Mind the Gap

And what a gap it is!  more than two years. But it's time to come back on line, look up, and see what's ahead.

What's ahead, it turns out, is spring.

And the boardwalk is waiting, so let's step over that gap - just ignore it - get out and see what there is to see.

Bailey Arboretum : A Walk in the Woods

    The one-time summer estate of Brooklyn financier Frank Bailey (whose fountain you may be familiar with), Bailey Arboretum sounds too good to be true: 40-odd acres of green peace on the North Shore, open free to the public, with free parking, 7 days a week the year around. And you are welcome to bring a picnic lunch and your dog (on a leash.)

    This is where we went to see Dawn Redwoods on Long Island. ("Surprise! We're not extinct.") And let me tell you, they are something to see:

I found it more or less impossible to frame a shot encompassing a whole specimen. Maybe next time. The ones growing on the estate here were planted from seeds collected in 1947.

 

Only seven acres are landscaped; the rest consists of rambling woodland paths, none of which are very interesting in late August. Still, they're shady and peaceful:

 

 

There is a dedicated children's garden area, and a small number of aviaries housing injured or otherwise-compromised rescued birds. They have a couple of crows (American and Fish), several red-tailed hawks, and a few owls (Great Horned and Barred).

 

This owl is blind in one eye.

 

    In my opinion, late August is a cruel month in the great outdoors. The birds are quiet, the insects are loud, and the pond scum is at its peak. So I'll be interested to see what this place is like in other seasons. The redwoods are deciduous!

    It surprised me to read that Bailey declares itself "the only accredited arboretum on Long Island and in the New York Metropolitan area." Say what now?  Planting Fields State Historic Park is a pretender? Bayard Cutting is a wannabe? Apparently they haven't applied for accreditation, which is a designation bestowed by these folk. Even more interesting, there are levels of accreditation, such that a golf course or a cemetery may be granted the status of an arboretum, albeit at a low level. (Maybe there's a tax benefit involved in doing so?) The page listing the levels of accreditation has links to lists of arboreta that meet each level. (Bailey is a Level 2.)

    So I'll be studying that list later, looking for more places to go. In the meantime, why don't you take a walk in the Long Island woods?

 

Determination



 



A pale predator waiting for the last late visitors to the sunflower. There in the morning before I left for work, there when I returned home at five. Patience is an eight-legged virtue.

 

 

Squeezed To Meet You!

Okay, I think we can see these are not your average, lazily-smothering-the-old-tree-type vines; these are some strangulatin' vegetable-constrictors that mean business. Having gotten hold of a strong young sapling, they are Taking. It. Down yessirree.
You'll understand why I made sure to keep moving, and not stand for too long in one spot, when I walked around the Knollwood ruins in Muttontown Preserve with my brother yesterday. The English ivy was so vigorous, so extensive... I swear it was grabbing my shoelaces...

Always A Trip, This Flower

All of a sudden, three foxglove plants sprang up not far from where I planted one four years ago. Volunteers!

Old Faithfuls

We have lots of different kinds of daylilies around here, thanks to the DH's old hobby, but over the years and the moving them around, I really don't know which one's which anymore. Anyhow, this is the first one blooming, and doesn't it cheer the joint up?

More Color To Rest The Eyes

Serene blue bellflower

Clematis

This vine hides in the dogwood tree; you have to work to see the blooms.

Finally! Something Pretty

Enough with the brown insects, empty nests, and grey sweaters. I'm tired of them too. Let's look at a flower every day instead, shall we? Here's what's blooming at the moment: this sweet pink tuft-flower-thing, whose proper name I've lost around here someplace.

On Pushing Through, and Coming Back

I didn't clear away the oak leaves last fall, but that didn't stop the tulips. All over the bed, they just keep unfurling, ever so slowly, and go not around the obstacle but straight through. The force is with them, the one that through the green fuse drives the flower.
(Oh look it up; you're in front of the internet anyway...)
The lizards have woken up and started to scamper, everything's coming up green, and crowds of robins are urging me to "cheer up! cheer up!" as they search for real estate to settle down on. I tell ya, it's like a Hallmark card at times.
Things have been quiet here since the end of the summer, when a spanner was thrown in the works, and I've spent the last six months being inspected, resected and injected. It's not quite over, but it will be soon, and trust me, when it is, we'll be getting back up to speed here. For what that's worth.
In the meantime, here's a snowdrop in the Clark Botanic Garden, on the first full day of spring.

Hiding In Plain Sight

Would you look at that? Do you see what's in the seed pod, beside seeds?

