Thistle: A Visit From a Poet
For those of you who celebrate Christmas, a certain poem was probably part of your upbringing, along with Frosty and Rudolph and all that sort of thing. You know the one I mean. You heard it, I heard it, we all heard it a zillion times in school, at home, on TV. “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse…” But although I heard the words enough times that they embedded themselves in my memory, I really had only a hazy idea of what it all meant. I mean, I got the general drift of Santa bringing the good stuff, but what, exactly, were...
Read MoreHay: Everything Old is New Again
An old hay bale. Left over from last winter—we bought hay to feed the sheep, but the early spring weather brought early grass and that meant the sheep didn’t need all the hay. So this one stray bale just sat there, ignored. It got left out in the rain and weather all summer and fall. Now in December it’s still just sitting there. No good for sheep fodder. The hay is all dead and useless. Except it isn’t dead, because life is starting over on top of the bale. Some of the zillions of seeds baled up inside have germinated, and there you go. The seeds of grasses and...
Read MoreThistle: Waiting for the Train
The Beacon train station. Waiting around for the train to New York City on a chilly damp day. It’s a long wait, and the train is running late, and the commuters are starting to grumble. Nothing to do but scout around for some interesting plant life. Over here in the rocks (which were carefully placed to keep weeds from growing) is a nice healthy cluster of thistle leaves. Not unlike commuters, thistles are aggressive and prickly. You have to be a bit prickly, to survive in a train station. Thistles have survival down to a science. They’re dandelion relatives, members of the Asteraceae,...
Read MoreDecember: The Greenest Month
Welcome to December. It’s a month of irony, I find–the month dedicated to the celebration of light, in which we have the least amount of light. Days so short they seem to end before lunch. Cloudy skies, elusive sun. It’s the month in which winter starts, and ironically the one which is devoted to greenery. I mean, when else do people actually lug entire trees into their living rooms? Behavior that would seem eccentric in May makes complete sense in December. One of the best things about December, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, is that almost everywhere you go,...
Read MorePine Hollow: A Dinosaur at the Arboretum
Okay, maybe you can’t tell from the picture, but this was a cold day. I mean a middle-of-January can’t-feel- your-toes kind of cold. Wind chill probably in the 20s. And this hardy class from the Bethlehem Children’s School in Delmar NY braved the weather to explore the Pine Hollow Arboretum. Pine Hollow is the ultimate unmowed backyard. It’s the product of decades of work by Dr. John Abbuhl, who turned his suburban Slingerlands home into a living museum. More than 3,000 plantings of trees, shrubs, and vines. Twelve ponds. Trails, paths, valleys and hills. It’s...
Read MoreGrass: Winter Green
It’s November. Not a doubt of it. I can tell, because of all the usual clues. I can see my breath. There’s a skim of ice on the pond. I need mittens in the morning, because the steering wheel is like ice. The trees have bare branches. And the grass is emerald green. It’s the oddest thing about November, I find, the combination of brown shrivelled flowers, barren tree branches, and bright green grass. Grass, you see, is hard to kill. The leaves of many species of grass and lots of other low-lying plants, like clover, are highly resistant to frost. It’s hugely to the plants’ advantage,...
Read MoreConnect with Anita
Recent Comments