Walking the Berkshires

Fruits of my Labor

Take that, late blight!

Wheels Within Wheels

The heavy rains of the last two nights have drenched my gardens to their thirsty roots.  Today in the welcome warmth of the sun, my children and I weeded the rows of new lettuce, the beans getting visibly taller day by day, and the lush tomato and basil plants.  I found a volunteer mustard plant from last year's seed, and a few gladiolas that managed to overwinter despite the bulb killing frost.  One pink ladyslipper beneath the old spruce has stayed in splendid bloom since Memorial Day.

The wildflower gardens are also transitioning from the ephemerals of spring to June glories.  Butterfly weed is preparing to blossom and a rain of new plants from sailing seeds is colonizing new patches.  The clumps of blue and yellow-eyed grass wink at the sun, and the bee balm is a yard high at least. 

The raspberries and black cap canes are in flower, as are the high and low bush blueberries.  The bare root strawberries and just starting to leaf, but the compost that forms their new bed is sprouting volunteer pumpkins from last year's Jack 'o Lanterns.

If you measure the season by the intervals between mowing the lawn, you miss all the others movements, unfurlings and fadings that make up the growing time.  I like to walk out to the garden gate and watch the tassels of grass in the twilight and their winking fireflies.  I like to see what is new and what is still to come in the garden and the world beyond.

"The Spring Clad All in Gladness..."

The unseasonably warm weather we have experienced here in the Litchfield Hills over the last few days has really given a kick start to Spring.  Many of the bulbs, ephemeral wildflowers and trees are leafing out and bursting into bloom at least 10 days ahead of where they were last year at this time.  Temperatures are now more in line, with chilly nights and days in the low 60s, but already one's thoughts turn to spaded earth and seedlings in soil thta may yet experience a hard frost before it is safe for summer garden glories like tomatoes and basil that I await with great pleasure.

I can smell the smoke of someone burning brush through my open office window.  These early Spring days are precisely the wrong time to spark up a burn pile, with tinder dry lands and strong winds ready to carry embers and fan the flames.  It is a good time, however to burn invasive barberry, which has just expended its energy reserves in a first flush of green and will have a hard time bouncing back from a good scorching. 

Tomorrow is Mayday and this weekend is therefore the one time of the year when the women of Bryn Mawr College revel in white.  I have fond memories of maypoles on the green, strawberries and cream for breakfast and frolics on the grass from my years at Haverford and as a "Bryn Man". 

"Pray dainty nymphs, and spake / Shall we play barley break? fa la la la la..."

Who wouldn't trade their work-a-day attire for straw hats and morris bells at such a time?   It's good to be the goat-footed balloon man... 

Extra, Extra

My latest article in the Lakeville Journal appeared in the April 2nd edition; readable here with free on-line registration:

"...My friend Mark Brown, an avid angler, tells me that we really have no native brookies left in Connecticut, as the indigenous strain has been thoroughly diluted by stocked fish. Not only that, but the widespread clearing of the landscape in the 19th century, accompanied by heavy fishing and the introduction of non-native trout species, further impacted genetic diversity of brook trout thought most of its range.  On opening day in 1877, one fisherman in Salisbury reportedly caught 150 brook trout in Moore Brook: none of them larger than half a pound.

By the early 20th century, a conservation movement spearheaded by dedicated sportsmen was hard at work in an effort to restore some of America’s vanishing wildlife — including the now ubiquitous white tailed deer — and to introduce other game species that they hoped would naturalize. Theodore Roosevelt is the one who is best remembered, but another national conservation leader was Connecticut’s Sen. Frederick C. Walcott, who along with Starling W. Childs established the Great Mountain Forest in Norfolk and Falls Village.

Sen. Walcott was a close friend and ally of Herbert Hoover, who deserves to be remembered as one of our great fishing presidents as well as the fellow who saw the bottom drop out of the market on his watch. In May 1940, the two men went angling at George Quinion’s fishing camp on Schenob Brook, just across the state line in Massachusetts, where they released several trout to help establish the fishery.  Quinion noted approvingly that President Hoover was careful to handle the fish with wet hands to preserve their protective coating, and used a barbless hook for his flies... "

The paper also ran one of my salamander pictures, which doubles the exhorbitant rate my services now command from a Hamilton to a Jackson.  

 

 

Dad and Lad and Daughter on the Ice

Last Sunday, Emily, Elias and I went over to our friend Tom's quarry for an afternoon of skating and wound up doing some ice fishing besides.  Emily caught two small bass right off the bat, but unfortunately there was no camera there at the time to record the moment.  Elias did not hook anything, but he and I did have some great time waiting by the hole, as this photo will attest.

Those marking the progression of our family through the years will regard these two pictures as having archival significance for 2 additional reasons.  Emily has glasses, received just before Christmas, and I have grizzle, clearly showing through at the jaw in my winter beard.  The skates, however, remain as always the hand-me-downs from my father, and unlike some years at least they have a fresh, keen edge.

