Making It Grow is brought to you in part by The South Carolina Department of Agriculture Certified South Carolina Grown helps consumers identify find and buy South Carolina products.

McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina.

This family farm offers seasonal produce including over twenty-two varieties of peaches.

Additional funding provided by International Paper and the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and Farm Bureau Insurance.

♪ Well hello and welcome to Making It Grow.

I'm Amanda McNulty of Clemson extension, and thank you for letting us come into your house on Tuesday nights.

We hope that you've enjoyed our show even though it's been a little bit different.

We've enjoyed knowing that you're out there and hearing from you occasionally.

Terasa, it is the holiday time and do you all get all excited about decorating over there in Florence?

Me not so much, but my husband absolutely loves the holidays and recently put his creative talents to work, created two wreaths with fresh greenery collected right from beyond our backyard.

Well that sounds wonderful!

I'm afraid I've got to get on the stick and do some of that myself.

Well we got the hort team together at one of our Zoom meetings, and we know we have a very talented hort team, and we will let you see what you think about their musical abilities as we start with a rendition of Jingle Bells.

[Jingle Bells sung in unison] ♪ Dashing through the snow ♪ ♪ In a one-horse open sleigh ♪ ♪ O'er the fields we go ♪ ♪ Laughing all the way ♪ ♪ Bells on bobtails ring ♪ ♪ Making spirits bright ♪ ♪ What fun it is to laugh and sing ♪ ♪ A sleighing song tonight ♪ ♪ Jingle bells, Jingle bells Jingle all the way ♪ ♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride ♪ ♪ In a one-horse open sleigh, hey!

♪ ♪ Jingle bells, Jingle bells Jingle all the way ♪ ♪ Oh, what fun it is to ride ♪ ♪ In a one-horse open sleigh, hey!

♪ Happy holidays!

Well, Terasa, um, I don't know that our hort team should be making too many career change ideas right now into the the musical field.

How about you?

Yeah, good advice.

Terasa, one thing that we just love doing is Gardens of the Week, and we've got the Governor's Mansion holiday decorations.

I think you're gonna talk about mincemeat pies.

Tony's house is all fixed up and poinsettias of Doctor Faust.

A tree for their unusual decorations, and a New Year's Eve arrangement.

We've got a fun line up for tonight, but let's do start with that wonderful tradition you started with us, The Gardens of the Week.

We have an extended version today.

It's been so much fun seeing everyone's yard and gardening ideas, so let's take a look as we explore our holiday plants, decor, and greenery.

♪ Terasa, I know it's hard to pick those gardens of the week, and I think you do it without trying to make judgments, but you know, there's really, I don't think you could pick a bad one, do you?

No, they are all wonderful in their own way.

Yeah, and they are diverse.

That's one of the things that makes it so much fun.

The Governor's Mansion is fortunate because every year The Columbia Garden Club comes and decorates, and goodness gracious fresh greenery and all sorts of things galore.

♪ Well it's my great pleasure today to be speaking with Mardy Fair and Mardy is a member of the Columbia Garden Club as was my mother and as is my sister, so what a wonderful tradition to be speaking with you, and Mardy, y'all have another wonderful tradition besides mothers and daughters and grandmothers all being members of this club, of decorating the Governor's Mansion which then is usually so graciously opened to the public to see your lovely work, but this year things are very different and Nancy Bunch, she's our liaison with the Governor's Mansion, called and asked if we could do this so that we can still let the citizens of South Carolina see your beautiful work there.

So tell us who all was involved in working in your committee and what the theme was this year.

Well, first of all thank you, Amanda, for having me on your show.

It's such a blessing and an honor.

I'm a fan of yours and I'm a fan of Making It Grow.

But um, yes, our theme this year was Home for the Holidays.

We know right now we're in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and so a lot of people are dealing with restrictions on travel.

Most people are staying home.

They're not having the big parties that they're used to having.

We're not having big parties at the mansion this year like they do every year, so we kind of stuck with that with our theme, Home for the Holidays, and tried to keep things simple and back to basics.

