Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Hot air and ill-informed banter

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You are here: Home / Garden Chats / Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Spontaneous Visual Combustion

Sunday Morning Garden Chat: Spontaneous Visual Combustion

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Tulip Tree

From “devoted commentor” Japa21:

To be honest I had no intention of sending anything in. I was just outside starting to tear out annuals and trim back those perennials that need it when something caught my eye that I did not expect to see. Then other things caught my eye, and here we are. All the pictures in this email and the next were taken today, October 25th.

This is about fall colors.

We tend to think in terms of trees when we talk about colors changing in the fall. For example, the photo at the top is a tulip tree the village planted in our parkway last year to replace a beetle devastated ash tree. Love the yellows and the streaks of brown.

But other plants can surprise us with their beauty. For example this hydrangea is just as beautiful with its changing foliage as it is with its full complement of blooms.

Hydrangea

Our Miss Kim dwarf lilac provides us with beautiful flowers and scents in the spring, but the leaves also change into a magnificent hue come fall.

Miss Kim Dwarf Lilac

Even the lowly, common hosta has a last shot at beauty before it totally wilts away.

Hosta

What really triggered my picture taking was the thought that, for some things, I was looking at what would probably be the last bloom, either because I was about to tear our or trim back some plants. And then there was the totally out of the blue surprise.

We always plant some snapdragons in what we affectionately call our piano garden, so named because of its shape. These will be the last bloom as I will be tearing them out and start preparing the ground for next spring’s plantings.

Snapdragon

With the advance of fall into winter. I also need to prepare the rose garden which includes major trimming, so this beautiful red bush rose will be the last rose until next year.

Rose

But the big surprise was this day lily, which decided now would be a good time to bloom, several months after all the others have departed. I’m going to let this linger at late as I can.

Daylily

***********
Last blooms in our garden were also daylilies — half a dozen vivid peach & magenta stunners spaced over the last couple of weeks, from a ‘bonus’ plant stuck in a random pot in September while I concentrated on the irises I’d ordered.

Not counting on more, after Thursday’s snap snowstorm, but at least it’s supposed to warm up enough this week that I can do some yard cleanup & prep for next year…

What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  2. 2.

    Spanky

    Kinda jealous. Most everything sround here went from green to brown, the Virginia Creeper being the lone exception that comes to mind.

    @Baud:  Sleep is a precious commodity these days.

  3. 3.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nice pics Japa. Our fall colors were pretty much done in by the 4+ inches of rain we got last week. Still a splash here and there, but that’s about it.

  7. 7.

    Ken

    @Baud: Juicers are sleeping in after the time change.

    Excepting those of us who woke up at our usual time and glared at the clock.

    I’ve noticed a few day lilies pulling the same late-blooming trick in this area. In many, it’s after the gardener has cut back the foliage – the plant starts sprouting back and decides, for mysterious plant reasons, that now is a good time to flower.

  9. 9.

    Raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: Straight north on 441 to Franklin then east to Sylvia. Then we turned around and went  to the Ocoee whitewater site for lunch. Dropped down to Blairsville and down through the Chatahoochee National Forest .

  10. 10.

    satby

    Beautiful pictures japa21, and thanks for the reminder that fall colors aren’t only on trees. I forget to notice things like your hosta’s gorgeous yellow glow.

    We had the first hard frost Friday night, so this week’s plans are to clear out the foliage of the delicate tubers and bring them in for winter, mulch up some of the piles of bright orange maple leaves in my yard and set up a compost pile for the rest. The weather for the rest of the week after today is supposed to be mild and sunny for November, so I want to get lots done. We’ll see ?

  13. 13.

    satby

    I know it’s not going to last, but it’s so nice to have a little daylight beginning before 7am!

    Well it’s dawn, and grey, but I’ll take it.

  14. 14.

    Mo MacArbie

    Got an earworm from resetting the clocks. Alas, google’s hits are dominated by an abysmal yacht rock song of the same title by a band that shall go nameless. So I bomb the better one thusly: Baby Come Back.

  16. 16.

    dnfree

    It’s the combination of colors at all levels that I love in fall. But I miss ash trees so much. They had a unique fall color that nothing else I see can replace.

  17. 17.

    MagdaInBlack

    All of my balcony plants are inside, patiently waiting for me to have the patience to put together the plant stand I bought for them. Hopefully that will happen today.

  18. 18.

    zhena gogolia

    Our colors have been kind of B- this year. But thanks to Covid and fear of gyms, we’ve been going on more walks up into our tiny woods, so we’ve enjoyed fall in a new way.

