Mists and Dark Mirrors

It's a misty, foggy day here on Cape Cod, with the remnants of Hurricane Jose brushing along the shore and continuing to drape the Cape with windy sheets of rain.  Today, not as much wind, not as much rain, but weather still unpredictable, so a short walk is better than a long one.  Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail is a viable choice:  only .8 of a mile, it offers limited exposure to a downturn in the weather.

The misty weather today suits fairy tale landscape of this trail, with its mossy hillocks and dark mirroring pools.

It's elfin, is what it is.  I think I expect to see tiny nimble creatures, all elbows and knees, wearing tiny cone-shaped caps, retreating shyly behind a mossy tree or hummock as I approach.

 What or who lives in here, do you think?

The low growing ground cover offers exquisite combinations of color and texture:

 And the mushrooms, always the mushrooms, always and everywhere, in this fog draped autumn woods at the edge of the ocean.

Today on Cape Cod: Mushrooms and Mosses

 We're waiting for Hurricane Jose here on Cape Cod, but he hasn't arrived yet.  So meanwhile, we took a ride out to Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail in the Cape Cod National Seashore.

 A trail through pitch pine woods leads to a boardwalk passing over silent black pools, moss, and mushrooms.

So many mushrooms! 

On the part of the trail that was not a boardwalk, Joe and I saw a young man, off the path,  rummaging through the woods, stooping every now and then, plastic shopping bag in hand. I asked what he was getting.

"Mushrooms." 

"Really?  Do you know what you're doing?"

"No, but I'm going to take these home and look at a book."

"See you tomorrow!"

He was far braver than I would ever be toward wild mushrooms.

Instead of picking them, Joe admired them photographically.  Later, looking at their photos, book in hand, I can't identify most of them.

Like this sexy little number:

Or this one.  Is the one above an unopened version of the one below? Or are they two different kinds?

 And how about this frilly little number?  You can't make this stuff up.

I don't know the names of any of them.

But that doesn't stop me from admiring them.

 

OK, these I know.  Indian pipes.  But I've never seen this pink relative until today:

I looked them up, and it turns out that these rosy looking plants are pinesaps, not Indian pipes. Indian pipes as I know them are white.  Those are growing here too.

It turns out that both pinesaps and Indian pipes are monotropa, flowering plants that do not manufacture food by photosynthesis, but get it from rotting matter in the soil.  They're strange, waxy-looking things.  But I love the coral glow of the pinesaps.

I know more flowers than I do mushrooms.  Like this one.  I recognize this one because it so resembles the centaurea that people grow in their gardens, and sure enough, it too is a centaurea, a wild version called centaurea maculosa.  The common name is spotted knapweed, which in no way describes them, except maybe in Old or Middle English:

Pretty, aren't they?  Spotted knapweed indeed.

Meanwhile, no hurricane here, not yet.  Maybe we'll go back out there for another look.

Creations of my Convalescence

 

The other day, I just started driving after four weeks of convalescence following hip replacement surgery.  That four week period, from the middle of July to the middle of August 2017, was a time of enforced inactivity.  I couldn't walk a whole lot, couldn't bend over, couldn't even tie my shoes.  But I could luxuriate in the juicy views of my garden out my back window.  I could watch the birds, read the New Yorker, and listen to books on tape.  I listened to a lot of them. 

I could also use my hands to create things.  Without the demands of my usual schedule--exercise sessions five mornings a week, significant volunteer commitments two mornings a week--the day was mine to savor.  No commitments, no expectations except getting better.

I sat in this rented recliner and worked on things.  That recliner made a rude farting noise when it moved up or back, but it was oh so comfortable, and hosted many a fine nap.

But I was awake more than I was asleep, and I could take as much time to work on art projects without worrying about commitments and expectations.  So, for example, I made the felted image below, which I'm calling The Last Picnic.  The original was a photo taken on the main trail at Penwood State Park, where I walked regularly with my dogs, back when I could walk distances.  I miss doing that, and I hope this hip replacement will enable me to get out there once again.  I took a lot of shots while out there, and this image is based on one of them. 

 I think there's something poignant about a picnic table covered with fall leaves.  Here's a closeup:

I did another felted piece too.  This one was already begun at the time of my surgery, and I used my recuperation time to finish it. 

This is Pemetic Trail, and working on it was a way to revisit the evergreen scented environs of Acadia National Park.  This trail runs east and west along the southern tip of Pemetic Mountain leading out to the Park Road. 

