Spring-into-summer is a celebratory parade of gastronomic gateways. Nettles, ramps, fiddleheads, asparagus, rhubarb,… So many seasonal ingredients and tastes. And now it’s radish time!
Ready for Radish Time? (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
These early French Breakfast Radishes are almost impossibly delicious. Crisp and spicy. Uniquely refreshing.
The French Breakfast Radish (Raphanus sativus) is [an] early summer classic — and perennial staple of Rosslyn’s vegetable garden — [that]… tends to be mild (less “spicy” than other standard radishes) if harvested and eaten early…(Source: French Breakfast Radish)
Ready for French Breakfast Radish time? (Illustration: Geo Davis)
Perhaps four years living in Paris account for my preference, but these early season benisons — as enticing to the eyes as to the tongue — beguile me year after year.
Radishes (my favorite are French Breakfast Radishes) celebrate precocious summer’s spicy return with vibrant, bye-bye-mud-season colors, a super satisfying crunch, and tastebud reviving explosions of peppery sweetness. (Source: Radishes and Radish Greens)
Such sweet springtime seduction. Love at first crunch. New and invigorating each year despite familiarity and anticipation.
And that’s just the red and white taproot. To be sure, the tuberous vegetable is what we envision when radishes are on the menu. But they’re only part of the radish time rewards.
Radishes aren’t just crunchy eye candy for crudités. Radishes are nutritious. Especially the radish greens! (Source: Radishes and Radish Greens)
That’s right. The lush greens you snatch to lift a ripe radish from the soil are a delight themselves.
As with standard radish varieties, the “radish greens” of the French Breakfast Radish can also be eaten. Washed and tossed into a saucepan of olive oil (or avocado oil), garlic, and onion, this wilted green is a delicious accompaniment…(Source: French Breakfast Radish)
Whether wilted alone or mixed with spinach and shredded Swiss chard, these nutrient rich greens will improve your plate. And radish greens sautéed then puréed with cream (or nondairy alternative such as Macadamia milk) make a delicate soup as pretty as it is piquant.
Holistic Orcharding: June pears (Source: Geo Davis)
I’m excited to report that we may finally be able to enjoy Rosslyn peaches, nectarines, and even a few pears and apples this summer. For the first time since we began planting an orchard, several trees have matured enough to set fruit.
Fruitful Orchard
Holistic Orcharding: Mulberry fruit ripening in June (Source: Geo Davis)
Holistic Orcharding: Mulberry fruit ripening in June (Source: Geo Davis)
Those bright red mulberry will darken as they soak up sun and begin to sweeten. They’re still pretty mealy (though the birds don’t seem to mind at all!)
The photograph at the top of this post shows a couple of small pears. A couple of pear trees set a pear or two last summer, but they dropped (or were eaten by critters) before I ever tasted them. Most of the pear tress are still fruitless, but a couple small green and red fruit are looking promising.
Holistic Orcharding: Young peaches in June (Source: Geo Davis)
For the first, our peach trees are setting fruit. Heavy winds and rains have resulted in steady fruit drop, but I’m guardedly optimistic that we may actually be able to sink out teeth into a few fuzzy, nectar-sweet peaches soon.
The peaches are the most fruitful of all the trees at this point. In fact, a couple of trees are so laden that I’ll probably begin thinning fruit as they grow larger, culling the runts and least healthy fruit and leaving the best.
The photo below on the left offers a wider perspective on a fruitful peach, and the photo on the right shows a young and almost equally fruitful nectarine tree.
Holistic Orcharding: Young peaches in June (Source: Geo Davis)
Holistic Orcharding: Young nectarines in June (Source: Geo Davis)
The three nectarine trees are 3-4 years younger than the peaches, so I’m curious why two of them are already setting fruit. The third nectarine tree has never been very healthy. Dwarfish and sparsely branched, leafed, I’ll try for one more summer to help it along. If it doesn’t begin to catch up, I’ll consider replacing it next year.
