The Chicken Plant

My Dad was born in 1918 in Mableton Ga.  He was the youngest son in a family of 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls.  History has always interested me and especially family history.  I've been told that my great grandfather moved his family to Mableton in around 1878 and was the 5th family to settle in Mableton.  My grandfather at the time was 5 and he told me they moved by horse and wagon from Marietta and it took them 3 days.  Don't guess they had rapid transit back then.  My grandfather was a blacksmith and was once written up in the Atlanta Journal for being the oldest practicing blacksmith in Georgia.  When I was younger,  as I've mentioned before we lived in Kirkwood, so I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I now wish I had.  The Daniell family is well known in Mableton   and anytime you would talk to the old timers there, they would tell you how good of a man my grandfather was.  The family lived in the town of Mableton in a house my grandfather built for my grandmother when they got married, but during the depression, he bought a farm outside of town.  The family moved down to the farm and planted most of the land.  My grandfather would walk to the blacksmith shop and work everyday while the boys did most of the farming.   Dad said they would work from sun up until sun down everyday farming and then granddaddy would give all they grew away.  He said at the time he didn't understand the depression so he thought his dad was the dumbest businessman in the world.  He didn't realize people were hungry.  I say all this because I believe this was where my Dad developed his love of gardening.  Seems I can always remember him having a vegetable garden and there was always flowers blooming in the yard.  One day after I had married I was over at his house helping him do something in the yard and we sat down in the swing to take a drink of water.  I noticed a bush he had planted a while back and how it had grown and asked him what it was called.  He said he didn't know the real name,  he just called it the chicken bush.  We both laughed and I asked why it was called a chicken bush?  He told me a story about when he was a small boy  he had gotten some little Binnie roosters from somebody.  He said they kept digging up my grandmother's flowers and would do their business all over the yard and every time anyone went out in the yard they would step in it and track it everywhere.  He said grandmother hated those roosters.  A man came by wanting to sell her some plants one day but she didn't have the money to buy anything but told him she would trade the roosters for anything he wanted to get shed of.  He said he would give her a speckled bush for the roosters and they made a deal.  Dad said they never knew the real name of the plant but just called it the chicken bush.  He had gone down and got a cutting of the chicken bush at the old home place, rooted it and that was it.  I asked if he would root me one and of course he did.  I have had a chicken bush rooted from the original bush at every house I've ever had and guess I always will.  It always makes me smile when I trim my chicken bush because it brings to mind some of the good times I had with Dad.   By the way,  the chicken bush is an Aucuba shrub.