We tried not to do, instead of large floral arrangements that may have been done in the past, instead we tried to limit things to just simple arrangements that wouldn't have to be refreshed, so a lot of what you see is greenery instead of floral.

Even though we are doing things differently this year it doesn't mean that we can't have our traditions, and so we see that y'all continued with the traditions, it's just that you did them a little differently, and they are absolutely beautiful, and I'd like to start with, of course, I think we have... we are so fortunate that our Governor's Mansion is situated in such a beautiful landscape, and y'all certainly started the welcoming at the outdoors.

You've got little small conifers there, lots of red ribbons, lots of greenery and I just love what you did with Santa Claus' boot.

What in the world was... who thought of that?

Well, thank you.

I saw those in the store and I called my co-chair.

My co-chair is Gwen Pruitt, and we were both in charge of the decorating committee, and we've never decorated the mansion before, so this was new to both of us.

So I said, "Gwen, I think I've found the perfect thing for the lamppost."

I said, "I can get something to tie him up there and we can hang a stocking from each lantern and put some greenery in the stocking."

I said, it'll be perfect," and so that's what we did.

We've got the stockings, we've got in each stocking, we have little Palmetto frond, we have some other little greenery in there.

We tried to do something that we wouldn't have to replace or replenish, so hopefully they'll hold up through the holidays, and we just thought that was a little touch and then my co-chair Gwen said we need a bow on them and so we did the red bow to add some pops, so...

It just looks lovely, and then as we enter the mansion again, you've got simple greenery around the door, a little bit of green bows and then a nice wreath, and we walk in, of course the living room is where the tree is, and what a beautiful tree you have there, and the mantel is also so lovely.

Talk about some of the things y'all did there, please.

Well, thank you.

We had some very talented ladies work on the mantels this year and I am not included in that very talented list, but they took again mostly South Carolina, we have the garland, but then they took Palmetto leaves, that Palmetto frond, again the smaller one, the magnolia leaves, boxwood, pitisporum, and they put it together in that amazing arrangement.

How they were able to put garland around that mirror, I'm still amazed.

It is so pretty.

And then under the tree you've got coordinated packages, but there's a little stuffed animal up there that seems to be a favorite of one of the family members, the four-legged family member.

That's correct.

That was a tribute to Mack.

It is supposed to be a bulldog stuffed animal in honor of Mack, and it can be for Mack for Christmas, so we had to stick something under the tree to honor him.

We also have a little rocking horse on the other side because to me a tree is beautiful but it's even prettier when you see gifts under it.

Yes, it is, it is, and then we have such a lovely entrance hall and stairwell, and that stairwell always has a garland on it, and this year you did it too.

It's not quite as elaborate, but it's very effective, and then the table that is right across from that has done beautifully.

Again, though, y'all are using lots of greenery, traditional greenery that we use in South Carolina, and we go into the room where Governor Haley's portrait is, and I think the way y'all wove that beautiful gold ribbon in feminized that garland so much.

It is beautiful.

Thank you.

Again, we had some help from wonderful garden club members and the way they did the magnolia that's picked right off the grounds of the Governor's Mansion and wrapped it with the garland and the gold ribbon, they really tied it in, and they used some gold balls to decorate, and it really ties in with the color of the portrait, too, and it helps bring it all together, and I want to give credit again to Nancy Bunch who kind of runs and manages the mansion and she's done that for as long as I can remember in the grounds and she helps cut a lot of the greenery so a lot of that greenery is actually from the grounds, especially the Palmetto fronds, the magnolia... She's delightful to work with.

She is delightful, she's so much fun and she's a pleasure to be with, so I want to give her credit.

And the creshe is just beautiful and I love the way you put pine cones around it.

It's lovely.

Well, thank you.

Some of those, we tried to get most of those pine cones from South Carolina, but they're a nice touch, and you see a little bit of garland around there too, so...

Yes.

And we have such a beautiful dining room and the McMaster family will of course have their immediate family there, and so y'all wanted it to to last long, and I think what you did was you used some of the beautiful silver at the mansion, and let that be your containers and kind of give you the glitz that you needed, and kept the arrangements a little simpler than usual, if I'm not mistaken.

That's correct.