I also fooled around with photo transfer.  The simple geometries of sand ripples make perfect subjects for mirror images, and though I fooled around with more than one attempt, this one emerged from my efforts.  This is Sandy Neck:

This one uses a photo transfer image of my beloved First Encounter Beach of Eastham, MA.  For perspective, here's the original shot:

Besides that, I also put together a shibori quilt for my daughter who is getting married in October.  Before my surgery, two of my daughters and I did some indigo shibori dyeing, and made nine 20 inch squares.  I sewed them together, added sashing, batting, backing, and binding, and quilted it.  Voila, wedding present. 

I also worked on another wedding present, this one part of a challah cover.  Challah is an egg bread usually associated with the Jewish sabbath.  Why does challah need a cover?  Who knows?  Maybe the Jewish homes of yon days of yore were drafty.  Anyway, when I asked my daughter Julia what I could make her for a wedding present, she said a challah cover.  This felted piece will be in the center of the one I'm making:

Four weeks of convalescence would probably drive some people bats.  I didn't really know how I would react, but as it turns out, I took to that enforced inactivity like a thirsty traveler to a clear spring.

Loving the Last Green Valley

I can't walk very far these days.  Can't drive, either.  But I can take a ride in the passenger seat of a car.  Joe and I took a beauty of a drive the other day, exploring Connecticut's National Heritage Corridor, also known as The Last Green Valley.  http://thelastgreenvalley.org.  

We followed the valley of the Quinebaug River and its tributaries north from the old mill town of Norwich, Connecticut, and through a number of quiet former mill villages up into Massachusetts.

The mills are mostly gone now, leaving economic devastation in their wake.  The National Heritage Corridor rebrands the area, focusing on its natural beauty, among other things.  The Last Green Valley is promoted as a place for hiking http://thelastgreenvalley.org/explore-the-last-green-valley/recreation-guides/hiking/, paddling, http://thelastgreenvalley.org/explore-the-last-green-valley/recreation-guides/paddling/, and pedaling, http://thelastgreenvalley.org/explore-the-last-green-valley/recreation-guides/biking/, among other activities.

I wasn't in any kind of shape to do any of that, and in fact I'm not sure I even knew about those potential activities, or even the Last Green Valley designation itself.  The idea for the drive just came about as a non-physical way to enjoy a sunny summer afternoon.

And it was great.  It included the legendary and lovely Logee's Greenhouses in the borough of Danielson.  http://www.logees.com/

This is Bougainvillea Orange Fiesta at Logee's.  It's the only photo I took that day, because I didn't set out to record and blog about the trip.  Phooey.  I wish I had.  Then there would be so much more to show you.  This one image gives you a little idea of the atmosphere and appearance of Logee's  greenhouses.  There's an ancient ficus pumila, a creeping fig, running all along its walls. Verdant.

From Danielson, we wended our way north through the Quinebaug Valley, past roadsides of Queen Anne's lace, orange wild lilies, and tall  mulleins, with their felted silver leaves and stately spikes of yellow flowers.

Have you ever been to Putnam?  This former mill town rebranded itself as an antiques center a couple decades ago, and I've been there more than once to ogle the Craftsman era antiques.

The Antiques Marketplace in Putnam looks as if it was repurposed from a local department store.

There are three floors of antiques in there.  Joe and I have a few pieces of Craftsman-style furniture in our home.  I'm very drawn to the furniture, furnishings, and architecture of the Craftsman era. I thiink that's because my grandparents had a Morris chair, an early version of a recliner, and I associate that kind of dark heavy furniture with grandparents and stability and home.

My grandparents, William Cadrain and Lillian Tanguay Cadrain, in the room they called The Little Room. My grandmother is seated in a Morris chair.

I also love green glass, and my sister Jerol, The Flea Market and Garage Sale Queen of the Tri-State Area, bought a ton of it for me.  I don't have a photo of my entire collection, but I do have this photo showing my green glass at work at of our Seder dinner in 2017 :

That Saturday, in Putnam, hobbling around on my cane, I saw a piece of green glass I wanted.  I don't know anything about its value or history, but it was inexpensive and I liked it so I bought it.

As the summer afternoon mellowed into evening, we made our way to Willimantic, CT, which has gone farther than any of the other mill towns in reinventing itself. Once The Thread City, Willimantic has repurposed its mills into housing and its streets into a vibrant restaurant scene.  It probably doesn't hurt that the town is also home to Eastern Connecticut State University.  The dark underside:  the town faced a heroin epidemic in the not too distant past.  I'm not up on that piece of its history.  The Willimantic I saw was vibrant.

For dinner, Joe and I chose the Cafe Mantic, where I had an heirloom tomato salad and a crabcake and Joe had Stonington sea scallops.  Delicious

I only took one photo at Cafe Mantic.  This one:

We got home to our dogs in the early evening.  I'd do this drive again, and again.  Maybe next time I'll even be able to do some hiking:

http://thelastgreenvalley.org/explore-the-last-green-valley/recreation-guides/hiking/

Yeah.

