The end of one year, the start of another

2014 went by fast when you look at it in hindsight... swoosh! But a lot of interesting and good things happened, and some that we could have been without, as always.  My blogging was reduced due to other things, but here is a little summary of the things I never got time to show you earlier from the year that is about to pass on to history (2014).

WEATHER: There was a very cold and wintry beginning. Everybody learned the word 'polar vortex' with caused low temperatures and snow and ice.

FOOD: Many good Swedish-style breakfasts, which are like true mini-smorgasbords. Kalles Kaviar we have to get at IKEA here in the US. 

CRAFT and ART: Philadelphia and Baltimore Craft Shows, as well as Morristown and Peter Valley. Weavings by AA, trips to Grounds for Sculpture, and much more enlightened and enlivened 2014. This sculpture below by Brower Hatcher is one of my favorites at Grounds of Sculpture... it is really a place worth many visits.  Below that is a piece of one of Erin Wilson's many handmade, innovative artwork quilts, which we love. (The photo doesn't really do it justice, since it was taken with a smartphone.)

SWEDEN: a trip in March to the homeland, led me back to some places I hadn't seen for over 35 years, and Fiby Forest was a wonderful place to revisit. March is usually a cold and dreary month in Sweden, but there are wondrous things if you look closer, red beetles, green mosses, and colorful food (indeed, these days Swedish food is not just boiled potatoes, brown meat and sauce).

IDAHO: Summertime was conference travel time as usual, this time in Idaho, a new state. Up into the dry areas of the Bitterroot mountain range was an experience - hiking around Blue Lake, and being in all the alpine meadows with new kinds of birds and flowers, and views and vistas. I am going back!

PLANTS: Lots of work work focused on plants as usual, especially neglected weeds, lichens, and edible and urban plants. Beauty and wonder is everywhere...

BUGS: But there was also a lot of insects showing up wherever I was, and they too can be gorgeous. Looking at them this year and finding help online to identify and learn about them lead to a whole new world opening up.  I guess I have to learn more about fungi next year...

OPTIMISM: And now, it is the last day of 2014. And, I end with a quote by Cheryl Strayed from her book Wild, on what nature (and life) really is about:

“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental.”

Seeing America sideways (from a long-distance train)

When you travel by train you never look forward, maybe a little backward, but mostly sideways. Quickly landscapes swish past, except at stations where speeds slow down.

 

You see the backyard of American lives, not the front meant for eye consumption.  What you see are the alleys, backyards, abandoned lots, weedy places and industrial parks far from the manicured front lawns of highways and city streets.

 

Bridges and tunnels provide structure and landscape channels - light or dark, over water or through rock.  Both have that sense of danger, non is completely safe, but fascinating and exciting. Better to be back on firm ground though. In the forests and swamps no people are present, their sometimes presence just marked by old, dried-out ATV ruts, a barely holding-together deer stand in a tree, or the remnants of a dock, long since gone. I imagine alligators and beavers in the lakes, but see white egrets and maybe a deer.

Through the backyards and hidden lives of Americans, from swimming-pools so small they are non-swimmable, to room extension after room extension built out back, maybe to fit ever-growing families.

Like an invisible snake  the polished train passes through, nobody, except some young excited kids that not have have learned to ignore, pays attention to the metal Amtrak tech wonder, pushed by electricity down the tracks.  Everybody else doesn't even look up, they go on with their business, be it hanging laundry, carrying groceries, running a red light, yelling at some kids, waiting for the bus with the headphones plugged in, or doing homework behind a dirty window...

Weedy plants are everywhere, covering up the empty spaces people left behind - an old parking lot, railroad sidings, ruins of factories with their hand-painted names that can barely be seen on the old bricks, and neglected yards.  Abundant green life everywhere. They are pretty, but uncontrolled - red leaves color the landscape in sunset colors in the middle of the October day.  Sumac, kudzu, virginia creeper, mugwort and tree-of-heaven... Each plant has a story and the humans have stories about it, all linked to human histories and miseries.