We left most of the candelabras in place.

I'm a huge fan of candelabras and I feel like they're gorgeous in and of themselves, but when you add greenery around them it just makes a beautiful setting, so we left the candelabras on the dining room table.

They just did a simple arrangement in little bowls with holly, cedar, and berry arrangements, and one of the requests and the issues they had before, is when you have a dinner and the arrangement is so big and so beautiful you can't see the other people at the table, so we wanted to give them something that they could still gather their family around the table to eat, but yet they can see each other, they can move the bowls or the candelabra, shorten or lengthen the table.

If you notice that table's able to be adjusted in size, so they can feel free to move their arrangements to fit the number of people that are eating, and how they can see everyone but also to allow everyone to visually see each other.

We have portraits of many of the governors on display in the mansion and under Governor Campbell's portrait you used a lot of colorful Christmas tree balls.

I love to use color.

I love the way you did that.

I thought it really picked the room up.

Well, thank you.

I can't take credit for it, though.

I really gave some of the garden club members free reign.

We gave them all these materials, the South Carolina grown plants, and we said "you make this how you want to make it" and so that was done by one of our members and she did a great job.

She's incorporated magnolia leaves right from the grounds.

She had garland and she took those Christmas balls and added them in, and it really does look good.

And there are little touches here and there throughout, and we'll of course show all the pictures that y'all so kindly sent us.

One thing that really touched me was you said that the staff borrowed a little bit of greenery and they set up a room of sweet treats for the people who we really do hold dearest and in our hearts with gratitude, and those are the essential workers: housekeepers, people who have to go to work every day, and the doctors and nurses, and I thought that was such a lovely touch that y'all worked together to have that reminder of those to whom we should be particularly grateful.

That was a sweet touch by the staff.

Normally they do a large gingerbread house.

Instead they decided to do that small tribute to the first responders including teachers, like you said doctors, nurses and different people, and it's got candy, assorted candy, and it also has a little bit of greenery that they used, and we think they did a great job.

Well, there's so much to talk about and I want to thank you for the time that y'all spent, the long hours.

I see that y'all were wearing masks or face shields, following all the proper precautions.

And is there someone that we've forgotten to mention that maybe we need to give a special shout out to?

Yes, ma'am.

Two quick things: One is that the tree in the front den living room, that was decorated.

My sister is a member of the garden club, Graham Smith, and she was in charge of that, and she did a great job.

The new members decorate it so she actually just helped assist them, and they used, a lot of the ornaments are South Carolina made by South Carolina artists, so those are featured on the trees, so that's a little nice touch - a tribute to South Carolina.

And I also wanted to thank Governor McMaster and the First Lady, Mrs. McMaster, who were very gracious to open up their beautiful home to us, to allow us to decorate and to kind to be in their way.

We had boxes and leaves and we had everything everywhere, but they were so kind to let us come in and do that, so thank you and thank you for having me on your show.

They are very generous and I know it means a lot to Mrs. McMaster.

She loves to share the beauty of the mansion and we are glad that we were able to work with you this year and virtually allow our citizens to enjoy the beautiful work that y'all did, and we wish you the very merriest of Christmas and happy holidays to all.

Thank you, bye Amanda.

Well Terasa, I'm glad somebody else had to polish all that silver, and I wonder what might happen to be your favorite part of that.

It will come as no surprise the dog lover in me really liked seeing all that footage of that bulldog, Mack.

[laughs] And he got an early Christmas present too.

So Terasa, I think that we're now going to learn about mincemeat pies, and I think that's something that you and your Nan used to do?

We did.

The holidays, that's what I think of the most when I think about the holiday season is baking and making of sweets and sharing them with friends and family.

So let's take a look as I explore this British tradition.

♪ I've been baking with my Nan since I was knee high to a grasshopper.

We had a lot of holiday baking traditions, but one of my absolute favorite is mince or mincemeat tarts.

Now mincemeat has been enjoyed for many many years since the Middle Ages, but it has changed a lot over time.

As the name implies, it originally did contain meat and was a way to preserve meat without having to cure or dry or smoke, so it would be minced and might be mutton or beef or pork mixed up with some fruits and spices and served in pastry.

