Apples

Small harvest

Our apple harvest was pretty sad this year. Only the McIntosh tree  bore any fruit, which was a bit surprising. I had intended to remove the tree because it had a trunk injury predating our move here. But the other two trees barely bloomed owing to a large crop last year. At least that's my hypothesis. We still have 2 large fruit hanging on what I think is a Macoun tree. A treat for later. They are not ripe yet.

I had hoped to delay harvesting these apples until after our company left, but the tree had other ideas. She dropped one apple this morning, I tasted it, and realized that these would not wait for 10 days. So in they came.

They are small but very tasty. I would not plant a McIntosh tree myself, not only because of the fruit size, but because they don't store well. They are great when picked, good a week later, and mush a month later. Well, "mush" is harsh. . . but you get the idea. Mealy is the term, I guess. They do make an excellent pie, and several of those are in our future.

These Boots are Made for Annoying

Tomatoes continue to come in, as do the beans. I blanched and froze another package of Kentucky Wonders today, and will continue to harvest until our guests arrive on Thursday. Then the rest of the beans will be let go to be collected for next year's seed. 

Fall is definitely upon us. The summer seemed shorter than usual, and we are once again in a seemingly interminable dry spell. I'll need to water the "lawn" tomorrow. And make a pie.

Retreat to an old friend

I still haven't made it back to working in clay. I don't know what's holding me back, but I do know that it's to do with losing Jasper. I had a couple of half-baked ideas sitting on my metals bench, so I retreated to that as my making medium. This photo isn't great, since you can't tell that the tube-set stone is a blue topaz. But you get the idea. It's a departure from my older work. . .more contemporary looking. 

I'm still a reliable metalsmith. I'm not such a reliable ceramicist. The throwing has improved vastly, and my hand building is something I can be proud of. But the glazing. . .that final opportunity to screw up. . . remains a nemesis. So back to what is easy. Known.

I had made a blank for this anticlastic cuff when I was thinking about a piece for the Citizens' Climate Lobby silent auction. I ended up donating 2 pieces of pottery instead, so this piece of copper sat on my bench for a few months. So back to it: Annealing, hammering, annealing, hammering, repeat. It is a known  process, if a little tough on the hands. I love the shadow in the first image, but the second gives a better ideal of who she is.

 

 

I also had some PMC that I've had since before we moved to Maine. It's at least 5 years old, but was so well packaged that it was still usable. For the unfamiliar, PMC is precious metal clay. It's fine silver that has been suspended in a Fimo-like base, so it can be worked like that plastic clay. But you fire it according to directions, and the base fires out, and you're left with fine silver, which is easy to solder, patina,etc. 

My photography setup isn't fabulous, but my little Nikon Coolpix does a decent job with these small items. Both of these are post earrings, fine silver and sterling, and on the right those are garnet cabochons. 

The garden continues, but we're down to tomatoes, beans, kale and raspberries for harvesting. Potatoes, pumpkins and apples will come at the end of September if all goes as it has so far. The summer seems shorter than usual this year. I'm thinking it's because we lost 6 weeks or so with Jasper being ill and then grieving for him. I still think of him many times every day. Mostly good thoughts.

Fall bits

The regular tomatoes have decided to give it their all, but my poor cherry tomatoes were so unhappy this year. I definitely won't have my many jars of Roasted Cherry Tomato sauce to get us through the winter, though the larger tomatoes promise to keep going for a while. So there will be lots of soup with tomatoes in it. The Kentucky Wonders continue to give me about a handful a day, which results in a meal in about 3 days (today!), and a box of frozen beans in about 6 days. The raspberries continue to gear up, and if we don't have an early frost, we'll be loaded with them. JoanJ, the primocane cultivar, has exceeded my expectations both in quality and quantity. And of course there is eggplant, even if the zucchini have suffered. 

I am at the time of year where I'm a little bit tired of Caprese Salad, though the Margherita Pizzas are still much appreciated.

