Indian Pipes

I saw these under a couple of dried oak leaves this morning:

These are Indian Pipes, monotropa uniflora, white plants which don't contain chlorophyll.  They're parasitic, hosted by certain fungi that grow on tree roots.  They're considered scarce or rare.  Yet, there they were, growing on the ground, amid the dried oak leaves, a few feet from the sandy driveway of my  cottage.

Meanwhile, inside the cottage, I put my newly-acquired magnets on the refrigerator.  I got them in P'town yesterday. 

Truro, Provincetown, and a Mystery Solved

It's not every day I get to solve a mystery.  The mystery:  what are these two spherical objects I found a few days ago on the ground outside our cottage?  I  finally figured it out with the help of my arborist friend. 

But not before going to the beach.  Twice. 

First, at about 8:30 this morning, Leah and I went out with the dogs and walked the tidal flats on the beach near our cottage at low tide.

After that, we drove to Truro, where our favorite walk leads past pitch pines, bearberry, and bayberry to a deserted beach, with high dunes and lots of sky.

Along the way, I felt the need to heed the call of nature.  So I did.

As I  was doing so, I said to Leah, "Don't you dare tweet this!"

But she did.

We like this walk because, when we reach the secluded beach at its end, we usually see seals bobbing along in the water.  Today we saw, not the dozens we saw last year, but a few.  Leah got a couple of decent shots.  The images are a little blurry, but at least you can tell they're seals.

When we returned to our cottage after that walk, I picked up my nature guide to see whether I could  identify some of the short, silvery-leaved oaks we'd seen along the path.  That's when I saw a picture of a spherical object like the one I picked up outside the cottage.

My arborist friend said she thought it might be a gall, and suggested that I cut into one of them.  So I did.  It was dense and crisp inside, like a hard green apple, with a tiny hollow at its center, as in this photo I took, with the objects lined up against my knitting ruler.

My friend suggested it might be a pitless plum.  I thought it was plausible that there could be a plum sapling out there, growing from someone's cast-off piece of fruit.  So today I went out looking for a little plum tree among the oaks and pitch pines.  But there were only oaks and pitch pines. 

Later, after our second beach walk,  I found images of similar spherical objects in my nature book, the Reader's Digest Guide to North American Wildlife.  They're oak apples: a gall built by a wasp as an enclosure for a wasp larva.  My arborist friend called it.

Here's Wikipedia on the subject:

Oak apples are caused by chemicals injected by the larva of certain kinds of gall wasp in the family Cynipidae.^[1] The adult female wasp lays single eggs in developing leaf buds. The larvae feed on the gall tissue resulting from their secretions.

These images from Google Images look almost exactly like the ones I found here:

Those of you who are not scientifically inclined may want to skip the following Wikipedia description of the gall wasps' building those spheres:

The plant galls mostly develop directly after the female insect lays the eggs. The inducement for the gall formation is largely unknown; discussion speculates as to both chemical, mechanical and viral triggers. The hatching larvae nourish themselves with the nutritive tissue of the galls, in which they are otherwise well-protected from external environmental effects. The host plants and the size and shape of the galls are specific to the majority of gall wasps, whereas about 70% of the known species live in various types of oak tree. One can find galls on nearly all parts of such trees, some on the leaves, the buds, the branches, and the roots.

After solving that mystery, Leah and I spent an afternoon in free-spirited Provincetown, where a thriving LGBT presence co-exists with a strong Portuguese community and an ongoing arts colony among buildings erected in the early 1800s. 

Today on the street, a couple of drag queens were out there advertising their shows. I asked one of them whether I could take a photo,to which s/he replied, sorry, no, not unless you buy a ticket.

Oh, well.

Still, there's lots to see here in P-Town.

Maybe you can't read all the clever sayings on those magnets.  My favorite is on the left hand side, second from the top:  "May I recommend a cheap wine to go with your utter despair?  Or how about third row, middle:  "You just made my shit list" ?

