Thunder

Courtesy of Wunderground.com

I saw the lightning from the studio window and I didn't want to get caught in the rain without my half-beaten umbrella, destroyed by one or another of the thunderstorms of this summer. I wasn't sure of the direction the storm was moving, all the while the chinny moon was in and out of our smokey warm front sky.

The yellow square indicates hail, the arrows direction, the notches in the arrows time till your neighborhood.

I made it home by 7:45 pm and only some low cracks and a few flashes, a drop on the sill, maybe two. The radar above tells a different story. Or not, this could be petering out. The storm V0 briefly had a tornadic signature over NJ, which I could see on the radial velocity radar image. Whenever I see a particularly intense thunderstorm, one with purple coloration and strong "shape" I check that radial velocity for the signature -something I did quite a few times this year.

The yellow diamond indicates a mesocyclone, which is simply a rotating storm which could lead to tornadic activity.

When I was a child I was horribly afraid of thunderstorms. So was my mother, and I think this is where I learned to fear. During really bad storms, which there always seemed to be, we would hunker down in the basement -a space somewhat capable of diminishing the experience of the storm. But, there were too many times that we kids were on our own, during storms, largely in summertime, in the afternoon, long before my parents would return from work. Those storms seemed so dangerous -as if the sky was after us, like a monster or hungry tiger ready to strike children.

I couldn't handle the loud, instant cracks of thunder -the sharp ones, the ones that feel like someone is shattering steel sheets over your head. I would plug my ears with my fingers to the point of ache. One time I was caught out on the open water in a skiff with my father. While we could see that a storm was brewing, he waited until the last minute to bring us in. I put my head between my legs so that I wasn't the highest point as lightning crashed around us, wind whipped waves driving the boat into the air. Another time, on the beach, a green sky storm seemed to stir up out of nowhere. Rushed from the water to the parking lot, lightning bolts crashing down yards away, but locked out of the car and waiting for my mother and aunt to make it with the keys.



It probably wasn't until my time in New Mexico that I truly began to get comfortable with thunderstorms. In my first few months there I lived out of my Ford pickup. It being monsoon season, afternoon, evening and night time thunderstorms were the norm. That first month was hellish as I tried to sleep in the pickup during night time storms, rain so heavy I thought I would get washed away in a flash flood.



Because of the nature of the landscape in the high desert, we can see distances, can watch thunderstorms form and dissipate from 30 or 40 miles away. I began to appreciate them for aesthetic qualities, something distance allows. I also began to appreciate the rains, and to watch people, however foolishly, not be scared off by storms moving in, ever so slowly, in the heat of a desert afternoon -soccer must go on.



It may have been my fear of thunderstorms that led me to my interest in meteorology, although I am as much inclined to believe it was Hurricane Belle, hitting Long Island one August, when I was six. My parents were in NYC that day, and we were cared for by my young uncle. It was humid and very cloudy, gray -I remember everything about that day from the moment my uncle told us we would have to bring in anything that could blow away. Up until that moment, we knew nothing of what was coming. The idea that things could blow away was highly intriguing. This was my first wind storm.



The storm passed overnight, lightning flashes revealing swishing, tormented trees, the black and white on all night, as my parents watched the progress of the storm via news reports. The next morning I recall the litter of twigs and branches, the fallen fences, the smell of fresh oak wood, but most of what I recall is the view out our bedroom window the night before, made visible by flashes of lightning.



So now it is that I am mostly comfortable with thunderstorms. But every so often, I am caught completely off guard, and this usually happens when I am removed from that ever so useful radar.



A few summers ago I was at the Mac Dowell Colony. It was the kind of summer where an unstable frontal boundary had parked right over northern NY, southern Vermont and New Hampshire. We had rough storms daily for about two weeks. I was in the common building, when it was struck by lightning. That was a loud. We had internet access in the building, so I checked the radar before leaving for my studio -a 15 minute walk. Nothing else appeared to be out there, so I left for my studio. When I got there, I had about an hour before dinner, which was in a yellow house atop a hill in a field another 15 minutes away. I decided to call Betsy on my cell. While we were talking I heard thunder that had the momentum of a march, canon fire, mortar blasts, a rather steady beating. After a few minutes, and seeing that dinner time was near, I told her that I should leave for dinner lest I get caught in the rain -oh the horror, wet at dinner.