And yes, that is a medieval cowl, Renaissance Faire vintage, and just the thing for warmth and unrestricted movement on the ice.  Or skulking in Sherwood.  I have a full hooded doublet as well, for more formal occasions.

Innocent Innuendo

One of the central truths of advertising is that sex sells.  Another is that words and phrases with perfectly innocent definitions can sound downright pornographic when taken out of context.  Just try saying "kumquat" without blushing.  The fruit itself is actually extremely sour, not at all what the name would suggest.  Accident?  I think not.

Or go to a diner and tell the waitress you take it black, like it over easy, and prefer fresh squeezed.    There is something very earthy about breakfast at a greasy spoon, and when Flo told Mel on Alice to "kiss my grits" we all knew she wasn't talking about hominy.  We can thank the US navy for taking things further downhill with "shit on a shingle" (creamed chipped beef on toast), though the limeys have their own version "on a raft" made with kidneys.  And anyone who made it through Ulysses and all that organ meat that Molly Bloom craves without catching the overt sexual references wasn't paying attention.

Any grease monkey knows how to do a lube job, twist a lug nut and what is going on between the master and the slave cylinders.  As for pistons and crankshafts, it takes a lot of thrust to get the engine going.  I am convinced that the absolutely filthiest song ever to slip past the censors is the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe", as a sample of the lyrics makes patently obvious:

Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she'll walk a thunderbird like (she's) its standin still
Shes ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored.
She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored

She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy

And comin off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears

Much more clever than The Lemon Song, which has all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer. 

Sports metaphors are a slippery slope, especially when inserted in the workplace.  That CEO missed an   opportunity by neglecting to include ice hockey terms in his inappropriate address.  Pressure in the crease, anyone? 

Old School Ads, however, are the cream of the crop.  As one memorable British 60s advert put it: "Unzip a banana"

My, oh my.  What ever happened to Carmen Miranda?  I think I'll go have a Snickers.  I hear tell it satisfies.

A Strange and Painful Decline

I happened upon an 1885 History of Berkshire County and discovered a passage relating to farming in New Marlboro, but just as applicable elsewhere in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills during the late 19th century:

"...agriculture just now, especially in the eastern portion of the town, is suffering a strange and painful decline.  Many homesteads have been sold for for less than the cost of their buildings, and others, the dwelling, the outbuildings, and most of the fences virtually abandoned, are being used as large pasture tracts.  The famous saying that the first settlers feared that they could not find enough stone for building purposes, now when boulders covers o large part of the surface, seems incomprehensible.  Perhaps these stones were regarded as unsuitable for building, or more probably they were then covered with vegetable mold and have since been heaved to the surface by frosts which strike deeper than when the earth was protected by forests.  Many hundred acres formerly yielding fine crops of hay cannot now be mowed, much less plowed.  As a consequence of this, and perhaps also because of the exhaustion of certain elements of the soil, there appeared, about forty years ago, a shrubby growth known as hard hack (Potentilla fruticosa) and steeple top (Spirea tomentosa), the two growing together, and this growth now covers entire farms, destroying even much of the pasture.  This is one of the most discouraging features of New Marlboro farming, since to clear the land of boulders and hard hack would cost more than its present, or subsequent value.  Much of this land, moreover, would require to be underdrained.  nature is providing some compensation in covering much of this land with a growth of pine, which destroys the hard hack and may soon become valuable for timber.

The author of the New Marlboro chapter of the History of Berkshire County, Professor S. T. Frost, is a keen observer who recognizes many of the patterns and processes - both natural and social - that affected the landscape of his day.   Some of the rural communities of western New England lost more than half their populations in the decades after the Civil War, as the availability of more fertile western lands and urban migration combined with the collapse of the local iron industry and decline of agriculture in a perfect storm of cultural, economic and ecological disturbance. 

The plants he describes as invading the abandoned farmlands are actually native to our region rather than introduced exotics, but behaved invasively in the absence of competition in the wet meadows that were no longer farmed.  Potentilla fruticosa, more commonly known today as Shrubby cinquefoil , is a calcium-loving wetland indicator species in the marble valleys of the Housatonic watershed.  Steeplebush (Hardhack) usually occurs in wetlands as well.  Neither species provides good grazing (even today, deer avoid browsing cinquefoil), so in addition to the factors mentioned for their spread, the use of former cropland as pasture might have encouraged the growth of these species until they out-competed the available forage.  Although he would not have though to use this term, Professor Frost is describing the impact of a lack of stewardship on the condition of previously managed lands.

Pasture pines invading abandoned fields became a regular feature of the changing New England landscape.  Anytime I find myself walking through a stand of mature white pine and nothing else, I am certain that they grew to maturity as a plantation or in an open field.  The forest that reclaimed these previously managed lands is different in species composition and structure, the attributes of its soil and the habitat it provides, than that which had been first cleared for settlement.  Some of the bird species that would have been abundant during the height of agriculture in our region  - meadowlarks, bobolinks, and a host of other grassland birds - are in parabolic decline as the land reforests.  Others like the wild turkey that would have been rare in Professor Frost's day are now thriving and expanding their numbers.

