Saw Palmetto, Serenoa repens

The trail beyond the saw palmetto leads to a secret skate spot we frequented as kids called the “Indy Wall.”

It’s an old concrete drainage ditch with seven foot banks and a tight four feet of flat bottom.

Now long faded, the first piece of graffiti was a large Independent Truck Company symbol on the far wall.

With two skateparks in the county, once treasured spots like these are now mostly neglected.

Crooked River State Park

I knew a girl who spent the first few years of her life on Cumberland Island among the dunes and mangle of maritime forest.  On our first visit to the island together, she showed me how to eat saw palmetto.  Grab ahold of the center-most spike of a young plant and give it a tug.  The soft, lower few inches taste a bit like heart of palm.

The USS George Bancroft is a decommissioned nuclear submarine now half-submerged in front of the main (Franklin) gate of Kings Bay Naval Base.  At the age of eleven, I begged my dad one day to let me join a raucous group of Greenpeace activists and Hare Krishnas in the same spot.  Today children climb on the US monument to mass murder.

Red Bougainvillea, Bougainvillea glabra

St Marys, Georgia

Elqui Valley, Chile

This bougainvillea adorned balcony in Santiago’s Barrio Bellavista rests around the corner from “La Chascona,” Pablo Neruda’s home named for his lover and third wife, Matilde Urrutia.  The name means “the uncombed.”

Street art surrounds the curious homes in one of Santiago’s most bohemian enclaves.

 

In the center of Santiago, some college kids spent an afternoon of their winter break giving away free hugs, or “abrazos gratis.”  In stark contrast to the youthful positivity, the man standing next to his bike was prosthelytizing about brimstone and hellfire, and the second coming of Jesus.

At times it was safer to pull out a handheld recorder, than a bulky camera that could easily get snatched.  Listen to a stroll through the heart of Santiago:

 

Later, we came across a blind couple and their young daughter singing for change.  The girl sat on the ground between her mother’s legs.  Listen below:


Air Plants, Epiphytes

 

Epiphytic plants obtain water and nutrients from the air.  They use other plants or structures, such as fences, for support.

Oconee National Forest

Oak Grove Cemetery, St Marys, Georgia

White Trail, State Botanical Gardens of Georgia

Pink Wood Sorrel, Oxalis crassipes

Until now, I never associated shamrocks with flowers.

While enjoying a bowl of spicy vegan chili, I unexpectedly caught some live Irish music this afternoon at The Globe.  Around four o’clock, a group of grey haired men lugging instruments began filing in and shuffling furniture, while forming a circle of chairs around a central microphone attached to a small black monitor.  Initially there were seven: two guitars, one accordion, two violins, a mandolin, and a slight woman with a small harp. Luckily, I had my recorder with me, so I sampled their set.  I chose not to edit background noise/conversation, as it was part of the experience.  Listen to the first two songs below.

In the middle of the third song, a woman in a purple hoodie walked in carrying a soft, violet dulcimer case.  A man with a mustache and a violin followed.  Closest to the musicians sat a group of five children under three feet tall.  One fellow in Superman pajamas struggled to get situated in a rocking chair, and as the musicians played, he rocked back and forth to the rhythm. To listen to a couple songs including the dulcimer, click below.

 

Sea Oats, Uniola paniculata

According to Georgia code 12-5-311, “It is unlawful for any person to cut, harvest, remove, or eradicate any of the grass commonly known as sea oats,” while tens of millions of dollars are spent on coastal development contracts on Jekyll Island’s fragile shore.

Georgia Beach
By Margaret Atwood

In winter the beach is empty
but south, so there is no snow.

Empty can mean either
peaceful or desolate.

Two kinds of people walk here:
those who think they have love
and those who think they are without it.

I am neither one nor the other.

I pick up the vacant shells,
for which open means killed,
saving only the most perfect,
not knowing who they are for.

Near the water there are skinless
trees, fluid, grayed by weather,
in shapes of agony, or you could say
grace or passion as easily.
In any case twisted.

By the wind, which keeps going.
The empty space, which is not empty
space, moves through me.

I come back past the marsh,
dull yellow and rust-colored,
which whispers to itself,
which is sad only to us.

Jekyll Island, Georgia

 

Hibiscus, Hibiscus rosa-sinensis

Questions to a Grasshopper

By Janisse Ray

Grasshopper, do you have a husband

waiting for you at home, under some sumac

roof?  Or a son who yet needs you?

In the grasshopper bank, is your account

low?  Is the Times waiting on an article

that you must squeak up out of your armored

head and from what you have deciphered

with those waving wands?

Is the rent do on your leaf, and do you

have to pay somebody for the water that falls free

from the sky?  To whom do you owe your food?

Are you paying for grasshopper roads and

grasshopper schools and grasshopper hospitals

and grasshopper police and some kind of insect

library filled with wondrous leafy scrolls?

Do you have a president?  Are you asked

to fight, to kill your own?  Must you pay for it?

Or are you free, as you seem, to go

bursting through the stalks of dry grasses,

among strawberry leaves and yarrow,

curious and flippant, without direction,

unwary, obligated to nothing?


Eucalyptus Tree, Eucalyptus globulus

These photos were taken on the banks of the Rio Magico (Magic River), in Valle del Elqui, Peru.  According to Robert Kirshner, a professor of science at Harvard University, “Chile has as good a claim as any place to be the center of the astronomical universe.”  The Elqui Valley is the center of the earth’s gravitational force, and is said to have healing powers.  I have never seen the night sky so clear.

Nodding Thistle, Carduus nutans

Author Matt Hern is the founder of The Purple Thistle Centre in Vancouver, Canada. According to his website, “We run a 2500 sq/ft resource centre that has a ton of supplies, tools, materials, classes and workshops,  and its all free.  There’s a library, bike fixing shop, computer lab, silkscreening room, animation facility and lots else.  And maybe best of all, the whole thing is run by a youth collective that controls all the day-to-day operations and really runs the place.”

Guerilla gardening is also offered at The Purple Thistle Centre.