Like the apricot that I replaced this year…
Holistic Orcharding: Transplanted apricot tree (Source: Geo Davis)
We’ve struggled with apricots. Few of our apricot trees are thriving, and one died last year. We replaced it this spring with the Goldicot Apricot above, the only variety that seems to be adapting well. I can report good new growth so far on the transplant, but another apricot has died. Both are lowest (and wettest) on the hill, so I plan to address the drainage this fall. Perhaps the heavy clay soil and high spring water table is simply to much for the apricots to withstand.
Deer-full Orchard
Unfortunately it’s not all good news in the orchard. We remain committed to our 100% holistic orcharding (thanks, Michael Phillips!) mission, but we’re still playing defense with Cedar Apple Rust and other pesky challenges. I’ll update on that soon enough, but there’s another frustrating pest that provoked my frustration yesterday.
Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)
Can you see the munched leaves and branches?
Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)
Holistic Orcharding: Apple tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)
Ive you look just below center of this photograph you’ll see where a large branch has been snapped right off. It was laying on the ground below. Also plenty of smaller branches and leaves chewed.
The two apple trees which were targeted by the deer were planted last spring. They’d both established relatively well, but they were short enough to offer an easy snack. We keep the trees caged during the fall-through-spring, but we had just recently removed the cages to begin pruning and spreading limbs (see red spreader in image above?), so the trees were easy targets.
And there’s worse news.
Holistic Orcharding: Young persimmon tree browsed by deer (Source: Geo Davis)
That’s a young persimmon tree that we just planted a couple of weeks ago. It was a replacement for a persimmon that arrived dead from the nursery last year (another drama for another day…)
Not only did the deer browse the persimmon, but it ate both leads, presenting a serious hurdle for this transplant. Not a good situation. I’ll pamper this youngster in the hopes that one of these blunted leads will send up another lead, or—more likely, but far from guaranteed—a fresh new lead will bud and head skyward. Fingers crossed.
Spring along the Adirondack Coast tempts us with plenty of enticing seasonal flavors, but a personal favorite is the sweet tart medley of local maple syrup and homegrown rhubarb. Although we’re still a little shy of rhubarb time, the maple syrup is standing by, and my imagination is conjuring up this springtime staple. It’s as perfectly paired with a steaming cup of morning tea or coffee as with grilled protein and a spring mixed green salad.
Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)
The images in today’s post, rhubarb photos that I posted on Instagram back in 2021, were inspired when Pam thrust a healthy handful of rhubarb stems into my grateful paw one morning. They’re a pinch more poignant now because our rhubarb crowns were accidentally rolled under last spring and we haven’t yet propagated a new generation.
Now that I’ve dangled the palate puckering temptation of rhubarb sautéed in maple syrup I’m going to ask your forbearance as I take a brief detour. I’ll get back to the super simple recipe in a moment.
But first an amuse-gueule: rhubarb haiku.
Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)
Rhubarb Haiku
Still chill, spring soil parts.
Green, red, unclenching, stalking,
sweet tart rhubarb.
When spring’s still inhospitable weather and clammy soil don’t seem to suggest this potent plant coming forth, just then, it does. Courageous and colorful. A fist unfurling from the earth, stretching out into impossibly lush, almost tropical, foliage. It is rhubarb time again.
Perhaps this tangle of tartness and sweetness, cool climate growth and tropical semblance, is the allure of rhubarb time.
Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)
Rosslyn Rhubarb Time
Rhubarb was one of my first forays into homegrown edibles back in 2007. I transplanted several crowns from my parent’s Rock Harbor property. We did not yet own the acreage west of the barns, so I hadn’t even begun to conceive of the gardens and orchard that we’ve been fortunate to develop since acquiring the first portion of our backland from Greystone in 2008/9.
I propagated the transplanted rhubarb crowns directly to the south of the carriage barn within the stone foundation of a long gone lean-to addition to the barn that may have at one point housed animals judging from the fertile soil. Combined with sunlight and heat reflected off of the carriage barn’s southern facade, this proved a productive microclimate for rhubarb (and asparagus) in those early years.