And of course, I am still missing Jasper. His memory, perhaps his ghost, is with me. I hope I can remember him clearly as I age so gracelessly. Smile.

 

Good news not great news

 

The good news is that we got a terrific rain storm. A series of storms, really. 1.81 inches, total. That is pretty huge. The earth rejoices, and I expect that the weeds will too. Always the optimist.

And I guess it's good news that I finally found homes for all of those peaches. I encouraged party-goers to take them (almost begged), and then canned the rest. A ripe peach waits for No One. Just 4 pints, which I may regret this winter, and only a half pint of roasted cherry tomato sauce. If it warms up, there will be more of the sauce, but it's been pretty cold today. Weather. 

On top of French Mountain in June 2025

I've been thinking a lot about Jasper. It's more reflection than outright grief, though it still comes at me at odd times. The water in his bowl had completely evaporated, so I cleaned it and put it away. I also cleaned up his toys. . .washed and dried a lot of tennis balls and cloth Frisbees, and put them all in a box for the Shelter. By the way, washing those balls really spruced them up. I wish I'd thought of it earlier.

I'm not ready to move his main floor beds just yet, though there are 2 in the basement that he didn't use toward the end. Steps between floors were not his favorites as his arthritis worsened, even though it sometimes meant being a floor away from us. Of course, that still leaves us with 4 lovely dog beds. Another day.

Beans to harvest. I found out that my zucchini are not the only ones that are shy bearing this year. It's apparently a "bad zucchini" year. Who knew such a thing existed?

 

Small vs large

"Peaches more peaches. I'll stack 'em to Heaven. I want 'bout six thousand five hundred and seven. . . " What? That's a revised quotation from Yertle the Turtle, a favorite Dr. Seuss short story. It's a pretty arcane reference. Sorry about that.

But. Most of our peaches from our one little tree are in now. When I looked out the window at the tree this morning, no fewer than 6 were on the ground. Not good. Between the crows and the turkeys. . .and then the secondary infestation of yellow jackets, I needed to get out there pronto. So I have this lovely counter full of highly perishable fruit. I'm hoping my sister-in-law will take some of the peaches.  

You can also see that the JoanJ primocane fruit red raspberries are just starting, and the Kentucky Wonder green beans are yielding well. I don't have more than 10 feet of any of these crops. And the harvest of a given day doesn't look like much, but when you harvest 3 times a week, pretty soon you're talking a lot of food. And for me, a big responsibility to not let any of it go to waste.

We visited a good friend yesterday who has, conservatively, an acre in garden crops. They are decently but not meticulously cared for. It makes me think about our reasons for gardening, and in particular, for growing food. Our friends are pretty overwhelmed with the fruits of their labor, and I think give a good bit of their produce to the food bank. That's great, but it is a lot to manage, and waste is inevitable. 

I have always had a "think small" mind set. I have no idea why. If I had to guess, I would say it's genetically programmed. Even my artwork is small. . .a ceramic bowl is huge for me. Jewelry-size metalsmithing is just my speed. John laughed at me when I thought our Ford Ranger truck was huge. Give me an escort or a Prius any day. Ah. That "Escort" dates me as well. . . probably soon to be yet another arcane reference.

I don't feel at all superior about any of this. I just find it interesting that something like scale of work would be innate, and not learned. Then again, my father favored a Karmann Ghia. It was a very cool car. Maybe I did learn that preference. . .
 

Let the games begin. . .

 

The rain came last night. It wasn't enough to ease everyone's mind about The Dry, but we got .48 inches here, which was a lot more than we had expected. A lot more. I thought we were only going to get a brief shower, which we did, but it was followed by a long slow soaking rain. Maybe not long enough, but what a relief. I am so grateful.

The peaches, and their level of ripeness, was a bit of a surprise. The birds (crows, I think) let me know. They had, in their usual delicate way, hurled several to the ground and ravished them. When I looked back in my gardening journal, I found that mid-August is when these peaches have historically ripened. They did sneak up on me for obvious reasons.

