Tag Archives: Garden

September 30, 2015

The Last of Summer & September

By daseger

We’ve got a deluge of rain on the way, which we desperately need, but I imagine that the garden will be beaten down after it subsides so I thought I’d take some of the last pictures of the season. I also had a rare afternoon in the Back Bay of Boston so I took some window-box pictures as well: some in the full flourish of summer, others harbingers of fall. I’m always melancholy in late September, more because Salem’s witching season begins assertively on October 1 than because it marks the onset of autumn and colder weather. Prepare for that prolonged rant over the next few weeks–or stay away! I am working on a few interesting (at least to me) Witch City posts for October, but no doubt I’ll also retreat and focus on the more distant past as well. Or leave town.

Still-flowering Boston, September 28:

And then Home: lots of lavender and catmint and a very fluffy rose, anemones, perennial agertum (a great fall plant, and much more blue than it appears in this photograph); Trinity in the garden, like a ghost of our dearly-departed Moneypenny.

11 Comments | tags: Boston, Cats, Garden, Gardens, Home, horticulture, Seasons | posted in Home, Nature, Salem

July 13, 2015

Event-fully Salem

By daseger

There is so much going on in Salem this summer that I’m a bit overwhelmed, and have taken to hiding in my garden! This was my strategy this past weekend, which was hot and sunny and jam-packed with things to do: sadly I inadvertently missed PEM Curator Dean Lahikainen’s lecture on the recent renovation of the Ropes House and the Salem Garden Club’s seaside garden tour, along with the “Paddle for Plummer” fundraiser for the Plummer Home, though I deliberately missed the Salem Willows Seafood Festival, which is not a community “festival” at all but a corporate event held in a (roped-off) public park. There’s still plenty of time to see the Thomas Hart Benton exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum and the exhibit on the alchemical activities of John Winthrop at the Witch House is just opening today. In a metaphor for this “close to home” summer, I also missed this weekend’s pop-up installation of giant inflatable rabbits down in Boston (Intrude by Australian artist Amanda Parer), but spent Saturday weeding with (three? four? rabbits) hopping (and napping) right in my backyard! On Sunday however, I could not avoid another event which happened right in my (de facto) front yard: Salem’s 4th annual Diner En Blanc pop-up picnic, which was held in the Chestnut Street park. You may be familiar with this……movement? (this sounds like too strong a word) in which people dressed in white “spontaneously” set up a picnic (with more white stuff, including food) in some secretive (right up to the afternoon of the event) location and dine together in pristine magnificence–it started in Paris nearly 30 years ago and now has spread to over 40 cities around the world, probably more, including Salem. As elsewhere, the dinner gets bigger every year as friends invite friends who invite friends….I wasn’t going to post on this happening (better word) as I thought it might seem a bit exclusive, almost as if we’re in Marblehead or Manchester-by-the Sea, but then I thought: what’s exclusive about this? Anyone can come, and they don’t have to pay for the privilege, like the Salem Willows Seafood “Festival”. Plus there was a great hat in attendance, which you simply have to see, and I am proud of my own blanc arrangement, made up exclusively from flowers from my garden.

Mid-July Weekend in Salem (and Boston–“Intrude” Rabbits courtesy of Mark Favermann):

All that’s left is my ghost-like chair this morning.

2 Comments | tags: Art, Chestnut Street, Flora and Fauna, Garden, Home, Local Events, Rabbits | posted in Culture, Current Events, Salem

July 4, 2015

Red, White, Blue & Calico

By daseger

We are sticking very close to home this July Fourth weekend as we have welcomed a new cat only two weeks after losing Moneypenny and there are lots of adjustments to be made on the part of said new cat (Trinity), our older resident cat (Darcy), and ourselves. I wasn’t quite ready for a new cat, but I am a sucker for a calico and this one almost magically appeared at our local shelter after a rough start in life. So I find myself cleaning out closets and other mundane house chores in between hissing standoffs and prepping my upholstered furniture for the coming attack by a new young cat. Yesterday was actually a much more beautiful day than today, which is cloudy with incoming rain. I hope it holds off until after the fireworks tonight, because Salem‘s are always spectacular: bigger and better every year. So I did leave the separated cats for a long walk, a long bike ride on my (also new) bike, the adorable Spokes and Stripes parade sponsored by Parents United and dinner at the Willows–under a bright red full moon which I couldn’t capture on camera. It looked briefly like Mars before disappearing behind a cloud bank. Most of the pictures below are from this sunny July 3rd: home, Chestnut Street, some sights and scenes around Salem including the Willows–all prepped for the big Horribles Parade this morning (which I missed, but I am sure there will be some great photographs at the Creative Salem site soon). My closet cleaning has uncovered lots of discoveries, including my favorite vintage dress which I purchased DECADES ago in Saratoga Springs, NY (and it was vintage then): I’m going to put in on in a few hours and go out to a fireworks barbecue on the water, mindless of clashing cats and impending rain. A happy, safe, carefree Fourth (and Fifth) to all.