When fortune cast her benevolent gaze upon us, allowing us to add +/-28 acres to Rosslyn, I transplanted the rhubarb (and the asparagus) to a new location about 100 feet west of the carriage barn, where the plants would benefit from plenty of sunlight. These hardy perennials served as reliable forerunners for today’s productive vegetable and fruit gardens.
Their propagation served another symbolic, if sentimental, importance to me. Both — Rosslyn’s rhubarb and Rosslyn’s asparagus — were transplanted from existing beds that my mother had previously transplanted from our childhood home (see “Homeport in Wadhams, NY”) to Rock Harbor a couple of decades prior. A continuity reaching back to childhood, a lineage of homes, and a meaningful association with my mother, the self taught gardener who exposed me as a boy to the uniquely fulfilling practice of germinating, propagating, cultivating, harvesting, preparing, and sharing homegrown food. A perennial interconnectedness.
Rock Harbor Rhubarb Time
Turning back the clock a dozen years to May 31, 2011 I posted about harvesting Rock Harbor rhubarb some 5-6 years prior. (If lost in the math, the following refers to the time when Susan and I were contemplating the still-unlikely possibility of moving from New York City to the North Country. Rosslyn was still more playful pipedream than reality.)
We walked down the road from the tennis court and stopped off at my parents’ house, still closed up for the winter. It would be several weeks before my parents arrived in Rock Harbor for the summer, and by then the asparagus would have gone to seed, so we picked enough for dinner and enough extra to bring back to the city for another meal.
I also picked a fistful of rhubarb to sauté with maple syrup for dessert. Susan disliked rhubarb, but I loved the lip puckering tartness. The taste transports me instantly to The Farm. (Source: The Farm)
Rock Harbor Rhubarb (Source: Geo Davis)
Much as our Rock Harbor rhubarb bridged time and place, Rosslyn’s rhubarb had become a seasonal reconnection bridge to a timeless tapestry of family, gardening, meals shared, and home oases.
Before I slide further down the slippery slope of sentimentality, I’d better get on with that recipe!
Maple Rhubarb Recipe
This maple rhubarb recipe may well be the simplest how-to you’ve ever come across. Sometimes the best recipes are the simplest!
Trim rhubarb ends to remove any leaf remnants (which are toxic to humans due to high levels of oxalic acid.)
Trim rhubarb ends to remove earthy bits.
Chop rhubarb into 1/2″ to 3/4″ pieces.
Fill a saucepan about halfway full of chopped rhubarb, and place on low heat.
Add a cup of water and a teaspoon of vanilla.
Cover the sauce pan and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring periodically to ensure even sautéing.
Once the rhubarb has begun to break down evenly, add a dash of cinnamon
Add maple syrup to taste.
Top this quick dessert/snack with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or a dollop of vanilla yoghurt. (If you’re dairy free, as I am, substitute your preferred alternative!)
The sweet tart flavor profile of sautéed maple rhubarb is so unique, so scintillating, so memorable that my taste buds are tingling as I write these words. Enjoy.
Last Sunday my bride and I settled in for a post-lunch-tea-and-snooze in the parlor. The previous week’s unseasonably temperate spring-going-on-summer weather had yielded to cold and rain, so we weren’t feeling too guilty about playing hooky. No gardening or tidying up the waterfront for spring boating. No orchard pruning or apple tree grafting for us. Just a lazy afternoon on the dry side of our rain pelted windows…
Whaplumf!
That’s the noise of a dove crashing into a window pane.
Hawk Attacks Dove
We headed into the breakfast room where we discovered a fierce looking hawk pinning a dove to the ground on the lawn near the bird feeders, ripping beak-fulls of feather and flesh from the stunned dove’s back.
