6 Hawks checked in briefly, excited to share the women who encourage his outdoor enthusiasm. This is what he sent. In his words, "Get out there in it!"

Immediately, three women come to mind when thinking of influences of my love of the great outdoors. Mother Nature number one is Mom. Despite some things I didn't enjoy, she gave me my appreciation of the outdoors, the nicest gift anyone ever gave me. Second is Beth Maynor Young, the Birmingham river photographer who introduced me to Dennis Holt. One January day she took me wading up a frigid mountain stream to the most sacred spot I've ever visited - The Walls of Jericho. Awesome! Then there was a gaggle of nameless, faceless counselors at Nature Camp, a spot in the Shenandoah Mountains of Virginia that I populated for two weeks each teenage summer. These women handled snakes and salamanders and spiders and EVERYTHING! I was smitten, but can't remember a single one. I left there on a trajectory to be a marine biologist. Life intervened and my career ambition blossomed into my sanctuary where I go and explore during down time.

Adm. Raphael Semmes had a small house on the site of the Slaton property.  On August 30, 1877, he died here. A tugboat was dispatched from Mobile to carry his body back to the city for burial at Catholic Cemetery (see End Piece, March 2010).

Thomas Fry, a next-door neighbor, was one of the pallbearers. The Semmes' home, later owned by Col. Joseph Hodgson, editor of the Mobile Register, was destroyed in a fire in 1895. James McPhillips built a two-story home on the Hodgson site. In the 1920s, Marshall Turner of Mobile razed the house and used much of the material to build the current one-story structure.

Source: "Battles Wharf & Point Clear"

by Florence and Richard Scott

{White walls, bed linens and wicker furniture perfectly suit the sunshine-filled rooms. In addition to the sleeping porch, the house has three guest rooms and a master bedroom.}

{The house did not have a phone for years. A string ran from this bell to the house next door. When calls came in, a tug on the string would ring the bell and call the Slatons next door to use the phone. Nowadays, the bell calls family in from the pier.}

{Furniture in the house floated in Katrina’s surge, but the water entered and left quickly, so much of the furniture was not seriously damaged. Elizabeth Slaton purchased the dining room table and chairs for the house shortly after the family bought it.}

Photos by Jean Allsopp

There's a confluence of history, art and greenery here. By the banks of the Bon Secour River, the Boathouse Studio at Cooper's Landing is alive with tradition. Both American Indians and waves of European immigrants have tended plants here. Their spirits energize the sandy loam.

For decades, Pearcey gathered architectural art from antique shops, Dumpsters and swap meets. He has repurposed art deco panels, building icons and garden tiles as display elements for semitropical foliage, converting the lawn into a feast for the eyes.

My host is more of a guide than an entrepreneur. He immerses me in tales of the landing and antebellum home, origins of art pieces, and care and propagation of plants. The mystique of segos, agaves and ferns grasps me like an ebbing tide. Though the encounter is more induction than sale, I find myself going home with one of each plant.

TAKE HOME TIPS:

"We're blessed with an environment where you can put almost anything in the ground and it will grow," Pearcey says. Segos are "programmed for survival." Toss chunks of a core or seeds from a friend's plant into your leaf compost and forget them. That's how Pearcey's 700 segos started.

The BoatHouse studio At Cooper's Landing, P.O. Box 277, Bon Secour. 949-6489.

Photo Information: Lloyd and Diane Pearcey's greenhouse is a tropical oasis. This agave, a California import, would have perished during this winter's freeze without the shelter of the greenhouse.