Budding Beauties

Admiring South Carolina’s spring fields

By Robert Clark

Photography by Robert Clark

The colors of cosmos under the cosmos. These cosmos flowers are related to the sunflower family. We are related to the cosmos, our universe. Counting the colorful flowers in this field is equally as daunting as counting stars in the night sky.

Van Gogh wrote, “Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.” Perhaps the artist understood the beauty found in fields. Let’s step out of our normality and enjoy nature in fields across South Carolina.

A light rain transcends a blooming peach orchard into an ethereal work of art. Surviving early freezes, the blooms soon fruit and are subject to hailstorms, wind, drought, and proper amounts of rainfall before ripening as the state fruit of South Carolina.
A light rain transcends a blooming peach orchard into an ethereal work of art. Surviving early freezes, the blooms soon fruit and are subject to hailstorms, wind, drought, and proper amounts of rainfall before ripening as the state fruit of South Carolina.

Fields provide the first harbinger of spring’s arrival. A field’s unshaded open spaces allow the increasing sunlight to strike a warming earth and germinate seeds, flowers, crops, or orchards of trees bursting into bloom. Spring is the ideal time to invigorate our souls, get out of the house, and savor the outdoors! Where should we look first? For me, it will be the fields of spring!

Farmers spend countless hours during winter months preparing for the arrival of spring across South Carolina. Farm equipment is repaired, oiled, and “tuned up,” ready to work the fields again and prepare a sweet-smelling earth for vegetables, grains, and fruits. Fields of peach and apple trees are pruned, awaiting spring’s growing season.

South Carolina’s peach and apple country offer flowering orchards and fields stretching for miles, resembling the finest artwork of Monet and Van Gogh. Peach blooms of delicate pink serve as reminders to return in a few months to savor the sweet, succulent taste of South Carolina’s state fruit. Further up the road in the Upstate, the white blooms of apple trees will soon fruit and beckon to return in the fall to enjoy colorful baskets of delicious fruit. Look for fields with vegetable stands nearby, and plan on returning soon to enjoy the in-season fresh harvest from the fields.

Daffodils blooming beneath large oak trees on the edges of fields are the last remnants of an abandoned home site. Odds are that a tenant home existed in this spot, and tenant farmers most likely worked the surrounding fields decades ago. Hardly anyone can pass a field of sunflowers without stopping for photos. Note how the sunflower follows the path of the sun during the day before resting during the night hours. Fields not planted in a current crop display a succession of wildflowers in a rainbow of colors. Bachelor buttons, daisies, wild roses, daffodils, coreopsis, cosmos, blackberries’ blossoms, and Queen Anne’s lace are just some of the numerous species in the fields.

Don’t overlook deer, turkey, birds, rabbits, and other wildlife feeding on field edges right before sunrise. Fields provide seeds and tender succulent growth essential for wildlife nourishment.

In the language of flowers, coreopsis means always to be cheerful. Coreopsis flowers attract insects, bees, and butterflies. On this day, blue skies, bright flowers, and butterflies fluttering overhead ensure this field is cheerful to the soul.
Wild blackberries ripening at a field’s edge are ready for picking and finding their way to the dinner table in pies, cobblers, and salads. Many of us remember the worst side effect of picking blackberries: chiggers, or red bug, bites on ankles and calves. The popular Southern dessert made from blackberries surely seems made from “scratch.”
Nature overwhelms a rough hewn cedar wood fence post and rusty barbed wire beside an abandoned field. The fence post alone tells us this field is long in the tooth. Overgrown with grasses and wildflowers, perhaps this field once supported crops of cotton, corn, or livestock. Today, we can only wonder as we admire the Queen Anne’s lace in the breeze.
Waterpower replaces horsepower; after fields have been planted and fertilized, the necessary ingredient becomes water. Drought in the spring growing season causes crops to wither, become undersized, and destroyed before market. Enter the irrigation system. Ground or pond water is pumped through irrigation pipes to water the field, making it less dependent on rainfall for successful crops.
A field’s open spaces absorb large amounts of sunlight and warm the earth beside cooler forests. As nighttime cools the air, the field’s temperature reaches the dew point and the atmosphere condenses moisture we know as dew. If the air becomes super saturated with moisture, fog occurs. Technical terms aside, this spring field is an artistic delight and needs no such explanation.
A spring wheat field surrounds an old farm structure in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. What keeps this building from being razed? Perhaps this farmer’s sentimental attachment to the structure will remain strong and preserve a rusty tin roof structure seldom seen across South Carolina in 2019.
Historic Brattonsville re-enactors plow a field as did farmers hundreds of years ago. Using a mule for horsepower, plowed fields are opened, furrowed, and prepared for seeds or tender plants to provide food in the months ahead. Farmers talking and directing their mules provide a cultural treasure seldom heard in modern times.
Historic Brattonsville re-enactors plow a field as did farmers hundreds of years ago. Using a mule for horsepower, plowed fields are opened, furrowed, and prepared for seeds or tender plants to provide food in the months ahead. Farmers talking and directing their mules provide a cultural treasure seldom heard in modern times.
A field of Helianthus annuus, or common sunflowers, is grown for oils and seeds. Domesticated in America, the flowered stem follows the path of the sun during the day. The face of the flower head also follows Fibonacci numbers, allowing the most seeds mathematically to fit in the flower head.
A field of Helianthus annuus, or common sunflowers, is grown for oils and seeds. Domesticated in America, the flowered stem follows the path of the sun during the day. The face of the flower head also follows Fibonacci numbers, allowing the most seeds mathematically to fit in the flower head.
Portions of a double rainbow shine above a grove of flowering crabapple trees at Milliken Forest in Spartanburg. Spring’s ever-increasing sun angle warms the atmosphere, causing trees to bloom and rainstorms to develop. Sunlight, rain, and 42 degrees F result in rainbows during the first two hours of sunrise and the last two hours of sunset.
Portions of a double rainbow shine above a grove of flowering crabapple trees at Milliken Forest in Spartanburg. Spring’s ever-increasing sun angle warms the atmosphere, causing trees to bloom and rainstorms to develop. Sunlight, rain, and 42 degrees F result in rainbows during the first two hours of sunrise and the last two hours of sunset.

«  back to issue