Did I mention that the dove was still alive? Despite the predator’s fierce talons and efficient beak, the dove periodically struggled and lifted its head to look around. The efforts were futile and only increased the hawk’s aggression.
It was a fascinating if deeply disturbing sight. A real world immersion in the sort of wild spectacle usually limited to the Discovery Channel. A Rosslyn safari sequel to the the Fox & Squirrel episodes.
Cooper’s Hawk on bird feeder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A dusty impression of the dove was still visible on the glass, and I surmised that the dove had crashed into the window while attempting to flee the hawk. I had seen a similar image about a week before on the kitchen window, as if a dove had been rolled in flour and then pressed against the glass, wings outstretched and head turned to the side revealing an eye and and the beak. Had this same drama played out then?
My bride was horrified. She raced outside flapping a pair of bright pink dishwashing gloves and shouting at the hawk. “Stop that! Get out of here. Go away!” The hawk looked at Susan flapping the pink gloves menacingly less than 10 feet away, then looked down at the dove, then up at me standing in the window, then back at Susan. The dove lifted it’s head, eyes wild with fright.
A standoff? A detente?
Suddenly the hawk flapped its wings lifting the still struggling dove from the ground. My fearless bride leaped toward the hawk, flailing her gloves and shouting angrily. The hawk settled briefly in front of the kitchen window and then flew away, abandoning the injured dove.
My bride pulled on her gloves and lifted the injured dove from the grass. It gazed up at her, struggling to breath. She carried the dying bird to the edge of our front lawn where placed it gently into a comfortable nest of leaves and twigs.
In recent weeks we’ve seen three of four piles of feathers near the bird feeder on different occasions, but I assumed the fox had switched from squirrels to doves. It turns out that we have two efficient predators who’ve discovered the benefits of dining on critters drawn to our birdfeeders.
Hawk Attack Dove “Research”
Never having witnessed this before I turned to the interwebs for assistance in deciphering what we witnessed. I found forums and blog posts documenting the exact same experience, in many cases even including the dove or pigeon smashing into a window before being nabbed by the hawk. And there’s a veritable glut of video footage online if your stomach is strong and your emotions are steely. (Note: If you are remotely squeamish, these videos are not for you.)
Are we contributing to the predation by overfeeding wildlife. I’m increasingly concerned that we are. Is there a better balance between feeding songbirds during the winter and over-concentrating/over-fattening the squirrel and dove populations? Certainly. But we haven’t quite figured out how to proceed.
I’ve recommended limiting bird feeding to the cold winter months, and my bride has reluctantly agreed. Verbally. When the food runs out. Which means that Rosslyn remains a fast food restaurant for foxes and hawks. And while my bride had repeatedly decreed our yard a safe haven for wildlife, we haven’t figure out how to communicate this to the predators. All advice welcome!
Hawk Attacks Dove Update
Half a year later I flash back to this experience.
It’s autumn, and we’ve just placed the bird feeders out for the winter. I’ve seen a fox slinking among the cedar hedge, spying on the squirrels, planning his next meal. The first pigeons arrive to peck the overspill sunflowers from the ground beneath the feeders.
Still no hawks.
And then, one crashes through the interwebs, plunges into my day, startles me, horrifies me, fascinates me. A hawk. A hare. An attack so familiar it seems as if I had watched the hawk attack the dove only yesterday.
Looks like my spring 2023 veggie garden exuberance (and perennially Pollyanna optimism) served me poorly. As we all well know from the time tempered tale of Daedalus and Icarus, the consequences of taking risks can send us plunging. Or, in the case of cheating the calendar by prematurely planting tomatoes, tomatillos, and other delicate spring starts in the hoop house, the fickle fates can zap our healthy vegetable transplants. Ouch! The consequences of high tunnel hubris is at once humbling and heartbreaking.
High Tunnel Hubris: Damaged Peppers (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Rewind the calendar a few weeks. I was chomping at the proverbial bit, anxious to get plants into the ground, overconfident that the high tunnel would take the sting out of any late frosts.