I accidentally picked a few that still had greenish ground color, but most of these were quite ready. And this is only half of them, from that little tree. They are smaller than expected, which surprised me because I thinned them hard this year. Maybe this is just a small cultivar. It IS a particularly tasty cultivar, which outranks size any day in my book. And they'll be perfect for canning.

I am trying to get myself to go back into the studio, so I figure by talking about these pots I made just before Jasper left us, I might be able to inspire myself.

These flower pots and saucers are made out of terracotta that is dug locally by Sheffield Clay, in Massachusetts. Wheel thrown, low fired, and slightly embellished. No glaze required, thank Dog. I love making these things that I will see every day in my very ordinary life. It is true that nobody else ever notices them, like the hand-made fine silver buttons on my dresses. But as I used to tell my jewelry customers about the fine work on the back of a brooch or pendant. . . it's like wearing really great underwear. It gives a calm kind of confidence that nothing else can impart. Smile.

The rain has brought some relief to my grief. . .at least the grief that wears itself on my outside. I can't really explain why. John thinks that the drought was a terrible stressor for all of us, but especially for me because of my past work in commercial agriculture. I can see a point in the future where people are starving due to our idiocy regarding climate change. It could be drought, too much rain, new insect and/or disease pests, or simply an inability to get a crop harvested due to lack of labor. Most folks have no idea what it takes to plant, care for, harvest and market a crop of anything. 

But. The rain has come, so today is a good day to Not think about the apocalypse!


 

Drought in the time of grieving

 

I expect you're all tired of hearing about Jasper at this point. I apologize. It's amazing how I keep trying to push beyond the brain fog and forgetfulness, and then I have a knee jerk reaction. . .to all sorts of innocuous stimuli. And down she goes. My brain, I mean. My heart.

Still, life does plow through, we we're doing the same. We are in a terrible drought right now. The longest in Maine  history, if I'm not mistaken. We are pumping from our well for the trickle irrigation, which is on all of our beds. . .most importantly our food crops. But the "lawn" (it's a poly-culture, so not exactly the all-grass cliche of a lawn) is crispy crackly. I've spot watered as I can, but am starting to worry about our well. John tells me that it's 130 foot well that over flows in the spring, so there's nothing to worry about, but this instinct I have against The Dry is powerful.

 And so much suffering. Forests, crops, homeless folks, folks without air conditioning (there are still a lot in Maine). It adds sadness to sadness to sadness.  

Muddling through. . .

We've been muddling through. I weed, organize photos and recipes, but can't bring myself to work in the studio or play the violin. 

Oddly, the garden moves forward as if nothing has happened. We made a conscious decision to not remove all evidence of Jasper. His beds and water dish remain, though I did manage to get foodstuffs to the Humane society. Crying involved. 

Even with his beds in place, there so much empty space in this house and in us. We three, pack of three. Down to two. We both dread walking downstairs after watching some intentionally mindless something, because we used to look forward to greeting Jasper. To laying down next to him, and giving him the good night pets. 

As I think back on it, though, the end wasn't as sudden as it had seemed. He had stopped following us up and down steps. He slept even more than the predator cliche. He had been deaf for quite some time, and we knew his eyesight wasn't great. But those things were gradual enough that we simply accommodated. 

He maintained the dressage prance when chasing a stick or a tennis ball. . .and still hiked a couple of miles every day until the last few days. His coat and eyes were shiny. Healthy looking. And he still held strong opinions. It was a shock to see him no longer able to get up,  to no longer be able to lift a leg, to fall when trying to defecate, and on the last day, to collapse when we tried to help him stand. I think he gave up. It was brutal. It was also merciful. He made the decision not a decision at all. Was it a request? Or am I just trying to comfort myself with that thought.

The video below was from his early days with us. . .at age 10. He had just learned how to play, after a lifetime of his ranch dog responsibilities. 

 

Jasper Learns to Play Video

 

Jasper My Jasper

 Sir Jasper of Highland House

Circa 2005 - 21 January 2025

Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really. Agnes Sligh Turnbull

 

A tough habit to break. . .