Salem on July 3 and 4: Trinity (who did not come in a bag or a box but seldom leaves the latter), the house and garden (with daneberry–the only red on display), and a shadow silhouette against Hamilton Hall, the Hall and Chestnut Street, a patriotically-painted house on Essex, the Spokes and Stripes parade on Salem Common, the Willows, my newly-rediscovered old dress.

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Cats, Chestnut Street, Fashion, Fourth of July, Garden, Hamilton Hall, holidays, Home, Local Events | posted in Home, Salem

June 28, 2015

Flowers and Flags

By daseger

That’s what late June and early July are all about in essence: flowers (mostly roses) and flags. This particular year, even more so regarding the latter. I worked on my garden quite a bit during this mostly sunny week, and I was so happy to wake up to hard-driving rain this morning because it meant I could have a Sunday day of rest–or laundry. Much of the garden is in full flower, but as I’ve been going for interesting leaves rather than short-lived flowers over the past few years green dominates. I think I went a bit too far in this direction so I introduced some interspersed old-fashioned mallows in the central garden this year, and I think they provide a nice pop of color. But mostly it’s about roses, which I have yet to master and probably never will–but even a fool can grow roses in June (July and August are quite another matter). Now for the flags: we usually have a full range of flags flying on Chestnut–from standard and more unique versions of the stars and stripes to the Hawaiian flag at the Phillips House to the rainbow flag, flying for last week’s North Shore Pride Parade but obviously bearing even more resonance now. I like to display my great-great-grandfather’s 45-star memorial flag on the side of the house, but it’s “flying” in the front parlor until the weather clears up. If anyone knows a good source for (cotton) reproductions of historic flags, please let me know: I’d like to buy a 24-star flag, the official version when our house was built in 1827. There was a more jarring display of flags last week, fortunately only digital, when The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore used a photograph of Hamilton Hall (just next door!) to create a “Confederate Flag Museum”: I’m including it here because it’s always good to remember that not everything is beautiful.

Late June garden with roses, roses, roses (only the yellow ones are mine: the rest are from the Ropes Garden and Flint and Becket Streets). Flags–real and fortunately NOT–on Chestnut Street.

Appendix: and even worse, someone hung a real Confederate flag on the Robert Gould Shaw/ Massachusetts 54th Memorial in Boston yesterday, and it remained there for several hours before a Lowell woman pulled it off: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/06/28/confederate-flag-hung-from-regiment-memorial/bLFrtGsKCLAEpFFDBsX0DK/story.html.

7 Comments | tags: Chestnut Street, Garden, Hamilton Hall, holidays, Home, Local Events | posted in Culture, Current Events, History, Salem

June 26, 2015

Lawnmowers for Ladies

By daseger

My occasional wanderings through the world of Victorian ephemera have definitely convinced me that bicycles represented a form of liberation–physical and otherwise–for women a century or so ago, but I’m confused by the multitudes of similar contemporaneous images of women operating lawnmowers: why would women actually choose to do tedious men’s work–didn’t they have enough to do, or, weren’t they in a good position to get out of it? Is this a case of advertising push rather than feminine pull? Women in short shorts and other inappropriate attire seem to be featured regularly in post-war advertisements for lawnmowers, but I’m more curious about trade cards and such appearing fifty years earlier, when women were supposed to be a bit more closeted. The first “lady with lawnmower” that captured my attention featured was an apparently quite famous English actress named Marie Studholme (1872-1930), who posed with all sorts of things, so I thought the lawnmower was just one more thing. But she was in good company: between 1890 and 1910 or so there were several manufacturers that seem to be marketing lawn mowers for women, or lawnmowers that were so easy to use that even girls could operate them (in their perfect pinafores). Perhaps this is a case of class trumping gender: after all, the majority of women didn’t have expansive lawns in need of tending. The lawn itself, like the lawn mower, is a nineteenth-century creation. I must confess to having a rather romantic attachment to my own manual lawnmower, but only because my backyard is mostly garden with very little lawn–and my husband always does the mowing.