 

 

 

 

Provincetown Town Hall, a lovely and graceful old building

By 5 pm, Leah and I were both feeling peckish, so we ate a light and early dinner at the Lobster Pot.  Strangely, when I first visited Provincetown, I refused to patronize the Lobster Pot, because, centrally located as it was, I thought it had to be a tourist trap.  Then one day our friends Margie and Rae suggested that we eat lunch there.  Such a surprise.  Delicious seafood, spicy Portuguese dishes, smashing view.  Today, this is what Leah and I saw from our table:

Here's Leah and a glass of chenin blanc.

Here's the banner above the door of the Universalist Church:

Rainy day in Eastham

It's raining here on the Cape, so the bikes have to come in for the day.

So maybe that means it's a good day to do some laundry, too.

Living on the edge here!

Meanwhile, Leah has started a Twitter account, reciting things I say, which she finds hilarious.  For example, seeing a group of 4 chihuahuas on the beach, I commented, "Those aren't dogs, they're cocktail snacks."  She's titled this account Artmomdotcom.  If you want to see it, go to twitter.com/artmomdotcom.  It makes me sound like a pottymouth, which we all know I'm not.

The Eastham Public Library

I brought several audible books here with me to Cape Cod, where I'm spending the month of September. So I had no need of a visit to a library here  Or so I thought.

I brought these audible books here with me on my IPod:

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund DeWaal

...and besides those, I'll soon download Tinkers, by Paul Harding, which my daughter Leah recommended.

These days, I almost always listen to my books instead of reading them.  By listening, I can also knit or sew or cook at the same time.  It's great.

There are some down sides to listening, though. It might be antisocial among a group of people.  And it's not conducive to conversation with Joe, my husband, with whom I share a household.

Joe (walking into a room where Diane is seated, listening to a book on her IPod):  Blah blah bluh blah blah blah blah?
Diane (removing headphones from ears)  What?

Still, I listen because I love to knit, sew, and cook.  And because I had all those books available on my IPod,  I didn't feel I needed a library visit here on Cape Cod.

But when Leah and I noticed a library card from the Eastham Library on the kitchen bulletin board of our rental cottage, it occurred to us that we could visit the library for a DVD to view on one of these September nights. 

So Leah and I visited the library on our bikes, down Herringbrook Road to Samoset, and left on Samoset.

On the front lawn of the Eastham Public Library, there's a miniature replica of the building.

Sweaty from my ride, and with my bike helmet still clamped to my wet hair, I climbed the steps to the library, entered its air-conditioned environment, and showed the librarian the card that had been thumbtacked to the kitchen bulletin board in our cottage.

She scanned it and found it nowhere in the system.  It was defunct.

But if I were willing to pay $5.00, I could get a card that I could use at all the libraries on the Cape.  I would be willing to do that, but I hadn't brought my wallet along on my bike.

Still, a lovely bike ride.  And look what's next door to the library:

The building of the Nauset Fellowship of the Unitarian Universalist denomination is on the National Register of Historic Places.   http://nfuu.org/.  Their website says they're "a warm-hearted, lay-led fellowship of the spirit based on humanistic values, a sense of humor, and a delight in each other and our community."

As a Unitarian, I'm tickled at the ubiquity of Unitarian congregations in Massachusetts and on Cape Cod.

So we didn't get to take out a DVD at the Eastham Public Library.

But what a great way to not take out a DVD.

First Encounter

The bike ride to First Encounter Beach almost didn't happen today, because when I got onto my bike and put my food on the pedal, it flopped uselessly, instead of engaging the chain .  I knew that meant the chain had come off the--the gears, I guess, is what they are. Leah and I inspected and found two places where it had slipped, and without too much trouble, I was able to slip it back where it belonged.  I got a lot of thick black grease on my hands, though.

Bike fixed, we headed to First Encounter Beach, about five miles away along sandy, pine-lined Herring Brook Road, to Samoset Road, where a right turn took us past sweeping green marshes to a tidal estuary where First Encounter River runs into Cape Cod Bay.

First Encounter.  This lovely bay beach, with its sparkling warm shallow water, takes its name from the Europeans' first encounter with the indigenous Nauset people.  It wasn't a peaceful encounter, by some tellings.  And we all know its final result for the Nausets.

