Thank you America and thank you Barack.

Land of Hope and Dreams

Grab your ticket and your suitcase
Thunder’s rolling down the tracks
You don’t know where you’re goin’
But you know you won’t be back
Darlin’ if you’re weary
Lay your head upon my chest
We’ll take what we can carry
And we’ll leave the rest

Big wheels rolling through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

I will provide for you
And I’ll stand by your side
You’ll need a good companion for
This part of the ride
Leave behind your sorrows
Let this day be the last
Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine
And all this darkness past

Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Meet me in a land of hope and dreams

This train carries saints and sinners
This train carries losers and winners
This train carries whores and gamblers
This train carries lost souls

Dreams will not be thwarted
Faith will be rewarded
Hear the steel wheels singin’
Bells of freedom ringin’

This train carries broken-hearted,
Thieves and sweet souls departed
This train, carries fools and kings

All aboard

Land of Hope and Dreams lyrics by Bruce Springsteen

Photo courtesy of University of Houston/Dr. Harrell R. Rogers

Dark and silent late last night
I think I might have heard the highway calling
Geese in flight and dogs that bite
Signs that might be omens say I’m going, going
Gone to Carolina in my mind

With a holy host of others standing ’round me
Still I’m on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I’m up and gone to Carolina in my mind

Hi everyone. I’m soon to be blogging from a new and improved growing zone. If there’s anybody alive out there, stay tuned.

Say nice things about me ’cause I’m gone southbound
Carry on without me

Lyrics by James Taylor. Photo courtesy of www.southeastroads.com.

Bye Daddy.

Earl Triplett Brown
Earl Triplett Brown, 81, passed away at home on July 22, 2008, following a courageous fight against a long illness. He was born April 21, 1927, in Buncombe County, the youngest son of the late David Worth Brown and Mae Triplett Brown Cole. He was also preceded in death by his older brother, Douglas.

He served in the U.S. Navy, and has both a bachelors and doctoral degree from the School of Pharmacy of UNC-Chapel Hill. He taught at UNC and at Haile Selassie University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he met and married his loving wife of 44 years, Marie Sophie Sequeira Brown. He was employed at Cabarrus Memorial Hospital for 25 years.

In addition to his wife, survivors include two daughters, Cynthia and husband, Joe, and Caroline and husband, Curt; two sons, Worth and wife, Kathleen, and Anthony; and an aunt, Sue. Survivors also include six grandchildren, D., A., K., G., K., and C. He will be greatly missed by numerous friends and colleagues.

A funeral mass will be said at 11 a.m. on Thursday July 24, at St. James the Great Catholic Church, officiated by Father Geiger. The family will receive friends following the service. The burial at St. James the Great Catholic Church Cemetery on Gold Hill Road will be held Friday July 25, at 11 a.m. Memorials may be made to St. James Catholic Church, 139 Manor Ave., Concord, NC 28025 or to Hospice & Palliative Care, 5003 Hospice Lane, Kannapolis, NC 28081.

Poppies! The one non-food item in my garden. I absolutely love them.

See the ladybug in the middle? She’s doing her bit to keep my garden free of nasty pests.

And a real live honeybee. Pollinate on, little buddy. Thank you for choosing my garden. OK, notice the blossom the bee is on. What kind of blossom is that? This blossom is on 2 plants I bought that were labeled as cucumbers. Here is what the fruits are ripening into:

These aren’t really cukes are they? I’ve seen round cukes but usually they are freaks of nature. All of these appear to be round. Is it some kind of squash, or a melon? They look like they’re going to be yellow, and the skin does have pricklies on it, like a cucumber would. Calling all vegetable identification experts, help!!!

UPDATE: my sister-in-law weighed in that it’s squash, my husband thinks she said butternut. Thanks Jill!!

Long time no blog…it’s summer after all. Garden updates abound. I usually hate photo-heavy posts. In fact I don’t recall making a post before with this many photos but in this case the pics are worth a whole bunch of words. First, a before/after view of my plot. Below taken June 20:

And from a different angle, taken today. For reference, see the poppies in the right upper corner of the garden? See if you can find them in the above picture. Two very small ones in the top left corner, towards the center.