I headed out the door, down the road, and into the woods. I can't see anything -only my ears to tell me what is going on. By this time Betsy can hear the thunder on her phone. I tell her that it is coming on awfully fast, mere minutes since I had left the studio. She tells me to hurry up and I tell her I think I should move faster. I hang up and walk faster, never inclined to run if I don't have to. By the time I exit the woods, maybe 7 minutes after leaving the studio, to cross the paved road, I see that the storm is just over the hill. It is not raining, however, and judge that I have enough time to get to the house up the hill before the deluge.



What came next was entirely unexpected. As I made my way up the paved road and turned onto the dirt drive, still the hill to climb, I am completely overtaken by the storm, surrounded by lightning bolts -there are ground strikes everywhere. I am mobilized by fear. You'll find this hard to believe, but the Mac Dowell creedo to not bother anyone in their studios prevented me from taking cover in any of the two studios on the way up the hill! I saw lightning above me, I instinctively dropped on all fours, or did I fall? The thunder was constant, never ceasing. I ran up that hill -who knew it was made of molasses? When I arrived at the top, I saw some of the kitchen staff running up the hill from the kitchen garden -they too were caught off guard. At that moment, lightning, which was landing all around us, had struck the large pine tree in front of the yellow house. A spiral burn and missing bark marked the spot, and where it leaped to the wishing well, it lost its shingles. All four of us ran into the nearest building to endure the storm. Never before had I felt so unprepared, so overtaken by a storm, so exposed.



Part of that is being in the mountains, where the woods obfuscates the sky, and the echoes off the hillsides distort what we hear -distorting our judgement. We were later told that this storm produced 20,000 lightning strikes per hour, which accounts for the thunderous march.



The next day, my friend, Tayari, a wonderful writer (and who introduced me to blogging!), wanted to go to town for lunch. I agreed, but a new thunderstorm was building just then. "Just a little thunder," she offered with her sweet Georgia sound before she walked and I jogged to her car. By the time we were on our way to Peterborough, it was clear things were going to get worse. After turning onto main street, the rain was so hard and wind so strong that we could not see in front of us. Then came the hail. I implored Tayari to turn right, into the bank parking lot, where there is a covering. But, honestly, and I think she would concur, she was just shrieking, freaking out, sitting in the middle of the road! She got the gumption to move on, but instead of the bank, pulled into another lot and parked under a tree. We endure 15 minutes of hail, falling branches, me wondering aloud whether or not hail could break the windshield, and crazy, car-rocking wind. I wondered about tornados in New Hampshire. And then we had lunch.



And that's how it is for most of us -tempest, then lunch. Although every now and then, we're awoken to what's possible.

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Hot For Farming

We received our federal farm allotment this past week. On Friday morning, we begun the hard work of turning the soil from a weed-lot to cleared-lot. It was hot and humid, but a breeze was blowing in from the ocean, 1000 feet away.

The plot, F12, had been weed-whacked a couple of weeks ago by the Dept. of the Interior. The heat and drought fried what remained. Our weeds are heavy on the mugwort, queen anne's lace, and crabgrass -but mostly mugwort, Artemesia vulgaris. You can't see them here.

But just under the soil surface, mats of stolons running every which way. Each little piece of stolon can create a new mugwort plant, so clearing as much as possible is essential. The soil is decent, friable, but demands organic matter.

This job would've been much harder if it were clay. My choice for breaking ground, a mattock. Many of the long time Tilden gardeners (some as long as 40 years) suggested I use the tiller (broken, missing?) -but in my opinion, this is the best way to go. Although tilling is faster, it also buries the stolons. Betsy raked though the mattocked soil to clear out the weeds, and wheel barrowed them to the compost pile.

And you just might hit these rubber mats with the machine -ouch. There are many ways to control weeds -chemicals, mechanical or manual pulling, or barriers. Someone chose interlocking rubber mats in many of the pathways in and around my plot. I pulled up those in our area, and will check into the free woodchips that I heard about at the BBG.

