Feeding the mosquitos

Edisto River, at Givhan's Ferry Park.

Local wildlife

Was riding by Crowfield Lake and decided to stop. It's only about a mile or two from home and I pass by it all the time, but for whatever reason I felt like taking some photos.

It's not much of a lake, really. More of a wide spot in Goose Creek, the waterway for which the city is named.

Crowfield Lake

There were about 8 or 10 of these guys floating on the surface, just sunning themselves. Who knows how many more were below.

People were standing off the shore with fishing poles, in the water up to mid-thigh. A couple of

kayakers

Same lake, same morning

You won't catch me doing this
in a lake full of gators

(or at all, for that matter)

were out there rowing around.

Now I know that gators aren't typically aggressive or hostile, and they prefer to stay away from people if given the chance. And I also know that when someone gets bit, it's usually because they stumbled into a nest or stepped on a gator, or otherwise pissed one off. I realize that gators are entirely different animals from crocodiles, and have a wholly different demeanor.

But I'm still not getting in the water with these guys. Nope. Not me. Water's their house, not mine.

Plus, I also know that the males can sometimes get downright ornery as we get closer to mating season.

"Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."

-- Hunter S. Thompson

Strawberry Chapel

In 1748, a seven year old girl named Catherine Chicken was tied to a headstone in the chapel graveyard by the town schoolmaster, and left there overnight.

Strawberry Chapel.

Strawberry Chapel

Strawberry Chapel

Link goes to sciway.net website.

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was built in 1775 as a parochial Chapel of Ease with the authority to bury the dead and perform baptisms.

At the time, the local parish church was Biggin Church,

Biggin Church Ruins

All that remains are the crumbling walls of the church.

The graveyard however, is still in use today. the ruins of which lie about 10 miles to the North, past Mepkin Abbey

Mepkin Abbey

A Trappist monastery located in Berkeley County, SC. A group of Roman Catholic monks who follow the Rule of St. Benedict. A Branch from the Order of Cistercians of Strict Observance. .

There are many stories surrounding the chapel, most of them wildly exaggerated or entirely fabricated. Superstitious folks consider it to be one of the Charleston area's haunted attractions. At least one of the stories appears to be true, and that is the story of Catherine Chicken.

Naturally, countless variations of Miss Chicken's story exist, some more embellished than others. But the most common and more verifiable elements follow.

It is a rather long story, but read on... It's worth it.

Catherine Chicken was the granddaughter of James Child, who founded the town of Childsbury in 1707. Her father, George Chicken, was a member of the Goose Creek militia who was involved in driving the Yemassee Indians out of the state.

Catherine was sent to boarding school in Childsbury, and placed in the care of the harsh and extremely strict schoolmaster and his wife, Monsieur and Madame Dutarque.

One day Catherine lost track of time while playing outside, and as a result, she returned late without having completed the chores or punishments she had been given earlier.

The schoolmaster went into a rage, telling her that if she insisted on being outdoors, then outdoors is where she would stay for the night. He tied her to a headstone in the Chapel graveyard, and left her there.

A neighbor heard her cries and initially mistook the sound for an owl, but he soon began to think it sounded like Catherine. He went to the Dutarque's home to check on her, but was told that Catherine was staying with her aunt.

Sensing that something wasn't right, he saddled up his horse and rode to the aunt's home only to learn that Catherine was not there. He alerted the townsfolk that the girl was missing, and a search ensued.

A young slave boy by the name of Mooney was prowling about in the area. Mooney was prone to sneaking out at night for jaunts through the forest and swamp. He he carried with him a long tree branch, and he had fastened a gourd to the end of it. The gourd had been carved with the image of a face, and he would place a lighted candle inside. He carried the branch with the lighted gourd held high, giving the illusion of a ghostly demonic glowing face floating through the woods at night.

Mooney may very well have been frightened by the sounds of moaning coming from the graveyard, but seven-year-old little Catherine, tied to a tombstone in a graveyard at night, was likely much more frightened by that glowing floating face approaching her.

He found her quite by accident, but was afraid to call attention to her thinking he might be beaten for being out after curfew. He was unable to untie her, but stayed with her until he heard the delirious girl cry out the schoolmaster's name and ask why he had left her there. Mooney worried that the word of a slave would never be taken over that of the respected schoolmaster but ran to the local town doctor anyway, to report what he had found.