The very next passage in this history anticipates the state of real estate affairs in the Berkshire and Litchfield Hills 125 years later:

"This present unfortunate condition of New Marlboro agriculture must be temporary.  When the best portions of the West, now being taken up so rapidly, are occupied, these deserted lands must become valuable, both for their locality and their producing power."

Proximity to major metropolitan centersin New York, and to a lesser degree Hartford, has made our land valuable as residential real estate.  A renewed interest in locally-produced food and concern about the loss of our remaining farmland to non-agricultural uses runs up against the hard fact that the land is worth more in a developed state than as farmland, and is too expensive for new farmers to obtain.  Meanwhile, Berkshire County is losing population and Connecticut is hemorrhaging an exodus of young people at one of the highest rates in the nation.  We have saved many significant lands from development but are unable to maintain them in a condition which will ensure that the very qualities that made them special will persist over time.  Without the resources to care for and steward our fields and forests, they are vulnerable to fresh degradation from invasive species and to loss of ecological productivity.

We should expect more changes in this altered landscape, not all of it for the worse.  Frost reports that "the fox and the raccoon are the largest game that now survives civilization."  Today we share our backyards with bears.

 

 

Night Out

This rarely happens in my life anymore, but tonight Viv and I have a night out on the town.  The sitter is set, there are funds for a good dinner in one of Great Barrington's many fine eating establishments, and at 8:00 p.m. the curtain goes up at the Mahaiwe on Richard Thompson's make up performance for the show he had to cancel back in April after being bitten by a scorpion.  Hard to imagine a nicer way to spend the evening.

And anyone who can make a Britney Spears song sound like a classic is a man after my own heart.

Fall Forage

My wife called my attention to these beauties growing beneath a tree on our street.  I knew at once what they were, but took the time with my children to carefully key them out and verify my identification.

They are white mushrooms, bullet shaped, and covered with russet brown flaky scales.

The stalk is while, slender and hollow.

The gills are very densely crowded, free from the stalk, and along with the caps they dissolve from the edge into an inky, black liquid as they mature, as two of these specimens were already starting to do.

In fall, with these characteristics, they could only be shaggy manes (Coprinus comatus) - called Lawyer's Wigs in Britain - a delicate and delicious member of the family of inky cap mushrooms. 

I first had shaggy manes at my friend Nic Osborn's in his fantastic troll house of a home over in Taconic.  The process of autodigestion that turns them from white to inky black is part of how they reproduce and release their spores, and it means that these beauties need to be quickly sauteed after picking.  I twisted and detached the stalks and trimmed the ragged edges of the caps, and tosses the pieces into a skillet  with a little butter.  My children were utterly delighted and declared them excellent fare - a rare compliment from my daughter with her many food aversions. It also gave me the opportunity to reinforce the parental injunction against putting anything in your mouth that you find in the wild without adult supervision.  I want them to respect the fact that what you don't know can, in fact, kill you, but not to fear those wild foods they can learn to identify and are wonderful treats for those in the know.

We also helped ourselves to some wild apples and made bars of apple crisp, a deep dish pie with a hint of  ginger, and a quart of applesauce that required no sweetener.  I also got plenty of material for my next article in the Lakeville Journal, which comes out on October 23rd and which I will link to when it does.

Now, if I could only find some sulfur shelf or lobster mushrooms!  There is an old oak tree where the former used to grow, but being a roadside tree they never seemed to last more than a day or so before some passing mycophagist made off with the prize.  Better me than thee, at least where edible mushrooms are concerned!  I'll be happy to serve some up for you if you are in the neighborhood.

Still You, Dylan Thomas.

Here I am at the tipping point of the season, a time when I often feel off balance.  The leaves are turning but except under some of the stressed street trees have yet to blanket the ground with that dry, crackling quilt of color.  There has not been a hard frost yet, so the two lone basil plants left in the garden continue to tempt their fate, but as for the rest it is time to pull up stakes and rotate compost out of one pile so leaves can go in their stead. 

I do not linger at these times.  I'd rather get on with it, drain the nut brown glories of the season to their very dregs.  If it must be Fall, let phalanxes of wild geese cry in exultation.  Let the swamp maples prolong their crimson riot and sugar maples blaze orange glories against a bright blue sky.  I want clean bracing air and the aroma of wood smoke and the rustle of musty leaves.  Bring on the squash soup and sweet cider, and more varieties of apples than there are days in October.

Yet every year I think the color pales in comparison to rose-tinted memory.  Not for me the dull yellows and pale greens of a half-hearted forest.  Time enough for the stoic russet oaks and bare gray limbs in the wind. If the long night approaches, it is time for finales, not funeral marches.  Let the mountains wear their hoarfrost like a crown and not a shroud.  Let the autumn revels admit no revenant before Hallow's Eve, and none thereafter.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- Dylan Thomas