Images of New England
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Looking northeast from the entrance of North Cove Harbor towards the CT River. This pier stands on what was once a rail causeway in the late 1800’s, connecting Saybrook Point to the Old Saybrook railroad station at the north end of town.
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Found this on my first kayaking trip around North Cove yesterday, on a northeast facing wall, shortly after low tide.
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I planted one hundred cloves of garlic in early November last year. They came from all around New England: Fedco Seeds in Kennebec County, ME (Georgian Fire), the Buffalo Mountain Co-op in Hardwick, VT (Snowy Bird and Red Russian), High Meadows Farm in Putney, VT (German White) and my own 2018 harvest (varied).
The first green emerged in early March; the crop was harvested in mid July, dried for a few weeks, and finally, today, on a beautiful eighty degree day with low humidity, cleaned up for storage. The yield was about ninety four bulbs (plus or minus), including a couple of able volunteers. Best results, size-wise, were from Fedco and my garden. Garlic scape pesto is in the freezer ready to go. I love the contrarian aspect of garlic – it’s planted in the late autumn, at which time my gardening mojo is back in full force. And it’s the first green to remind me that spring really is on the way, before daffodils and maybe even crocus.
Yesterday I used some of the new garlic in a batch of fire cider that should be ready to go in a few weeks – good for whatever ails you, old timers say, particularly over the long winter. The summer is shifting, here in early August …
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This is just a placeholder until I can work out the kinks in a video upload of these guys munching. Stay tuned, it’s a compelling thirty seconds.
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Three monarch butterflies have been hanging around our gardens this past couple of weeks (two seem to be a couple, flitting around everywhere together), and one of them laid some eggs on the underside of one of the leaves of this plant above. Those eggs quickly developed into ravenous caterpillars that proceeded to defoliate the plant, before moving on elsewhere. Some ended up on another type of milkweed three feet away, but so far none yet on still another type some ten feet away, where I half expected them to be, given multiple plants. Elsewhere near our home, there is no sign yet of any monarchs or eggs on a profusion of milkweed plants at the boat landing; they were inundated with them last year.
Addendum on 8/12: they finally found the milkweed ten feet away.
Addendum on 8/17: the eggs/caterpillars were actually those of milkweed tussock moths, otherwise known as milkweed tiger moths. See next post.
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The Khousa Dogwoods (Cornus Khousa) have been spectacular along the coast this year, where Spring has been on the cool and rainy side. I don’t remember a year with blossoms so magnificent and the trees looking so healthy. There’s a particularly nice stretch heading west out of the center of Madison, where a number of stately colonials provide a backdrop.
This hasn’t so much been the case with other dogwoods; I notice the pink and reddish flowered ones (Cherokee Brave/Cherokee Princess – Cornus Florida) have hardly flowered at all, and have long since gone by.
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I returned here a few days after taking this photo, at about the same time of the day, and the backlight on the smoke bush was again spectacular.
A man was standing where I had been, clutching a large drawing pad and furiously sketching the scene before it shifted. His concentration was such that I felt a little bad even saying hello, and apologizing for walking into the scene briefly to ID the yellow flowers in the foreground. “Oh I can work around you..”
Turns out they’re coreopsis, surrounded by milkweed and white columbine.
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