 

Pumpkins and pole beans "share" space

I have a habit of over planting. Some of that comes from my great enthusiasm, some for a repeated inability to realize how much plants will grow. Especially annual plants. This is their big shot, right? Germinate, grow, reproduce, die. . .all in one growing season, not even one year. So it should come as no surprise that while this garden looked pretty sad and scraggly a month ago, it is growing outrageously now.  I keep moving the pumpkins from the pole bean trellis, and from the lawn, and the beans are asking for more vertical space. Fortunately it won't be a battle to the death, at least I hope not. Decent soil and amendments, mulch, trickle irrigation, and an abundance of sun will sustain both, even if they get a little impatient with one another. I do wish the beans would start to set flowers, and the pumpkins would start to set fruit.

The Vegetable boxes in mid-July

Likewise, my vegetable boxes are champing at the bit. The indigo, my impulse buy in early June, is really getting pushy. . .I may need to harvest and dye something sooner rather than later. . .but the basil, eggplant, tomatoes (so tall!), kale (!) and potatoes are all flourishing. I'm afraid to say this lest I jinx it.

 

Clematis

 

 

It is a time when the ornamentals are at their summer peak. I won't bore you with all of them, but by mid-August, most will look pretty tired and spent. Some will be setting next year's flower buds, some will be recovering from all of that reproduction, some will just be hot and tired.

 

But for now, they shine. All of them. 

Yet another day lily

Hydrangea

 

The tall ones, and a sweet beginning. . .

The tall ones in a favorite vase

As I was walking around the yard, I realized that The Tall Ones have arrived. The peach colored slightly frilly day- lily is a real show off. . .she's blooming so much that I feel like I have to cut some to bring in. Hardly fair competition for the rest of them. Hydrangeas are just getting a start, but the Coral Bells are also having great fun. And my volunteer grape needs a little resistance to her climbing under the siding of the house.

Also of note, I harvested a few blueberries yesterday. . .plump and fully blue, so delicious, and a bunch of raspberries. These pictured are from last Tuesday, but Thursday's crop was considerably bigger. Raspberries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until we get sick of them, and then I'll start on the jam. Smile. Raspberries for the winter.

Small beginnings

These are summer raspberries. . .a cultivar called 'Killarney'. We never grew it elsewhere, because it's big claim to fame is it's cold hardiness. But moving to Maine, it seemed a good idea. I was unimpressed with its size, flavor, color and thorniness for the first couple of years, but I'm pretty impressed with size and flavor this year. It's not as red at full ripeness as my fall fruiter (JoanJ), not as large either. But it's a decent eating berry. Last year I was sprinkling it with a little sugar to eat straight, but this year I'm not. It's pretty delicious as is. I did see my first Japanese Beetle on a leaf yesterday. I'll have to monitor that closely. I hate to spray unnecessarily, but those critters can ruin the whole business. Japanese beetles so love all of the family Rosaceae. That includes not only raspberries, but my apples, plums and peach. Can't have that.

Other horticultural items, the basil is ready for the first big cutting (pesto!), all of the herbs are doing exceptionally well, even the little cilantro that I transplanted from a grocery store pot, and the bean and pumpkin vines have decided to overtake the entire yard. Food is so great!

 

What a sweet plant. . .

 

Cornus canadensis

I just thought I'd share this new discovery. It's a plant we discovered while hiking on Plummer's Point Preserve over the weekend. Clearly a dogwood, id'd as Cornus canadensis. The common names are Bunchberry or Creeping dogwood. It's a native (with a very large range), and while we missed the flowers, the groundcover alone is lovely enough to have me very interested.

 Wikipedia provided the image of it flowering. I'm thinking a lot about where this will thrive in our garden/woods.

Cornus canadensis flowering. THX, Wikipedia!

Nice to have a bit of good news. I'll take it. 