I'm sorry for them, but glad to have this lovely beach only a short bike ride away.

Leah, arriving back from First Encounter

Labor Day Weekend, Eastham, Cape Cod

September.  The best month.  The sun is still high, the air is still warm on the back of my neck, and the sand is still softly sun-baked between my toes.  Best yet, the vacation rentals drop to their off-season levels.

The dogs and I are spending the month of September in this cottage in Eastham, Massachusetts, on the bay side of Cape Cod.  An assortment of friends and relatives will cycle through over the course of the month.

Joe and I and our middle daughter, Leah, arrived here on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend.  Yesterday the three of us, and the dogs, walked on Nauset Light Beach, on the ocean side of the Cape, and saw this seal floating along in the water while eating a fish.  Or maybe it was a crab.

Trust me, that's a gray seal, eating fast food, Cape Cod style

There were plenty of seals out there, bobbing along in the water.  The story is that sharks have reappeared along with them, as the seals are tasty to the sharks.  Am I bothered by the sharks?  Not really.  First of all, I haven't seen one--I understand they're around Chatham, at the elbow of the Cape, not here in Eastham--and secondly, the water here is far too cold to tempt me into it beyond my knees.

Joe left for home last evening to get ready for a big trial coming up in mid-month.  Leah and I and the dogs stayed on, and when the tide was low, we walked out on the tidal flats on the bay side, a short walk from our cottage.

Sunset, Cape Cod Bay, Eastham, Massachusetts

When the tide is low, and there's only an inch or so of water on the sand, and the sky is reflected in it, that's heaven on earth.

In that twilight, there was a flock of birds circling over the water, peeping and diving and circling and then peeping and diving some more.  From what I could see in the falling dusk, I thought they might be terns:  slim bodies, white underbodies, forked tails, crooked wings.

This is a photo of a common tern, but not the circling flock I saw last night.  It was too dark for me to capture them on film.

In fact, it was so dark, Leah and I wondered how the birds could see whatever they were eating.  The schools of darting minnows, I suppose.  The minnows were almost the color of the dusky sand, and their shadows showed as much as their bodies.  How could the birds find them to eat? By smell?  By the movement?  Maybe, after eons of evolution, these birds just sense, by sight or smell or some other means, the presence of their food.

This morning, on my way back down to the beach again for the dogs' morning walk, I found these two little goodies in the sand beneath my feet:

Does anybody know what these are?  They're smaller than ping pong balls and look like tiny apples.

Once the dogs saw I had picked these up, and was interested in them, Mocha waited until I wasn't looking, then took one gently between her teeth and buried it for safekeeping between the cushions of the couch.

Do the dogs love it here or what?

Cape Cod Fiber Orgy

Tomorrow I leave for a month in a rental cottage on Cape Cod, and I'm bringing four fiber art projects with me.

Such as felting materials.  Wool roving on the left, dog hair in the middle, bamboo mat and noodle in the center back, needle felting supplies on the back right, and a few felting books, center front.

Here's what I plan to do with those materials.  With the autumnal shades of wool roving, I hope to capture this image:

There's something so poignant about the juxtaposition of the picnic table and the fall foliage.  I find this photo so compelling that I recreated it at a felting workshop a few weeks ago.  This is how it turned out:

I'm not crazy about it--too dark.  So, when I'm at the Cape, I'm gonna re-do it.

Another felting project involves these two images of my dogs playing on the beach:

Shall we...

Dance?

Next:  How about this image of a jeep trail on the wooded top of a dune in Cape Cod National Seashore?

It's my great joy to render this lovely place in fiber art.  I'm recreating it in crewel embroidery.  Here's my work so far, which I'm bringing  to the Cape with me, and which I hope to bring to near completion while I'm there:

I've got lots and lots of embroidery floss and pearl cotton to use on this project:

And as if that weren't enough, what about this baby blanket I'm knitting?  Or, rather, planning to start knitting:

 Here's the pattern for that blanket.  Many thanks to friends Deana Leikin and Margie Aronson for delving into their archives to find this pattern for me!

Finally, some funky tie-dyeing:

Are those enough projects for a month?  Time will tell....