How the year flies by

It’s hard to believe but we are on the doorstep to November with the time change (fall back) just a weekend away. It seems the older I get, the faster time seems to slip past. At the beginning of this last winter, we got hit with a cold spell in January that rivaled the ones I remember from a kid. Twenty below zero (Fahrenheit) at night and barely reaching zero during the day. Cold enough to make the car battery seize up and the fuel line to the furnace ice over requiring the services of a plumbing firm to thaw things out.

Wind storms came and went, finally taking out a dead pine near Big Rock.

Thankfully spring arrived, a bit drier than usual but pretty much on time.

Memorial Day came and went, the weather cooperating enough to allow the usual Memorial Day parade starting at the local firehouse just down the road from where I live and continuing up downtown Main Street.

The holiday is a signal for serious gardening to commence so I made my usual planting in my raised beds of a few vegetables with what I hoped was suitable protection against the usual offenders (deer and woodchucks).

Alas, the local woodchuck (a female) produced a hungry litter that proved small enough to squeeze through the fencing to feast on the growing wax beans. I belatedly reinforced the fencing and was able to coax the surviving plants to produce a few beans for the dinner table.

Summer proved meltingly hot this year with humidity levels appropriate more for the tropics than Northern New England. Rain came in fierce torrents at widely scattered intervals, making it hard to keep the raised beds moist. In spite of the unstable weather conditions, I was pleased to see more bees than I had seen last year. Also a pair of wood thrushes collected nesting material from the back yard and took up residence in the woods, the male’s sweet gurgling song floating through the trees, something I hadn’t heard in quite some time.

Finally something else I haven’t seen in well over a decade, monarch butterflies came migrating through in late August. It’s easy to read encouraging omens in this, that somehow Mother Nature is still managing to hang on in spite of all the damage careless humans seem determined to cause. But we are not out of the woods by any means and need to continue our efforts to support Her. I am down by one composter but have adjusted by snipping weeds rather than yanking them up, adding to the mulch in the gardens. Weather permitting, leaves will be raked up and after filling up the remaining composter will be scattered beneath the trees, allowing nutrients to return to the soil to support the next generation of bees, wood thrushes, monarch butterflies and, yes, baby woodchucks and hungry deer.

Tools of an artist

As a kid one of my great enthusiasms was drawing. Crayons, markers, watercolors and pens streamed through my fingers as I doodled, cartooned and sketched countless reams of paper. Somewhere along the line though, that pastime faded away to the occasional doodle on paper margins. I’m not sure why that happened but the preoccupations of adulthood likely got in the way. However as I have gotten older, my interest in drawing has rekindled.

The tools available to an artist boggle the imagination. My go-to place for quality supplies is the Blick art supply web site. Their free catalog is an inch thick tomb displaying tons of brushes, pastels, oil, watercolors, pencils, charcoals, air brushes, paper pads and numerous other goodies to inspire the budding Rembrandt or Michelangelo wannabee. I could spend all day just thumbing through it and ogling the supplies but of course the whole point of having the catalog is to order something and then start creating.

The simplest drawing tool, as well as the best to start with, is the pencil. Drawing pencils come in two forms, graphite and charcoal. Graphite pencils are the ones we are most familiar with, especially in the form of the number two pencil. Artist pencils come in a range of grades based on their hardness, with the softest pencils graded B to pencils with harder graphite cores labeled H. The number two pencil everyone is familiar with falls in the midrange (HB). Which grade of pencil to use depends on your preference. I tend to settle on 2B and 2H when doing quick sketches. Graphite pencils can range from the hardest (9H) to very soft (9B) but you will discover you won’t use the full range. Once you have sketched a bit, you will find your favorites and stick with those. Art supply stores do sell pencils individually, so you can purchase the grade you prefer and not wind up with a pile of pencils you will rarely use if you buy them by the set.

One drawback to graphite pencils has to do with shine. Because graphite is a mineral, it will reflect light from a surface you may intend to be very dark. If you are looking to create dark values in your drawing, charcoal pencils are better. Charcoal pencils come in varying grades of hardness as do graphite pencils. Made from either grape vines or willow sticks burnt in an kiln without air, their organic composition allows them to absorb light so you don’t get the annoying sheen that you do with graphite.

For eager beaver do-it-yourselfers, you can create your own willow charcoal sticks but being somewhat indolent, I prefer buying them ready made for use. One drawback to using charcoal is the fact that it smudges very easily. A fixative spray can lay down a layer of protection as long as you don’t mind the smell or the slight change in appearance it can cause to your artwork. The decision of whether to spray or not to spray is a controversial topic among artists, with everyone having their own opinion. If you are not interested in long term storage, a cheap hairspray will do the job though the paper may yellow over time.

As for what brand of graphite or charcoal pencils to use, you can buy them quite cheaply at Walmart for quick sketching practice in the beginning. As your technique improves you can find better quality pencils online at a variety of sources. None of them are really budget busters and the quality is roughly the same with all of them. You will no doubt settle on a personal favorite and have at it.

Happy drawing!

Plant Galls

On investigating plants throughout the summer, it is not unusual to come across a bizarre looking growth on a plant, many times looking much like a tumor or a wart. These are galls and they are produced by a variety of parasitic organisms such as viruses, fungi, mites and insect grubs.

