Quoddy Peat

Back in summer, remember summer, I posted about our trip to Maine. We traveled to the beautiful Quoddy Head State Park to see the rocky coastline, balsam forest, and bogs. The surprise of the trip was a bog that is suffering erosion from rising seas. Bounded by an inland bay to the west and an ocean cove to the east, the erosion reveals peat in all its anaerobic glory, in a way I've never seen -its natural state.

We could see years upon years of layered peat, from light and dry on top to wet, dark, and spongy below -the peat already in a process of transformation. Did you know that peat eventually, under the right conditions, becomes coal? 

I do not use raw peat in the garden or on the farm, and I plan to reduce my use of peat to nearly zero this year, primarily by purchasing a fine compost mix for seed starting instead of the common peat-based seed starting mix. I'll report here how that turns out. Consider doing the same, yep, -for peat's sake.

UPDATE: I bought compost and vermiculite to combine as a substitute for peat-based mix.

Quoddy Bog

How many of us have explored a bog? The Irish landscape gave us the term we use often, but we barely appreciate its roots. 

A bog like this one requires a boardwalk. There's hardly anyone light enough to avoid getting "bogged." This landscape expressed a surprising shift in scale unseen in other environments. At once you are viewing the trees, shrubs, and moss. Get closer, you see even more.

The dominant colors within the bog are crimson and chartreuse.

Ribs add rigidity to the rather phallic structures of Pitcher Plant, Sarracenia purpurea.

Hairs point downward on the interior throat, making it easy to enter, but hard to leave.

An ant investigates at its peril.

The Pitcher, like all pitchers, eventually fills with liquid -in this case, rainwater.

The trapped insect falls into the liquid, where it is digested by enzymes released by the plant.  

Statuesque flower of the Pitcher Plant.

Seeds.

Sundew is another species of insect digesting plant.

There are two varieties of Sundew in the Quoddy bog. This one is known as the Round-leaved Sundew, Drosera rotundifolia. 

Insects are drawn in by the sparkly, sticky fluid on the tips of hairs. Once there they become trapped and digested. The leaves do not close on the insect like the Venus Fly Trap.

In the areas where rain had ponded on the surface, the other Sundew.

Drosera intermedia, or Spatulate-leaved Sundew.

Which happened to be just about to flower, although just out of reach of my camera phone.

The dead sphagnum layered beneath the surface is several feet deep, is oxygen and nutrient poor, and highly acidic. There is no ground water in this substrate; the bog receives all its water from rain and dew alone. That these plants evolved the ability to ingest nitrogen, phosphorous, and other nutrients from insects is rather incredible.

Other plants making a life for themselves on top of the sphagnum moss include stunted black spruce, ericaceous plants and a rubus species.

There was some blueberry (and cranberry too).

Black Crowberry, or Empetrum nigrum, was abundant (edible fruit, none present).

The rubus-leafed plant to the upper left is called Baked-apple Berry, or Rubus chamaemorus. Yes, these berries are edible and, you guessed it, are said to taste like baked apples.

Up next -peat.

Quoddy

Time being what it is, several images and a few thoughts are all I can put to post. Enjoy. Visit the northeastern most region of Maine sometime. As raw, wild, yet accessible, as the east coast gets.

Sun to the south east, we begin our hike.

In just a few steps we are in a balsam fir and white spruce forest, moss floor dappled, stunning.

Where the sun made headway, woodland asters were in bloom.

And recent rains had inspired mushrooms to fruit.

Is there no better way to see mushrooms than floating above a mossy carpet?

There were several plots of thick clover cover deep in the woods. It appeared out of place, and I wonder if it has anything to do with this.

Out of the woods, onto the cliffs.

I believe a cranberry flower (crane -berry), cliffside.

