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Live oak with fresh new leaves emerging

In front of our house in Thomasville Georgia is a very majestic Live oak Quercus virginiana. Today, March 20, 2023, It has new leaves emerging that are about 1/2 inch long. The tree is hosting the currently green Resurrection Fern Pleopeltis polypodioides.

Quercus virginiana, in front of our house in Thomasville
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Botanizing I-95 from Pennsylvania to Georgia at 70 mph

I 95 just south of Richmond Virginia. A dramatic interchange above The non native and invasive blooming Callery Pear.

A long 930 mile two day trip, with carefully planned stops to take care of the most basic needs. I curated the trip going from antique mall to antique mall to experience the cleanest bathrooms spanning the breadth of the East Coast of the United States Of America. Pounding America’s finest pavements, I often relax into the journey by botanizing and delving into the beautiful natural world that I 95 relentlessly plows through. For much of the almost 1000 mile trip, the grinding and exhausting interstate highway is just feet away from exquisitely beautiful natural surroundings, all of which are fully appreciated here on the Sanguine Root.

Fayetteville, North Carolina: Cercis canadensis The Redbud tree in cultivation at my mid-trip hotel accommodations, Tuesday morning March 7, 2023. Alongside the highway, the Redbud trees started to show their blooms in Richmond. By the time I got to Thomasville Georgia, the Redbud trees were shaking off most of the blooms and were leafing out.

Through Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and DC there were plenty of blooming Japanese Cherry trees. As I got into northern Virginia, blooming red maples were the stars of the show. Once I crossed the East Coast epic James River, the Botanical landscape changed. Running right through Richmond Virginia, the James River is a notable crossroads into a different botanical environment. At this time, the Redbuds are blooming! Driving south in early March is so interesting in this respect, in that real differences in blooming trees can be viewed in an immediate time reference!

The long road ahead

South of Florence, South Carolina I started to see Carolina Jasmine, Jessamine sempervirens, growing alongside the highway. This plant is an astoundingly beautiful flowering vine that will leave you mesmerized from its beauty and you will just keep thinking about it after your initial experience with it. When you first see Carolina Jasmine, it it is your personal re-entry into spring and the end of winter. I never got a chance to get a picture and stay tuned for that one! Also in South Carolina I saw Saw Palmetto Serenoa repens growing in the woods just adjacent to I 95!

In South Carolina driving over a beautiful natural landscape

We do this drive often, working on two rundown houses, one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the other in Thomasville Georgia. We have gotten to know the natural world in between. That whole world has been scientifically delineated by plant range maps, notably available at the U.S. Geological Survey. Upon my arrival in Thomasville Georgia, I was greeted by my already bloomed and gone to seed cultivated Bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis.

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The buried city

Still processing last week’s afternoon at Mt Moriah Cemetery, here in West Philadelphia where this post is being composed, more thoughts are stirring. I put together 5 photographs from lasts week’s adventure.
Cemeteries are interesting on so many levels, so many of us have some kind of relationship with them.
Currently, as the global political climate is rapidly changing, there is a turbulent atmosphere of historical re-invention, where history is dangerously being buried and hidden away, dismissed and outright denied. A Society, having buried its mistakes and atrocities is doomed to repeat them, as the common wisdom demonstrates.

However many lies (and secrets) are buried in a cemetery, the intact and preserved cemetery still holds them truthfully. We as a society can go to the old cemetery and question and observe what has been saved.

In this photo, the tension between the needs and desire for order in things and places and the uncertainty, disorder and chaos of current American life are in a grotesque contrast. Many of the plants that are covering these elegantly carved tombs are invasives imported from Asia that have outcompeted the native vegetation and have made the ruins of Mt Moriah Cemetery very difficult to stabilize.
The very geometrical tombs stand in contrast to the wild and uninhibited overgrowth. Here, the unmistakable tension between the “natural world” and human expectations and aspirations of order and beauty are on full display unintentionally. Epic ruins such as Mt Moriah Cemetery challenge our perceived relationship with the “natural world”, and in this case, other species, mostly plants, and interestingly enough, plants imported from other global regions that have grown outside our society’s own expectations of them.
The Romantic era from the Mid 1800s understood the beauty and mystique of ruins. These stones were made to evoke a ruined stone wall. Quite the irony here I must point out: a grave created to celebrate a romantic vision of ruins, to stir that innate sense of eternity and the transcendence of the spiritual world in favor of the built realm, is relegated into ruin, here at Mt Moriah Cemetery
. It could be interestingly argued that perhaps Mt Moriah would be more beautiful if left completely alone, in the most Romantic sensibility. However, I would argue it is worth stabilizing because the invasive vegetation and trees are destroying the beautiful architecture and integrity of the cemetery. The trees and vines are pulling down the monuments, destroying the beauty of the cemetery. Pulling down the history, the aesthetic intention.

What is striking here is how quickly in time the older generations are forgotten in our society. Who they were and what they went through has been lost in the histories of so many American families. We get so caught up in our current worries, anxieties and day to day existence that our ancestors are forgotten. Immediately upon inspection, it is duly noted that their history and struggles are doomed to be repeated if we blithely disregard and ignore our own blood relative’s and ancestor’s struggles!
This picture says it all. This could be any of us down the long hard cold cruel world of history and the future. Who knows, perhaps whoever was buried here would laugh at this and accept this fate because they had a life contemplating the understanding of the decrepit nature of our built and ordered world. I would most certainly hope so, because this is where we are all going, and let’s hope for it, because it is so romantically beautiful.