The train on its shiny steel tracks cuts through it all, relentless, just passing by on to distant places, different lives. Behind it are kids starting, pointing, and laughing, and maybe imagining jumping on, one day.

(Written after taking the train today from Trenton to Washington, DC, and passing through Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland, and over Delaware River and Susquehanna River. All photos are taken from the train, many at full speed, so they are of course blurry, and therefore accurate.)

Garden update from New Jersey: baby mantis and poppies

The baby praying mantis' are out, growing quickly by eating aphids.  We see up to 10 at the time, and they are hanging out by the daylilies, which opened their giant yellow flowers today.

We have had too much rain already.  But the plants love it. In the last week we have had 7 inches of rain, which is nearly 200 mm. The fruit on my car window is an immature red maple samara.

AREA and I went to The New York Botanical Garden a few weeks ago. Philip Hass has an exhibit there where he has made giant, oversized sculptures inspired by Arcimboldo's The Four Seasons.  What do you think?  We weren't too impressed.  Gaudy and overblown, I think. It also looks like a plastic flower arrangement. (more photos here)

And, among the nicest things our town has done recently is the installation of solar panels by each school, and, the sowing of wildflower seeds around their newly planted trees.  Here are the weedy cornflower and poppies flourishing, with the solar panels in the background. People stop and take photos, just like we did.  This is so much nicer than green, sprayed, sterile, lawn.

Spring proof from NJ

Here are some very quick photos to show that the spring is here, finally.  In the last two weeks every plant has burst open and things grow faster than I can photograph. This is among the best times in New Jersey, before the horrible hot and humid summer.

Right now, flowering in the garden is: gooseberries (krusbär), plums (plommon), dandelions (maskros), pear tree (päron), peach tree (persika), dead nettle (rödplister), daffodils (påsklilja, pingstlilja), Scilla (scilla), crown imperial(kejsarkrona), bleeding heart (löjtnantshjärta), hairy cress (hårig bräsma), goldenbells (forsythia), birch (björk), veronica (trädgårdveronika), and common rocket (sommargyllen).

I have been busy prepping the raised beds for the sowing of carrots, onions, chard, radishes, peas, lettuce and beets, and they are all coming up now. There is plenty of space for the tomatoes and peppers, which have to wait until last frost date, May 15. I bet they might have to revise that soon, considering our increasingly warmer climate.

 

Only one day left

What do you think?  How will we remember 2012, this year of extremes...?

Will we remember hurricane Sandy? (Answer: yes, definitely.)



Will we remember the nor'easter named Athena, that arrived a few days after Sandy? (Answer: probably not, we have a lot of early snowstorms these days...)


Will we remember the crazy election with Romney vs. Obama, and all the money that was wasted on political ads instead of putting to good use for a better world?



Will I remember the year I started growing weeds on purpose? (Maybe not, but others might.)


My Agent Orange Hot Sauce with habaneros and carrots?  Yes, that is among the best ever made in this house.  A memory that has to be repeated next year, and this is probably the spiciest hot sauce I have made.


I do know what I will remember:

The robin chicks in our garden:


The poison hemlock that decided to grow in my raised bed (which is pretty funny since I just decided to learn more about weeds):


Seeing the original fossil of Tiktaalik, the missing link between lake-living amphibians and terrestrial tetrapods:


Feeling strangely 'at home' in a tiny town in Vermont, a place that reminded me so much of the good parts of rural Sweden.


I also think this was the year when the climate change opinion changed; I can feel it in the air, in the media, among my neighbors.  Nobody is arguing about the weather becoming wetter, windier, drier, stranger anymore.  Not here. Not after blooming flowers in January, snowstorms in April, drought and 'the-sky-just-opened'-rain showers in August, the superstorm/hurricane Sandy and then the snowstorms after that.  The weather just is crazy, and you can see it with your own eyes.