This is Thaddeus, the ranger. While we were beginning Friday morning, he and a team of DOI employees came to check on the garden. He announced that he was looking for beautification projects for the summer. I gave him some ideas. I will forward him the woodchip info if that pans out. I also think a sign board where we can share info would be useful -place it right where those folks are sitting. In the mean time, they can mow the pathways that aren't covered in rubber mats or astroturf, and fix the plumbing.

Our standpipe and valve did this when turned on. No pressure. First thing to check was the line -how did all the other valves flow? Turns out just fine, including the one after mine in the line. Must be the valve then.

This took some doing. My ordinary wrench could not extricate this valve from the pipe. I needed a super sized pipe wrench. These valves are brass, but the pipes are not -they are galvanized steel. Anyone who has ever worked on an old home knows that if the building is filled with galvanized pipes for water supply, there will be expensive trouble in the near future.

Here's why. This is the inside of that valve that I removed. It's filled with small chunks of rusted steel that have corroded off the inside of those pipes. Pipes like these won't be good for much more than 5 to 7 years. The galvanized pipes here have been in place for a very long time. No doubt each valve has some of this rust in it. I saved mine to show Ranger Thaddeus.

The new system: all brass fittings, with a 'T' branching off to the public tap (red) and to my personal irrigation timer tap (black). Now I just need to figure out how I want to irrigate beyond the timer: trench flood, black pipe drip system, or soaker hose. My experience has been with the first two, although the black pipe and fittings for the drip will be expensive and time consuming (finding components/installing). This year, I may have to go with soaker or flood, although something about the soaker hose gives me pause. The rubber? The slowness? What?

All told, it took about 6 hours to clear the land, over two days. That was the hard part. The vegetables are sitting in the side garden waiting for us to plant them. I still want to get some organic matter in the soil before we plant. I am waiting on J&L for info about a compost delivery -looking at about 3 cubic yards worth. The plot to the left, belongs to an Irishman named Jimmy -he hauled in about 30 bags. I don't want to do it by the bag for cost alone.

Both days, it being so hot, we escaped to the beach after our work. The water is warm, maybe 70 degrees, but enough to cool us down. We hope that we don't get caught leaving the garden, where our van is parked -our permit is for active gardening only. How we see it is, though, that coming all this way to garden requires the benefit of the beach. That's where it's at, see. And driving to the adjacent Reis Park to pay for parking is silly. SO we leave our van, permit on mirror, and head to the beach, fingers crossed.

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Farm On The Beach: Planting Nights

I thought I could do it. Leave the studio at 5pm, go home, pick up the vegetable starts, head to the farm on the beach, prepare the soil, layout and plant the starts before nightfall, all before the rain that was expected to come. I wanted to take advantage of the coolness of night, the irrigation from rain, the best opportunity for the fragile starts to settle in on these hot July days.

I have three flats of vegetable starts: eggplant, tomatoes, broccoli, collards, cabbage, sweet and hot peppers, celery, and chard all thanks to J&L Nursery. Underneath those starts is a wheelbarrow full of horse manure and shavings from a pile on the southwest corner of the garden. I thought I might give that a try, although a previous experience with less than composted horse product gave me a season of weeding oat sprouts! I used the manure in the celery bed. I decided not to wait for compost this season -who can wait any longer! I am using an 'organic' 5-10-5 fertilizer and plan to get compost delivered for next season.

While I began laying out the tomatoes, the storm clouds began to build to my north. This storm affected flights out of JFK, but not me.

I rushed to get my plants in the ground, feeling my executive functioning faltering as the sun dropped lower in the sky. I was digging trenches and building mounds for the tomatoes. Where will the peppers and the broccoli go? Cucumber seeds? Don't forget the chard!

Oh no. The sun is about to set. Will I get locked in? How late is this place open anyway? Tomatoes are mostly in, turn on the water to check the irrigation trenches. Maybe I should plant something else. How about the celery -I've only 12 of those. Farmers work by the sun and I've started at 7pm! Silos of farmers' jokes are filled with city boys' best intentions!