Exploring Connecticut's Last Green Valley

It's a glorious summer day.  But you can't walk.  What do you do?

I've just had hip replacement surgery, so I can't walk much right now. 

Instead, I took a ride with my husband Joe the other day, inspired by a story in the August issue of Connecticut Magazine:  http://www.connecticutmag.com/travel/the-last-green-valley-head-east-to-explore-our-national/article_24d88ade-6712-11e7-91c5-377881458ea8.html

The Last Green Valley, described in the story, is one of the few areas in the state not plagued by light pollution:  a swathe of green running north and south along the state's border with Rhode Island.

It's actually been designated a national heritage corridor: not an actual physical park, but a geographic area, in which local government, businesses, and nonprofits work together to uphold the historical and cultural heritage of the place, not to mention its natural beauty. http://thelastgreenvalley.org/

I didn't set out to blog about our ride on Saturday July 29, and I didn't take notes, or photos, but boy I wish I had.  The ride was such a thoroughly enjoyable experience that I want to share it, even if sharing means cadging photos off the Internet for illustrations.

 We started on highways, driving south and east to Norwich, Connecticut, but soon leaving the Interstate for poky Rt. 12, which winds its way out of Norwich and into the rural towns and villages of Plainfield, Moosup, Killingly, Danielson, Sterling, and Brooklyn before making its way to Putnam, Thompson, and eventually Webster, Massachusetts.

The route follows a river valley, or rather a river system:  the Quinebaug River and its tributaries, which, according to the Norwich Bulletin, include the Patchaug, the Moosup, the Five Mile, and the French River.  When Europeans came to the area, they used the rivers to power mills, first sawmills and grist mills, finally textile mills.  The textile mills, which once provided jobs, are now weathered brick hulks, or sometimes just isolated smokestacks, brooding over the landscape in these towns and villages with their pawn shops and crumbling sidewalks. Many of the old mills have been repurposed for housing, but others loom brokenly.

This photo of the Prym Mill in Dayville is from the Norwich Bulletin

This refurbished mill in Plainfield, now condominiums, was the Plainfield Woolen Company.

These old mills are tokens of the reasons why this area of the state is known for its poverty and the social problems that go along with it.  I'm thinking that the National Historic Corridor designation goes some way toward turning that story around, focusing as it does on the culture and natural beauty of the area, and bringing in people like me to explore it.

The scenery was midsummer lush, all Queen Anne's Lace and orange wild lilies, and the few stops we made were delightful.

The first was at Logee's Greenhouse in Danielson, Connecticut.  Did you know that Danielson isn't a town on its own, but a borough of the town of Killingly?  There in Danielson are the venerable Logee's Greenhouses, founded in 1892. Logee's is known for its unusual tropical greenhouse plants, as the man who started it, Ernest Logee, was an avid horticulturalist.  Its several greenhouses are buried halfway into the ground and its aisles are twined with the tiny heartshaped leaves of a ficus pumila, a tropical vine which I imagine must be as old as the building.

The greenhouse interiors are as labyrinthine as they are green.

For some reason on which I'm not entirely clear, Logee's is now operated by a descendant of the original Logee family, a guy named Byron Martin.  I remember Byron from Michael J. Whalen Junior High in my hometown of Hamden, Connecticut.  His dad, another Byron Martin, was a minister in town.  Last time I saw Byron the son, he was about 12 years old, riding his bike down Brook Street like a bat out of hell, standing on the pedals.    Now he's the owner of Logee's and the guy in this video: https://youtu.be/g95ExtOQpTw

He probably doesn't remember me.  I only remember him because I have the blessing or curse of remembering everything and everyone, always and forever after, amen.

Back at Logee's, neither Joe nor I set out to buy plants, but the greenhouse was so lovely, and the plants so luscious, that we each bought a few.  I chose this Black Jewel orchid for its velvety dark  foliage streaked with orange:

I've never grown this one before, but I understand it's fairly undemanding for an orchid. It flowers, too.  Take a look: http://www.logees.com/black-jewel-orchid-ludisia-discolor-1796.html

I also chose a flowering maple, Abutilon Miss Marmalade.  I've had good luck with flowering maples in the past.

Joe chose the drama of a night blooming cereus, epiphylum oxypetalum Mark Twain, a plant once grown in Mark Twain's home conservatory.

http://www.logees.com/night-blooming-cereus-mark-twain-epiphyllum-oxypetalum.html

Joe also bought a carnivorous plant known as a sundew.  He's had good luck with another carnivorous plant lately, and his success with that pitcher plant has inspired his purchase of the sundew.  He plans to put them both in a terrarium.

