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f only for the memories it recalls only a few of the pines themselves survive and under them a few of the plants characteristic of pine woods here you see two of them the partridge berry mitchella repens and one of the pipsissewas chimaphila maculata the partridge berry seems to be taking the changes in stride the pipsissewa not so much so that s not surprising for success the partridge berry mostly needs lack of competition from taller plants the pipsissewa on the other hand evidently lives in association with soil fungi which themselves form relationships with the pines when the soil fungi go so too will the pipsissewas by then i ll probably be gone too posted by mcwort at 7 40 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest watch where you step it was probably fifty years ago when i first read konrad lorenz s king solomon s ring the image above provoked a memory of one of the stories in the book it seems that the lorenz residence included many of the animals curious zoologists tend to accumulate including graylag geese the geese had the run of the ground floor of the house and their deposits littered the floor lorenz s grandfather whose vision was failing had frequent unsanitary encounters with these so when i first saw what you see in the image above it was easy to imagine that a flock of thousands of well fed geese had recently roosted on those ball fields but geese are not to blame an aerator had recently worked the fields and the results when wet will be just as messy as what geese leave posted by mcwort at 6 46 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest homecoming when i stepped out onto the front porch the other day i saw this draped over the front steps it s a black rat snake our largest local snake but it s probably not just any black rat snake it s probably our black rat snake and if it is it has been seen here over and over since it was a hatchling it and our garter snakes can be seen in the bushes along the front of the house in april and in october they bask in the bushes and i m pretty sure they hibernate at the house foundation i ve long regarded the presence of snakes as proof of a well managed garden posted by mcwort at 6 39 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday july 23 2018 terrapene carolina the box turtle you ll probably have no idea how happy this makes me it s been years many years since i ve seen a live box turtle in this neighborhood i m glad to also say that it s been years since i ve seen a dead one on local roads if you had asked me recently about box turtles i would have said that they probably no longer survive here so i m very happy today this one looks like a female to me i hope she thinks this is a good place to lay her eggs a couple of hours after i took this picture i went back to take another look but she had already moved on this made my day posted by mcwort at 8 18 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday july 22 2018 passerina cyanea the indigo bunting and the urban ornithoscopist while absentmindedly staring out the bedroom window the other day this bit of gorgeous blue caught my eye it was only about eight feet away out on the deck eating grass seeds i walked to the other end of the house to get a better view and just then i heard the front door opening wayne was coming in i grabbed him by the arm and motioned for him to keep quiet as i whispered indigo bunting and dragged him to a window with a good view i gave him the camera and he took the video you see here posted by mcwort at 2 07 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest anna waving goodbye posted by mcwort at 12 05 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday january 12 2018 vermeer and van leeuwenhoek best buds pranking and pulling a fast one yesterday wayne and i went down to the national gallery to see the exhibit vermeer and the masters of genre painting it was time well and enjoyably spent dogs of a brown and white spaniel sort appear in several of the pictures and we heard someone joking that the several painters all used the same dog borrowing it one after another this morning s washington post had an article on two breeds of dog now newly recognized by the american kennel club one is the nederlandse kooikerhondje a brown and white spaniel which looks just like the dogs in the mid seventeenth century paintings i was about to write a letter to the post pointing out that the dogs in the post picture looked a lot like the dogs in the paintings when i pointed this out to my friend jane she responded that the post did mention in the later edition she read that the dogs sometimes appeared in old paintings in other words as she put it someone beat me to it there were also parrots in some of the paintings the first one i spotted from a distance looked like an african gray parrot to me but on closer inspection it appeared to be green is this a case of an originally gray pigment ageing to green earlier today i was looking at pictures of poppies in an on line seed catalog that reminded me that there is a vermeer at the national gallery which was not included in the exhibit his girl with the red hat i did a post about this in 2016 take a look here http mcwort blogspot com 2016 06 poppy in search of girl html as i looked at that face this morning i had a bit of startling insight or was it delusion to me that face was familiar and it was something i saw in the exhibit yesterday which seemed to bring several things together the exhibit included the famous paintings the astronomer and the geographer there is a tradition that a van leeuwenhoek was the model for the men portrayed in these paintings not a lot seems to be known about the connection between van leeuwenhoek and vermeer but this much is known the records of their births appear on the same page of the registry in the delft church where these were recorded and van leeuwenhoek was the executor of vermeer s will girl with the red hat is a bit of a puzzle the subject of the painting is wearing an outlandish get up there is no reason to believe that the citizens of delft went around dressed that way that pretty much rules out its genesis as a portrait nor is it a typical genre piece the painting seems not to emphasize the quality of the garments so much as it obviously gives the artist the opportunity to display some exquisite brush work and what is that hat made of but what really catches the eye is that beautifully rendered face no female face in the exhibit comes close to this one it s so natural so warm and alive so real and when i look at that face i see the same face looking out from the painting of the geographer the face it seems to me of a young comely van leeuwenhoek were vermeer and van leeuwenhoek best buds are they pranking here and trying to pull off a fast one on us you ve got until january 21 to get down to the museum and see all three paintings for yourself the astronomer and the the geographer are in the big exhibit girl with the red hat is in gallery 50a and is this the first time all three have been under the same roof at the same time since they left vermeer s studio posted by mcwort at 10 29 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest monday december 4 2017 a mile post my bedtime reading last