Catherine was not expected to live. She was struck mute, and her face was drooped with palsy. She was bedridden for days, and though she thrashed about in the throes of obvious nightmares, she didn't speak or utter a sound.

She survived, and eventually she mostly recovered but was disfigured for the remainder of her life.

The schoolmaster was stripped to his undergarments, tied in a rear-facing position to the back of a donkey, and ceremoniously drummed through the center of town by the militia's drummer-boys as the residents pelted him with rocks, fruit, and eggs as he passed through town. Still tied to the mule, he was placed aboard a ferry to cross the river, where the mule was struck with a whip. The mule bolted into the woods, still carrying the backward-facing, nearly-naked Monsieur Dutarque on its back.

The town of Childsbury was wiped out by a malaria epidemic in the 1750s, and no longer exists. Only the vandalized ruins of the chapel and accompanying graveyard remain.

Strawberry Chapel is listed in the National Register

Strawberry Chapel

Link goes to the Historical Marker Database website (hmdb.org)

(page will open in new tab/window)

of Historic Places.

Mepkin Abbey

Graves in the garden terrace

Neatly tucked away between the Western edge of the Francis Marion National Forest and the Eastern banks of the

Cooper River

Cooper River

View from the Eastern bank
at the Mepkin Abbey garden

, a group of Roman Catholic Monks belonging to the worldwide Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance live in quiet reflection.

In accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict, they devote their lives to prayer, spiritual study, work and hospitality

Stairway to somewhere

Mepkin Abbey

Mepkin Abbey

Link goes to the Abbey's official website.

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(established in 1949) is a Trappist monastery located in Berkeley County, SC, nestled between Moncks Corner and the ruins of Biggin Church

Biggin Church Ruins

All that remains are the crumbling walls of the church.

The graveyard however, is still in use today. to the North and the abandoned remains of Strawberry Chapel

Strawberry Chapel

In 1748 a 7-year-old girl was tied to a headstone in the chapel graveyard, and left there. She survived. Barely.

Then things got weird. to the South, where town of Childsbury once stood.

The property was known as Mepkin Plantation when Henry Laurens bought it in 1762. A few generations later, his family sold the land, and after passing through the hands of several different owners it was eventually puchased in 1936 by the well-known magazine publisher Henry Luce (Famous for Time, Fortune, Life, and Sports Illiustrated, among others).

Pond near the garden terrace

Luce's wife (Claire Boothe Luce) commissioned an extensive landscaping project to build what became known as 'Mepkin Garden'.

The garden and a large area of adjoining land were donated by the Luce family in 1949 to the Trappist Order's Gethsemani Abbey.

At the highest point on the eastern edge of the garden terrace, there are a few burial plots with the graves of the Luce family.

A (much older) small walled graveyard is also located nearby on the grounds of the monastery, with the graves of the Laurens' family .

I got photobombed by an insect. I thought it was a
mosquito, but I'm told it's a crane-fly.

In the photo of the Luce graves at the top of this post, a wedding party can be seen in the distance. The gardens at Mepkin are a popular place for weddings, especially during the Spring and Summer months.

I don't care what anybody says, Springtime in South Carolina is just the prettiest dang thing you ever saw. And the gardens are so close to the river that summer isn't usually oppressively hot here. I did my best to not disturb the wedding party while I wandered around taking photographs.

A blue flutterbee.
"Red-Spotted Purple", supposedly,
but that sounds like a made-up name.

The monks at Mepkin grow rice and oyster mushrooms, which are available for sale at their gift shop and a few local grocery markets.

They trade food and supplies with other Abbeys, so many items from other locations are available in their gift shop.

The Mango-Pepper Jelly from an Abbey in Virginia is delicious.

They also raise chickens and they once sold eggs locally, but after the idiotic terrorists at PETA launched a protest against them for keeping chickens, they stopped selling the eggs.

Mepkin Plantation is listed in the National Register

Mepkin Plantation

Link goes to the Historical Marker Database website (hmdb.org)

(page will open in new tab/window)

of Historic Places.

Below is an interactive flash mini-panorama that I made by taking dozens of photographs in the garden, and then stitching them together. You can click and drag the mouse on it to scroll 360-degrees left or right, or you can use the arrow keys. Shift and Ctrl will zoom in/out (the mouse wheel does the same, but this may not work depending on your browser and configuration). Be warned though: Going too fast may induce vertigo.

