Well, obviously Sunday, Apr 15 2012 

gardening acairfearann 17:00

You know how one can look at something all the time (in this case all one’s life) and not see it?

The other day, contemplating the Norway Spruce out to the east of Happy Thought it finally dawned on me that it really was different from the others… shorter (all of 80 feet), a darker green colour, narrower cones, bright magenta young cone buds, and….long hanging branches….much longer and much more draping than the normal habit of a Norway Spruce.   Why! It is a weeping Norway Spruce.  A fully mature specimen and not so extreme as modern cultivars of ‘weeping’ trees; but nonetheless distinct.  I shall have to stop and look, halfway up the hill there is another tree that appears similar.

I feel very stupid.

(pictures at some point)

 

A musical note Friday, Apr 13 2012 

Esperanza acairfearann 18:56

One of Julie’s daughters, Fanny, was a pianist.  She made her living as a piano teacher before working for Steinway as the moving force behind its program of sponsoring young or unknown concert pianists.  It is through her legacy that Esperanza boasts the Steinways that it has.  However, the whole family has a tradition of musicality (to my great shame, I break with this tradition being barely able to stumble through the most basic of pieces).  Entertainment for generations meant a performance, usually on the piano.  Through the 1920’s, it was not uncommon for there to be parlor concerts, family members and visiting performers from New York City and, even, Europe might be involved.

Because of Fanny’s career, and because of Helen’s interest in the arts as well, it is no surprise, that the acoustics of the 1893 addition are remarkably good for a private home.  It was not built as a theater, but I cannot help but think that they must have requested a space specifically designed for the piano.  The piano, I would note, arrived a year or two later…and has never been moved.  Today, Jamie can usually be convinced to play a Chopin nocturne or two (from Memory!!!), and the elegance of the sound is not due solely to Chopin. 

Tonight, the reason for this post, I am seeing just how much the respectable (if by today’s standards antique!) sound system can take in regards to Anglican choral music.  The answer, for the curious, is that the space handles it well, for those that have heard such music in its original spaces, this is a compliment.

 

Early Spring Friday, Apr 13 2012 

Modern Photos acairfearann 13:12

 

Chip, chip, chip Thursday, Apr 12 2012 

Projects acairfearann 14:32

Taking paint off of old, cast iron garden furniture is an unhurried process.  I don’t have access to a sandblaster so it is most done with a much abused set of wood chisels and a drill-powered wire brush.  The latter is not as useful as you might think…  It is useful, but you simply cannot get it into all the little nooks.

I think we have all encountered the chic patio furniture patterned on the grape vines and pretending to be Victorian.  Well, this is the real stuff, and I am dying to encounter the replicas now.  Why?  Because the originals have leaves with actual indented veining, grape stems with the sort of vertical ribbing a real vine has so some of the vines are faceted, tiny cutouts, and other extremely sharp detailing.  All of which had been obscured first by some vivid green paint, and then a hideously heavy layer of white paint.*  Encasement in the extreme.  But I’d like to know if the replicas were patterned on clean originals or painted/rusted originals…anybody ever looked?

Now to decide should it be green or white, if green which green. The jury is still out.

*yes they are lead, what else?  Brain…what brain! ( I do take suitable precautions, but not to OSHA/CT standards)

 

Black bears in northwestern Connecticut Tuesday, Apr 10 2012 

Modern Photos and Uncategorized acairfearann 22:09

Over the last fifteen or twenty years, black bears have gradually become much more common in this region of Connecticut.  There is a fair bit of open space close by, most importantly the large tracts owned by the state and the water companies, so a breeding population is well established.  Last year a female denned on our property with three yearling male cubs, several other females have been seen (the females all have easily read ear tags) and there is a big male who is easily ID’d by a facial scar.    Bear sign in the woods is common.  It was, therefore, absolutely, no surprise to hear Robin (our horse) flipping out the other night, and even less of a surprise to see that the trash can was once more dragged across the lawn in the morning.*  A bear had clearly visited at about midnight.  It was a bit annoying but hardly unexpected; still I would like to figure out a location to hang a suet feeder for the woodpeckers again.  I will not hang it from a second story porch though, I don’t need them climbing the porches, they already climb the exterior stairs….

One of the young males on the front porch, they actually aren’t as big as you would think!  But nice claws there…

The young males, in a pine tree, a few months earlier.**

*Black bears are not a real threat to the horse; however, they could be and Robin knows this, he generally stands his ground halfway along the top fence line, which gives him a clear 360 degree view and plenty of space to run.  Dogs, which actually are a more serious threat to a horse, are something he has every intention of dispatching with extreme prejudice, but he knows better than to tangle with a bear.

** Not as stupid a picture as it would seem, I was with the DEP guys who were resetting the collar on the mother bear, who was solidly tranquilized at the base of the pine.  Those cubs had no intention of coming down or going anywhere at all, still we knew where they were.

 

Critters in the woods Tuesday, Apr 10 2012 

Uncategorized acairfearann 16:29

If one spends much time in the woods, one starts to learn what animal makes what noise.  No sound at all or no appreciable sound if a person is walking is, of course, the default.  However, they all can make quite a bit of noise. Squirrels and chipmunks are far louder than their size would suggest.  This is particularly true if they are chasing each on the ground, as they do not pay any attention to their surroundings.  Loud rustlings in the shrubbery, therefore, are probably very small rodents.  Deer don’t tend to make all that much noise, a deliberate four beat walk; unless they are spooked, at which point they tend to go crashing off through the woods.  Unlike the rodents, there is less rustling, more of a crashing sound.  Bears can sound exactly like a big dog, no surprise there.

