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A Staycation as fun as Vacation
I’ve always been a day-tripper. With seven kids, and “home” usually lasting two years, it was always as if we were always on vacation. When we moved to a new location, I grabbed brochures, AAA tips, and filed away all the interesting, beautiful, exciting, educational places near by and made sure we saw as many of them as we could before IBM moved us on up the road. We saw all kinds of museums and out-of-the-box attractions, hiked trails, splashed in streams, collected all kinds of things, and experienced history, all usually within 3-4 hours so we could pack a lunch and be home for supper.
Now it’s the two of us, in another new location, so off I go again. Today I visited Pinkham Gardens in Suffolk, VA, an hour and a half from Edenton. This isn’t a public garden, so if I hadn’t been traveling with Sound Gardeners Garden Club, I wouldn’t have had such an opportunity. Mr. Pinkham is a plant collector and potter. Mrs. Pinkham is a hybridizer of lilies, and a judge of lily competition. Both had so much knowledge to share and a passion for their work. Their property is like a State Arboretum, and a State Botanical Garden. I took so many pictures, my iPhone ran out of gas! We walked and walked, as if this fairy land would never end. I took a page of notes, some were plant names, but mostly of things I need to know, and maybe didn’t know I needed to know. For instance, I never knew that when a bromeliad bloomed it was done. Forever. I never knew there was a tool for separating the big chunks of lily, hosta, or iris roots, other than stomping on the shovel. It’s called a root separator! How have I missed out on that wonder of the world? So many plants, so little time. When I grow up, I want to be a plant collector. And I’ll need a cadre of flower-workers.
Take a look around you, find something to see, then go, have yourself a staycation. When it’s so close to home it doesn’t seem exotic, but most of the time, it really is a homegrown gem.