And as if to rub it in, the storm that was building to my west, traveled south. Just enough big drops to show me what it could've provided, but didn't. Great show of lightning though, and I'm reminded of all the summer storms I see from my apartment that appear to be taking place off the coast of Coney Island.

I rush to pack up all that I didn't plant. The rest will have to wait until Thursday as work precludes me from attending to farming until then. I became aware of two things: The plot is too small for all that I've planted in my mind and the birds like to gather here at dusk.

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On The Mushroom Trail

We arrived in darkness the evening before I hit the trail of the woods, anxious to see it in August, never have I been present so late in summer. I was told it would be cool and dry this time of the year, but it was warm and humid, much like the NYC we had left behind. There had been significant rains in the prior weeks, leaving fresh signs of muddy torrents. The mosquitoes told the same tale, trailing me, humming it in my ear.

On the northern slopes, where the forest canopy is nearly impenetrable by sun light, and amongst the few plants, there is much fallen timber. Whether or not something is wrong with this woods, as it appears to my senses, the tangle of twigs and timber is the understory. There is little to no leaf litter, no humus, not much of anything. But, on those fallen trees, there are fungi of all sorts. Ever since my experience in the Pine Barrens of LI, I've held a casual, but definitively greater curiosity about mushrooms.

The beautiful, velvety, green and white Turkey Tail, trametes versicolor, or, if not, possibly Stereum ostrea.

Unidentifiable mushrooms were fruiting everywhere; the cool blue-tinged browns, grays and greens of the understory punctuated by yellows and oranges.

Of course, there are rotting logs and timber everywhere for the saprobic fungi to decompose.

Dappled light occasionally appears on the forest floor. Wait, is that? Yes, those are mushrooms.

Hundreds of small white mushrooms growing on a few logs, dappled by sunlight.

They are humorous in appearance -in that pubescent way.

But also a bit alien, mysterious. These turn out to be Lycoperdon pyriforme, pear-shaped puffballs, edible when young. Tom Volk says the name can also mean pear-shaped wolf fart, if translated -"Lyco" meaning wolf, "perdon" to break wind.

An aging Coral mushroom, possibly Ramaria stricta, along side the little puffs.

Simply striking.

And startling.

Well named and creepy, Dead Man's Fingers, Xylaria polymorpha, easily spooks those prone.

It is hard to seek out mushroom IDs on the internet. The characteristics often necessary to ID fungi are often overlooked, often underneath, sometimes microscopic, and often discovered after the fact.

Quite possibly Chinese Snow Fungus, Tremella Fuciformis. I'm guessing "Tremella" for its shaky nature and "Fuciformis" for its seaweed-like form. Am I getting good at this?

I really want this to be called Bread of the Woods, Panisilva mellidermis!

And these could be called Toadstool People, Mycosella minipopulus.

Any

suggestions

for

these?

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Crispy Leaves And Beach Garden

Its hard to believe it mid July already, but I'm also filled with the sensation of autumn. Our streets are filled with crispy brown leaves. The air is quite humid and warm. I am reminded of late September or early October. If it were not for my rational sense of time, I would think that we had an autumn warm front overtake the area. The kind before that first cold front that really crisps the air. Or maybe the kind of air that we get as an October tropical system passes nearby. I get this sensation on cloudy days, with those crispy leaves blowing down the sidewalk -it has a unique sound which I cannot attempt to imitate with phonetics.

This morning we are off to the beach. The beach garden that is. Gardening on the beach, that's what it's all about. Despite the fact that we have some cherry tomatoes, unknown orange tomatoes, and three brandywines like the two above, basil and other herbs at home.

This is my haul from the nursery. Let's just say I got an exceptional deal. Broccoli, collard, cabbage, chard, hot peppers, sweet peppers, celery, two types of eggplant, cherry tomatoes, and an assortment of tomatoes I haven't grown since I was a kid -celebrity, beefsteak, supersteak. The nurseries are pretty close to throwing these little starts away. In my past experience, planting so late with these little starts often leads to stunted growth and little productivity. This year, having received the plot so late, I'm willing to take the chance because I got such a good deal and I want to try as much as possible. We also got a load of page organic seeds for next to...