Magnolia Plantation

Located on the Southern bank of the Ashley River just outside the city limits to the West of Charleston, SC, Magnolia Plantation

Magnolia Plantation

Link goes to the official website for Magnolia Plantation & Garden "

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is one of the oldest plantations in the South, and has been owned by the same family for over 350 years and 15 generations.

The plantation home

The land where Thomas and Ann Drayton built their home and a formal garden in the late 1670s was originally a rice plantation.

The core of the current house was built near Summerville, SC before the Revolutionary war, and floated down the Ashley River after the War between the States.

The plantation was owned by another Thomas Drayton (the great-grandson of the Thomas Drayton who bought the land) until his death in 1825 when, having no sons of his own list as heirs in his will, he bequeathed the land to the sons of his daughter Sarah.

A beautiful day to relax in the grass

A condition of the will stipulated that his grandsons Thomas and John Grimké were required to assume their mothers's Maiden name of Drayton in order to collect the inheritance.

John Grimké-Drayton later became the sole owner while studying for the ministry in England, after learning that his brother Thomas had died of a gunshot wound on the steps of the plantation home.

In 1838 Grimké-Drayton attended Episcopal seminary in Philadelphia, where he met and married Julia Ewing.

Showing off his plumage

The plantation did not become famous for its gardens until some time later, after Grimké-Drayton was struck with consumption.

Believing the outside air would do him some good, he spent much of his time outdoors extensively reworking the gardens in an English style.

He intended to create a series of romantic gardens to make his bride Julia feel more at home in the lowcountry, and reportedly confided to a fellow minister in Philadelphia of his desire "...to create an earthly paradise in which my dear Julia may forever forget Philadelphia and her desire to return there."

What's this guy doing here?

It is thought that he was the first person to introduce Azaleas to the Americas, and those Azaleas (along with the majestic Live-Oaks) were among the many things for which the gardens became well-known.

After Union troops burned the house in the War between the States, Grimké-Drayton opened the gardens to the public in 1870 as a tourist attraction to make money. The gardens at "Magnolia-on-the-Ashley" (as it came to be known) were the first privately owned gardens to be opened to the public.

The house and the slave cabins have been restored, and the plantation/home now serve as a museum and tourist attraction.

Magnolia Plantation is listed in the National Register

Magnolia Plantation

Link goes to the Historical Marker Database website (hmdb.org)

(page will open in new tab/window)

of Historic Places.

Roaming around...

God's Acre Healing Springs

God's Acre

Link goes to sciway.net website.

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is an unusual place located off-the-beaten-path in Barnwell County, South Carolina.

About 60 miles South from the state capital of Columbia is a small Mennonite community called Blackville.

Pipes have been driven into the rock

Four or five miles North from the town of Blackville along Highway 3 is the appropriately named 'Healing Springs Road', and the spring lies a mile or so East from the highway.

The water from the artesian spring is clean and pure, and many of the locals come here regularly to fill jugs. They say it tastes better than the city's tap water. Not having tasted the city's tap-water, I'm unqualified to give a personal comparison, but I can attest that the spring water does taste pretty good.

The history is rather vague and much of it is apocryphal, but the story behind the spring dates back to the Revolutionary War.

Runoff from the spring

The local native population considered the spring a sacred gift, and when a group of British soldiers were mortally wounded and left for dead by their countrymen after fighting in the Battle of Slaughter Field (a.k.a. 'Windy Hill'), the natives took them to this spring and cared for them.

Military records from the time show that the soldiers returned to Charleston a few weeks later, with all injuries miraculously healed.

It's called a Black Swallowtail,
I'm told. And it's male.
I thought it was called a flutterbee.

The story spread that the water had therapeutic properties or even mystical healing powers which had allowed the wounded troops to regain their health after drinking and bathing in it.

The Edisto Indians reportedly sold the land for a bag of corn, and the Healing Springs Baptist Church was built next door.

The church made the decision to forgo digging a traditional graveyard on the land, in order to keep the springs intact and undisturbed.

The land was owned by L. P. "Lute" Boylston until his death in 1944. In his last will and testament, he bequeathed the land to "God Almighty", ensuring that the water from its spring would always remain free for anyone to drink.

God's Acre is listed in the National Register

Healing Springs

Link goes to the Historical Marker Database website (hmdb.org)

(page will open in new tab/window)

of Historic Places.