A memorial, a mystery, and a severe case of deja vu. We emerged from the forest onto a promontory full of drying grasses and a green, leafy plants in flower. To the north, a little bronze plaque memorializing a woman, who's name escapes me but had a distinctive Slavic sound (ys, zs, cs, and ws), adorned a boulder facing the sea. The flowering plant, again, appeared out of place. It looked like celery! Tear and sniff, too strong for celery, but Lovage? The plaque said that this was the favorite spot of the woman it memorialized. Lovage is a favorite of eastern European cooking. Could she have planted it here? Was it her favorite place, not only for the sea and cliffs, first sunrise in the east, but also because her favorite pot herb was growing rather wildly? I have no idea, but then, a consuming feeling as if I had been in this exact spot before. What is this all about. I had intended to make my way up the coast for years, but never made it past Schoodic Point. Had I encountered a similar cliffside and Lovage growth further down east?

Deaths from ocean spray whipped up by the Groundhog Day Gale of 1976.

While the invasive purple loosestrife was in bloom, so was the fireweed, Epilobium angustifolium.

A spectacular alternative.

Off to the bog, we rested, lounging lengthwise down the planks through a wetland. While there were several benches along the coastline, there were none within the woods.

Old Man's Beard, Treemoss, Usnea spp. -a symbiosos of fungus and alga.

Moss-blanketed forest with emergent Indian Pipe, Monotropa uniflora.

Again, Indian Pipe, pearlescent white atop green velour.

The sun now toward the west, we left Quoddy Head for Lubec -population 1359, bridge to Canada, and three eateries. Did you know that there are three spices in Maine? Salt, pepper, and fried. Keep it simple, stick to Maine's natural resources -lobster, potatoes, milk, blueberries. Although they do breakfast well, bring your own coffee. 

Next post -the bog.

The Lobster Pot

After a morning of reading we headed out to last year's swimming hole. This year minus the hike over Schoodic Mountain. The hike is superb, especially if you like views of Mt. Desert Island, the coast, and blueberries, but we did a lot of hiking yesterday.

Now, we wait for our lobsters. They're incredibly cheap this year. We hear it's because Canadian lobstermen have flooded the market. I have not tested this, but a quick google search finds a NYTimes article on the topic from 2 days back.

While live lobsters are cheap, the lobster rolls are still coming in at 10 bucks a pop (I don't eat them). Lobster dinner at the shack with the 1/2 cob corn and a bib is still rolling at 20 or 25 a plate (1-1/4 lb).

So we kill our own over our camp fire or stove. It's messy, but someone has to reduce the overstock of lobsters, may as well be us. In the mean time, they squirm in a brown sack, placed ceremoniously over the wood we are about to burn.

As soon as we locate a pot without a hole in the bottom (how did we miss that?) we will get our boil on. If not, we will figure how to grill them under a bed of seaweed. I've seen it done, but that was long ago, and another story.

Quoddy

We left behind the Maine scene that begins at Ogunquit and ends at the ferry to Nova Scotia. Do this some time. All that was seen cannot be presented here, but these two images and one word suggest the reason for our travels. Bog.

When In Rain

Today is a day of light rain and we are tent bound, with trail mix and books. I am reading Greenmarket farmer Keith Stewart's book and weighing my constitution.

Schoodic Light

It's not that the plants growing in Maine are unique, it's simply that the light's relationship to them is, giving every moment, from the canopy's translucent greens to the forest's luminous shadows, a mystique found nowhere else in the northeast. A phone camera such as mine cannot even begin to approach it.

Roughing It

Evening Relief

It had rained for two days, nonstop, before Irene. You remember that. We spent the first day in Bar Harbor avoiding the wet, but by evening, the clouds began to part.

The view from the woods edge.

And from the slick rocks covered in mustard seaweeds.

Which had mussels between them and occasional urchins.

And the coast had berries, like these.

Which dried blue.

And these plump reds.

That also came in orange.

And then the sun set, promising us a drier day.

We Rode The Giant Water Flume

...all the way to Maine. Our campsite is wonderful, well-selected, salt water bay just 100 feet away. We arrived near dark, set up camp by rain and dark, cooked a really not at all bad Portuguese chorizo (so the wrapper said) chili over an eye burning, lung charring, smokey damp pine (2.50/bundle, local driveway, leave money in the coffee can) fire. The rain kept me up at night, and then the light, the early morning light! This morning, the rain let up enough for us to start a new fire, have eggs and Christmas boerewors (that's what we're calling them), bread, and good coffee. 