 

State of the Garden on the Summer Solstice

I decided to document where the garden is a couple of days ago. It's a longish video (11 minutes or so. Funny that that seems long now. . .), so don't feel obligated to watch. It was fun to make. Oh. And be sure to turn on the sound. . .it makes a lot more sense with it.

The State of Highland House Garden 

 

What Folly.

Here's the thing. I should know by now that what I imagine is never what I make. You'd think I'd know that by now, and be able to head off disappointment before it, once again, catches me by surprise.

In the case of Folly, a lot Did go right. I was able to make the pieces fit nicely. The form came together mostly as envisioned, and the embellishments proved joyful work. The various sides are continued like a 4-sided canvas. It's true that the embellishments are more cliche. . .perhaps formulaic. . .than I would prefer, but all in all, I can overlook that. AND! I dried her slowly slowly, and through the drying, and both firings, there were no rebellious cracks.

The most terrible disappointment was the glaze. While it looks like it's only a flat white, I actually had lightly "kissed" the white with a dark green glaze. The green continued around the piece in a spiral. What green? For some reason it didn't show up at all in the finished piece. It's as though the Klaus Hard White swallowed the Coyote Matt Green. A disturbing thought. I had to cover over some dark green underglaze I had used on the hidden parts of the assembled piece because they showed up as horizontal lines dividing the vertical form. I did not like that one bit. Then, as I was doing that bit of magic, I dropped the lid and broke it. It was not a terrible break. . .I was able to glue it together admirably well. But I know it happened.

One of the things I loved about the concept of the piece is that it fits together as separate, discreet sections that can be used as a place for secret treasures, or as 3 separate vases.

It works just fine. However. I had imaged more graceful forms for the individual pieces. And now I'm left to wonder if I shouldn't have made the whole mess round instead of square. For the individual vessels, that would work better, I think, though I like the square format for Folly as her whole self.

For the sake of being complete, I'll include images of the other three sides.They're not bad. I may make a series. I love the idea of making them in porcelain, round, with No Glaze. Take that, Glaze. 

There is some precedent for the idea of doing more Follies. Folly Camelot, Folly Royale. . .name your Folly. I made a large enameled torque back when I was enameling that was called 'Primal'. I loved making it, and it was actually sold before I displayed it, so it was satisfying on several levels. The last in the dozen or so I made was 'Primal domestica'. I traded that piece for an original painting by Jerry Lisk of Boise fame. 

And isn't our current world so full of very upsetting Follies, that maybe some more whimsical Follies is just what we need. I'll have to think on it. Right now I'm exhausted with her.

 

 

A brief Folly. . . bisque!

 

Folly came through the bisque firing just fine. To see all of her sides, check out 

Folly: Halfway There

From the strange brain of. . .

Things have been crazy busy on all fronts. . .trails, garden, office, friends, and the studio. I had the idea for this piece (about 24" tall, which is large for me) several weeks ago when I decided that I needed a tall slender piece for a specific place in our bedroom. It was influenced by a very cool set of tins that I had gotten from The Bees Knees in Boston, which were stacking tins.

 So. This is called Folly. See it on all sides in This Video. It is three separate vessels that stack together. This is, of course, the raw clay form. I am very unsure as to whether it will survive drying and two firings (the last being a glaze firing), so I thought I'd show it to you now. It may not live long, but it deserves a little airtime. 

The British wealthy used to build Folly's on their extensive property holdings. They were buildings, often large and ornate, that sort of looked useful, but actually weren't. There were eccentric indulgences. This piece isn't exactly that, since it will be somewhat useful, but it feels like it has some of that spirit. It is, rather, functional and decorative. Those are kisses of death in academic art circles, but I'm ok with that. It was a challenge to make, and it may even make it. If it does, Folly will make another appearance.

