Our tree farm is about seven miles west of Lawrenceville. The property records are in Lawrenceville and that is where we made the buying deal. The city was founded just after the Civil War. It is a pretty little town, but kind of dead. Incomes are low. Everyone was friendly to me and very informal.

A very interesting are the accents. It is not quite the usual southern accent, more like a mixture of tidewater and upland.

Here are some pictures.

Every Southern town has a Confederate memorial, usually like this one: a sort of pensive single soldier standing on top of a column. In back of Johnny Reb stands the Lawrenceville Historical Society. It does not have long hours, so I have never been in inside.



Above is the Court House. I had a good time looking up the records of my property. It was all contained in fat books. As you got farther back, they started to be hand written.



Above is Main Street. If a cute little town was close to Washington, the houses would be worth a fortune. Here they are not. I think a dog sleeping in the middle of that street would not have much to fear from traffic.

Posted by Broadnax at 06:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really don’t like the American Indian Museum, but I really love the grounds. You can see natural plants and plantings around the place. I recall when it used to be just a field. I used to run there. It is nicer now.

Tobacco was a big part of Indian culture and the first crop English colonists really could make money selling. It built the colony of Virginia. These are some picture of Indian tobacco. Recently when I was down at the farm the hunters told me about tobacco. Southern Virginia used to be a big tobacco growing area, now less so. The tobacco lands have often been turned over to loblolly. When the tobacco grows, the bottom leaves turn yellow. These are the first harvests. Later the whole plant is dried.

If you look closely at the first picture, you notice the no smoking sign. I dislike smoking with a passion, but it is funny that we forget the importance of this particular crop.

I am hoping to build a pond on my land, so I took lots of pictures of the pond they have at the museum. I like the mix of cattails, lilies and the bald cypress. You would not guess this was right in the middle of urban Washington.

Posted by Broadnax at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)