There’s something about springtime, about gardening, about the promise of colorful blooms and produce that I’m finding too tempting to resist… with all the enthusiasm and optimism of an almost 100% planted garden. May 2023 be as abundant as 2022!(Source: Giebel Garden Flashback)
For a couple of months, we’d been monitoring a dozen data logging thermometers positioned strategically throughout the high tunnel. I made the apparently ill informed decision that we were ready.
High Tunnel Hubris: Freeze Watch (Source: Apple Weather)
I’ve learned again, and again that worrying about the weather is an unhealthy and unhelpful practice. So I won’t. Or, I will try not to worry. Nature, benevolent nature, will offer us what she considers right. (Source: Giebel Garden Flashback)
Benevolent, yes, in the grand scheme of things. But the peaks and valleys of nature’s day-to-day EKG is perhaps, slightly less benevolent.
This will be our second season high tunneling, but it’s our first opportunity to jumpstart planting (by about two weeks).
[…]
We’re tempting fate by leapfrogging the typical Mother’s Day planting date, crossing our fingers, and imagining tomatoes by the 4th of July. (Source: Green Zebras 1st in High Tunnel)
There it is: “tempting fate“. No blame, except my own optimism. I understood the stakes. I understood the risks. And I understood the consequences. But, friends, I find no analgesic in any of this today.
High Tunnel Hubris: Damaged Tomatoes (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
With metaphorically melted wings and a painful plunge, it’s now time to regroup. Time to triage.
High Tunnel Hubris: Damaged Eggplant (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Geo: How do the damaged plants look?
Pam: Not good. Looks like three tomato plants survived. Possibly lost all of the tomatillos as well.
Geo: Crushing. Hardly seems possible. Let’s allow them to adjust. Tomatoes may send out new shoots. Tomatillos too, but less likely.
Pam: The garden is fighting me this year. Soaker hoses and timers have been a struggle.
High Tunnel Hubris: Damaged Peppers (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Although the perspective is pretty bleak, at this point, I’m tentatively hopeful that some of the tomatoes may recover. If the soil was warm enough, the roots may remain vital. If a sucker shoots in, we can cultivate it into a new plant. The prospect, of course, for tomatillos is less good. But I’m not prepared to give up yet. The possibility of new growth might yet eclipse the discouraging dieback we’re now witnessing. After all, I’m not aware of anyone who has ever died of optimism!
It must be spring! Sometimes affectionately cooed (by nobody ever) and sometimes disparagingly grumbled (almost always), “mud season” has rounded the proverbial corner. Dun and drab are giving way to brilliant white and violet and — as soon as the daffodils and dandelions bloom — vibrant yellow.
¡Hasta la vista, winter! Spring has sprung.
Crocus (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Crocus & Dwarf Iris, Haiku
Crocus, dwarf iris dabbed from pigmented palette, early blooms unearthed.
Nature is the original artist, liberating all manner of magical blooms from the earth where only weeks ago it seemed unlikely that this theatre would open on time. But it does, year after year. And this is and a small part why I consider gardening to be the very fountain of optimism.
Dwarf Iris (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Bulbs Now, Buds Soon?
Once bulbs begin to push their green shoots up out of the damp earth, it’s easy to let optimism run away with us. The daffodils and the daylilies are pushing up as well, although we’ll need to wait for a while longer before the day lilies bloom.
This exciting succession of blooms inevitably primes my Pollyanna pump for other blooms, especially bud burst in Rosslyn’s orchard. Talk about theatre!
Imagine for a moment enduring many, many months without fresh, homegrown produce. Tragic, right? Especially for a passionate gardener who loves to prepare and share garden-to-table fare for family and friends. Now you can stop imagining because this next part requires no imagination… It’s Spargelzeit!
