These Trees are Talking October: A Garden of Autumn Impressions

It's mid-October and we're back to working our way though all the 'walks' in our relatively new trail guide, "Hikes & Walks in the Berkshire Hills," concentrating in particular on the 'walks' as many of the more ambitious 'hikes' are designed for sterner stuff than we can bring to the game. We like the walking, all right, but then we like getting back to the cottage, putting our feet up, sipping warm beverages and thinking about how virtuous we've been.         
After a rainy morning at the start of the Columbus Day weekend we looked for an outing not too far from base camp, the Stockbridge summer (now fall) house that Anne's parents bought many years ago and generations of the family continue to put to good use.

            My son Saul -- (pictured, left, with daughter Sonya) all four of us were attending this Columbus Day reunion -- found a likely candidate in the miniscule, mostly hidden municipality of Richmond, Mass., a town where you never tend to go to unless you've taken the wrong road, probably because you're trying to find your way to the West Stockbridge entrance onto the New York State Throughway. So it made a change to be actually looking for the place.

            "There is no town center in Richmond," our trail guide informs. When you get to the top of the hill, it advises, "avoid the left turn" that's labeled Lenox Branch. We so avoided.

            Taking the other fork, we descend a mountain, eschew another turning at a road we have in the pat reached while coming from an entirely different destination, and continue to East Road. Once there, the directions say, "park somewhere" and "as soon as you can."

            It's all good. East Road in Richmond is the kind of place where you can in fact park just about anywhere and begin walking. Even on a three-day weekend at the peak of the leaf-peeping season there is no traffic on East Road. It's the kind of place where the habitations of man are few and far between, the fields wide and green, the hillsides wooded and multi-colored, and the sky large and very blue.

            The following day, Sunday, was all things bright and beautiful right from the start, so we drove down to the Bartholomew's Cobble conservation property managed by Trustees of Reservations, a site we visit pretty much every Columbus Day weekend. The photos of wooded and grassy paths along the Housatonic River were taken here. We climb Hurlburt's Hill at the end of the outing, a classic prospect -- summits, mountain sides and long vistas in all directions (bottom photo). Other people do this too, but the Cobble property is extensive and absorbs the modest numbers served by its parking lot well.

            On Monday we decided to stay close to home again, and I find a trail guide proposal for a modest, but satisfying walk that falls remarkably close to our East Road outing. We drive up the same mountain pass blacktop, but this time we take that other fork, Lenox Branch, and then go down three-quarters of a mile to find a promised "romantic" vista "tersely labeled," as our guide puts it as "S. Glen" on a wooden sign to indicate the single parking space for the walk through Stevens Glen. Only to find -- ta-da! -- that the Berkshire Natural Resources Council has been at work and provided us with a real sign spelling out the site's full name, a decent parking area, and a new map board showing a loop trail with a "spur."

              Living up to its advertisement, Stevens Glen proves to be a deep-woods beautiful trail of big old trees, with their special silence and soft pine needle powder underfoot. We walk steadily, with occasional photo stops, the day's gray atmosphere serenely filtered by the tall tree tops. We are promised an "outlook" somewhere, so when we reach the 'spur' we eagerly take it, finding ourselves climbing a steeper ascent that leads ultimately to an incredibly atmospheric hidden prospect overlooking a deep, rocky ravine. Is this the romantic heart of the glen? I'm not sure how these words were meant back in the day. But we looked with pleasure down into a rippling stream cut deeply between two rocky cavernous sides (a New England sized 'canyon' perhaps), while enjoying the luxury of an iron-framed observation deck that upheld us securely while we peered over the side.

            And then, of course, silent as a whisper, a great blue heron flew right past us between the rocky enfilades at exactly our elevation. The angel, I thought, of the place. If I were quicker I could have touched a feather.

           

Deadheads in the Garden (Not What You Think)

            So there I am, squatting in the front garden dead-heading asters.

            This act was a direct response to an issue raised by my sister, Gwen Eichorn, who gardens at her home near Syracuse. We have been discussing such issues by email. Deadheading plants -- removing the spent blossoms in order to stimulate the production of new blossoms -- is something to ponder before leaping into it because it's a time-intensive activity.        

            The value of this activity from the point of view of a time cost/benefit analysis has got to be a persistent issue for the army of backyard gardeners, us amateurs, that is, who don't go around snipping off spent pansies at professionally maintained mansions, corporate headquarters and civic showplaces for a living. Frankly on the macro level it sounds like a recipe for repetitive stress syndrome. Snip, snip, snip. I've snipped a hundred or more faded blossoms (the old word for this was 'blown') from a single coreopsis heliopsis, a perennial that looks great in its gold-topped fully crown moment in the sun of July, but then grows dark. The scores of unopened buds just millimeters behind the faded blossoms proved an irresistible temptation.