Miss Marie Studholme with her bicycle and lawn mower, c. 1900; Lawn mower trade cards from c. 1880-1910, Boston Public Library and from a selection at the Trade Card Place.

5 Comments | tags: advertising, ephemera, Flora and Fauna, Garden | posted in Culture, History, Paper

June 19, 2015

Desperately seeking Distractions

By daseger

A difficult week: we had to put our beautiful calico cat Moneypenny down after she suffered some sort of stroke, and then Charleston. Too awful for words, and I just walked past that church last week. We’ve had some lovely late spring early summer days, which seem almost cruel in my morose mood. My garden looks beautiful from far away, but up close it is full of weeds that I’ve been too busy to yank out. So that’s my plan–I shall tend to my garden and pursue the other distractions that have always been helpful in tough times: shopping (for everything from clothing to vintage lawn games), old movies (life is always good when Doris Day is on, submarine movies always plunge me into another world, and I’m currently obsessed with George Sanders), history (not only my profession but also my daily preoccupation–the perfect perspective corrective), and drinking (another great perspective corrective, in moderation of course). I need a new bicycle too: that will help. I do have some nice pictures that belie my dark mood: the garden–from afar so you can’t see the weeds! The lilac and variegated dogwood trees are particularly beautiful this year. Chestnut Street Park across the street, with the remains of a lovely neighborhood party last night, a thoughtful offering from my friend Pamela, and the gardens and antiques at the Massachusetts Horticulture Society’s Elm Bank last weekend, when all was well with the world.

Very impressed with this lady’s bedstraw–must get some.

15 Comments | tags: Antiques and Collectibles, Garden, Home, horticulture, Mood, Shopping | posted in Current Events, Home

June 2, 2015

What to do in June: then and now

By daseger

For various projects over the years I have compiled a stack of reprints of agricultural, health, and “better living” manuals and almanacs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which prescribe monthly tasks and helpful hints, including Thomas Tusser’s Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie (1557) and its sequel Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, Richard Saunders’ Apollo Anglicanus: The English Apollo (1665 edition), and Nicholas Breton’s Fantastiks: Serving for a Perpetuall Prognostication (1626) just to name a few titles. While we may not welcome a regimen as much as early modern audiences, I’ve got a busy summer ahead of me so must make some lists. The contrast of rural life centuries ago with (sub-) urban life today is striking: my busy life looks pretty leisurely in comparison.

What to do in June, circa 1600:

1) Weed: in June get thy wedehoke, thy knife and they glove: and wede out such wede, as the corne doth not love. Slack no time thy weding, for darth nor for cheape: thy corne shall reward it, or ever thou reape. (Tusser)

2) Shear the sheep, but not the lambs.

3) Fatten pigs.

4) Ensure that all outbuildings are in good condition to store grains when the rain comes: things thus set in order, in quiet and rest, shall further thy harvest and pleasure thee best. (Tusser)

5) Harvest the first crop of hay: it is now June and the Hay-makers are mustered to make an army for the field. (Breton)

6) Distill roses and “sweet herbs”.

7) Drink the “pleasantest” wine, and white wine in particular, for it purgeth Choler, and noxious humors from the stomack. (Saunders).

8) Eat “Sallets of Lettice prepared with Vinegar” (Saunders)

9) Don’t eat too much, and exercise: all this month glut not the stomack, but arise from the table with an appetite; arise betimes in the morning, and exercise your body with some long walk. (Saunders)

10) Take heed of eating Cheese and Apples this month, and don’t stay too long in the bath, but to wash the feet this month in cold water is commended. (Saunders)

What to do in June, circa 2015:

1) Weed.

2) Trim the claws of my cats, even those of intimidating Mr. Darcy (or take them to the pet groomer).

3) Buy “healthy weight” cat food for my cats, especially Mr. Darcy.

4) Write nice note to new neighbors asking them to paint their old peeling shed, which borders our garden.

5) “Harvest” flowers from lady’s mantle, alexanders, roses, and other June flowers.

