Acair Fearann

There is something indescribable about the taste of wild, New England grapes.  There are two types, the small red and the small blue (the ancestor of the Concord).  Both are no larger than a penny, thick skinned, and heavily seeded.  Absolutely nothing like your typical grocery store grape.  The sharp flavour is so intense that eating more than a few is unlikely.  The taste is closest to a port wine or the heavy, dry wine I had once from the isle of Santorini, Greece, where the grapes grow in a poor, dry climate creating a naturally high concentration of sugars. A sweet tartness, smoke, sun, and the wild.

The titmouse wasn’t terribly happy about me running off with several clusters though…

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I was planting two Comptonia peregrina (better known as Sweet Fern) today, and consequently did a bit of research first.  Sweet Fern is undeservedly, in my opinion, poorly known.  Finding the plant in a nursery is uncommon.  This has always struck me as odd: here is a plant that grows in disturbed, hot, sandy/gravelly, poor soils.  It should be an ideal foundation plant, especially with its fragrant leaves (somewhere between citronella, pine, and rosemary), short habit, and not unpleasing (if not spectacular) winter and summer appearance.  It is a distinctive New England/Mid Atlantic plant, growing wherever road cuts, sand banks, or pine forests exist.  Summer in New England, especially in coastal areas, is linked in the minds of many people with its heady scent.

Well, it turns out there is a reason for its rarity in the nursery trade.  First off, it will not transplant bare-root.  Secondly, getting its seeds to germinate is extremely difficult.  Cuttings are the best way to get another plant but that art has only become common in the last fifteen years or so.  But then, the question arises: if the seeds don’t easily germinate, how does it pop up where-ever a clear-cut has been done?  As it happens the seeds are sensitive to soil disturbance and have the ability to remain dormant and viable for upwards of seventy or more years.   See the linked article for more:  http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/445.pdf

This got me thinking about how little we know…we routinely search for ways to protect both organic and inorganic materials from decay…here is a plant that has developed a chemical barrier that allows for indefinite protection of a highly vulnerable organism (a seed embryo) in harsh conditions of freeze/thaw cycles while partially buried in an environment prone to moisture and generally fairly acidic.  It is the sort of thing, if I was a scientist, I’d pay attention to…

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(well as much as I ever rant)  Those who know me, know I hate summer.  As far as I am concerned, northern Scotland is my ideal climate: never above seventy and usually dark with a constant wind.*

This summer has been especially un-endearing, what with the heatwave and the lovely combination of drought and high humidity (how, the H— does it manage that?).  Needless to say the tomatoes and peaches, both of which had such glorious promise, have succeeded in rotting on the vine/tree…while green.   So much for canning tomatoes, which I was rather counting on doing.  Gah. 

Then there is the house….waterfalls of condensation on the windows and everything that might conceivably have to do with plumbing has a certain morbid entertainment level.  But I could do without the humour.  And the spiders…usually I get rid of the cobwebs but don’t enthusiastically chase the spiders when I clean…not this year.*

*I’ll spare you the physical details, suffice it that those thousands of British colonials who died lingering deaths from complications of skin ailments in the tropics or quick deaths of heatstroke? I’d be one.

*I’m neither the world’s worst nor best housekeeper.

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Usually August would include Oriental lilies, daylilies, and hostas but this year those went racing past in July.  The current colour scheme is heavily weighted towards ‘hot’ lots of yellow, hot pink, red, white.  There is some blue, and some of the dusky fall colours: ivory, old gold, rose, dusky blue, mauve are starting up.

Hydrangea: the big Pee-Gee, also known as grave-yard hydrangea, is just spectacular this year: a waterfall of ivory shading to rose almost fifteen feet tall and completely hiding a staircase.  The Endless Summer blue and the Twist-n-shout blue/pink are less happy this year, I think the wonky spring didn’t help, but they are usually a clear blue cloud in the orange/pink/white of the garden.

Garden Phlox: mostly the reverted wild pink, but the white ‘David’, along with ‘Bright Eyes’; it is everywhere here.

Shasta Daisies

Joe-Pye weed

Early goldenrod

Ligularia

Red and blue cardinal flower

Sunflowers

Echinacea

Globe thistles

Yarrow: generally rose/gold shades and a fair amount of wild white

Morning Glories: ‘Grandfather Ott’ purple

Black/Brown eyed susans (Rudbeckia hirta)

Wild thyme

Wild greek oregano

White wood aster (very early for this)

Bergamot: hot pinks/reds

Petunias

Verbana

Cosmos

California Poppies

Jerusalem artichokes

Queen Anne’s Lace

Chicory

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