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Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
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The Dahlia Lady brightens Lampton Lane with huge fall flowers On Lampton Lane, the garden is populated with plants with known pedigrees, with their own stories, aided by pest fighting garden spiders, and the loving care of Virgie Claycomb. It's a rewarding enterprise, even though the Claycombs have to contend with aphids, deer, and now, a renegade emu. It tromps where it pleases. By Ed Waggener For Virgie Claycomb, a flower with a story has so much more meaning. Just as old families put so much stock in lineage, and horsemen watch bloodlines, Ms. Claycomb, who is now retired after a career as an Adair County Health Department nurse, prefers flowers with a history she can recite. Recently, spectacular dahlias were the crowning glory of a her neat flower and vegetable gardens on Lampton Lane. Her favorite dahlia, she said, was her mother's Old Red, which came from the 1949 New York State Fair. Her garden does allow for some plants whose stories are beginning with life on grounds of her home, which sits next to the Judge Jerry Vaughan estate on land in the Bliss Community, land which was once part of the farm owned by the late H.R. Claycomb, the father of Virgie Claycomb's late husband, David Claycomb. A spray of variegated flowers neighboring her Old Reds have shows of red, yellow and and white. They are pretty, but not her favorites. Their Claycomb history is just beginning. But the lavender blooms bring a sparkle to her eyes. They've been in the Claycomb family for 46 years. The first bulbs came from Clara Van Zant of Edmonton, a fact which will never be forgotten, if Virgie Claycomb has anything to say about it. She hopes that 100 years from now, the flowers history can be recited from Clara Van Zant to Virgie Claycomb to all the subsequent dahlia fanciers. With her, it's much the way for flowers the way it is with South Pacific islanders' recitations of the generations of their ancestors, or the "begats" in the old Testament. Flowers have more meaning when their stories are remembered. Deep peach-hued dahlias are next to the lavenders And then come a dahlias with a deep peach hue. They're real counters. They came from a gardener near chance. Her husband had traded for them several years ago. Her newest are little pink cactus type dahlias, which she likes now, but will wait a few seasons before they become fully Virgie-approved. In the last four feet of the dahlia there are flowers with huge purple blossoms. "They may never be my favorites," she said, reaffirming her zeal for her Mother's Old Reds from the 1949 New York State Fair, "but I think they are my second choice, already," she said. Growing the flowers takes patience, careful monitoring Raising dahlias takes time and a careful monitoring of the calendar. The bulbs are taken up every fall and replanted each spring. On the visit, Ms. Claycomb said she'd be labeling colors the next week, prior to taking them up after the first frost kills down the foliage. The dahlias will hibernate in careful dry storage inside until next spring, when they will be re-interred in Claycomb Garden on Lampton Lane. But a few bulbs, she says, are added frequently from Gurney's Seed & Nursery. Dahlias aren't for the growers unaccustomed to disappointment. "They're disease prone," she said. Dahlias are subject to pests like aphids, and occasionally suffer from leaf-spot and dahlia wilt. Bad bugs are fought with garden arachnoids, the magnificent Agriope spiders so admired and protected by residents in the Bliss and Gradyville area. "We've got five I'm watching in the gardens," Virgie said. And one special one, which is harvesting evil insects in its webs on the back deck is being left alone for a while. Later, though, she'll carefully move its egg sac to a spot in the garden where the next year's spiders' work will be even more effective. Deer are another problem in the garden, not for the dahlia. But they are especially fond of the vegetables Virgie Claycomb grows. The deer are mean on her corn and tomatoes. Still, the small, well-tended beds provide all the corn and tomatoes they want, plus okra, green onions, green beans, green and habernero pepper, and potatoes. "We'll have lots of potatoes," she says. New threat from half a world and five miles away One new threat to the garden has arrived from half a world away, orginally, but maybe only five miles away at present. It's an emu, believed to have arrived from the Adair-Green County frontier. The emu is an interesting sight, but the huge ratite has bad garden manners, and tromps where it pleases. That displeases Ms. Claycomb's son, David Wayne Claycomb. "He's after it right now," she said. The emu may be the second largest non-native flightless bird in Adair County, but it's not welcome on Lampton Lane. Not until it changes its evil ways and learns proper garden etiquette. This story was posted on 2006-10-16 05:13:12
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