A FEELING OF PRIMEVAL ROOTS

Early September in the Piedmont of NC is not usually the time of of year you experience mists rising off cooling bodies of water. It's still just too hot. Those conditions usually arrive with the beginning of earnest leaf drop.  So, I was pleasantly surprised this week upon waking to find I was in a 'Primeval Garden'. Foggy mists cushioned the verdant summer's growth and created a very theatrical look as I walked through garden spaces and looked down connecting garden paths. 

I thought it would be worth a post to Show why moments like these reinforce my love of the forest and the gardens I have made in it. 

Looking up the driveway you may remember the trimmed mounds of Abelia chinensis flanking the driveway. This morning the crunchy pea gravel leads eerily into the mists of nowhere. 

Turning around where I stood in the driveway,  the house is in deep shadow behind the silhouette of a mature China Fir that could be the back of a sleeping dinosaur. 

Conifers and tall ground cover shrubs point to the distant forest canopy shrouded in mystery. 

Ferns and Fatshedera moistened by the mists of the morning are at my feet.  I wade through to see.....

an inkling of civilization peeking out from behind a Paw Paw Tree sapling and Chinese Spice Bush. 

Looking to the left the 'Fern Walk' is soaked in moisture and the collection is anchored by a 3' wide Holly Fern. 

As I sit and ponder the aged Tulip Poplar rising out of Holly and Broad Beech Ferns,   I imagine early Mammoths wandering the fern covered floor of the woods.  

The naturally mulched path over 'Sometime Creek' leads me on........

to the bluff where a lightly leaf sprinkled moss path points East. 

On the return path to the house I see it is still shrouded in fog and plants are dripping wet. 

Huge native Magnolia tripetala leaves hang over a simple wooden bridge. Magnolia genus fossils have been traced back to 100 million years ago making Magnolias one of the oldest plants in the world. Who or what back then looked upon the great great great.....grandparent of this tree?

The beetles that pollinate Magnolias evolved with this plant. 

And a fairy's old greenhouse remind's me.......

As the sun leaks through the clouds I head back to the present. My imagination is buoyed and  refreshed to start the day.  I love the woodlands and enjoy the gardens in mine all year in all kinds of weather.