Crazy how tall the tomatoes got huh? They’re totally out of control–they’ve busted out of their puny tomato cages and have moved out of the garden into the surrounding areas.  I harvested the first tomatoes today! a couple of grape-sized ones that were SO sweet, and a few of an early variety called Glacier that’s supposed to do well in the northeast. The tomatoes were good, not too sweet but so fresh tasting.

In all fairness, everyone’s gardens at Fox Pt. look fabulous:

Another angle (my plot is at the very end of this path):

OK, now check out the before/after of my basil. June 20:

Here it is today. Notice it’s already started to bolt. I spent a lot of time today harvesting and snipping flower heads to stop the bolting.

We’re going to be eating pesto all summer. This is not a bad thing–there are worse dishes we could be eating I suppose! (If I do say so myself, I make a mean pesto.)

More pics tomorrow: Poppies, friendly insects, and a mystery vegetable.

Er….the headline I really meant to write was “First Harvest.” But, sorry Whole Paycheck Foods, I will not be needing your services as much now that I am beginning to reap the bounty from my wonderful little community garden plot at Fox Point Community Garden, and now that the Downtown Providence Farmers’ Market where I pick up my community supported agriculture (CSA) box is open.

(Gratuitous cat photos below the fold!)

As you can see below, I am not the only one enamored of the three Swiss chard leaves that I plucked from the garden yesterday.

I love the look on Tiny’s face in this picture! We call him Inspector Puss, because, as my husband Curt put it, he inspects everything (literally) that comes into the house to see if he should be afraid of it, eat it, or play with it. Tiny loves to eat grass and greens, so he has clearly categorized the chard as Something to Potentially Eat.

In the end, however, he didn’t take a taste, only a couple of sniffs. Buuuut, I digress. We’ve had a couple of big rainstorms in the last few days, tons of sun and warm temps before that, so everyone’s plots at the community garden are “bustin’ out.” Three chard leaves may not seem like much…I rode my bike out there and as I was picking the chard, I realized suddenly that I didn’t need my sunglasses anymore. A giant black cloud loomed over me and the 3 miles between the garden and my apartment. So, I finished cutting the chard and bolted out of there without so much as glancing at the spinach and basil, which I suspect are also ready.

Next time I’m there I’ll take my camera! More pics coming.

Did you see this article in the NYT yesterday? (Warning-registration may be required.) Canadian researchers are examining the ability of plants to distinguish members of its own species from “outsiders.” Last summer scientists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario published a study on the sea rocket (Cakile edentula), a native member of the mustard (Brassicacaea) family that grows above the high tide line on sandy beaches.

Yet scientists have found evidence that the sea rocket is able to do something that no other plant has ever been shown to do.

The sea rocket, researchers report, can distinguish between plants that are related to it and those that are not. And not only does this plant recognize its kin, but it also gives them preferential treatment.

If the sea rocket detects unrelated plants growing in the ground with it, the plant aggressively sprouts nutrient-grabbing roots. But if it detects family, it politely restrains itself.

The finding is a surprise, even a bit of a shock, in part because most animals have not even been shown to have the ability to recognize relatives, despite the huge advantages in doing so.

If an individual can identify kin, it can help them, an evolutionarily sensible act because relatives share some genes. The same discriminating organism could likewise ramp up nasty behavior against unrelated individuals with which it is most sensible to be in claws- or perhaps thorns-bared competition.

Pretty cool that sea rocket can distinguish between its family members! (That’s a photo of it at right.) Dr. Dudley and his colleagues have since then discovered evidence that three other species can do the same thing, but in different ways.

Plants’ social life may have remained mysterious for so long because, as researchers have seen in studies of species like sagebrush, strawberries and thornapples, the ways plants sense can be quite different from the ways in which animals do.

Some plants, for example, have been shown to sense potentially competing neighboring plants by subtle changes in light. That is because plants absorb and reflect particular wavelengths of sunlight, creating signature shifts that other plants can detect.

Reserachers also studied a certain parasitic weed called dodder (genus Cuscuta, absolutely terrible vampire-like plant, maybe I’ll do a post on it one day). Dodder can “sense” chemicals released in the air by nearby plants and use it to “sniff out” its victim:

Scientists also find plants exhibiting ways to gather information on other plants from chemicals released into the soil and air. A parasitic weed, dodder, has been found to be particularly keen at sensing such chemicals.

