An Interesting Shrub and Story On A Wednesday Walk

My photos today are from a walk that I took last month at Cromwell Valley Park in Baltimore County, Maryland. This is the paved trail that is right by the Nature Center at the park.

This trail takes you past some beautiful Evergreens, lovely scenery and the old cemetery there. It also takes you up to the Sherwood House which was built in 1935. The Sherwood House is where you will find the Park Office. I don't know that they offer tours inside of the House (definitely not right now) but I would love to see the inside sometime.

Anyway, I'm taking you just on the other side of Sherwood House to show you an interesting shrub that I saw there but first I had to walk by these pretty pink Azalea flowers. The Azalea shrub was behind a thin wire fence which I suspect is there to keep deer from eating the shrub.

Also, from the other end of the Sherwood House I took this photo of a small sitting and picnic area with the American flag displayed.

Here is the interesting shrub though that I wanted to show you.

I had no idea what it was but the leaves looked like a kind of Holly and it had green and purple berries on it about the size of a grape. I looked it up once I got home and I'm certain that it is a Grape Holly shrub. I dropped that little hint about the size of the berry being that of a grape but this is also where my interesting story comes in.

I kid you not! The very next day my father-in-law texted me about a plant that he has had in his yard for a couple of years now and wondered if I might know what it could be. I guess you can see where this is going! He said it had green berries on it the size of grapes and he was going to move it to another part of his yard. I asked if the leaves resembled that of a Holly and if the green berries turned purple and he said "why yes they do" on both of my questions. I told him that I believed it was a Grape Holly and explained how I knew that and just the day before had come across one and looked it up. Lol ... what a coincidence! I thought you might find that as interesting as I did so am sharing it here.

Anyway, that was my interesting story to go with the interesting Grape Holly shrub that I discovered on my walk at Cromwell Valley Park. I'll leave you with this last photo that I took on my way back to the vehicle. I thought the sky was quite pretty especially with the band of blue just below the clouds and that you might think so too!

Thank you @tattoodjay for #wednesdaywalk!!
Thank you @elizacheng for #makemesmile!!
All photos and text by me @deerjay. All rights reserved.