The Editing Process

This garden does not want to show up in digital pixels. Most of the images are bleached in a white indistinct light. Without my photo editor I can't begin to adjust the images and try and make them good enough to post. Maybe it is the low sun and the dappled light that makes the camera unable to determine the light level.














Maybe it is the garden itself, embarrassed by the thick layer of weedy vines that has engulfed so much of it, ferns that have run rampant and packed the beds to over flowing and five foot tall Spanish Needles, Bidens bipinnata spread hither and yon, that the garden refuses to show its true self.

Potato Vines, Smilax, Cat's Claw Vine; Macfadyena unguis-cati, Virginia Creeper and a few more I don't recognize have buried huge chunks of the Azaleas and Camellias that fill this garden and climbed high into the Redbuds that sprout and grow where they can.














I can only begin a small portion of the editing process that begins a recovery, maybe, for this garden, the garden my grandmother planted, the big southern garden of my childhood. I tear and clip at the ground level not really tying to get at the roots of the invaders. That has to come in a second round. For now I work at giving the shrubs air and light, some breathing room.