Dodder is unable to grow its own roots or make its own sugars using photosynthesis, the process used by nearly all other plants. As a result, scientists knew that after sprouting from seed, the plant would fairly quickly need to begin growing on and into another plant to extract the nutrients needed to survive.

But even the scientists studying the plant were surprised at the speed and precision with which a dodder seedling could sense and hunt its victim. In time-lapse movies, scientists saw dodder sprouts moving in a circular fashion, in what they discovered was a sampling of the airborne chemicals released by nearby plants, a bit like a dog sniffing the air around a dinner buffet.

Then, using just the hint of the smells and without having touched another plant, the dodder grew toward its preferred victim. That is, the dodder reliably sensed and attacked the species of plant, from among the choices nearby, on which it would grow best.

“When you see the movies, you very much have this impression of it being like behavior, animal behavior,” said Dr. Consuelo M. De Moraes, a chemical ecologist at Pennsylvania State University who was on the team studying the plant. “It’s like a little worm moving toward this other plant.”

The movie that she’s referring to? YOU HAVE TO SEE IT! Go to the NYT article link and scroll down until you see the link for the movie. It’s worth getting an account to see it if you don’t have one (it’s free). The movie a time-lapse of a dodder seedling putting the moves on a tomato plant that it’s in the pot with it. (A still from the movie is at the top of the page). It truly looks like it’s sniffing the tomato plant out as it looks for its next victim.

Plants sure is crazy peoples!

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES

I’m way overdue for a tree of the month selection! This month I picked red horse chestnut, Aseculus x carnea ‘Briotti’. I actually haven’t seen this tree in bloom before and I think it’s quite exotic looking for New England. This is probably as close as we in the Northeast will be able to get to crape myrtles, the ubiquitous blossoming tree seen so often in street plantings and mall parking lots in the South.

The red horse chestnut is a hybrid of common horse chestnut A. hippocastanum and red buckeye A. pavia, cultivated for garden use. It’s a deciduous tree that grows to 30-40 feet tall upon maturity. Its pinkish or red blossoms bloom in the spring. It likes full sun or light shade and moist, well-drained, slightly acidic soils.

I don’t know if Bach Flower Remedies work or not–they’re the company that make Rescue Remedy among many other “flower essences” used for various psychological ailments. One of the 38 essences is made of red horse chestnut. According to their website, it’s supposed to be good for those who “find it difficult not to be anxious for other people.”

Well, I certainly hope the flower essence is based on the flower not the nut, because the nut is supposed to be poisonous. It contains saponins, which is toxic to many animals, including humans, though to a lesser extent. Supposedly if you cut up the nut into small pieces or grind them into flour, you can leach the poison out by rinsing it several times and pouring the water out, but I won’t be the one testing out that theory.

The nuts look like a bit like a regular chestnut and are surrounded by a thick hull. They’re sometimes called conkers. It’s easy to see why–a falling one would probably conk you out. For that reason, this would probably be an ill-chosen street tree. In parts of the UK, children play a game, also called “conkers,” with the nuts–maybe they throw them at one another.

Whenever I pick a tree of the month, I try to pick one that has multiple uses. Buuuuut, I freely admit that I picked red horse chestnut just because it’s pretty!

Blossom and nut photos courtesy of Wikipedia.

I hope everyone is enjoying nature on this beautiful three day weekend!

Here are a few more pictures of Fox Point Community Garden. You can see it’s a pretty funky little garden. This is a picture of the “garden shed”–a misnomer that conjures up images of small wooden shacks–when this is actually a big concrete building with plenty of storage space.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many tomato cages in one place.

This next one is a long view of the garden from towards the north end. My plot is towards the back near the chain link fence.

Below is one of the two watering spigots–decked out with watering cans, it reminded me of a Christmas tree.

Last but not least is my favorite picture–it’s of the terrace at the very north end of the garden and our fox mascot. To the left of the fox–the brown bin with the white lid–is the bee box. The sign over it says, Bees–Do Not Disturb. No worries there. I’m glad my plot’s on the south end of the garden!