The word Spargel means asparagus and Zeit means time. The term Spargelzeit refers to the time of year when white asparagus is harvested in Germany (some call it Spargelsaison – “asparagus season”). (Source: GermanyinUSA.com)
Essex is a decent wander from Germany, but I certainly share their enthusiasm for the first harvest of homegrown asparagus. So whether we call it asparagus time (Spargelzeit) or asparagus season (Spargelsaison), let’s celebrate the first garden-to-table produce of the 2023 season.
Spargelzeit: Steamed Asparagus (Photo: Geo Davis)
Now, there is one little hiccup in my declaration of Spargelzeit, and that has to do with the color of the king of vegetables. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. Let’s return to Germany for a moment.
It’s that time of year again — the asparagus season has started in Germany! To say Germans love this seasonal vegetable would be an understatement… they absolutely adore it. Every year, the average German consumes roughly 1.5kg of the vegetable that is often referred to as the ‘king of the vegetables’.
Whilst the green variety is available all year round, Germans prefer the seasonal white variety that grows only during ‘Spargelzeit’ (asparagus season) which lasts from mid-April to mid or late June. (Source: Medium.com)
I remember discovering something similar while living in Paris in my 20s. Although the French considered white asparagus a delicacy, they looked askance at green asparagus. Too pedestrian, perhaps. Peculiar, say I. After all, the white asparagus has practically no flavor at all. But green asparagus, I’d like to suggest, is, in fact, the precise taste of the color green. Delicate, subtly bitter, and bursting with vibrance. The taste of spring… The taste of spring…
Spargelzeit: Asparagus for Dinner, May 6, 2023 (Photo: Geo Davis)
In the photo above the asparagus occupies place of honor in the middle of my plate. To the left, a simple grilled ground beef patty from Full and By Farm, and to the right some organic tomatoes I picked up in Vermont. Having spent the morning planting tomatoes in our high tunnel with Tony, I am hopeful, that soon — or at least far sooner than usual — I will be able to share photos of our earliest-ever tomatoes!
As a nod to Spargelzeit I tried to accompany my Rosslyn asparagus with other local food. Perhaps a sausage would have been more appropriate.
Traditional restaurants offer menus dedicated to this seasonal favourite, offering soups, salads and warm spears served with hollandaise sauce. It’s also served as a sort of add-on to other regional favourites, piled upon a schnitzel or a slice of saumagen (a haggis-like specialty from the Pfalz region), or stacked alongside a pair of hot, meaty bratwürste. When it comes to any plate of food in Germany, white asparagus is no exception: more is definitely more. That’s not a stereotype that will ever be crushed. (Source: The Guardian)
More is more, but I’ve decided to temper my overexuberance on this first day of Rosslyn Spargelzeit. I was tempted to serve myself a second heaping mound of asparagus, but I managed to exercise a modicum of restraint and placed them instead into the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch. Chilled asparagus with balsamic vinaigrette. Delicious.
As asparagus time begins yielding to rhubarb time (photo update soon!) I brainstorm asparagus recipes that I’ll lament overlooking once seasonality advances our homegrown ingredients. A vague recollection sends me filtering through old blog posts and then drafts of incomplete blog posts. I find notes started on May 14, 2014, and I know what my final garden-to-gullet asparagus recipe will be: green eggs and ham.
Asparagus Green Eggs
Although there are many tasty ways to concoct delicious green eggs (avocado, artichoke hearts, succulent spinach fresh from the garden,…) today I will alchemize the quintessential taste of spring — delicate asparagus spears bursting with their 100% unique tanginess — and hyperlocal, free range eggs from Full and By Farm.
Green Eggs and Ham: garden-fresh spring asparagus (Photo: Geo Davis)
Look at the brilliant yellow-orange color of the eggs! Almost too colorful to believe. And yet this is the signature of local, free range eggs. We consider ourselves fortunate indeed to enjoy a steady stream of organic eggs from Full and By Farm.
Green Eggs and Ham: farm-fresh eggs from Full and By Farm (Photo: Geo Davis)
Although at other times we might’ve been able to prepare pork from Full and By Farm (or another local farm) in this case I’ve used dulcedumbres, smoked ham from the Village Meat Market just up the road in Willsboro.