It was very hearty.

It's changed a lot over the years and doesn't usually contain meat these days.

I normally use a store-bought mincemeat but this year I'm so lucky that I have homemade that was made by a very dear friend from my hometown in Granville, New York.

The first step in baking is to gather all of your materials.

So we've got our pastry ingredients, tart tins, baking racks, mixing bowl, measuring devices, ice water, anything that you might need.

Preheat the oven to four hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

I use the same basic pastry recipe for all pies whether it's apple or strawberry rhubarb, pecan or these mince tarts.

It's super simple, consisting of shortening, flour, salt, and ice water.

Incorporate the dry ingredients.

So mix one teaspoon of salt into two cups of all purpose flour.

Now it's time to incorporate the shortening.

You'll do this with a tool known as a pastry blender.

The process can be a bit tedious, but you'll just keep blending until your entire mixture has approximately all the same size pieces.

Now you're ready to add the ice water.

It's hard to say exactly how much you'll need, approximately six tablespoons give or take.

I like to incorporate it with just a regular knife.

Once you think you have the right consistency, go ahead and get your hands dirty and form that pastry into a ball.

Place the ball of pastry in Saran wrap and put it in the fridge to chill.

The chilling process is going to help that shortening to harden a bit, resulting in a much flakier pastry.

While the dough is chilling, you can go ahead and grease your tart tins.

What I like to do is use the shortening wrapper and that way I can just rub it in the tins rather than having to use extra shortening.

I'm just making use of what would have been waste.

Now we have our chilled pastry and we are ready to roll it out.

Now you can use your countertop but I have a rolling mat that I like to use.

Be sure to flour that rolling surface so your pastry doesn't stick.

The goal is to get a nice, even, approximately one eighth inch pastry.

Once you have that accomplished, you're going to use a pastry cutter.

You'll see I have two different sizes, with the larger as the bottom crust and the smaller as the top crust.

So we'll start with the bottom.

My tart tins hold one dozen, so I want to cut out twelve bottom pastry pieces.

Now you want to work the pastry as little as possible so it stays nice and pliable.

So strategically place those cuttings to get as many as possible out of that piece of dough.

Once you have your twelve bottom pieces cut, you're ready to go ahead and insert them in your tart tins.

Try not to stretch the pastry during this process.

Using a long-handled teaspoon, place mincemeat in each of your tart wells.

You'll want to be careful not to overfill so that the filling doesn't bake out during the baking process.

What I like to do is try to incorporate just the solid part and leave as much of the juice behind to keep my tarts looking nice and neat, and try to prevent the filling from spilling out during that baking process.

Now we need to cut the tops.

Go back to the refrigerator, get out the dough that's still chilling.

Again, same process.

Roll it out on a floured work surface, trying to get an even one eighth inch thickness of pastry.

Use the smaller sized pastry cutter to cut out twelve top pastry pieces.

You're going to use your remaining ice water to help to seal the pastry, so dip your finger in the water and go around the outside edge of one of the top pastries, and then put it on top of a bottom, pressing down to seal.

You're going to do this for each one of your tarts, so each of the dozen.

Now we're not finished sealing.

You can use your fingers to do the rest, if you like.

I prefer to use a small desert sized fork.

Now not the end with the tines, but the opposite end, and you'll just press that around the outside edge of each tart.

We also need to allow some venting in our tarts, again, so that as the filling heats up, it doesn't leak out the sides.

You can just simply poke holes with the tines of the fork, or you can be a little more creative.

I'm going to use the letter M representing mincemeat so that I'll know that these are filled with mincemeat.

You can go ahead and bake them as is, or you can brush them with an egg wash or a cream if you prefer your pastry to have a little bit of color and shine.

I have an egg wash just made from one egg that I beat well, just like I was making scrambled eggs, and I add a little bit of water to thin it out and make it easy to spread.

Place in the oven and bake for ten to fifteen minutes or until lightly browned.

Now what do you do with your leftover pastry?

My grandmother would always make turnovers with the leftover pastry.

So we're gonna repeat the same process.

Roll out the remaining dough.