Galls come in an astonishing assortment of shapes, colors and sizes, depending on which organism created them and which plant is being parasitized. Gardeners may bemoan the appearance of these funky growths. But for the most part, they don’t really harm the plant unless it is already sickly or is heavily laden with galls, they only render it a bit unsightly to look at.

The invading organism releases a substance which irritates the surrounding plant cells which begin forming a microhabitat for the parasite to live in. Insect galls will often have nutritious starches and other materials which may insure that the grub remains in one spot and doesn’t entirely devour its host.

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The above picture shows a small clump of galls on a wild grape vine in my back yard. They are likely the product of grape midges that hatch from eggs laid by the mother inside the stem of the vine which then forms the gall. There are a variety of grape midges each with its own life cycle. The vine itself appears uninjured and as long as the damage remains minimal, I will leave it be.

This particular gall was found on a non spiny member of the thistle family (not sure of identity). The gall extends several inches along the stem, swelling it but not apparently interfering with the growth of the weed as it managed to produce flowers. Until I can firmly identify which plant it is, the identity of the gall maker will be uncertain.

This odd bulbous growth found on a jewelweed plant is also a gall. It is formed by the larva of the jewelweed gall midge. The egg producing the larva is planted by the mother into a forming flower bud which then creates this odd structure looking much like a Christmas ornament. Once it has matured enough, it will chew its way out, drop to the ground and winter over.

Galls can take many whimsical shapes, some looking so much like part of the plant that if you aren’t familiar with the species, you might not realize you are looking at a plant gall. One is the willow pinecone gall which resembles its namesake. It looks quite ordinary until you recall willow trees don’t have pine cones. Oak apple galls often look so much like apples, you could be forgiven for thinking it was an actual fruit. But a closer look reveals its true nature, an oddly structured home for the little grub inside.

It’s easy to pitch a hissy fit when you see these strange formations on prized plants in your garden. But for the most part they are harmless. Many of these larva and mites hide inside the plant to avoid predators such as birds and other insects who would gladly chow down on them if the opportunity presented itself. What looks like a nuisance to you is actually lunch to somebody else. If you really have to, just pinch off the leaf or odd growth and remember it’s merely another startling reminder of some of the astonishing adaptations to be found in Nature.

Vintage Art

I have a fondness for vintage art work and own several clip art books from Dover Publications with a wide assortment of illustrations. They range from elegant to comical, all with their own special charm.

The above illustration is from one of the clip art books. I like to call it the amazing levitating mop for if you look closely, you will see the maid is not really holding onto it.

Recently on the blog site Ecosophia, the writer John Michael Greer complained about busybodies of every sort and put out a call to have the Order of Anti-Poke Noses revived. Apparently there actually was such an organization and one of its calling cards is shown above with a delightful vintage image of a ghastly harridan poking a long proboscis over a fence and sticking it into the business of a quietly courting couple.

Off and on over the years I also collected vintage postcards and advertising cards such as the following.

Balsam’s Hair Tonic promised you would not only gain a youthful appearance if you made use of their product but a happy family life as well.

The reverse of the card (a bit hard to read because it is shopworn) extols its virtues and also advertises an accompanying health tonic that will cure insomnia, dyspepsia, rheumatism, malaria (!), jaundice and a host of other ailments, all for a buck fifty. What a deal!

This is a postcard which doubles as a fortune telling card for single ladies. With lots of green color and four leaf clover images, how can you go wrong finding out who your future hubby might be? (Notice it assumes he will be a gentleman, though some of the choices of Circle III seem to be more for working class fellows.) Fortunately no one ever made use of it so it now occupies my collection.

I’m guessing this postcard falls under the humorous category, though the humor seems a bit dated to me, not surprising since it’s from the early twentieth century.

What lies behind the appeal of vintage images like these, or any vintage item for that matter? One line of thought seems to be that while some of it may be the inexpensiveness of second hand items, there may also be a psychological basis for it as well. It allows us to mentally connect with the past and serve as a source of comfort in unstable times. While I can’t say that is the reason I enjoy these images, they do harken back to a simpler time when things seemed a bit saner and much more human.

The little sketch I recently made of a ‘dippy hippie’ may not be quite vintage but does make me nostalgic for times now long gone. Will such times ever come again? I think so. Especially if you are willing make an effort to make it happen.

Peace.

The Perils Of Gardening

All of us dream of having a garden like this –

But wind up with something that looks like this –

Well, maybe not that bad. But with all the hungry critters and erratic weather, it’s not easy to produce something that’s even halfway between the above photos. So how does one ward off persistent fence crashers such as deer and woodchuck, the two large beasts that cause me the most trouble?

Put up fencing. Lots and lots of fencing.

Chicken wire is also a good defense. Here are some of my peas under a force field of chicken wire.

And some of my wax beans with fencing and wire mesh.

I found a wire mesh cage stashed up in the top of the garage when cleaning out the detritus of 50 plus years. It makes a nice wire cage for the bush squash I am trying out.

Will any of this be effective in making it possible to harvest some veggies later on in the summer? Only time will tell. Stay tuned.

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I am happy to report the sale of a third story to the quarterly magazine Into The Ruins.
Thank you Mr. Caris!