Time to face the facts and do something about it, people. And don't rebuild where it will flood again...  Do you think the stone age people rebuilt when the land rise changed the coastlines?  No, they were smart, they moved. It doesn't work to be stubborn when nature's forces are against you. How will we adapt?  (And for the record, all but 0.17% of scientific reports agree, the current climate change is caused by the human species. That debate is over.  Now it is time to decide what do to.)


So, taking a census of the year, what were the highlights?  

Well, I saw a lot of things that was interesting: Ground Zero, the abandoned railroad terminal at Liberty State Park, Washington Monument, Edison Labs, the green mountains of Vermont (injured after hurricane Irene), shapes at Grounds of Sculpture, a rare pink gentian, Ken Hamilton's models, crocodiles and leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, the rescued SAAB museum, and Ai Wei Wei's exhibit in Stockholm. I also made some things I am proud of, like this scarf and about 70 jars of canned food.

But the highlights must have been all the good food we made from mostly locally grown meat and vegetables, eating fresh tomatoes from the reinvigorated and redesigned kitchen garden with blue highlights, teaching fun classes with great students and co-teachers on really interesting subjects (evolution can never be a boring subject), seeing my relatives in Sweden, learning about weeds that are beautiful and neglected, getting an art quilt by Erin Wilson, that the cats survived another year outside (even during Sandy), and getting AREA off to art college.

2012 was also the year where I gave in and got an iPhone, despite my severe reservations and horror at other people's addiction to this piece of technology. Honestly, I think it can be a good thing, but you have to learn to turn it off, and set all signals and notifications but the phone calls to silent. There is nothing more annoying than someone that has a phone on vibrate or buzz while doing other things so they and you (and the people around you) get interrupted all the time.  And don't take it to bed (as if I ever would do that... my phone lives in another room.) I wanted the GPS and a way to get news during the next storm that hits us, since all power and internet will be out again then for days, I am sure. Another day I will rant about Facebook etc., don't you worry.  As my brother says about me, 'you are certainly not an early adopter'. :)

And the people, art, and books this year that have had the most influence on how I think and what I do, are probably the author Cheryl Strayed (book reviews will come!), Anu Tuominen's art (the blogpost about her is here), and the book The War of Art (half of which is good about procrastination and getting things done, while the rest is mumbo-jumbo about spiritual inspiration). 

And with that - Happy New Year, Happy 2013!, with a photo taken exactly a year ago in the forests around here.  This is the fruit of a tulip tree, Liriodendron tulipifera.

just some garden photos from this summer...

We found a nest of robins in the katsura tree, and they grew so fast and hopefully disappeared before getting eaten.


The blueness of morning glories never seize to amaze me:


The strange weed that had been loving the raised bed over the winter turned out to be poison hemlock ('odört' in Swedish), the toxic plant that became Socrates' last drink when he was sentenced to death.  I watched it grew, flower, and then pressed it in the herbarium press before it could set seed! :)
 


Once again the hollyhocks got attacked by the hollyhock rust fungus.  It just isn't the place for hollyhocks, too bad.  In Swedish, hollyhocks are 'stockros', and I have never seen any sick ones in Sweden. I am telling you, gardening in New Jersey is a kind of warfare againsts pests, vermin, fungi, viruses and bacteria.  I don't remember my parents complaining about blister beetles, stink bugs, late blight or anything like that.  OK, we had that potato disease, I remember that... and birds eating cherries, but nothing like this. The good thing is that I can always bring in every fungal pest to my colleagues at work who really appreciate the addition to their teaching collection of fungal pathogens.


This (Glechoma hederacea, ground ivy, 'jordreva') is one of those purple flowers that turn blue when you take a photo of it.  The sensitivity of the digital sensor in the camera is different from our eye, because this flower certainly wasn't blue.  I have seen the same thing happen with slide film, especially Kodachrome.


This was a really cool beetle in the goldenrod flowers, imitating a wasp. I wonder what it is called?