The incessant rain has led us to hiding in Bar Harbor, drying my joints out, in a coffee shop full of drenched north faces and beans. We bought some candy like good American tourists, but here is what we're looking forward to: lobsters, mussels, and clams delivered to our campsite by a local trapper. Only five fifty a pound and delivered at 5 pm. We'll do this tomorrow, when the sun is scheduled to shine. Not looking forward to stabbing the lobster in the head to kill it before grilling. Betsy's killed chickens so maybe she'll take a stab at it.  

There is an incredibly brilliant cleome outside this bakery, but that may be the rain talking. Photos will be few and faulty, as our camera literally has no name. Time to brave the rain again, figure out how we will spend the remaining light of day. 

Talking The Walk

We left town on Friday for a quick escape from NYC. We went to Providence, RI, then up to Maine to visit the art program where we used to work. Somewhere between Providence and East Madison, Maine, I lost my camera.

I didn't know it until I visited a friend's new vegetable garden. While I was munching on the green beans (hers are way better than ours), I noticed a large-leafed polygonum, or smartweed, growing in the middle of her bush beans. On said smartweed a blasphemously large pile of Japanese beetles. Japanese beetles love to eat foliage of tender plants like green beans, yet there they were munching on this one smartweed. Genius I thought! Allow some smartweed as a trap for these beetles. I ran for my camera. Hey, where's my camera? Missing. Vanished. Gone. Must've left it in Providence?

Insert picture of Japanese beetles eating smartweed here.

On Sunday, after a most blissful post-cold front night in Maine on a lake with good old friends, a dinner raid on the reach-in (the large glass-doored fridge), and a few G&Ts, we headed to Mt. Desert Isle for a night of camping and a hike. On our way we passed a man on Route 2 tapping an 8 foot diameter earth down the highway.

Insert photo of oddball thing here.

At 5 pm we arrived Seawall campground, where we expected to stay, but it was filled. As it sounds, Seawall is right on the ocean and in August, very popular. Fortunately, we found another park campground (that shall remain unnamed) that was not far, one spot available and nearly perfect. We ate non-lobster for dinner at a lousy lobster pound on Rte. 3 and headed back to the camp for an early sleep. At first the stars were visible, then in the early hours of Monday it drizzled some and poured some. Cool breezes blew into our van while we slept, half-naked, without chill. Only Maine could make rain and clouds seductive, desirable.

Insert picture of campground here.

On Monday morning, we returned to the Isle and decided to grab a map from the ranger station at the head of the island. The extra helpful ranger confidently suggested two hiking routes to fill the 2 hours we said we had. We selected the shortest hike, ate breakfast in Southwest Harbor at the place the ranger suggested (Sips) and headed out. Four hours later, climbing the up up up of the northern face of St. Sauveur Mtn., I realized that the ranger did not get a good look at me, or she wanted to teach us a lesson about hiking in Acadia. What she should have said was two hours in, two hours out!

Insert photo of Valley Cove, Somes Sound, and boats, fog and sun.

We made it to the top, foraged for blueberries, bumped into a friendly couple we had met previously on the trail. They gave us the last of their water -how generous. We thinking a two hour hike on a foggy day, no need for water bottles. Silly us. Sun came out, hiking vertical.

Insert photo of me guzzling two liters of liquids at local convenience store.

I also saw quite a few plants that were quite interesting to me. One had dicentra eximia type leaves and a pink oxalis-type flower. Have to find out what that was.

Insert photo of plant I thought was great that you might too.

We left Mt. Desert Isle at 5pm, hours after we had planned. On the way we listened to a radio station calling itself Frank FM. We arrived in Providence at midnight. Our friend, graciously accepting us so much later than expected, offered us watermelon -just the right thing. She said she had never seen my camera.