Turkeys on the other hand…Generally very little noise.  However, they routinely sound like a person who is carefully threading their way through the trees.  It is exactly the same deliberate, two-beat walk.  Slightly creepy.

 

It rained! Monday, Apr 9 2012 

Trees acairfearann 12:21

A little bit, but still classified as a moderate drought.  For a fascinating map see: http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/monitor.html    We are much, much better off than many other areas of the country though.  However, the woods are quite dry, rather crunchy when you walk through them.  The pond’s flow is minimal, which isn’t helping our little algae problem; though I was pleased to realize that much of the stuff floating on the surface of the pond is not, in fact, algae.  Instead, it is an uncountable number of frog eggs.  They weren’t very loud this year, but they certainly did spawn. 

I ought to be sowing some grass seed, I think the forecast has a chance of some more showers.  Naturally, I didn’t get to it yesterday.

 

Objective Observation (also known as whining) Saturday, Apr 7 2012 

Uncategorized acairfearann 21:48

One of the hardest things with a place such as Esperanza is stepping back and seeing what has been accomplished.  In the ten years that I, and even more so my parents, have been actively working on the property a great deal has been done…and yet.  It always seems that the harder one works, the more there is to be done.  The curse of a perfectionist, I suppose?*  Inevitably, I see every ill plant, every chipped bit of paint…

It doesn’t help that the weather has the Goldilocks Syndrome and in addition that dry Spring weather always sets me on edge; but I think the main part of it is that when one sees a location every day, it becomes extremely hard to see either positive or negative change.  Which is where a photographic record comes in handy.  Unfortunately, although tellingly, we have almost no photos of the property during the 1980’s and 1990’s.**  I keep reminding myself, when working on a project, to take ‘before’ pictures….I never do.  It becomes easy to second guess one’s observations: either you didn’t realize it was there/wasn’t there because you didn’t know to look for it, or it is there/isn’t there because you did/didn’t do something….and you can’t prove it either way.

The human mind seems peculiarly good at erasing information which has no immediate emotional import, and that is very frustrating for long term analysis. 

*Less Sisyphus and more Pwyll chasing Rhiannon.

**It isn’t just that they aren’t digitized…they Aren’t there.

 

Mid April, 1873 Saturday, Apr 7 2012 

Historical Events acairfearann 10:29

Julie, in Hartford, writing to Morris in New Orleans.

“Yesterday Fanny and I went up to Esperanza. It looked cloudy when we started, and before we reached there, it began to snow, and culminated into the worst storm I ever was out in in my life. It snowed and sleeted and blew, and the driver had to turn back after going round the hill because of the drifts, which have been fifteen feet deep in some places. He had to get out and walk because the horses got stuck, the wheels sinking to the hubs in the soft snow and mud. The road straight up the hill has not been cleared this winter, and there are women up there who haven’t been outside their own door yards since Christmas. We could not get through Pussy Lane, but had to go in at the bars of Satis Bene, and away around the old house place, and out through the big gateway, and so into the road before we could get in at Esperanza gate.”

This is a very vivid, but frustratingly unclear passage.  If we look at the broader history of the town, Julie’s comment about the Town Hill road not being cleared actually makes sense. This was probably the straight section, about a mile and a half in length, that begins above the two minor roads that go around the hill: Steele/Burdick road to the east and West Hill/Maple Hollow to the west.  By the 1870’s Town Hill, the former town center, had lost most of its year round population.  Julie had purchased, in addition to Esperanza: Satis Bene, Appleby, and Aunt Piney’s house lots.  Their close friends, the Yales, lived next door and were also summer residents.  These were five of the central Town Hill lots, additionally, the dozen or so house lots south of the center on Yellow Mountain had been abandoned and returned to pasture.  The church had been vacant for nearly two decades.  There were probably no more than ten, at a most generous count, houses that were occupied year round on the hill by this time; in the following three decades, several of these would also become second homes or summer residences.  The town’s population centers, and main traffic routes, had shifted to the two river valleys.  It would only be in the 1930’s, when the state built the highway, that Town Hill’s population would start to increase again.

 

Planted! Thursday, Apr 5 2012 

gardening acairfearann 20:48

Three grapevines and two kiwis (of the pink variegated leaf and fuzzless fruit variety…really!).  That doesn’t sound like much, except of course for the minor detail of creating a garden bed running that side of the pergola.  You know the old term, ‘sod-busting’?  It has fallen out of use these days, but when the lawn is healthy, undisturbed for several decades, and composed of numerous perennial ground-covers (thyme, grasses, mints, violets, etc.) cutting through it becomes hard work.  You can bounce a blade off of it, if the angle isn’t vertical and the force isn’t great enough.*

I do hope the plants by the pergola do as they ought.  It will eventually include a honeysuckle, a rose, several clematis and space for a swing and a bench, as well as areas for the scented geraniums and the other tender perennials to be set out in the summer (I believe there is a fuschia and a begonia that are supposed to hang from the beams).  Very classic, which is of course in keeping with the location.  Well, the kiwis aren’t classic, but why not experiment a bit?

*Taking five minutes out to recreate even the most cursory of edges on the cutter makes a real difference.

 

« Previous Page — Next Page »