A live Fall-Flourish Centerpiece

Halle Russell, a floral designer for Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden, shows us how to make a simple, beautiful, live centerpiece packed with fall flourish!

Southern Stories

Working at a botanical garden in the south and seeing plants you'd typically find in your grandmother's garden can evoke fond memories! In addition our current exhibit, Come Sit A Spell, and the furniture and programming that we have based on the exhibit have led me to remember very special memories of my beautiful grandmother. Because of the southern connection and memories we asked our guests to write down their favorite "southern-time" stories and share with us!

I will admit I have too many great memories and not enough space in this blog to write them all. One in particular is remembering how my grandparents used to can every summer and I could not wait until the time was right to eat all of the special things they were preparing...especially the grapeleaf pickles! Not too many people seem to know what they are, but it's a sour pickle that is just a little bit of southern goodness! I loved summers with my grandparents and especially with my grandmother whose love you could feel with all the summer goodies she would create. She turned 91 this year and still cooks her legendary meals for us today. I loved sharing this story and hope that it reflects how much I love her and growing up with her meant to me (I had to attach a picture of her to just show how adorable she is)!

If you have a special memory like this we would love to hear it! Please send in 250 words or less a favorite "southern-time" story to southernstories@dsbg.org by July 30. The winner will recieve a $250 grand prize and be featured on the Garden's Facebook Page. Stories can also be submitted to the following postal address: DSBG Southern-Time Stories, 6500 S. New Hope Rd., Belmont, NC 28012.

Who We Are and What We do

There are three of us who are devoted to riding the bluebird trail every week from March through August, or whenever the last nestlings have fledged. We keep detailed records of each of the thirty-three nestboxes. We also are avid birders and spend time looking for and at birds as well as listening and identifying them by song, call, and chips. Every time we go out, there is something exciting for us to talk about with each other. It's pooled knowledge and our friendship has become solid because of it.

Although it is not necessary to have three persons to do our assignment, we like it this way because we have backup if one of us is not available on a particular day. One of us is a retired school teacher, another a retired power plant supervisor, and one is a retired manufacturing factory owner. Together it's an excellent team because of our broad background experiences.

The records that we keep on each box are kept in a large notebook. There is one sheet per box with information to be checked off or written in. The categories include: date, monitors' initials, partial or complete nest, number of eggs, number of chicks, and probable number fledged. The last category is always a guess as we usually don't know for sure that the chicks actually flew. They could have been attacked by predators, but we keep a positive view and count them as having fledged safely.

There are other records kept also such as location of the boxes and how the location affects the probability of box use. As a result of these records, we have moved unused boxes to locations that have resulted in nests in those boxes. We don't have it right yet and we expect to move a few more by the next bluebird season. Our project may not be of great interest to many folks but, to us, it's a fascinating study of the Eastern Bluebirds.