  19. 19.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Not exactly garden related but cool anyway: As If the Platypus Couldn’t Get Any Weirder

    The platypus is nature’s crazy quilt, as this strange creature looks like about a half-dozen different animals all rolled into one. Turns out that platypuses were hiding yet another conspicuous feature: THEY CAN FREAKIN’ GLOW IN THE DARK.

    It’s not enough to be a mammal who lays eggs, sports a duck-like bill and webbed feet, hunts using electroreception, and wields venomous spurs. The platypus also glows green under ultraviolet light. Because of course it does. Details of this unexpected discovery were published earlier this month in the science journal Mammalia.

    Something else I did not know:

    The platypus now joins a very exclusive club, as it’s one of only three known biofluorescent mammals, the other two being opossums and flying squirrels.

    I actually have a blacklight flashlight that I use for hunting hornworms at night. I’m gonna have to use it on the next possum I see and if I get lucky maybe even a flying squirrel or 2 might reveal themselves.

  25. 25.

    Lapassionara

    Thank you. These are lovely. We had a sunny day yesterday and no rain, so I was able to work outdoors. It was good to be outside. Hope to get another bit in today.

  33. 33.

    Jay

    Have a single Cardinal Flower still in bloom on the patio,

    which T, texted me a day ago, was drive by’d by an Anna hummingbird, (22 stories up),

    funny that, wished I had seen that.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Gonna be “Sunny, with a high near 50. Northwest wind 8 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.” A good day to be outside in the gardens, even with those winds.

  36. 36.

    Immanentize

    Thank you, Japa.  I, unlike randy, prefer the fall to all other seasons.

    Sadly, it snowed about four inches Friday. Most of the leaves here hadn’t changed. My big limelight hydrangea had turned he color of Japa’s. But now, as it warms up, everything is a huge mess. I did pull off the green tomatoes before the freeze — maybe 2 or 3 dozen Celebrities and Rutgers. Plus scores of Sungold and Cocktail. Took the remaining herbs inside, now drying the sage….

  37. 37.

    japa21

    Thanks for the comments.  It truly was an impulse but I am glad I followed through on it. The next day we got the first snow of the season, followed by a nice freeze a couple days later. Plus some high winds. Tulip tree now mostly just branches, the hosta in full wilt.  What a difference a week makes at this time of year.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    Hundred Patriot Prayer, Proud Boys, many heavily armed, show up in Vancouver, WA., to counter-protest people mourning Kevin Peterson, a Black man, killed by cops two nights ago. They're also waving a "Police Lives Matter" banner. https://t.co/EeEqwGFmum— Arun Gupta Flatten the Ruling Class (@arunindy) November 1, 2020

    Shit show continues

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @LivingInExile: Just got a new roof put on the old homestead. Seeing as it has pitches of 9/12 and 12/12, I decided against abusing my poor 62 y/o carpenter’s body any more and paid somebody to do it for us. $7500 well spent. (a 5 man crew, I gave each a $20 tip as well, I appreciate hard work and like to let people know it)

    The old (original) roof was in really bad shape, kind of astounding it never leaked. Lasted better than 50 years tho because of those pitches. We got architectural shingles so it will last at least that long again.

    ETA: Be careful up there and remember, it’s not the fall that hurts. It’s the awkward landing.

  44. 44.

    oldgold

    Here is a garden variety joke my granddaughter shared with me as her Halloween trick last night over the phone – thanks to Covid.

    How are Trump and a Jack-o-latern alike?

    Both are orange, empty inside and should be thrown out during the first week of November.

    I told her not to give up her day job, which is zoom attending first grade.

  48. 48.

    debbie

    I’m still seeing a couple of pink and purple hydrangea flowers around the neighborhood. I can’t remember seeing that this late in the season.

    Beautiful photos!

  50. 50.

    LivingInExile

    @OzarkHillbilly: I really like the architectural shingles. Much easier to work with.  This section of roof has two 12/12 sections coming together in a valley, then joining a flatter porch roof. It had an overhang sticking out over the porch roof. Removed the overhang which solved some problems but still a lot of flashing to screw with.

  53. 53.

    LivingInExile

    @raven: I remember that.  You would probably have gone through Carthage on your way to Hamilton. The only claim to fame, or infamy, for Carthage is that’s where Joseph Smith his demise.

  54. 54.

    StringOnAStick

    We arrived at our new home Friday at 5, and I’m thrilled at the new garden opportunities I now have.  The prior owner was wheelchair confined but had been a serious gardener before, so what is still alive is obviously happy here. We bought this place via a FaceTime call, and we were even happier with the house and it’s location when we got here.  It needs a deep clean inside and out plus paint and flooring but the bones of the house and of the garden are excellent. We feel incredibly lucky to have landed here. We’ll have to put some money into it but it’s worth it.

