Collecting Violet Seeds

I love violets. Maybe someday I will learn how to tell one type from another. For now, I assume that they are all native plants, and I give them names like "the violets that grow under my poison sumac" and "the violets that grow in the muddy lawn at the school down the street".

The violets in Gabe's Garden, pictured above, are "the violets from Marna's Driveway", and they are the first violets that I have been able to watch for an entire growing season. Now, finally, I have an answer to the question "why do I never see a dead violet blossom?" It seems that when the flower is ready to make seeds, it bends over and hides its head in (or very near) the dirt. Obsessive gardeners take note: this variety of flower saves you the trouble of dead-heading!

Months later, the little football-shaped pod goes from green to greenish yellow, and once again stands up straight above the foliage. Then, when it dries, the pod pops open in three segments, revealing a couple dozen round seeds. Further drying causes the pod segments to constrict a little further, which tiddlywinks the seeds airborne. (At any rate that is what I have concluded after emptying some of the seed pods into my lawn. Pinch them gently in just the right spot and the seeds go flying rather forcefully.)

I seem to have missed seed-season for the "poison sumac" violets and "the one lonely violet under the maple tree out back", but I nabbed a few remaining pods from the "muddy lawn" violets, and lots from the violets in Gabe's Garden. The paper-bag method seems to have worked: the green pods left in a bag have dried and popped open nicely. Now I just have to see if they germinate. Does anyone out there know if these seeds need exposure to winter weather to germinate? If not, I would like to start some of these indoors over the winter. Already dreaming of Spring, I lust for violets.

Sunset

I love my husband: he takes photos for me when I'm too busy!

Unidentified Flying Object. . .

I looked out last week just in time to see the frost on Gabe's Garden lit up by the rising sun.



But what is that speck over the far clump of grass? Look closely. . .



It appears that a male cardinal was flying past just as I pressed the button!

The Poetry of Winter Light

The shifting light seduced me out into the wetland today.


I am not good enough with a camera to adequately show what I see when I look at these shifting patches of sunlight.

Artist Andy Goldsworthy calls the darkness of holes "the fire of the earth". I have to agree. The first time I approached this glaring note of black, I was afraid there was an animal watching me from the darkness. Once the mud freezes, this must be grand central station for creatures seeking shelter in an otherwise flat and exposed area.

It's a tipped, but still living tree that created this cave, and the shock of its shadows contrasts in such a fascinating way with the subtle purples and golds of the woods, the soft greens of the distant evergreens, and the blue of the sky. If I ever pick up a paintbrush again, I will try, again, to capture those subtle winter colors.

Farming and Jellyfish

One of these days I'll do a real post again, I promise!

But for now, here is an inintended consequence of modern agriculture: the runoff coupled with rising sea temperatures creates ideal habitat for jellyfish. We are going to have to start eating these things soon if we continue to deplete our farmland and fail to conserve the ocean's fish.

I lied.

Here I am, again, using the blog as a scrapbook. Sorry! But this one is uplifting, I promise!

In Lynn, Massachusetts, the Food Project has started up yet another urban farm plot. If you follow the link, it will take you to an amazing series of super-wide-angle photos that document the transition of urban field to farm. I have been curious what methods they have used to avoid growing plants in lead-laced soil. In Lynn, they laid down plastic over the entire plot and then dumped alternating rows of soil and mulch on top of that.

Okay okay, just one more. . .

I really need to start posting on the backlog of photos from my own yard. But I can't help it. . . just one more article. . .

"We have shown that while genetic engineering has provided a solution to the problem of viral diseases, there are also these unintended consequences in terms of additional susceptibility to other diseases."

Creating new varieties of plants doesn't make a perfect plant? Shocking.