South Carolina Country Roads by TOM POLAND

Author:TOM POLAND
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2018-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

DOWN IN CAMELLIA LAND

PARTI

DATELINE I-20 WEST, FEBRUARY 11: I’m making my way to Edgefield to attend Edgefield Camellia Club’s annual Camellia Tea. As soon as I take Exit 18 onto Highway 19, everything changes. I-20’s bland corridor of cars, trucks and tedium gives way to thick, green cedar groves, sprawling pine-edged fields, stately avenues of oaks, an abandoned home or two, historic plantations, horses and a curious collection of what appears to be forsaken eighteen-wheelers in a powerline right-of-way.

My goal is a leisurely one: saunter around Edgefield a bit and take photos and make mental notes. I will arrange my day to end at Magnolia Dale, circa 1843, site of the first residence in Edgefield and home to the Edgefield County Historical Society. That’s where the Camellia Tea will take place.

It’s one of those days when it’s good to be out and about. Cirrus clouds etch scrimshaw feathers into a deep blue sky. Golden daffodils shine at ground level with backdrops of green fields of rye. Explosions of camellia blooms, I’m told, will add their voices to the chromatic chorus.

My first stop is in Trenton at Darby Plantation, home to “Miz” Clarice Wise and a camellia garden some eight decades old. I ring the doorbell to no avail. That’s ’cause Miz Clarice is outside. Spying me, she motions me over to the entrance of her walled camellia garden. “Daddy started it in the early 1950s,” she tells me, adding that the “cold snap” got her camellias, and it’s true. Freezing temperatures burned a lot of them. Still, pristine blooms live among the beautiful losers. In the blue light of winter, camellia blooms appear a bit subdued but nonetheless glorious. Their colors range from cherry red, lipstick pink and velvety cream to blood red, all framed by glossy green leaves.

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