Our itinerary today revolved around the tour for which we signed up yesterday. This plantation is one of the oldest ones in the area and is still in the hands of the original family after umpteen generations. The gardens are splendid even though the true blossoming of so many species of flowers and trees is still weeks in the future. Azaleas cover up for the rest of the laggards, though, and one has a sense of what lies ahead when spring arrives in earnest. Our tour guide (who was sometimes incomprehensible but no one seemed to mind) pushed us, cajoled us, guilted us, to hurry along the path, fie on taking photos, to be on time for the plantation tours that were on our tickets. This was not what I thought we were signing up for, but we went along with it. I think Jim was secretly happy--five minutes for the gift shop? Perfect. Lunch? At 1:45 we had ten minutes to grab a bite and then hurry to the bus to get back to town. This plantation deserves about two or three days of exploration. The swamps that have reestablished themselves after the demise of the rice plantings are full of bird and animal life. I swear that they breed alligators here; we saw more of the creatures than we have seen the entire trip up to this point. As usual, I couldn't take photos in the house, but it has quite an interesting history and was a pleasure to visit. Magnolia Plantation is a jewel, one whose glitter I barely glimpsed, but then I like to have things to bring me back.
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