Anticipation

Hampton Park hollyhock, Charleston, South Carolina
Success in growing hollyhocks has eluded me thus far. Maybe this year?

As I anticipate what the new year will bring, I host a mini-retrospective of photographs I made over the course of the year that ends today. 

Here is one of several Chinese fringe flowers I bought with an Abide-A-While  gift certificate a group of generous colleagues gave me almost ten years ago. Lately I've allowed the Loropetalum to sprawl. The effect late last January? Magnificent!

A year or two ago I traveled to Carolinia Nursery in North Augusta, SC to find this Star Magnolia which I brought home and planted out front. I bought it as a reminder of the Star Magnolia I saw in Kyoto, Japan soon after the March 11, 2011 earthquake. 

Just one of several day lilies descended from ones I purchased from Roycroft Nursery in Georgetown, SC.

This rambling rose I brought from eastern North Carolina where it thrived on a ditch bank.

It must have been nearly twenty years ago that my daughter brought home a starter for this rambling rose after a visit to the site in central North Carolina where her father and his third wife were building a home. These roses bloom profusely each May. 

Growing on the Eastern North Carolina farm that has been
in my family for generations, this quince is beginning to dwarf the woodshed.

This mockingbird often kept me company in the garden last winter. Will it return?