night was from richardson wright s 1933 anothe r gardener s bed book in the opening chapter he notes that the sum of the pieces he had by then written in his two bed books was 730 each of his bed books contains 365 pieces one for each day of the year this blog is not written on a daily basis lately i ve been lucky to do a couple of entries per month but here s what prompted me to make this blog entry i ve now made over 730 blog posts since i started back in 2007 and while it took a lot longer for me to reach this point at least i m still at it posted by mcwort at 8 29 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest saturday september 23 2017 colchicum tessellation tessellation in colchicum beaconsfield colchicum rosy dawn a massive but untessellated cultivar the two images here show the difference between tessellated and untessellated flowers in colchicums in the image of beaconsfield you can easily see the checkerboard pattern of the color the intensity and clarity of this pattern varies with the age of the blossom and the light conditions in addition to beaconsfield other cultivars which show this pattern well are disraeli the giant and glory of heemstede in glory of heemstede the pattern is somewhat smudged but the overall color is very good in the giant overall the color is pale and so the tessellation is not distinct unless the blossom is examined closely for contrast the lower image shows rosy dawn an untessellated variety note the lack of the checkerboard color pattern grow this cultivar for its massive blooms the outer tepals are more than an inch wide in well grown examples posted by mcwort at 12 05 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest friday september 22 2017 colchicum six large flowered hybrids six large flowered hybrid colchicums i suspect that only those with a high tolerance for nomenclatural instability will persist long in an enthusiasm for the wild forms of the genus colchicum this uncertainty extends to the garden hybrids too above you see six of these hybrids six very well worth having some of the names date back to the pre wwi hybridizing work of the zocher firm whatever they are they are wonderful the enthusiasm for these plants when they were introduced and the sometimes hyperbolic naming might seem excessive to us but keep in mind that a century ago the only colchicums likely to be seen in european gardens were forms of the diminutive european wildflower colchicum autumnale and the ancient colchicum byzantinum aka colchicum autumnale major in comparison to those pale little ones these big richly colored and sometimes tessellated hybrids are glorious wondrous giants indeed in the image above you see left to right rosy dawn glory of heemstede beaconsfield jochem hof the giant and disraeli glory of heemstede beaconsfield the giant and disraeli are all characterized by conspicuous tessellation jochem hof is notable for its intense dark coloration rosy dawn is remarkable for the width of the tepals some are over an inch wide posted by mcwort at 5 29 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday september 17 2017 the interconnectedness of things a bite of pizza takes me back to wwii intrigues pizzacs s margherita pizza jim s favorite part last night wayne and i went for pizza there are several top notch pizza places within a five or ten minute drive from here and last night we tried pizzacs again cs in this case stands for the italian come sempre meaning as always an allusion to their membership in the associazione pizzaiuoli napoletani if there are such people as pizza geeks this is probably where they dine there s nothing fancy about this place but you can get a pizza made with mozzarella di bufala and the crusts are wonderful my choice was pizza margherita and as i munched it i absentmindedly made one of those connections that i should have made long ago have you ever wondered who the eponymous margherita was she was none other than margherita di savoia queen of italy at the end of the nineteenth century about forty years ago with little more with me than a eurail pass a camera some cash and seemingly unlimited optimism and enthusiasm i spent six weeks in england and western europe while in england the vegetarian hostel in which i stayed it had an opium poppy growing in the cracks of the front steps i ve got a photo to keep the memory keen had a beat up old upright piano in the basement out of curiosity i opened the piano bench and there i struck gold volume i of parisotti s 1885 arie antiche my offer to purchase it was declined you can have it was the proprietor manager s response two pages from this are shown here including the page dedicating the work to margherita di savoia regina d italia dedication page title page of parisotti s 1885 arie antiche for more about parisotti check out this link https en wikipedia org wiki alessandro_parisotti for more about queen margherita check out this link https en wikipedia org wiki margherita_of_savoy this book might carry even more history written inside the cover is this june forbes sempill münchen 1939 is this the hon june mary forbes sempill daughter of william francis forbes sempill 19 th lord sempill was she one of the many aristocratic young english women sent by pro german families to germany in the 1930s for finishing if so her death in 1941 at age 18 killed by enemy action was ironic from thepeerage com her father lord sempill was a notorious british spy employed by the japanese he was so well connected that he never faced charges for his traitorous activities posted by mcwort at 7 17 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest hemerocallis in mid september mid september daylilies with companion plants here are some late blooming hemerocallis combined with others plants also blooming now the smaller yellow daylilies are autumn prince the larger orange ones are autumn king mixed with them are some hardy ageratum tatarian aster a lone bellflower common bindweed salvia guaranitica and several sedums posted by mcwort at 5 53 pm 1 comment email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest colchicums 2017 colchicums with companion plants colchicums have been blooming for about two weeks now some of the earliest ones are already over for this year i gathered these early this morning and quickly put together this grouping now i ll be able to enjoy them throughout the year posted by mcwort at 5 40 pm 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest thursday july 27 2017 sinningia trio sinningia trio i ve grown to like these tall lanky sinningia so far the best way to use them in the garden has eluded me they remind me of salvias penstemons and even phygelius the three you see here left to right are butter and cream sinningia sellovii and scarlett o hara there are others and i m beginning to think i want them all they have yet to be tested by a winter in the garden i know from experience that when dry they survive easily in a cold frame but in recent years it s been easier to keep them dry in zip lock plastic bags at room temperature posted by mcwort at 5 16 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest sunday july 16 2017 smilax laurifolia smilax laurifolia smilax laurifolia the light green growths you see in this image are this year s new growth on smilax la...