I usually cut down the daylilies' flower stalks before they develop seed pods, but the ones I miss have, by mid-October, been dessicated into lacy cups of glossy jet beads, like the ones here. I thought it made a nice image, with the shadow and the contrasting textures, and photographed them two weeks ago. Only now do I see.....the snail. (Make that snails. That's one in the left pod, too!) These guys get everywhere. It's not unusual to see the little critters poised at the end of an eight-foot-long willow branch that must have taken them hours to traverse the length of, from the ground to the very tip where now is being chewed up the tenderest, juiciest new growth. But really, you climbed all the way up the stalk, into the seed pod... Did it eat and fall asleep? Was it attacked by a predator and left there, an empty shell? Went looking for that same stalk and seedhead today, but it's gone; it's been two weeks of rain, wind, leaves falling, sun, rain, etc. So. Something impossible to look out for next year...

Easier On The Eyes

I apologize for flaking out and leaving that giant spider up for weeks as the only thing to greet you, my welcome visitors. While I will continue to flake out for a few days, until I drum up something to say or show, let me post a prettier placeholder here. Normally, I bore you all with Latin names, but honestly, I just plain forget what this is. It's not a daisy. I bought it in the spring at the nursery; I think it's a perennial, the flower petals are rosy, purple, blue or white, all on the same plant, and the centers are all this great navy-blue.

Oh, wait! I found out. It's an osteospermum, probably the cultivar "Passion Mix." Should be perennial. Anyway, it's very pretty all season long here in zone 7; I recommend it.

Key West (Floral Edition)

Key West in August is very warm, very humid indeed. On the bright side, everything's in bloom.

Ken took the shot above, the one below, and the one below that, the banana tree.

Look up there! Bananas!

I think this one of the fan palm is his, too.

Gaudy Girls And A Syrphid Fly

This lantana, above right, is quite the show-off in the sunshine, especially next to the blue campanula. It's been impossible (for me) to get a satisfactory shot of the flowerheads for some reason. There are too many florets, somehow, for the focusing to ever look perfect. Oh well.

These little hoverflys are exquisite for their size; here's one on top of a lavender spike for scale. I found out what kind they were by submitting this photo to BugGuide.net, which is a very helpful site for the amateur naturalist.

Recent Acquisitions

The Dee's Nursery in Oceanside holds a local-legendary 4th of July Sale annually, when everything-but-everything sells for 50% off list. It's mobbed, even at the 5:30 (a.m.!) opening.

I didn't go this year, and only went to the nursery this morning, more than a week later, to get some stakes for the tall stuff that was falling over. I was happily surprised to find that the half-price sale goes on for "a week or so," according to the cashier, and there were still a number of healthy, not-yet-potbound bargains. I scooped up a white dicentra (alba, a cultivar that blooms after the classic pink variety is done):

another coral bells called Plum Pudding for its purple leaves:

a clump of fescue 'Elijah Blue'

and two clematis plants: the dark-purple 'jackmanii' and a white sweet-autumn variety. They're not in bloom right now. But we half-price gardeners are patient. Oh, and I got another fern, a marginal shield fern:

...so named not for a dearth of the characteristics shared by shield ferns, but for the fact its sporia develop on the margins of its leaves.

Oh, and in an update on the habits of fireflies, I had occasion to observe this one for quite a few hours over the course of planting this afternoon, and my anecdotal scientific conclusion is that yes, they do in fact do nothing, and eat nothing, all day!

First Seeds Of The Season

These are from the clematis, whose blooms are spent now. The seeds themselves are miniscule, but beautifully tricked out for travel with long curvy manes of golden fibers. They remind me of fishing lures.

The Rest Of The Vacation Slides

Okay! No more twee stories about insensate objects; let's just breeze through a few last photos from our weekend in Niagara. Leaving out pictures of the people we were with (they're shy,) wineries that pretty much look like wineries anywhere else, and more pictures of Big Water, here's what we're left with: We visited the butterfly conservatory in Niagara Park's botanical garden:

Did I mention that Olivia came with us? She had a blast:

And look! everywhere we go: baby birds!

The Niagara River is a major nesting area, especially for gulls, and we were there in the middle of chicky-time! Above is a common herring gull and chick. There were hundreds of thousands of gulls around the falls and in the islets on the Niagara River.

In the Dufferin Island nature area we saw red-winged blackbirds, including one who opened a can of Hitchcockian whoop-ass on Ken for trying to take her picture. (She must have had a nest nearby.) There is no photograph of her for that reason.

Flowers were more cooperative:

A wooden walkway crossing part of the river had wide spaces between its slats, and you could look through them and see thousands of little fish in the turquoise water.

And finally:

This! The misty, shady area around the "Cave of the Winds" at the base of Bridal Veil Falls encourages some mighty fine tree fungus.

And that's it! For some moving images of the Big Water, visit my YouTube channel, where there's a clip of the view from our hotel window, as well as a brief moment from the Journey Behind The Falls. Almost like being there! Except you're not wearing a poncho.

Hello, April, Glad To See Ya!

I thought you'd never get here. (No foolin'.) What a relief to the winter-weary eyeball.