Insert picture of me miming blogging without images.

On our return to NYC, we decided to hit the beach farm to see how things were going and for the swim because we really weren't ready to return home. When we arrived at the farm, things generally looked good, although I noticed some wilting plants and that the flood ditches were powder-dry. Despite my box, someone had turned off the water again. What can I say? You don't want to hear it.

Insert photo of wooden box with writing on it.

All that I could do at that moment was to write on the box with a delible pen that the valve should remain open, that the irrigation is controlled by the timer, that the timer is the controlling valve, when it is open and for how long, and please, please, do not close this valve -your water pressure will not be affected! Afterward, we sprayed the garden with the hose to wet down the soil and it caused the writing to bleed like some gothic mascaraed overture -now with a sense of drama that my architectural drafting hand attempted to dismount. Hello hasp and lock.

When we arrived home we were happy to find a dead mouse on the floor. Yes, I said that right. The night before we left, our cat had been scouting a mouse. Now, we've always had mice in the ceiling, but never before have we found evidence of any mice in the apartment -giving our one mousing cat credit for that. For some reason (I'm going with upstairs bachelor neighbor's new flooring and new live-in girlfriend) the mice have decided to migrate into our territory. I had been finding our mouser staring at the kitchen counter for several nights. On this night, the night before we left town, I finally saw a mouse. Well, good mouser that she is (she was trained on Maine mice), she caught and carried it happily to the living room where she decided it was best to let it free so that she could have some fun with it. Well, in the ensuing WTF, the mouse made it inside the couch. We tried and tried to get it out. The next morning we headed out the door leaving that trouble behind, hoping that in our absence our animals will find a resolution.

Insert dead mouse/proud kitty photo here.

I was unhappy to find that some folks thought it was okay to pull flowers from our garden while we were gone. When they pulled the zinnias from the side yard, they simply yanked the whole plant out. What we found was a dried up zilch hanging from the fence. In the front yard garden someone has broken and removed the blooming lily stem so that they could bring it home to enjoy all the remaining lilies.

Insert broken lily stem picture here.

Well, now that I am sans camera, I wonder in what ways my blogging will suffer. It is the images that drive the structure of my posts. I have been looking into cameras to replace my aged Canon A80 (purchased 2004) for two years now, never finding the camera that does everything that I want it to. All the while my Canon had been holding up, doing its duty, suffering only through the pesky E18 error (dirt in lens -can't extend lens). A week ago, I left it on the roof of the van and drove to the studio -it was still right where I put it when I got out in Sunset Park! I guess I've been unconsciously trying to lose it.

Well, now it's time to start touching cameras. Hello B&H. I cannot buy, however, I am totally broke -not even the can't touch my savings broke -no savings. We poured everything we have into the Previa minivan and new studios. Hmm. I need to find a way to make some extra cash.

I thought maybe the cat could do photo shoots and TV commercials. We all think this, right?

Letters From Maine

No air conditioning and hot weather conspired to send me to Maine for a few days. I took the bus to Boston and hitched a ride with a friend to a lake in Somerset County, Maine. It was still pretty humid up there, especially during the Bill episode, but lovely nonetheless.

White Baneberry, Actaea pachypoda


Also known as Doll's Eyes, the 'bane' tells us not to eat the berries.


The blue berries of Yellow Clintonia (in flower) or Blue Bead, Clintonia borealis.


Obviously an Aster, but what kind? I thought maybe Eurybia divaricata or macropylla.


Distinguishing it are all purple flowers above the white ray, slender leaves, and one-foot tall.


I think the stems of Jewelweed, Impatiens capensis, glow in Maine yet elsewhere maybe not.

Speaking of Impatiens, artist and friend Shawn built this woodland garden this summer near his cabin. The tower in back is made of wine corks, most of the garden of impatiens.

Epiphytic-like mosses and lichens cover this spruce tree on the lake. Click on it for greater detail.


The trunk of the spruce above.

A 7-year old clear cut. Remaining Hemlocks keep new growth from occurring under their canopy. Much of the new growth is Aspen, also known locally as Popple.