So much more to say about Logee's--the lush greenhouse smell, the remote location--and the tiny borough of Danielson itself.  And I haven't even begun to tell you about the Antiques Marketplace in Putnam, and the beautiful piece of green glass I bought there, and the Cafe Mantic, in the old mill town of Willimantic, where Joe and I had a delightful locally sourced dinner.  Maybe I'll tell you about those next time.

Today in Gardening: I Can't Contain Myself

Container gardening is a lot of fun because, if you use annuals in your containers, you can change them every year.  (Annuals are the ones that live just one season and go away).  You only need to be sure to choose annuals that are appropriate for the conditions you have to offer them.  I usually choose and plant my containers in May and June, so that by today, which is mid-July, they're filling out.

 For this spot with its morning blast of sunshine, exposure, I chose a purple and silver theme.  Here are angelonia Angelface Blue, lobelia Lucia Ultraviolet, verbena Superbena Purple, and for silver accents, dichondra Silver Falls and helichrysum Icicles.

I'm continuing the silver and purple theme with the windowbox, another container that gets a blast of morning sun.  

I've had incredible good luck with Supertunia Bordeaux.  I love its delicately traced dark veins.  So I tend to use it someplace in my containers every year.

Here I combined it with a bicolor angelonia identified only as  "Joey's Indestructibles."  Also dichondra Silver Falls.  The dichondra is struggling to make its presence known--you can see it trailing down--because the Supertunia Bordeaux is such a vigorous grower.

I'm continuing the purple and silver theme in this hanging pot, but you can't see it very well, as it's photographed against the sky:

That's callibrachoa Superbells Blue in there.  I've had such good luck with callibrachoa, and you'll see this isn't the only place I'm using it this year.

I broke the purple and silver theme to plant this pot, a shameless imitation of a container set called Pollinator's Paradise offered by White Flower Farm.  White Flower Farm's looks like this:

They've combined cleome Senorita Rosalita with Salvia Amistad.  I couldn't find Salvia Amistad at retail in my area, but I could find salvia Black and Blue, so that's what I used.  Mine looks like this:

But I've only seen one pollinator, a hummingbird, on it.  Huh.  Some pollinator's paradise.  That said, I nevertheless have to admire cleome Senorita Rosalita.  If you've ever grown cleome, you know how wildly invasive it is.  Martha Stewart, for example, has called it a horrible plant because of its intractability. It's also sticky along the stem.  Now someone has changed cleome by developing Senorita Rosalita, a sterile cleome that isn't sticky and won't self-seed.  I applaud that.

I've said that I've had good luck with supertunias.  Here's Supertunia Honey growing in a pot that's also planted with thunbergia alata, the black-eyed Susan vine:

I've grown the black-eyed Susan vine in this spot in front of the garage for years.  Because it works.  That location gets a brutal blast of noonday and then withering western sun all afternoon.  Only tough plants will stand up to that blast, which is made worse by reflected heat off the garage, and the black eyed Susan vine has served me well in that spot.  So far, the supertunia Honey is going strong, too.  My sharp-eyed gardening friends will also see the leaves of Heavenly Blue morning glories in this pot.  Those are volunteers. 

In addition to the supertunias, I've also got callibrachoa in more than one place.  Here's Blueberry Scone Chameleon Calibrachoa in the front of the house:

 

I think it's called blueberry scone for its blue and yellow color combination.  Here's how one vendor displays it:

Pretty, isn't it?

Another plant that I use and re-use every year is torenia.  This one is basically a shade-lover, but it does well in fuller sun, too.  Here are torenia Catalina Gilded Grape, yellow with a purple throat, combined with torenia Summer Wave Large Blue:

There are torenia in this pot below, too, but I think I put them in a spot that gets too much blasting sunlight, because you can hardly see the yellow torenia creeping out the bottom:

Also in this pot along with the torenia are ipomoea blackie and the red fountain grass, pennisetum setaceum rubrum.  My sharp-eyed gardening friends will also see the heart-shaped leaves of Grandpa Ott morning glories, a volunteer.  That's a polite way to describe Grandpa Ott morning glories.  Another is to call Grandpa a dirty old man who spreads his seed far and wide.

There's one more pot to show you.  On my front porch I have a giant green and yellow coleus, Cong. Jr. Green Halo, the trailing green ipomoea Sweet Caroline, and yellow wave petunias. It's a fresh combination:

Look at all those crazy colors in my container annuals this year!  I can't contain myself.

Here are some of my tips for pot success:

• Fill the lower third of the pot with empty plastic flowerpots to occupy space the roots won't need
• Fill the rest of the pot with compost mixed with osmocote plant food and a hydrogel like Terrasorb
• When you water, use a water-soluble plant food in a dispenser on your hose.  If my friends who garden organically can suggest an organic alternative, let me know.

• And most of all, enjoy.  Garden like no one is looking.