Spent nearly 6 hrs touring the Magnolia Plantation and Gardens this afternoon. Originally founded in the late 1800's by the Drayton Family, it has remained in their family down through the years. Through all the early years the family made their fortune by growing rice in fields/ponds cleared by slave labor. This proved to be very profitable for them and they soon became one of the richest families in the area.

   The original house was two stories tall and built of brick and native stone, a classic style of plantation home. It was hit by lightning at some point and pretty much burned to the ground. Even the foundation was unusable so they ended up rebuilding their second home where the house is today. This house was also a large, typical, rich plantation owner home. This home remainded standing throughout the Civil War, but was finally burned down as the Union Troops left the area after the city of Charleston was captured.

   So the third house was built on the bones of the 2nd house. It's a very nice two story, wood framed home with huge porches all the way around supported by rows of large white columns. This may be because the family fortune at this point after the Civil War was nearly gone, so it is a very nice house all in all. The plantations life as a rice producer was pretty much over with the end of the Civil War. Facing hard times the owner at that time sold about 1500 acres and leased the mineral rights to most of the rest to a mining company that was after a 2'-3' layer of ore that could be crushed and used as a source of fertilizer. Thus becoming one of, if not the original, strip mine in the USA. When the owner saw the damage being done to the land he managed to get most of the mining stopped and decided to open the house and grounds up as a get-away place for well to be patrons of Charleston instead.

   The gardens around the place became the central focus of many of the visitors and are one of the oldest gardens in the States. Nearly 300 different kinds of azalea's, numerous types of tree's and shrubs. All tied together with path's and ponds and beautiful views of the river.

   I took one 45 min tram tour of the grounds narrated by a very knowledgeable guy who could talk about any subject related to the house and grounds. He was very good at spotting birds, alligators and turtles and knew all their scientific names as well as their common names. It was well worth the few bucks it cost to go on it.

   Got home at sundown so there was no time for a forest walk this evening. Will get enough walking in tomorrow to make up for it if I can drag myself out of bed and get going early enough in the morning. Want to go into Charleston tomorrow and wander the streets of old town and see some of the old houses and other buildings. We'll see in the morning.

   Finally; It's been really interesting to me to write this blog and send it out there.  Have gotten some positive feedback from a few of my friends who have emailed me directly, otherwise I'm not sure what any one's impression of it is, as there have been no comment's logged so far. It appears that there are a few people who are logging on and taking a look though, of real interest to me is that there are 13 people in Russia and 3 in Germany who have logged on at least once. That is in addition to the 73 from the US so far. To all of you, whoever you may be, thanks for checking in, hope it has been of some interest to you and I hope you continue to look once in awhile and feel free to pass the site along to others if you think anyone else would be interested. Thanks.

Photo's from the trip to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens:

A small bridge over one of several ponds in the garden area.

One of my favorite types of flower, a very pretty purple iris.

There were several peacocks and lots of peahens on the place. This one decided it was time to try and impress the ladies. What is interesting to me, and of course a picture can't capture it, is that they vibrate their tail feathers at a high rate while they are all fanned out. (It makes a lot of noise). Of course lots of people trying to get a good picture of this while it was happening. One of them evidently made the mistake of getting in between this guy and the hen he was trying to impress... a screech, a fast lunge and the guy was doing a very fast retreat.

The plantation was located on the Ashely River just west of Charleston. For very many years the river was the only real way to get back ond forth between home and town. All of the supplies came in by boat and all of the products the plantation produced went out by barge.

Another nice iris, this one white.

They have a small petting zoo kind of set up at the plantation with lots of chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats and such. This guy is like the perfect rooster when I think about what they should look like. He was busy strutting his stuff up on a fence rail and crowing nearly non stop. None of the hens, that I could see, were even paying attention to him. Lots of people taking pictures of him too so I just had to outwait all of them.

Another view of the Ashely River.