A walk on the railtrail

Jasper and I went to the Peter Garrett Trail today. It runs along an old rail bed. . .a disturbed area that is once again being overtaken by Maine flora and fauna. Old-growth forests are a whole 'nother thing, of course, but seeing spring happen in any of our forests is a treat. The Honeysuckle is in bloom right now, with it's sweet musky scent. It sort of steals the show along the sides of the trail. But the wild viburnums are also in flower (also scented, though less aggressively) and the morning weather is perfect. Cool enough to keep the biting insects at bay, but warm enough for a dress, cardigan and dog-walking shoes. Jasper, of course, has a nice fur coat which will become a liability as summer warms.

There is a pink variant of honeysuckle as well. These may all be invasive species. . .I'm not sure. It's a funny thing about all of these invasives. So many have simply become part of the forest ecology. They often out-compete native species, running them out of town, but things like Rosa multiflora are here to stay. There is simply no way to rout all of them out. 

 The forest floor was covered in some areas with buttercups, and there are other areas that are swathed in Jewel Weed. Some folks don't like that one, but they aren't very competitive in the garden, and I love that they bloom late in summer, when color is harder to come by. Their orange-spotted yellow leguminous flowers also develop those very fun seedpods that explode when you touch them. Evolution has so many interesting twists and turns.

Buttercups

 

Jewel Weed leaves

Viburnum

The viburnums range from some that look like their cultivated cousins, to these wilder looking species. I saw one today that was tree-like. . .probably 20 feet tall.

More viburnum

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, there is some truly bad news. While I'm somewhat circumspect regarding some invasive species, the Japanese Knotweed is just killing us. Killing all around it. It has taken over areas in the forest, and closes in on trails. In another two weeks the trails below won't be passable. Our area there is small enough that we can come in a whack it back with a bush hog, but it will be a constant job. And I know that in the end, the plant will beat us. It's like kudzu in the south. There is simply no defeating it. 

Japanese Knotweed

The trails group is working in small areas to hold back the onslaught of Asian Bittersweet, which climbs and kills large trees, but again. In the end, it just has the advantage over us. Sad that we have been so foolish with many of these exotic species, but it also might be inevitable in this time of international travel. And fewer and fewer people who understand how natural systems work. 

Blackberries getting ready to sing

So. How about I end on a positive note?  This last image is of blackberry buds. They are getting ready to burst into bloom, and offer up their wild progeny. Blackberries are such vigorous plants that many an agronomist sees them as a weed, rather than a crop. It makes me wonder how they'll hold up against the Knotweed.

Phew

The potatoes emerge

This is obviously not my most dramatic image. But it is my potatoes, finally emerging after more than two weeks post planting. I can't tell you what a relief this is. I had two rows of prime garden real estate tied up with them, and knowing that they didn't rot. . .of for some more nefarious reason show themselves. . .is pretty dramatic for me.

Oak seedlings 

Perhaps a little more dramatic is this very dense bunch of oak seedlings.

We had an enormous number of acorns last year. Walking across the lawn felt like you were walking on large ball bearings. They were actually dangerous. So now, the oak seedlings are everywhere, often in bunches. I'll be pulling these and the Ash tree seedlings out of all of my beds for the foreseeable future.

Double-File Viburnum flowers

Speaking of drama, the Double-File Viburnums are putting on their annual show now. I, once again, am so grateful to the folks who planted them. Every year I have pause to wonder why I never saw them growing up. And every year I'm so glad that they're here in this place that is called ours.

In hindsight, it seems odd that someone like me, who has 3 degrees in Horticulture, was unfamiliar with this plant. I'll need to find out how recently they were released. With all of the plant I.D. classes I had, you'd think. . . after all, that was where I first developed my love of Metasequoia glyptostroboides. And yes, spellcheck, that is the proper spelling.

Double-File Viburnums

I have, as promised in a previous post, been checking on our Jack-in-the-Pulpit. It is a surprisingly long lived flower, as these forest species go. Someone has eaten one of the leaves, which are poisonous to humans, but the flower survives, with that central anther becoming increasingly prominent.

The leaves are the trifoliate ones in the image. You can see that one has had a bite taken out of it. 

Jack-in-the-Pulpit, day 5

Jack-in-the-Pulpit leaves