Pull away! We went for years without this pest here, and then it exploded. I personally lay the fault partially at the feet of the town: it can be traced to some fill for the road, and then several catastrophic washouts which deposited the road all over the Royal Oak area.* That being said, it would have gotten here anyway. And had I been paying attention, I might have caught it the year before the road washed. Some of you will recall, it was the fast thaw following the winter of all the snow that did it. The hurricanes finished the job.
At any rate, it is here. Victory, however, is possible. I went down to the Calf Pasture and wood road entrance the other day, with the gloomy assumption that I would be spending the day on that section. Amazingly, I found that the last two years have substantially reduced the infestation. The wood road had almost none (five plants); the Calf pasture had perhaps one-sixth the amount that it had last year. Now, I’ll have to get it again later in the summer and next year (a lot of first year seedlings were visible) but that is a far cry from the near 100% cover of the last two years. This gave me the time and the impetus to start in on Royal Oak proper. Maybe in a few years we’ll get it under control. It will never be eradicated, but it might fall under seasonal management as opposed to Oh My God.
As to why…well the Calf Pasture has golden-rod, Wake-Robin, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Canadian Lily-of-the-Valley, Baneberry, Cranesbill, Hay fern, Cinnamon Fern, Christmas Fern, various bunch grasses, grape, honeysuckle, dogwood, and various others.* All of which are going to do much better if they aren’t being choked by Garlic Mustard, which will eventually kill off most other understory plants. (it is actually capable of stressing mature trees thanks to the chemicals in its roots)
In my opinion, one has a certain responsibility to the land, if not to future generations. That said responsibility carries the dubious joy of seven ticks, wading in poison-ivy, and pulling Garlic Mustard till one’s respiratory system rebels; well, that is a very small price.
*the Royal Oak, Calf Pasture, and wood road entrance are about 6 acres of former pasture, evenly divided between flat and steep with rocks. They are now mostly open, second-growth forest. Several intermittent streams cut through the area, the dirt road is perched above it.
*I wasn’t doing plant ID, just passing observations while pulling.
Garlic Mustard Friday, May 17 2013
Landscapes ecology 13:23
Nice place to have a cup of coffee… Thursday, May 16 2013
Esperanza and gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos gardening, photography 10:37
View from the south porch, showing the little kitchen and pergola…now if I could just get the clematis to grow along the top bar rather than curling up in a bunch…
Deciphering old letters Wednesday, May 15 2013
Genealogy history, letters 12:54
Reading difficult handwriting is an interesting example of how the mind works. We have a wonderful ability to fill in gaps and decipher unreadable pieces, as long as there is some context. It has some similarity with certain word games, combining Scrabble and Fill-in-the-blank. One rapidly becomes aware of whether or not one has mastered a hand, however, when confronted with a proper name. Context and familiarity can help: if the place name or last name is an expected one, chances are better that it will be deciphered. On the other hand, if it is a place name or last name (those are especially bad) which is entirely unfamiliar, one’s actual ability is quickly revealed. Sometimes, a last name is doomed to obscurity. I have a passage here: ‘we moved Mrs. P????’s piano’ from a letter I am working on. Well, Mrs. P. doesn’t show up again in the letter, and the involved letters ‘i,e,l,b,r’ are blurred. An educated guess can be made: ‘Pollbiers’ but, frankly that doesn’t ‘feel’ right. So, a question mark is left, and one moves on. Maybe, at some point it will be made clear, either by increased familiarity or by a better example. Still it is likely that she will remain as ‘Mrs. P.’ Personally, I have a sneaking suspicion that the difficulty in deciphering odd last names is part of the explanation behind the old style of saying, ‘Mrs. B.’ or ‘Mr. M.’ along, of course, with space and labour saving.
Curves Monday, May 13 2013
Garden curves I hadn’t noticed before….flagpole garden and the west drive. The white flowers in the daylily line are daffodils, Pueblo and Sailboat.
H.M.S. Inflexible Sunday, May 12 2013
Historic Photos historical photographs, naval history 21:53
For something entirely different from the photo archives…
Taken in 1909 at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York City: H.M.S. Inflexible. She was just about two years old at the time and was serving as the temporary flagship of the Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Edward Hobart Seymour. An Invincible class battle-cruiser, she served throughout World War I, participating in action in both the Mediterranean and North Atlantic campaigns, including Dardanelles and Jutland. She was scrapped in 1921.
The photograph was probably taken by George Creevey from his motor yacht, Mavourneen.
Camouflage! Saturday, May 11 2013
gardening and Modern Photos gardening, insects, photography, tulips 08:13
This little guy has been camped out in this tulip for several days, even through yesterday’s rain. I am not sure what he is going to do about the fact that the tulip in question is steadily turning pink…can spiders change colour?
Green worlds Friday, May 10 2013
Esperanza 09:35
There always comes a day in spring when the world goes green. Suddenly, the forest fills in, trees that seemed distant are suddenly right in front of one. This effect can happen in a matter of hours. Go out in the morning and the roads seem wide and bare; come back in the evening and they are tree-lined alleys. A lot of people find it claustrophobic. It certainly does take a readjustment every spring.
It also changes the color of things entirely. The big Keeping room and library of the house have a set of windows that, in the winter, look out at a large expanse of open trees and garden areas. In the spring, this is transformed to Green, much brighter than the late summer greens. The colors of the rooms change as well; mercifully, they are painted/plastered in shades that tolerate green light. It is, however, a subtly different effect; especially in the Keeping room where the tinted plaster contains minute mica flecks. These don’t sparkle, but they do react to the light. In the winter the room is several shades lighter and brighter; in the spring it is a darker brown.
Of course currently the dining room and kitchen have a pink cast: a massive redbud fills the eastern windows, what isn’t filled by this is taken over by a Japanese maple slips, and a Wolf River apple is in full bloom on the west. It is a good thing that blue, rose, and gold play well with pink flowers!
Photo of the Day Wednesday, May 8 2013
gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos gardening, photography, wordless wednesdays 10:13
On names Tuesday, May 7 2013
Genealogy 09:09
and genealogy. Esperanza is so inextricably linked to the first two generations (Julie Palmer/Morris Smith) and Helen Yale Smith/William Webster Ellsworth) that it is weirdly easy to overlook the next ninety odd years of influence. I was flipping through some documentation relating to one of my long term projects, the transcription of the Mavourneen‘s logs, when I hit an amusing factoid. George Creevey, who married Lucy, the daughter of Helen/WWE, had a motor yacht named Mavourneen. His brother William had a motor yacht by the name of Eileen in 1912. Now the question arises, did William name the yacht after George’s daughter, Eileen born in 1910, or was George’s daughter named after the yacht? The problem being that I don’t know how old the yacht was… In either case, that George and William were close to their Scots-Irish roots, despite several generations in the Adirondacks seems clear.
