of the plant are extremely poisonous, even causing a skin rash if you touch it. Cows and sheep have died from eating it.
I notice that the beavers have built a dam nearby. The summer before John and Colleen's wedding, we were invited to Colleen's family's home in the Mississippi Delta. Their farm land is bordered by the Tallahatchie river. We all put on boots, covered ourselves with mosquito repellant, boarded pickups and drove out to a stream where there was a beaver dam, which Colleen's father and brother blew up with dynamite while we watched. Quite a sight. I used to think the beavers live in the dam, but they do not and it is illegal to kill beavers in Mississippi.
No comments:
Post a Comment