Those chickens are fine

Hey y’all!

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and I am cutting down camelia bushes. In some parts of the south, that sentence alone is enough to have me convicted for heresy. Camelias are prized here, and for good reason. Their rose-like blooms in the fall and winter, are bursts of hope in otherwise dreary times of the year. They are one of my favorite flowers – their blooms have seen me through many a seasonal affective disordered depression.

But these particular ones have not been happy for years. They are on the south side of my house, having once edged our patio with blooms. Our first two winters here they bloomed nearly nonstop. 

But that was when they were under the shade of the neighbor’s backyard live oak tree. Over the pandemic, our neighbor moved away and his successor waged war on all the trees in their yard, including the live oak that had given us, and our camellias, much needed shade. 

They have not bloomed since then. Their leaves are sun-scalded, and while they still grow, it is as mere evergreen shrubs, a shadow of their full glory. 

So it is August, and I am putting them out of their misery. They were once thriving, and then things changed and now the kindest thing to do for them is to take them out. The shade is never coming back. They would, if I left them, just struggle in the blistering heat every summer. It feels a bit like euthanizing a favorite pet, honestly. Like it’s the most caring thing you can do. 

If we were starting from scratch, I probably wouldn’t buy new camelias—I tend to focus our shrubs on native plants that benefit our pollinators, and that can grow without interventions. But this winter I will buy a few to replace the ones I cut down and plant them in the wooded area at the back of our yard. Both so I can get my winter roses, and so they can know the joy of blooming where they can thrive. 

As I’m cutting down the camelias at this early hour before the heat comes in, it occurs to me that a lot of the things I hang on to (like these camelias) are things that once worked for me, but then things changed and now they don’t. 

And when things quit working for you, perhaps the kindest thing you can do is to let them go.      

St. George’s Hall in Liverpool, England is tiled in 30,000 hand-crafted Minton tiles, usually kept covered and only uncovered for a few weeks each year. Well, they are currently uncovered, and here is a six minute film showing them to those of us too far away to see them in person. The tiles first make an appearance around the 3 minute mark, but the whole video is worth a look.   

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall (click through to read the full quote).

A fascinating piece about how we are fighting to save the wrong bees, one craftsman’s work to save the right ones, and the realities of growing older and marketing.  

Check out this amazing photo of the full solar eclipse over on NASA’s site Astronomy Photo of the Day  

This incredible poem. "What I Am Telling You, Jessica, Is That Those Chickens Are Fine" by K.T. Landon     

The most clicked link last issue was this collection at the Library of Congress of “roadside vernacular architecture”  

Over on my blog I posted about depression and roses, about reimagining what resilience looks like, and this damned heat and its effect on my mental health my garden. I’m blogging a bit more, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss any posts, you can subscribe a number of ways here.   

If you are a paying member, you got an essay over the weekend that was really a love letter to our house, and on Wednesday, I sent a video (calling it a vlog seems too grandiose for what it was) to the paid members. This might become a thing – weekly videos for members, that is.   

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Take care, 

HH 

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