Charleston Walker

I am on vacation in Jerusalem this week and am taking in incredible historical and cultural sights. In between tours of the Old City, the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), and various museums, I have enjoyed some fabulous meals in a variety of restaurants. Today my lunch was in a lovely garden venue, The American Colony Hotel, in East Jerusalem.

Over the years guests at this century old hotel have included leading political, literary, and artistic figures including Winston Churchill, Graham Greene, Mark Chagall, and Joan Biaz. All of them no doubt were attracted to the property’s various patio gardens which contain a wide range of evergreen and flowering plants.

The weather here is still warm with highs around 60 degrees and lows in the 40s. Begonias, coleus, roses, and plumbago were blooming today along with roses and fruit trees.

A lovely old olive tree was the center attraction in one area, while lemon grass, basil and other edible plants comprised the planting in another.

Bougainvillea draped the walls at the pool garden along with beautiful white roses.

What a lovely venue for lunch, and my spinach omelette was terrific!

I fell in love with Moon Vine (Ipomoea alba) while gardening in Columbia, SC, and warmly recall the night my two sons were swimming in our pool at night and first saw her lovely white blooms.  “What is THAT flower” one of the boys asked pointing to my brick wall covered with several white blooms that dazzled in the moonlight. It was almost magical!

A cousin of the Morning Glory and the Sweet Potato vines, Moon Vine blooms at night and has a delightful vanilla fragrance. In my Columbia garden, she was grown as an annual, but in reading up on her I discovered that in many tropical zones, she is considered a perennial plant. What would she do in Charleston, a semi-tropical environment, I wondered.

I decided to start some seeds in July.  I soaked them for 12 hours in water and then nicked them at the pointed area of the seed.  With very limited space on my patio,  I dropped them in a container with a trellis.

Moon Vine needs full sun, so I moved my pot around to capture as much light as possible. This fabulous plant did not disappoint. The blooms started emerging early this month, and I doted on my pot constantly as we waited out Hurricane Florence.

This week my Moon Vine started blooming, and I have run outside nightly to catch the incredible show!

October is flying by,  and the marigolds have been lovely. Caught this little butterfly on one at Magnolia Park. 

We are almost halfway through October, but it is still hot and humid in Charleston with heat factors in the 90s.  A number of flower boxes, however, have definitely taken on fall colors like this beauty on Tradd Street. 

Saw this lush balconey garden today at the charming Berkeley Park Apartment Building on Rutledge Avenue near Colonial Lake.  Now that we are beginning to experience a little more of the Fall season, I can imagine how nice it would be to start my morning with a cup of coffee “on the balconey” and watch the daily beauty of Colonial Lake come alive! 

I love walking on Rutledge Avenue! This house, with its beautiful American flag and fabulous window planter, is one of my favorites. Nice vivid color combinations!

We are now three weeks after Irma’s Surge, and many of the city’s gardens are still in recovery.  While out walking today I saw evidence of Irma’s impact on garden shrubbery, which if surviving, had lots of brown leaves. But occasionally I spied a new bloom like this lovely pink rose,  which reminds us of the beauty to come next spring.

What a summer we have had in Charleston! The weather has been horribly hot and humid, but we have had very little rain here on the peninsula. Heat factors have been over 100 degrees since mid-June, and I have been watering my potted garden daily.

My flower walking has been limited to early morning or evening flower photographs. I am a bit surprised at how well flower boxes and small urban gardens here have held up. I guess most folks are like me and get up early to water.

Here are a few of my summer 2016 photographs:

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I cannot imagine there is a more beautiful city than Charleston in Springtime! The season has come early this year, and Charleston is awash in colors of pink, rose, blue, yellow.

I have been roaming Charleston’s streets in awe of the beauty of this season. One of my favorite places has been Washington Park with its spectacular azaleas, Peppermint Peach tree blooming with its two color blossoms, and the gorgeous Fringe Tree blooms.

Walking the streets of Charleston reveals beauty and rich color on every block.

Of course there is no place like Magnolia Gardens in the spring!  In late March I took a flower photography class with Kathleen Clemmons and Donna Eaton and was once again startled by the sheer beauty of the place. Here are a few of my photos:

I have spent the first month of 2016 taking photographs of camellias, known here in Charleston as “The Winter Rose.”

These gorgeous flowers are everywhere, and I have been throughout the city snapping away trying to capture their beauty. I am now posting on Instagram with Kathleen Clemmons’ 365 project and then uploading Instagram images to Facebook. I have loved hearing from Facebook friends about their involvement with camellias.

With camera in tow I have been to city parks, cemeteries, and the beautiful Middleton and Magnolia gardens. Most of my photographs have been with my Canon 6D and the 100mm Macro lens, but increasingly, I am using my new little Canon M3 Mirrorless camera with the fabulous 22 MM lens. It is so much lighter and easier to handle.

The Low Country Camellia Show at the Citadel Mall on January 23 may well be as close to heaven as I will ever get. I shot over 500 photographs there of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen.

One of the highlights of the month was hearing from my old Rock Hill neighbor Beachy Cobb who shared the story of a camellia named for her grandmother who lived in Rock Hill and knew my parents. Beachy then sent me a photograph of the camellia, Mrs. Charles Cobb. According to an article printed in the 1937 Rock Hill paper, Mr. John Drayton Hastie from Magnolia Gardens, made a presentation to the Rock Hill Garden Club on camellias and announced the naming of a new camellia he had propagated for prominent Garden Club member, Mrs. Charles Cobb. As I researched this camellia, I became intrigued with the possibility that the camellia I inherited in my patio garden was Mrs. Charles Cobb! In any event, I ordered two small plants from Louisiana and will compare the blooms next year to see if I have a match.

The variety of colors and shapes of camellias is enormous and have provided incredible subjects for photography this month!