A Visit to Buck’s Pocket State Park 1994

Note:  Buck’s Pocket has not always been a state park and there are lots of memories of visiting that area.  It’s a gorge and simply beautiful.  It’s said that defeated politicians go to the pocket to recover.  If you haven’t visited Sand Mountain you’ve missed a treat.  Stay tuned — I plan to blog about the mountain and it’s beauty after we have the trees and flora green again.

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Perhaps it was that trip to Buck’s Pocket State Pocket that did it, but the magnetism of the wildflower trail is just too much to resist.  Frustration is the only explanation  – the are so many things I have to do that I can’t do the things I want to do.  Of course, walking or standing on the wildflower trail is at the top of the want-to-do list.

There’s no way we could walk the wonderful trails at the pocket and not stop and study the flora growing there.  Oodles of wildflowers –  a virtual sea of them!  I’ve never seen so many May Apples in one place, along with Solomon’s Seal (both false and otherwise) to say nothing of ferns and trillium with a generous sprinkling of poison ivy.  The spring wildflowers won’t last long and it’s either stop doing everything else to see the show or miss the performance.  I choose not to do the latter.  Usually I try to stay one step ahead of the health department, as far as housekeeping is concerned; but hang the house keeping, let them come on — if they don’t like it, we’ll all leave.

The Windy Knoll wildflower trail, located in my favorite scope of woods, boasts six varieties of trillium and we have just been given a seventh.  A squeal of delight – like a child at Christmas – burst forth when I spotted a cluster of Bellwort, with its perfoliate leaves (perfoliate meaning the stem goes through the leaf) and bells of yellow blooms. Jack-in-the-pulpit is also growing in profusion, both the purple and green-throated varieties.

The trail has never been prettier, but we searched high and low for the Fire Pink, with its crimson blossoms, where it grew last year.  It’s a temperamental plant that doesn’t want the mulch around it and prefers to drop its seeds along side the rocks.  We gave up on our search and when we visited the Botanical Gardens Plant Sale in Huntsville recently, we purchased a new Fire Pink plant.  Later we were thrilled to find the evasive little plant in a new location..  It was not lost at all – but had just moved to a spot more to its liking.

What a joyous afternoon we spent at the plant sale.  Almost any plant one would desire could be found in one of the various tents, but I never dreamed we could find Creeping Fig!  And, suddenly there it was!  A number of years ago, for my birthday, I received a beautiful topiary – it was teddy bear made of sphagnum moss and sprigged with Creeping fig — a delicate little vine with round leaves.  We enjoyed Teddy for a year or more and then I forgot to water him for too long and the vine was dead.  That set off a search, which has lasted for four years.

This new Creeping Fig was also set on a topiary, but it was in the shape of a turtle.  The price was probably too much — but what the heck, it’s only money.  Never mind the cost, I’m happier with this than I would be a mink stole or a Cadillac.  Anyway its too hot for the stole and today the only trip I want to make is down the wagon road in my favorite scope of woods.  I couldn’t use a Cadillac there anyway.

Spring time at the Windy Knoll, wildflowers, jaunts in the woods with the One I Love Best and plant sales, with unexpected finds – this has to one of the best parts of country living.