You can go ahead and cut it into a nice rectangle so that it's easy to work with.

You can use a filling of your choice for your turnover.

I happen to have extra mincemeat so I'll just go ahead and use that, but strawberry or raspberry jam works nicely, even something like lemon curd makes a good filling.

Seal up your turnover in the same process using water along the edges.

Don't forget to give some venting, so use the tines of the fork.

Again, you can just make a pattern, you can use letters like M for mincemeat.

Perhaps you'll even get a little creative and try to add some holiday symbol like a Christmas tree or a wreath.

When you take the tarts out of the oven, you'll want to cool them on a wire rack.

Your finished mince tarts can be served at any temperature.

Some like them cold, some like them at room temperature, or some like them warm.

I personally think there's nothing better than fresh out of the oven after they've had time to cool down just a little bit.

A note of caution: if you're reheating them, say in a microwave, be very careful, as the filling gets hot very quickly.

The tarts do freeze exceptionally well, and this comes in very handy during the holiday season.

It's bittersweet baking by myself this year, but I'm so incredibly thankful for all the years I had to spend learning from and baking with my Nan.

Cheers!

Well Terasa, I've never had that wonderful tradition, and I'd like to try it myself.

Is the recipe available somewhere?

It is.

We've posted it on Facebook so I hope you'll give it a try.

Well I am going to give it a try.

I may have to call you up to get some hints though.

Um, Tony Melton not only built his house, Tony is just the most remarkable person, but he's so proud of it and with good reason, and he has decorated it.

It is just splendid, and like a fairy land all atwitter with lights and things that he does.

I don't know anyone who's more creative than Tony.

♪ God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen ♪ Instrumental Well Terasa, I hope he's got those low wattage electric lights, don't you?

I bet he does.

Jim Faust is an expert on poinsettias, so let's let him share some of his expertise with us about that holiday plant.

♪ Hi, I am Chase Smoak, Clemson Extension horticulture agent in Sumter County and today I'm up on campus at Clemson University with Dr. Jim Faust.

How are you today Dr. Faust?

I'm doing well today Chase.

So let's talk a little bit about poinsettia production.

This is one of my favorite plants around Christmas time as well as yours, I know.

Yeah, it's on my favorite plants year round, and a lot of people don't realize it takes a full year to really to grow poinsettia.

The first plants actually are planted for this season are planted in January in Central America.

And they produce big shrubs that they can then harvest cuttings from and sell to growers in the U.S., South Carolina in July, and our growers receive these we call 'em unrooted cuttings.

So it's simply two inches of a shoot tip, and then they put them into a propagation greenhouse and a month later you have a rooted cutting.

And then those rooted cuttings go into bigger pots in August, and the plants grow a little bit and then we pinch them, and we pinch them because nobody wants a single flower at Christmas.

We want a branch plant, a nice bushy plant, and poinsettia produces one flower per branch.

So we pinch them, we promote branching, we get four or five branches that start to grow in September.

In the late September what actually starts to happen is the plants actually perceive long nights.

The poinsettia knows what time in the year it is based on how long the night is.

Right.

And so that is the trigger that okay winter is coming.

Christmas is coming.

The goose is getting fat and the plants need to flower.

That starts happening in the middle of September, late September, and then eight weeks after that, the plants will actually be ripe and ready to put into a retail store.

After all that, and after the thirteen or fourteen weeks, we come in, we had this beautiful, compact plant and this is kind of the modern plant that we see these days, but it hasn't always looked this way has it?

No, no, the plant has evolved and has developed, and I guess the proper word is domestication.

Just like humans domesticated animals, they domesticated plants too because they don't look like this in the wild.

In the wild, they're native to Mexico, and in these deep canyon ravines off the west coast of Mexico you can find wild poinsettias growing still today, and they have very narrow bracts.

On the poinsettia the red part is called a bract.

The part in the center of the bracts is actually the true flower.

You can look down and see it's not so showy.

We mostly appreciate the bracts and... but though, the wild ones have very narrow bracts and are kind of loose and open airy plants.

They're not this big bold Christmas product.

And then the plants also don't grow, you know, eighteen inches tall the wild either.