6) Put terrible-smelling salmon stuff on roses.

7) Drink the “pleasantest” wine, especially Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand.

8) Get on the kale bandwagon.

9) Don’t eat too much and exercise.

10) Seek out new goat cheeses–the only kind of cheese I can eat—and try to take more advantage of my clawfoot tub, as well as what Nicholas Breton calls the sweet season [in which] the senses perfume, and the spirits comfort.

Arthur Wesley Dow, A June Morning (also known as A View of Ipswich, Massachusetts), 1893.

9 Comments | tags: Art, books, Cats, Flora and Fauna, Food and drink, Garden, Home, Renaissance | posted in History, Nature

May 23, 2015

On the Trail of Twinflowers

By daseger

Given that today marks the birthday of one of the most important naturalists in world history, Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778, also know as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus), the so-called “Pliny of the North”, “Flower King”, “Second Adam”, and perhaps most objectively “Father of Taxonomy”, I thought if would feature his namesake favorite flower, Linnaea borealis, more commonly known as the twinflower. I’ve been searching for this plant for my own garden for some time, but it has remained elusive. Linnaeus didn’t discover this rather humble plant, a native of the northern regions of his ancestral Sweden, but almost as soon as he gained fame and titles for his work he adopted it as his personal emblem. His constant commemoration, in Sweden and elsewhere, often encompasses the twinflower–first among all of the other specimens he classified in his groundbreaking system of binomial nomenclature.

Bust of Linnaeus with twinflowers, Dictionnaire pittoresque d’histoire naturelle et des phénomènes de la nature (1833-1839); Portraits of Linnaeus, twinflowers in hand, by Martin Hoffman (Wellcome Library) and Mrs. Anderson (1858; Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).

In tribute to Linnaeus, the linnaea borealis is the national flower of Sweden, and so it can be found everywhere: on fabrics, pottery, calendars, and cocktail napkins. All of those things are available over here too, and the plants apparently, but I just can’t find one. I know they will grow here in Massachusetts, I’ve picked out a lovely little place among the woodland plants in the back of my garden, but it remains linnaea-less. The long Memorial Day weekend is always a big nursery/gardening time for me, so I’ll try, try again, but I don’t have much hope: I might have to be satisfied with material substitutes. Anyway, on this appropriately beautiful May day, a toast to Carl Linnaeus, without whom we would all be wandering around in a very chaotic world of nature, and to his beloved twinflower!

ASDA photograph of twinflowers by Allison Brown; teaching slide from the Annals of Botany, “Limited mate availability decreases reproductive success of fragmented populations of Linnaea borealis, a rare, clonal self–incompatible plant” (maybe this explains my problem! Limited mate availability! Self-incompatible!); felted twinflowers on Art that‘s Felt; a portfolio of Linnaea Borealis porcelain from Hackefors and Svaneholm.

Leave a comment | tags: Anniversaries, Art, Carl Linnaeus, Flower and Fauna, Garden, Horiculture, Pottery, Shopping, Textiles | posted in Culture, History, Nature

January 25, 2015

White Report

By daseger

Oh the indignity! All day long yesterday (and still) the Skinner’s site reported that Frank Weston Benson’s Figure in White, recently deaccessioned by the Salem Public Library so that funds could be raised to fix a fountain, went unsold, but now the Salem News is reporting that BENTON’s painting went for $300,000, far below its estimate. And in other news, we had our first snow storm, which cast everything in white–more, much more apparently, to come on Tuesday. Winter has arrived rather later here in eastern New England, but it appears to be making an entrance!

Frank Weston BENSON’s Figure in White, and more white outside.

8 Comments | tags: Art, Auctions, Garden, Local Events, weather, Winter | posted in Current Events, Home, Salem

October 22, 2014

Fall Colors

By daseger

Another picture post today–I promise to get something more substantive (and literary) together by the end of the week. Fall is flying by in a flash of color, so I stopped for a few minutes to capture some. One of the (few) negatives things about being a professor is that this is an incredibly busy time of year; one of the (many) negative things about being a department chair is that this is an insanely busy time of the year–so there’s not much time for anything else. My job, combined with my disdain for Salem’s transformation into Witch City in October, generally translates into a month spent inside, which is a shame, because it’s usually so beautiful outside. But I have ventured out to a few tranquil places (including my garden) to catch some color before it all fades to drab.