Green Eggs and Ham: deli sliced ham from Village Meat Market cut into strips (Photo: Geo Davis)
As the ingredients start to set up with a little heat, the yellow, green and pink are still distinct, three parts of a perfect medley.
Green Eggs and Ham: local ingredients and lots of love! (Photo: Geo Davis)
Cooked to perfection (overcooked, my bride would say), green eggs and ham, make the perfect breakfast, lunch, or dinner!
Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham
I imagine that many of us, perhaps even most of us.) remember the book, Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. If you’re needing a little blast from the past, enjoy this video.
The male ruffed grouse in the photo above was documented on a Rosslyn wildlife camera about a year ago. Fancy fowl! And the two images below were recorded a few weeks ago.
Rosslyn’s backlands are fortunately flush with ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), a welcome reminder that wildlife gravitates — as if by some primal sense — to safe havens and sanctuaries. If you preserve it, they will come (or so our experience over the last 12+ years suggests.)
Ruffed Grouse (Rosslyn Wildlife Camera)
What is a Ruffed Grouse?
A brown or gray-brown, chicken-like bird with slight crest, fan-shaped, black-banded tail, barred flanks, and black ‘ruffs’ on sides of neck.
Habitat: Deciduous and mixed forests, especially those with scattered clearings and dense undergrowth; overgrown pastures.
Female gives soft hen-like clucks. In spring displaying male sits on a log and beats the air with his wings, creating a drumming sound that increases rapidly in tempo. (Source: Audubon)
Popular among hunters for their tender meat, the ruffed grouse in these images are safe in Rosslyn’s wildlife sanctuary. Although Susan is a vegetarian (a pescatarian, actually), I concede a robust appetite for wild game. That said, I’m not a hunter. And when we purchased first one, and then a second adjoining lots, our intention was to preserve and rewild, to invest in a healthy and resilient wildway buffering the already significant wildlife moving along Library Brook. With acreage expanded and John Davis’s wildlife stewardship guiding our rewilding efforts, native wildlife are returning and prospering.
If you’ve never heard a ruffed grouse drumming, you should definitely play the video below. It’s a mysterious rhythm I associate with late winter through early spring outings — cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and sometimes mindful, sometimes mindless meandering — through Rosslyn’s forests and meadows.
Does anybody recollect seeing the Sherwood Inn‘s boathouse billboard as photographed above. It’s well before my time, but probably not too long before my earliest Essex memories in the 1970s. I recently reached out to our friend Cheri Phillips to find it what she might know about the photograph above. She generously gifted me the photo shortly after we purchased Rosslyn, but she no longer recalls where it came from. In terms of seasonality, it looks like late winter or early spring. March seems likely. And the abbreviated west end of the boathouse pier intrigues me. Perhaps that helps narrow down rough timeline? I’m hoping that one of our insightful readers will be able to help fill in the gaps?
Today bold signage no longer greets the eye in Essex, but the handprinted (I’m guessing) boathouse billboard must have been extremely visible on the waterfront rooftop just north of the ferry dock. It’s the most attention grabbing element in the photo above, but there are some additional details worth noting as well. For example, if you examine the left side of the photo, roughly halfway up the edge, you can just barely detect the roof of the long gone bathhouse once located north of Rosslyn’s boathouse and roughly adjacent to the remains of a crib dock that once reached far out into Lake Champlain. Also notable is the absence of trees along the waterfront. This and other images made in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s reveal a virtually treeless lakefront at Rosslyn and the other residences located south of Rosslyn: Sunnyside, and Greystone.