They grow twelve feet, fifteen feet tall.

Usually with no branches at all, they just grow straight up, and then have a flower way up high on top of the canopy.

Now one of the cool things you showed me when I was taking your class a few years ago, was that you can actually eat the nectar.

I'm glad you remembered something Chase, but yeah, actually if you want to, if you're a little daring.

The scieathea produce a drop of honey dew, basically.

It's to attract pollinators.

And when the flower's nice and ripe you see a drop of it on there.

And if you bend down there and lick it it's actually incredibly sweet.

It's just like having some honey in your coffee or tea.

It's a really delightful taste you would never guess that a poinsettia could taste so good.

That's right, what an amazing little thing.

So many people think it's actually all poisonous, and they're very nervous about touching it or leaving it around with the little kids or the animals.

Yeah, it's not a poisonous plant.

That's kind of a long, going back decades, urban legend.

In fact I've eaten some.

They don't really taste very good, so there's no reason to do that.

The leaves actually taste bad.

The bracts, when I was in Mexico a few years ago to actually look for poinsettias in the wild, I found a chef there that was actually preparing dishes with poinsettias as an ingredient, and she served a beautiful salad with poinsettia bracts mingled in with other green lettuce leaves, and they actually don't taste that bad.

Well Dr. Faust, thank you so much for discussing some aspects of poinsettia production with us, and I think it's time to try some of the nectar off these flowers.

You just dig in there.

It's sweet.

I'm gonna get some myself.

Mmmm, that's some good eating right there.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Well Terasa, I think it's always good for us people not to over water our house plants.

You are correct.

They can be a little tricky to take care of.

Mandy Flynn is the better half of our producer Sean Flynn, and boy, you are really going to enjoy her Christmas tree.

♪ The Twelve Days of Christmas ♪ Instrumental Terasa, people certainly do have their own traditions for Christmas, don't they?

They do, and it's so much fun to share them with others.

And then my husband came over and we had a good time doing a little preview of New Year's Eve, so here is Edward in his tuxedo, and we hope that you have the happiest of New Year's and a wonderful season as well.

We are approaching New Year's and my friends Hank Stallworth and Ann Nolte whom you've heard me speak of because they're always sharing flowers with me for my hat, usually have a big New Year's Eve party and I do an arrangement for their great big dining room table.

This year of course, we are all going to be with our very small, intimate family group, but that doesn't mean we can't have our traditions.

So at my house I'll be there with my husband Edward Wimberly, and my friend Guy Allison, who's part of our family, and we are going to pass on our dining room table, a traditional arrangement that I make every New Year's, and I like to do things that have old things that look like, you know, the last, the end of the old year, and the new things that look like the rebirth and the new year coming in.

I just love rice scoops.

I'm gonna take this bracelet off because I'm gonna hit it on something and make noise.

Um, everybody in South Carolina, at least below the Midlands, lives on rice, and we are so lucky because Dr. Merle Shepard of Clemson and other people around the state have developed these incredible new rice varieties, all based on the Carolina Gold rice.

And this is a rice scoop, which in Asian countries is used to measure rice, or traditionally was.

I have a lot of them and I find it to just be indispensable for flower arrangements, and I'll show you why.

I traditionally always tell you that everything leaks, so believe me, and that's why you need to have a lot of double thick black plastic bags in your pantry, and usually when I'm going to do an arrangement in this, I'm going to be using cut flowers, and in that case I take some of our Oasis, we've talked about this, it's called wet floral foam, and remember, it just cuts like that - simple, easy as pie.

And if you want to use it in an arrangement where you're gonna be putting stems of cut flowers in it, you have to soak it first, but in this case, what I'm going to use it for is to lift up the arrangement, so in any case, I normally would...

I've cut this so that it fits in here nice and snug, and if I were gonna do a traditional arrangement, I would then use a bowl and have Oasis in it, and I would set it in there.

And the point of that, let me show you, is that now my flowers don't have to um...

If I put the bowl flat on the bottom, the pool of flowers would barely have their little heads sticking up, but by raising it up, you get to see more of the flowers so it makes it a much more appropriate height.