Cow-grazed fields are full of Goldenrod because cows won't eat it, enabling its spread and giving it a bad name. Add to this that many people still think Goldenrod is allergy-causing Ragweed, and let the hating begin.

Lawn webs in morning with dew.

A more permanent web on the Haircap Moss. See the spider in the funnel hole under the hemlock seedling?

A foggy morning on the lake.


Elegant, no?


Another angle.

As far as I can tell, this is Pickerelweed, Pontederia cordata. Pickerelweed seems to have varying characteristics. Maybe someone out there can ID this more effectively.

Savage Beginnings

I was going through some old photo CDs and I found these photos from the first year of the front yard garden in 2004. I had planted these maximilian sunflowers that I had dragged all the way from New Mexico -four years prior. They grew to 14 feet tall! Where does the tree begin and the sunflower end?

I planted cosmos sulphureus, and they got pretty damn big too. There were insects singing in there that I had never heard in the city -probably because I had threw in some plants from a garden in Maine. It was lovely in its wildness, but awful too.

There was a black-eyed-susan vine that had cute flowers but spread like a monster. The chain-link fence was still up, and overall things looked pretty ratty and wild.

The Boltonia I still grow, but no more B.E.S. vine, no more cosmos, no more Plume Poppy (you see it in the back left -one plant from Maine that became so many), no more of most of the plants I started with. Despite how it looked, I still was in love with it and the process of change over the years. I still have the maxamillian sunflowers, but I learned how to keep them shorter when I came around to understanding that they were asters. In my neighbor's garden, 'B' she goes by, I watched how she clipped back asters to keep their height under control.

I hear a rumour that my landlord will remove his remaining telephone poles from the other side of the house. If he does, and no one stakes a claim, I'll have doubled my 75 square feet to 150 in one fell swoop. I wonder if that new side will look like these photos do, when the front yard garden was new.

Farms go Vertical

According to an article at MSNBC, architects are planning for vertical tower farms in cities (and elsewhere). Seems a little too technological for my taste, but it is arguable that many of our vegetable foods already do come from horizontal greenhouses. Check out this site: verticalfarm.com.

.

My wife and I had a vegetable garden in a community plot in Madison, Maine in the summer of 2006. Its a short season up there.I bought Early Girl and some Roma-type plums tomatoes and I was lucky to harvest any before I had to leave at the end of August. I bought large-sized starts, maybe 18 inches tall, to get me going. So what do I know when I read that a company, Backyard Farms, Inc. (previously known as U.S. Functional Foods, LLC), decided that this is a great place to open a huge greenhouse complex to grow tomatoes, year round! Well, central Maine does have some economic woes and so, no doubt, the government there gave the company some tax incentives and excellent electricity rates. To grow fruit of this sort in a greenhouse without the aid of the sun (essentially 1/2 the year) requires a lot of artificial light. It requires pumps and fans and irrigation. It requires heat. A lot of energy goes into this type of production.

Despite all this, central Maine is now providing much of New England with hothouse tomatoes year round. Could it really be cost effective? How do those tomatoes taste? I read one report that Whole Foods is carrying them. The press has been good, though mostly scraped from the Associated Press report.

Would you like to see 18 story greenhouses in New York City? Do check out the book Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. I really enjoyed this book and it is worth your time. I am thinking twice about all those potatoes I have ever eaten after reading Pollan's description of an ordinary Idaho farmer's agricultural practices in the field. This is simply a great read on the interrelationship of humans and plants.

It happens to be raining tonight and it is about time. It’s been a bit droughty the last six weeks or so. The plants are doing fine, but the trees have given in to some leaf drop. Tonight we did see some lightning. You know that it is said to be good for plants. Oh they look so healthy after a good thunderstorm. I'll continue to think it even though I’ve suspected it wasn't true. Its just that when you get some lightning, you often get some good, deep-soaking rain. However, and this is just some foolish thinking, I do think that plants know when it is going to rain and prepare for it.