Sherwood Inn Signage on Boathouse Roof (Photo: Cheri Phillips)
In just a few short months it’s possible if not likely that we’ll be able to enjoy a similar perspective looking northeast from roughly Sunnyside. There will be considerably more trees, and most likely there will be considerably less ice and snow on the lake. And not boathouse billboard! Although it’s too early to guess, recent years have resulted in fewer and fewer significant freezes of the broad lake. Perhaps this year will be different? If so, maybe we can stage a now-and-then duet with Cheri’s vintage view of Sherwood Inn’s boathouse billboard.
Springtime is tulip time, a dramatic chapter in gardners’ succession blooming cycles. With snow drops, hyacinth, and daffodils fading, colorful tulip blooms take center stage. And this year’s tulip time does not disappoint.
Tulip Time (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
Signs of springtime are abundant lately. It’s asparagus time. Also ramps, apple blossoms, dandelions, fiddleheads, tulips, nettles,… And lily of the valley unfurling dramatically. An entire army of terpsichorean twirlers synchronized, slowly unfurling, mesmerizing. (Source: Lily of the Valley Unfurling )
With especial thanks to my bride Susan Bacot-Davis for her moody photos, I offer you three intimate portraits of our current tulip time. Like festive gala gowns these goblets of pigmented petals dazzle and dare us to imagine springtime maturing into sizzling summer soon…
Tulip Time (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
So much confidence and coquetry in these precocious summertime previews. And yet these blooms are delicate, susceptible to swings in temperature and downpours.
Tulip Time (Photo: Susan Bacot-Davis)
The tulips make me want to paint, Something about the way they drop Their petals on the tabletop And do not wilt so much as faint… (Source: A.E. Stallings, “Tulips”, Poetry Foundation
It’s that remarkable season of reawakening, spring, glorious springtime! And more than all of the other blooms that announce the season of unslumbering, Dandelions remind us that nature is nourishing and vibrant and brilliantly colorful.
Routinely dismissed, even abhored, as an annoying weed, dandelions are for me a welcome harbinger of warming temperatures, greening environs, several seasons of blooms and fruit and vegetables. And yet dandelions remain mostly symbolic representatives of reawakening, vivid reminders of the abundance we’ll soon celebrate.
Friend or Foe: Dandelions (Photo: Geo Davis)
A decade or more ago Tom Duca introduced me and a gathering of Essex area friends to The Teeth of the Lion: The Story of the Beloved and Despised Dandelion by Anita Sanchez. His enthusiasm for her enthusiasm about dandelions made an impression on me that afternoon. I planned to read it, but it slipped off my radar. Until now. I’ve located a copy that is presently wending is way to me. So, soon I’ll be able to amplify my understanding (and presumably my appreciation) for dandelions.
But even before educating myself I’ll comfortably come down on the side of dandelions bring friends. Yes, I know that many might consider them an invasive scourge peppering the perfection of an otherwise green lawn.
Friend or Foe: Dandelions (Photo: Geo Davis)
But I do not share this disdain. Rather, dandelions evoke childhood wonder and enthusiasm for spring a perennially optimism inspiring season for me. Simply put springtime is seasonality’s metaphorical morning. And rambunctious riots of dandelions are one of the most exuberant symbols of the season. Persistent, yes, but in so many cases we’re able to recognize the merits of persistence. Why not dandelions?
We know too that dandelions are a forager’s friends, Nature’s nourishing gift of vitamins and minerals after months of hibernal stinginess. I’ve enjoyed tender dandelion greens in a spring salad mixes from the store, but I’ve rarely made the effort to harvest these spicy freebies from the yard. It’s an embarrassing oversight I intend to remedy. Soon. And dandelion wine? So many experiments to explore…
Friend or Foe: Dandelions (Photo: Geo Davis)
So for now, I’ll optimistically file dandelions as friend (and not foe) despite the proclivity of so many among my gardening aficionado cohort to vilify and endeavor to extirpate this sunny sojourner. If designation by and large comes down to bias, I’ve now made mine known. Caveat emptor. And once I’ve made it through Sanchez’s book I’ll be able to update this post with a meatier installment justifying my somewhat sentimental declaration that dandelions are our friends. Stay tuned…