Today we're gonna use living plants, so I'm gonna take this out and put it aside, and you see that I always spray paint everything black.

Usually I get it all over myself too.

Come on, you can do it.

Come on.

There you go.

We're getting there.

It's like trying to put your bluejeans on if you put 'em in the dryer, right?

I always hang 'em out on the stairwell.

I don't like 'em to be so tight.

Whew!

Who said flower arranging was easy?

So this time, all because I'm using real plants, I'm going to cover up the Oasis with another black plastic bag, which I have right here.

Double.

They're called contractor bags.

You want them to be good and strong, and I'm going to now put potting soil on top of this, because I'm going to plant these living plants in potting soil, just like you plant them out in your garden.

So I've got some potting soil here and I'm going to sprinkle it in there, and you know it's going to pack down some, but I think we're probably going to start with it about like this, with a little bit of room to grow.

As I said, I like things that look old and like the old year on its way out and my favorite thing to use generally are plum branches with lichen on 'em.

This year I was driving by our new library, and we have a librarian in St. Matthews named Kristen Simensen and she is just wonderful.

We are so fortunate to have her.

And she had this dead tree in front of her house, and I traded her a loaf of bread if she would let me cut some of this.

This happens to be a Hawthorn, and I know that because if you can get a close up, it's covered with little spines, and I think this is a Parsley Hawthorn, and I have one growing in my yard, but this one she's on a very sandy soil.

Everything goes very slowly which is what helps the lichens to grow, because remember lichens don't hurt plants, they're just a sign that the plant is growing slowly, so I'm gonna try to get this to not be too tangled up, and put these two branches in.

I hope I won't poke my eye out.

I should have had some safety glasses, probably.

Okay, and now you'll see why I love rice scoops, because it's got this handle in the middle, and I just so happen to have ready, some floral tape.

So I can now take my floral tape, and tie these to this wonderful handle, and by the time we finish, you'll never see it.

I need a little bit more, so let me get a little bit more, and I'll show you a trick of the trade with floral tape.

This is super important.

So you get it going and when you cut it, you have to be really, really careful to get a Marilyn Monroe smile, because if you don't, it'll get on your lip, and will pull a piece of your lip off, so you have to go... just like that.

Very, very important.

One of the tricks of the florist trade.

Okay, so I've got that and then I generally use an amarylis, and I couldn't find one this year, one that was sprouting, and so I said "well, I kind of want something that makes the transition between way up here and way down low.

Most of my flowers are kind of short, so I found a pepper plant that had these beautiful red peppers on it, and I went in and took off almost remember you can always tear up the root ball and I can't, I've got a limited space here, so I wanted to limit that, so I'm gonna weave that in so but now I've got a little bit of transition, and I think the red is pretty against that grey.

I'm really pleased that I found that great pepper plant.

Let me turn it around so y'all can see how pretty it is.

Isn't that just fabulous?

And I can, you know, move these around a little bit at the end if I have to.

There we go.

How's that?

A little bit better.

Okay.

Hold still there fellas.

Okay.

So I went over to Jackie Macaulay's, Jarrett's Jungle, and we looked around and she had some kalanchoe or kalanchoe.

People say it differently.

We'll have to ask Dr. John.

And so I've got three of those and once again, I've got a lot of stuff to get in here, so I'm just gonna...

I've taken a lot of the root ball off, and I'm going to put them down in here.

Hold still, hold still.

And I've got one more.

Now, we need something that really shows a sign of new life, and for that, lo and behold I was so lucky at the grocery store.

I found these paperwhites that were growing in containers, and so that's going to be what looks like new growth, the new year really coming in.

Isn't that fun?

So we need a little more potting soil now.

Be sure their sweet little roots... and you know paperwhites are the earliest of the bulbs to bloom in South Carolina.

Mine have been blooming for about two weeks in St. Matthews.

I'm sorry, they started blooming in the first of November in St. Matthews, really early, way before the daffodils do.

So let's get these lovely little paperwhites in here.

I'm going to put one more.

And of course, I can just put them out in the yard when I finally take this apart.

Give him a little more soil because we want to be sure those roots are going to come, and that it's up high enough where we can see.

