Free Manure and Hellebores!

Friday Meg and I went and picked up a 10' trailer full of horse manure. The manure was free , we were given the phone number of a horse farm not a mile from the house by the owner of Treefrog Nursery up the road. Because of the rain we have been having and my bald van tires the van got stuck twice behind this farm. Luckily they pulled us out with the tractor and loaded the trailer with 4 scoops of manure for us! Good neighbors no question!



Here is one of the two Camellias we purchased at Treefrog Nursery. The other is a double with huge red blossoms. This plant is around 3 foot tall. We still need to get about 5-6 more camellias.


Meg's sister brought her parents over today and she gave us these two huge hellebores from her garden in Chapel Hill. One plant had 18 blooms the other 20, seeds galore too.


These hellebores were in 3 gallon containers, I'm impressed such a nice gift.

While planting 2 camelias and 2 hellebores, I dug up the pignut hickory seed sprouting. I potted it, we'll see if I can grow one myself.

The morning included a hike with the Duke Natural History Group at Occoneechee State Preserve. I found this Brown Elfin on Spring Beauty. I'd never seen Brown Elfins near the Eno River at the park always found them along the Brown Elfin Knob Trail. Meg found 5 other Brown Elfins, in all we had 7 a pretty good number.

All that white among the grass is Spring Beauties, so beautiful don't you think?

And the prize of our morning Oconee Bells, Shortia galacifolia a new plant for me. Likely planted in this location as it is about 500 miles out of its range. We climbed a water fall to get to see and photograph them, not an easy task with my camera in tow.

For those of you that are bird watchers we also had our first of spring birds. Heard calling an Ovenbird then along the Eno River we heard then saw a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher.