Historical Excerpts Sunday, Nov 10 2013 

Genealogy and Historical Events , , acairfearann 13:43

From a set of notes written by Fannie Morris Smith, circa 1915, talking about her Grandmother (Charlotte nee Calkins, m1 Palmer, m2 Norton), the mother of Julie Palmer Smith, born 1804 and died 1874.

 

“Grandmother, like my mother, was a born nurse. In the frontier community where she lived people in an emergency came from far and near to ask her help. She enjoyed it as a spree, would put on her black silk dress and gold watch, and ride off to preside over life or death as the case might be.

Her life with John Palmer did not last long. His business in Brockport (furniture) went on the rocks and soon after he died. (I have a candle stand with exquisitely turned stem – the top one beautiful maple board – which he made to please his young wife.) Not long after his death she married Henry Pitkin Norton, a young lawyer. They had hard work to make a living at first, and grandmother raised canary birds, which, as she improved their song by whistling and singing to them, so that they had many beautiful notes, found ready sale. Every scrap of kitchen fat was saved and tried out, and in the spring the winter’s store of wood ashes was tried out and the lye boiled down to make a soft soap, which found ready sale, so did her vinegar, made of the odd spoonful of juice left from the preserves on the supper table.

Grandmother’s two leisure arts were quilting counterpanes – she drew her own patterns (one of her quilts is in the Conn. Historical Society collection) – and transferring embroidery on new linen to make fine collars and handkerchiefs exquisitely done. She used to knit red and white woolen stockings for her grandchildren, and make jars of preserves and pickles to send us. Nelley aged eight emerging from a stolen visit to the cellar, and exclaiming, “pickles, I love you!” comes back among my memories.”

*Charlotte married John Palmer at age 14, she had her only child: Julie Palmer Smith at age 15.  I think she married Henry when she was perhaps 19 or so.

 

Japanese Maples in the Fall Thursday, Nov 7 2013 

gardening and Historic Photos and Landscapes and Modern Photos , , acairfearann 23:02

I mentioned in passing that I don’t object to Japanese Maples, which is good as we have a number of them…Although some of the more strict ‘native plants only’ group would argue for them being invasive; they don’t fit the definition very well here.  They grow much too slowly to compete with native maples or oaks, (assuming of course there are native maples to seed the area).  They do, however, germinate and grow.  We started with two: a finely cut dwarf and a fairly coarse purple/red back in the 1920’s.  They have crossed over the years and have produced many babies: some with finer cut leaves than others; some with good fall color (brilliant orange or scarlet), some that are an OK purple/red; some that have green summer foliage (always orange in the fall), some with dark red summer foliage. 

IMG_4099 The original dwarf, finely cut one.  You can see a branch of the other original in the top left corner.  Sadly, this dwarf is not long for the world, this photo was taken three years ago, the top branches have since died.

IMG_4090 One of the babies with a fairly typical medium fine cut, this one is almost green in the summer.

IMG_2141 Two of the offspring, the closer one is a genuine scarlet in the fall, the other is noticeably more purple/maroon.  That is accurate color in the photo. 

Specialc099One of the earliest photos that show the original two in 1957.

IMG_4763 The same maples in 2012. This maroon color is the standard for most of the offspring as well.

 

Does anyone else Wednesday, Nov 6 2013 

gardening and Landscapes acairfearann 22:50

find little engines (in mowers, string-trimmers, chainsaws, etc) to be utterly, totally invaluable and irreplaceable? And utterly infuriating?

The lawnmower didn’t like the cold and didn’t like the load that the leaf-catcher put on it, and kept stalling. It had to be on clean ground with exactly the right amount of choke/throttle to engage yesterday.  On the other hand, I can’t imagine raking all those gingko leaves…

And the string trimmer….getting it restarted after refilling the gas tank? Flood, wait, flood, wrench the wrist, flood, start! Then it runs beautifully.  And clearing the unwanted seedlings from five acres? While going around all the wanted saplings and seedlings? Well a brush scythe would do it, but it would take forever and not be nearly as neat.

Useful gadgets, but they certainly are prima donnas!

 

Golden Rain or Gingkos Monday, Nov 4 2013 

gardening and Trees , , acairfearann 21:06

We have two Gingkos, one about 120 years old and one about fifty.  Thankfully, both are males, so no fruit.  They are lovely trees, though the young one is too big for its space.  They are quite hardy in this area, but they have some quirks….  In the fall, if the temperature drops to a certain point, they drop ALL their leaves ALL at once (as in less than eight hours).  It doesn’t matter if they are still green or have turned gold, they will drop.

As it turns out, it would seem that 25 F is that temperature.  At least, yesterday both had essentially all their leaves.  Last night hit 25 F; this morning there was a gentle, steady patter of falling leaves.  By noon they were bare and the ground was carpeted several inches deep in leaves.  This year about eighty percent had turned, so it is a mostly gold carpet; but they are still a bit green and a bit soggy.  I will pick them up tomorrow.

