Home to My Valley is an ongoing series about the natural world, family history, and southern culture.

The title is a nod to a 1970 book about the people of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Valley written by my ancestor Paul Green, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Southern playwright who popularized the folklore of ordinary Southern people. Our roots in the Cape Fear River Valley - and belief in the literary quality of that place’s stories - are shared.

I began photographing my family’s land during the pandemic. At the beginning of 2021, my husband and I built a wooden boat in my parents’ outdoor shop. Weekend after weekend we made the hour-long drive from Durham to Buies Creek, North Carolina to work on this boat — a safe and quality outlet for spending socially distanced time with my mom and dad. Visiting home always felt like a respite. Reacquainting myself with my childhood home felt like a gift.

My parent’s land abuts the farmland that my mother’s family has owned for three generations. Back in the 90s, my parents purchased a tract of land near the farm to build our family a forever home. But my granddad had other plans. He’d heard that a piece of land in direct line of sight from his childhood home was up for auction. This mattered. He bought then pitched that land to my parents. They bit then built that home. We moved in the week before Hurricane Fran walloped our community in 1996. But that’s a different story.

On these boat building weekends there was always a moment when my mother fetched a five-gallon bucket, filled it with water, and lugged it to the freshest blooms on the property. I always walked with her. As she clipped and plunked the flowers into the bucket she planned to send to Durham with me, she’d tell me about them. When they typically arrived. How they did last year. What she liked about them. The conditions that suited them best. I listened, and saw those flowers through her eyes. Within the context of the land. Within the context of our family. Pretty soon I started looking at those flowers and that land with my camera.

In this first installment of Home to My Valley, I celebrate the flowers my mother loves the most: her camellias. A link to her father, and his mother. Who made a living farming the land next door. Who took pride in everything they grew. Be it tobacco, cotton, vegetables, or flowers. These bushes, situated on sandy soil beneath Carolina pines, connect her to them, to the place she loves, and to love itself. Drawing inspiration from modernist painters and textiles, I’ve manipulated these photographs to highlight the texture, beauty and atmosphere of the natural world where they grow. They are a celebration of what and how my mother loves. Of beauty and femininity. Of home.