            My diligence met with minor success. Maybe one new blossom for every 15 to 20 faded blossoms I decapitate. This year I volunteered our daughter Sonya for that job on her 'vacation.' Happily, she volunteers herself for time-consuming landscaping tasks whenever she visits during the growing season.   

            Despite the low rate of return, deadheading a coreopsis produces some satisfaction. With some other plants, like the pale pink anemones just finishing up, my attempts to stimulate color by removing the old blooms have failed to make an appreciable

produced anything at all. I'm betting the technique works better with annuals -- pansies, petunias, marigolds -- than it does with perennials.

            Almost everyone believes that it should work. I deadhead our Shasta daisies because the blossoms are so large and white and generally happy looking -- and besides, another gardener pointed out that I should be doing it -- and because you can see the next round of fat little button-shaped nubs coming up. Alas, very few of this palpable second round ever do blossom. And then they usually prove smaller and kind of half-baked looking. More 'perfect' conditions for this flower's flourishing probably yield better results from deadheading, as they do for almost all other aspects of the plant growth. The results of my dead-heading may be limited by the fact that very few of my plantings (i.e. almost none) enjoy "full sun."

            This year, caught up in drought-patrol, I never got around to deadheading the daisies. I did recently deadhead our hardy mums -- and the perennial version called 'garden mums' (third and fourth photos down). So far no results from a second generation of buds on those plants where the first the blooms are already gone.

            Asters, however, are an interesting case. I have various perennial asters, only one of them really flourishing (top photo), but some of the others producing a good burst of color for about two weeks. But I can't remember if I attempted systematic dead-heading before. Examining the plants closely, it appears that potential buds, if not actual blossoms, are forming almost everywhere you look.

            So this year I decided to make the experiment. I attacked a plant with striking red blossoms (second photo down), trimming carefully so as not to destroy any new baby-buds willing to give open-air exposure a shot. I'm not sure any of these ever intended to do anything more than pretend. We'll see.

            And then I attacked a blue, standard-color perennial aster, all of whose bright flowers have quietly blinked out in the last couple of days as if somebody threw the 'off' switch. On inspection, sure enough, many, many possible-buds -- very small, nearly countless -- lying up close, right behind the blown blossoms, even though the lower parts of this plant appear to be drying out. I dead-headed about half of these stems. Just in case I get any result, I have a clear basis for comparison between the dead-headed stems and those that were not dead-headed.

            The final lesson for me is that although I consider this aster plant to be a very modest specimen, far short of large and lush, when I concentrated on removing every single faded blossom from the chosen branches there proved to be scores and scores and scores of them. It takes more flowers than you think to make that true, blue impression.

            So another unanticipated insight from this experience: so much more is going on in every flowering plant than meets the casual glance.

Call Me Ishmael's Landing: Surprising Moments in New Bedford

            I was unprepared for my visit to New Bedford last week. I had called the mayor's office, looking for some useful 'insider's' insight for a newspaper story; my questions were vague, my impressions of the city were vaguer, and I had to look up the mayor's name. My call was routed to the mayor's "PR person." I was impressed that the mayor had a PR person: most local governments could probably use one; and the some of the 'spokesmen' for state agencies seldom did anything as useful and get on the phone and welcome my inquiries. The New Bedford PR person, however, managed to persuade me in an upbeat minute or two that I absolutely needed to pay the city a visit.

            We made a tentative date; she would call me back. My meeting proved a moving target, variously planned for the mayor, the economic development director, the PR person herself, or the head of the tourism office. When I got there the agenda turned out to be, in order, the mayor, the tourism director, and the mayor's chief of staff.

            Maybe some credit goes to the absolutely gorgeous late September weather that accompanied my visit -- blue skies, seventies, sun glinting off the water -- but my impressions of the city were altogether rosy.

            Cobblestone streets, restored 19th century buildings, inexpensive loft space, a helpful cop who gave good directions, busy downtown activity, and an even busier port.

            Though photography was not (nor is ever) my job, when I was taken to the third story balcony of the Whaling Museum for the view of the harbor, I could not help taking out my camera. The photos of the harbor posted here are from that vantage.

            I'm fascinated by the port, which (I was surprised to learn) is the number one fishing port in the country according to the total value of the catch. Wouldn't the biggest fishing port be in Florida or somewhere on the Pacific or in one of those Cajun crawdaddy spots? (Answer: no). Apparently Atlantic fishermen are still bringing them in, quotas and all. And more of them bring their fish to New Bedford than anywhere else.

            The harbor is now also the site of the new staging area for the assembly of the gigantic Cape Wind off-shore wind turbines. Cranes rising from the harbor are now building a dock sturdy enough to hold these weighty components. 

           The official state sailing vessel, the Ernestina, is berthed there there. The Charles W. Morgan, the last remaining vessel from America's one-time globe-circling whaling fleet, paid a visit this summer and drew 35,000 visitors. Regular weekend festivals lure big catches of tourists as well.