Now I need something to come over the edge, and so I was able to find some ferns.

This is a Maidenhair fern that actually is hardy in South Carolina.

I have some that stay in the garden.

They die back in the winter but come back perfectly beautiful, and so we are going to use that as our spiller over the edge.

I have a little baby Holly fern that also is going to eventually move outside.

Once again, don't be scared to really be firm about taking foliage away.

I advise you if you do this, is do it on the floor or porch where you can sweep it out, and not in the television studio.

But um... we've got a wonderful vacuum cleaner so it'll all be fine.

Okay, and so we're kind of coming towards the end, tucking these little fellas in.

We need a little more potting soil.

It also helps if you stick your tongue out.

You've got to stick your tongue out sometimes.

That's just part of doing stuff for me.

We've got one left.

Let's put him right in here.

Beautiful little Maidenhair, which is of course a native that you find in places in South Carolina.

And if you don't have some growing in a shady part of your garden, I would encourage you to get some because it's just so pretty.

Okay, so now I need to tuck in more potting soil.

Get it where everybody's got his roots or her roots, depending on how you...

I guess a Maidenhair fern would be maybe a maiden, so those are her roots.

And get everybody because you want good soil, contact with the roots, and then now and only now after I'm gonna come in and slowly, slowly, slowly pour some water, and I just happen to have right here, the containers that those little paperwhite bulbs came in.

So I'm gonna slowly add water, and I'm gonna do this over the next hour or so to not flood it because I don't have any holes in this, so this is a little more um... you have to be a little more careful when you're watering something that doesn't have good drainage.

But I've got that done, and at this point I can come back with a pair of scissors and get rid of all this black stuff, that wonderful double black bag, because everything leaks, and I'll tell you, it is pretty awful if you're doing an arrangement on the wedding cake table, and it's a silk tablecloth that the bride's grandmother had, and all of a sudden it's wet and the guests are pouring in the door.

So make certain that you'll never have that happen to you.

It also helps to have a slightly better pair of scissors.

We're managing things.

This is four levels, layers of plastic we're cutting.

Ahh.

The end is in sight.

Hang with me.

Alrighty.

Snip snip.

I think I know what...

I think I'm gonna have to get my husband who's real good at sharpening things to sharpen these scissors for me.

He has a file, and he sharpens the scissors and the knives.

Now, I have some... to tie it all together and hide anything that's ugly, I have some Spanish moss, and I like using this because again, I think it references the lichens on the tree.

You know, you always want repetition, repetition, so we'll have Spanish moss in here, and that way you won't see the edges, and everything will look like it's related and this will seem like it's a soil, an area where the plants are just growing, and it's so pretty, and don't worry about Spanish moss.

Some people just think it's full of chiggers and red bugs.

If it's on the ground that might be true.

If you pull it out of the tree that's not true, but if you're worried about it don't put it in the microwave because that's going to kill it.

This is a living plant, so if you're worried about it having insects in it, just put it in the freezer for a little bit and it'll be fine.

That'll take care of any insect problems that you might have been worrying about.

It's in the pineapple family, and it does flower.

It's in certain parts of South Carolina because it has to be near water.

So you find it down towards the coast, and we have a good bit of it in Calhoun County, and a good bit of it in Sumter County.

So, so here we are with an arrangement that I hope makes you kind of think of the old and then the new, with the little bulbs popping up.

It will have a new year coming, and for all of us we certainly hope that this new year is going to see that when we finally get together, everyone is still with us and we'll have a glorious reunion, but for New Year's this year, be with your close family and continue your traditions and enjoy your New Year's.

There are few more things I'd like to do, and I think I'm going to do them outside, so I'll see you in just a sec.

♪ Auld Lang Syne ♪ Making It Grow is brought to you in part by The South Carolina Department of Agriculture Certified South Carolina Grown helps consumers identify find and buy South Carolina products.

McLeod Farms in McBee, South Carolina.

This family farm offers seasonal produce including over twenty-two varieties of peaches.

Additional funding provided by International Paper and the South Carolina Farm Bureau Federation and Farm Bureau Insurance.