The other quirk is that gingko leaves do not decompose easily.  Fallen leaves, if they have turned gold and dried out, can last several years in dry shade.  They are hydrophobic, even in a watered compost pile, they will form clumps that are literally bone dry despite being surrounded by soggy material.  If they are green when they fall, they will decompose…..much like banana peels will…. (i.e. suffocating slime) this is not desirable!  We pick them up, separated from the other leaves and create a pile which just sort of sits there.  We try to pick up only about half of the oak/maple/magnolia/beech leaves, leaving the rest as mulch; but we try to collect essentially all of the gingko leaves.

 

Red Maples Sunday, Nov 3 2013 

gardening and Modern Photos , acairfearann 22:06

I fail, utterly, to understand why people plant Norway Maples by the thousand.  Japanese Maples I understand (I’d better, otherwise I am a total hypocrite).  But Norways?  Now, we have several very large Norways, but I cut every sapling I see.  They have poor fall color, rarely have good structure (especially the more modern cultivars), and blah bark. Never mind that havoc they are wreaking as invasive species par excellence!

The quandary is made worse by the existence of three outstanding native maples: Sugar, Red, and Silver.  All three have gorgeous fall color, the Red and Silver are very tough trees, (the Silver is a common urban street tree in Montreal), both the Red and Silver are fast growing, they have generally good structure (full grown Sugar Maples are classics), elegant bark, and did I mention the fall color…?

Here is a shot of our young Red Maple, looking up into it, hardly doing it justice.  And this, in a Terrible year for fall color.  It is an orange one, some around here are a true scarlet.  Each tree has a specific color that they turn each year, the base color is not weather dependent, only the brilliance and length of the show.

IMG_2136

 

Weather Saturday, Nov 2 2013 

Uncategorized , acairfearann 10:51

A bit of rain and wind to welcome November.  I like that sort of wind, even if it keeps one awake and knocks the power lines askew.  Some people don’t though; here is Julie’s take on November wind in upstate New York, 1856:

“The Storm wind has been abroad raging and tearing around madly, all the time, spitefully howling down the chimneys, shrieking in at the windows, rattling the panes, and creaking all the doors. Sobbing and soughing in the pine trees and being as generally ill conditioned and disagreeable as it is possible for a winged wind to be.”

I suppose, it is easy to enjoy the wind with the advent of decent storm windows.  Still, I liked it in Edinburgh where I definitely Didn’t have decent windows!

 

I’m getting tired Thursday, Oct 31 2013 

Esperanza and gardening acairfearann 10:24

of having to water certain plants in the spring and fall…for the last few years, we have had dry springs and dry falls, which is the worst timing for any plants that are trying to establish themselves or which are prone to desiccation in the winter (the broad leaved evergreens, roses, azaleas, and the like).  I am hoping this fog actually turns into rain.  .

Although Not hoping that hard, we currently have an almost hole in the roof, as we are putting a skylight in a room.  They haven’t actually cut through the outer roof yet, just the interior wood. For those who know the house, it is in Aunt Carlotta’s room on the second floor, south end, two skylights on the east side near the peak.  A bit of a trick getting up there…it turns out that the peak is solidly over fourteen feet (i.e. a man standing on the top of an eight foot ladder could only just brush the top of the peak with his fingers).  Some ingenious re-use of old lumber and the scaffolding was high enough.  As always, size in this house is very deceptive!

 

 

Photo of the Day Tuesday, Oct 29 2013 

gardening and Landscapes and Modern Photos , , acairfearann 16:04

IMG_6348

 

Healthcare Sunday, Oct 27 2013 

Uncategorized acairfearann 19:57

and different worlds…. a paragraph from a letter by Julie, 1859, to Morris:

“Lottie has been in bed since Sunday (letter written on Wednesday) and is under the Dr’s care. She has a fever, I suppose it is an attack of worms, and is as restless and uncomfortable as only she can be. I hope she will be better soon. I was afraid we should lose her. There has been such dying among the children in this quarter that I was very nervous. She seems though to be better and I hope she will soon be on her feet again.”

Before and after that paragraph in the letter discusses other, more mundane news as usual.  There was, of course, nothing to be done one way or the other: Julie was in Hartford and Morris was in New Orleans; if their daughter was deathly ill it would, most likely, have been over before any letter (let alone a reply!) arrived.  Given the emphatic past tense in the paragraph, Julie may well have held off on writing until the outcome was certain, but still…  A very different world from ours of instant communication!

 

It Snowed! Friday, Oct 25 2013 

Uncategorized acairfearann 11:20

Well, only a few little flakes here and there on cold surfaces, so it doesn’t exactly count….

I am beginning to think that the UPS men have a running game going on; this time a package arrived in the mid-morning (it usually is late afternoon) and was placed on the Telephone Hall porch.  Not a completely new one to find a package on.  But definitely not the most common one.  The perils of multiple doors, porches, and no clear ‘main/front’ door.  It actually is a fairly reasonable place, I suppose, if someone has walked in from the barnyard.  And I certainly don’t mind that they prefer that entrance, the UPS truck doesn’t really, quite Fit in the front entrance.  Well it does, but it doesn’t look like it does!

 

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