            I am fascinated too by the map of the harbor the tourism director gave me, along with a score of other promotional materials.

            Tops on the list (for stirring the imagination at least) is the little rectangular inlet called "Ishmael's Landing." Not many of us sail our eyes all the way through "Moby Dick" these days, but almost all of us remain intermittently charmed by its first three words: "Call me Ishmael."

            I imagine Melville's Ishmael, the novel's first-person narrator, wandering into New Bedford these days and looking for a berth on a fishing vessel. He gets a craving for the sea (just as Melville tells us). He wanders into town late one evening and spends a night in the new Marriott Hotel. He finds a self-guided walking tour along the docks. There's the "fishermen's wharf" and "state pier," a high-speed ferry terminal to Martha's Vineyard (well now, he ponders, what can happened to Nantucket?). He stares at the highway bridge that carries Route 6 to Fairhaven and Pope's Island. He continues strolling, past the "visitors waterfront center," the dingy dock, the coal pocket pier, Homer's wharf -- Homer, you say? In honor of the old Greek mariner and travel yarner? -- and then stumbles on the sign for "Ishamael's Landing."

            He stares in surprise. They knew he was coming? What a city -- it throws the welcome mat out for everyone. 

          What does he do now? Well, according to another map I found online, he's in the right place to find a "water taxi."

            Call me Ishmael. And call me a water taxi.

The Roosevelts: 'Rosies' and Thorns in America's Common Garden

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            If we learn anything from the Ken Burns documentary concluding Saturday night on the Public Broadcasting System, it's that the progressive, humanitarian future foreseen by America's two great 20th century presidents has regressed in the last thirty years to a version of the darker, oligarchal, corporately manipulated past.

            It was Theodore Roosevelt, a Progressive Republican, who declared he would stand up to "the malfactors of great wealth."

            Nowadays Washington insiders would proudly wear that phrase as a team affiliation on their T-shirts. If somone or some entitly possesses great wealth, he must be good, because it's only by cuddling up to possessors of great health that elected can keep their seats. It's the new normal. Elections are too expensive for a Congressman to look a gift horse, however mangy, in the eye. The Supreme Court tells us that's the way things should be.

            FDR had some interesting epithets for his opponents as well.

            "Economic Royalists," we heard Franklin Roosevelt say in one ofhis famous Depression ERa speeches to the country, "fear that we are threatening their power."

            He regarded the coprorate bosses of his era as a class who saw themselves as "royalty." They deserved to hoard the wealth because they were born to their position, their class, their privileges. FDR was born to that class as well; he knew and understood them. He knew they 'hated' him as a 'traitor.'

            JP Morgan, the darth vader of suffering inflicted on the millions of exploited workers and their families in America's 'gilded age' -- i.e., society divided into rich robber barons and impoverished masses -- clashed with both Roosevelts. He could not believe that Teddy Roosevelt invoked 'emergency' powers to prevent his takeover of the entire railroad system with toal of setting tranporatation rates for all goods. It doesn;t say in the constitution you have the power to do that, his lawyers pointed out.

            "The consitution exists for the poeple, not the people for the Constitution," TR said.

            Who would say anythng liek that today?

            FDR saved the country in 1933 by closing the banks until he had a plan to reform them. Morgan, still around -- no Luke appeared to slay this Darth Vader.

            Their hate was a price he would pay for saving America from chaos and despair, and saving them from the real possibility of a Soviet-style, class-based revolution. 

            But while much of this story might be familiar to many of us, what continues to amaze me is that the words -- the ideas, ideals and values -- routinely spoken by the men in the White House are completely absent from today's political vocabulary.

            FDR, in another archived film moment, observes that a public policy should not be judged by whether "it added to those who already had more than enough, but whether it added something to those who have too little."

            This would be apostasy today. There is no concept in American society of "having too much." Given the routine compensation packages for CEOs, bankers and stock brokers, how could there be? There is no notion in common public opinion tht they they are fleecing the public good to feather their own no nests.

            And there is no consensus that public policy ought to be concerned with those who have too little. If you are unemployed, poor, hungry or homeless or driven inot penury by exorbitant medical costs, the genearl opinion appears to be that such matters are your own business. Why come running to us? Congression leaders ask today. We take care of ourselves. Model your behavior on us.

            Americans wrote thousands of letters every day to FDR when he was in the White House because, int the words of one, this was the first time he thought someone actually cared about them.

            The government had an obligation to take action to ensure "a decent place, a and decent government" for its citizens.

            Somehow we've lost the notion that "providing for the common good" was the purpose of government.

            Maybe watching a documentary that provides a detailed passage through the major events of the first half of the 20th century will remind of us how hard life was for the many and how far we had to come to create the common social advanatages the Baby Boomer generation could take for granted. Do we have to go back to 1900 and do it all over?