Redbuds are an oddity to me. I have never seen a tree produce flowers in the same way. In early Spring little purple flowers appear along seemingly smooth bark and cover the branches. When the leaves start to come the flowers drop. Janie got our two trees at a Nature Conservancy sapling giveaway. They were tiny slips that I put in the ground with little hope of success. They are both healthy and tall, twelve years on.
Camellias make our winters more bearable from a gardening point of view. Just when all flowers give up and disappear, camellias burst into bloom around Christmas and continue for two months.
My neighbor, Clyde, is an avid gardener and those beds are his winter vegetables, now passed. He gave us a bunch of collards and I made stuffed collard leaves, wonderful. Collards are so good fresh from the ground. Much less bitter.