I finally got one of my NE Wildflower Society purchases in the ground -thought the rain the best opportunity we'll have. This is the New England Blazing Star - a liatris, placed in the spot formerly occupied by coneflower. I hoping this can compete with the yarrow, sunflower, and mums.

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What I Really Should've Written Last Night

As soon as I got home I got wind of the crazies coming to my part of town and was so distracted by my anger that I didn't even think to say how wonderful I thought the exhibit I went to see at the Whitney Museum is. Friday nights are 'open late, pay what you wish' at the Whitney. Betsy and I got there around 7 pm to see the Charles Burchfield exhibit before it closed next week. The curator is Robert Gober, a great artist and nice guy that I was fortunate to meet up in Maine a few years back. It's wonderful to see he is thinking about this painter, who inspired me a decade or more ago and who is often under-recognized.



Burchfield's life-long work shows a shifting emphasis between his drafting skills and inventive form. His medium is watercolor, doing it in a way that is completely his own, and often with a density that may make it look like oil painting when seen in reproduction. My favorite early works are those that are highly evocative of a sensation, an experience of the environment.



His images of western NY state towns and industry appear menacing at times, always in dark grays, blues, and white. They have a density and mood that recalls for me early van gogh.



Later in life, freed from certain representational constraints, and in no way completely unconnected from the movement of abstract expressionism, he moves into a wildly energetic symbolist landscape painting that reminds me of Samuel Palmer.

Samuel Palmer

Charles Burchfield

The exhibition is up for one more week, closing on the 17th. You also have one more opportunity for 'open late, pay what you wish' next friday. Enjoy.

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Just Rotten

Today I believe that I discovered why so many tomatoes rot on the vines at our community garden. Because we live in a city, without the space nor time to process so many fruits at once and neither does our livelihood or survival depend on it.



How did I make this discovery? Charged with cleaning the house today, I decided to tackle the compost bin first -it was filled with tomatoes and starting to smell of fermentation. Before emptying that outside in the pile, I thought I would handle the three different piles of tomatoes we had from recent farm harvest expeditions on the countertop. My fingers instinctively retracted as the tips sunk into the gooey mess on the underside of one tomato, then another, and another. How about the ones in the bowl, nope, those too. Disgusting. The bottom side of almost every tomato, ripe or just ripe, had turned to mush or had slits foaming with with white mold. The runny juices, had slowly moved from the pile to the collection of salt, pepper, and oils. Through some sort of capillary action, these juices made their way up into the pepper grinder. Yuck and now trash.



I had just the other day went through all the super size cherry tomatoes to pick out the cracked and moldy. I thought I had gotten them all. Here's my speculation: The overdose of rain at the beach farm, in conjunction with regular watering, cool temps, and the ground or near-ground contact of so many of the tomatoes brought them into contact with all kinds of fungus and bacteria ready to take them on. They hardly had a chance. My instinct had been to resist eating any of these post rain tomatoes fresh. Now, those ripe and free of goo, are in the oven to be de-skinned, and boiled, for a long time, as sauce.



Betsy and I have been talking about how we will stagger everything next year, so that we can try to reduce an inundation of tomatoes and other vegetables. We'll also grow some heirloom types that seem to produce less tomatoes. The broccoli and peppers were abundant, kept longer, and were easier to process into frozen packages. We just didn't have the time or space for 100 tomatoes.



Despite all this, we're still trying to concoct a scheme so that we can have another plot -maybe one of those unused, untended plots. I judge myself not on this years experience, which I think was a grand success given our planting dates in late July and very little care given to much of the growing.

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Exterminated

I have little ability to comment on this story, brought to my attention by a commenter on my last post. Since I was away, I haven't been in the park, where I see the geese. The biggest shame and hurt is that these animals are simply dumped in a landfill. I know why the 'authorities' didn't announce the roundup -because they would've met much resistance. We've been living with resident geese in the metro area for 20 or 30 years. When I was a kid, they were only passing through. Is it right? I don't know. Our complicated human experience.

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