    I can’t wait to garden here; there’s lots of pine needles to rake and get out of the gutters but we have 99% of our stuff in storage for a month while we get this interior work done, so it will have to wait until the moving van arrives. Can’t wait to get started!

  55. 55.

    NotMax

    @LivingInExile

    Inveigled one time into replacing the flashing around a double chimney stack on a pitched gravel roof.

    Makes me shudder thinking back on it. There’s a special niche in Hell for whoever decided gravel roofs should be a thing.

  57. 57.

    Quiltingfool

    @OzarkHillbilly:  When we had the roof of a rental house replaced, we tipped each roofer and provided a 12 pack of their preferred beverages to take home. My husband was a floor installer until his knee gave out, then a boat lift installer, and he appreciated the homeowners who gave tips or beverages. He is a big believer in paying it forward! I’m glad he does; ain’t nothing worse than a stingy man, lol!

  62. 62.

    Gvg

    @NotMax: one of the things I recently discovered is that the make safety rope anchors that you can install on your roof designed to go under the shingles but obviously poke up above them, so that you can attach a safety rope every time you or workers have to go on the roof. Such an obvious thing to exist, but no one mentioned it to me. You have it installed when you put on a roof, probably multiple ones for a bit or complicated roof. The builder supply place I looked at priced them at $7.50! To save your life maybe. They are meant to be attached at the peak and come in different pitches. I assume they go though to the rafters not just the sheathing.

  66. 66.

    JeanneT

    Nice photos!  The autumn colors here in west Michigan are the richest they’ve been in years – and lasting a long time.   We have a gusty windy day today with snow in the air, which will clear off a bunch of the maples and aspen leaves.  But I have hopes the oaks will hold most of their leaves for a while yet: beautiful burgundies and russets.

  67. 67.

    Jay

    @Gvg:

    yurp, they have been around for a long while.

    Thing is, the roofers need to install them,

    and the owners need to pony up for the costs.

    here, in the lower Rainland, customers, won’t pay $35 tor zinc strips to kill moss, but will pony up 2 years later, $450  to have the moss removed.

  69. 69.

    satby

    @debbie: No, I like that too, because then it’s light later. And I live far enough north that it stays light almost until 10pm during summer.  I know I’m weird, but I like the time variation of the seasons too.

  70. 70.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jay: It’s difficult in the best of times to get somebody to show up out here to give a bid. Even harder to get a contractor to accept an acceptance. Took over a year to manage this. Price was actually the least of my concerns.

    @LivingInExile: I have a 2 1/2/12 pitch porch roof as well. They had to put ice shield under the shingles for that part.

    Flashing, if it’s gonna leak, that’s where. There was a sky light on one of the 9/12 pitches. Guess where it leaked? Yeah, finally removed that sucker a year ago before I tried getting bids.

    Which left a dormer (that I need to reside), the stove pipe, and the electric as the only things needing to be flashed. I hate holes in a roof.

  72. 72.

    LivingInExile

    @OzarkHillbilly: I probably wouldn’t be doing this job myself if it wasn’t for the 12/12 pitch runs onto the flatter pitch where I have a chance to dig in my heels. I’m 66 years old and it’s just a question of which body part is going to hurt the most after a day of playing on the roof.

  74. 74.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m going to need to reroof  this place in the next few years and was considering metal. Any pros and cons I should know about? A lot of houses here have metal roofs and I was surprised by that.

  75. 75.

    Yarrow

    So pretty. A friend sent some photos from a cabin in Colorado. The colors were spectacular.

    I was busy yesterday getting my fall/winter garden in. In the spring it was hard to find vegetable seeds so I went through my stockpile and used up old seeds. Some germinated, some didn’t, but I was glad I had them. I’m doing the same now with fall/winter crops. I have lettuce seeds going back to 2011! I can really tell when my life fell apart because in every category of seeds there are zero seed packets from the same three years. No time, no energy.

  76. 76.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @LivingInExile: I’m 66 years old and it’s just a question of which body part is going to hurt the most after a day of playing on the roof.

    Heh. In my case the answer is “All of them.”

  78. 78.

    Immanentize

    @satby: I put a raised seam roof on my house in San Antonio.  I loved it!  And it will last a hundred years.  It does add some weight (had to re-deck or actually first deck before the metal went on). But that didn’t prove to be a problem at all on my one story 1891 double shotgun.

  81. 81.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Get standing seam if you can afford it. The corrugated roofing with the screws in the field have the weakness that the rubber washer will eventually fail, but you aren’t likely to see the damage the moisture causes for years, or maybe not till it has to be replaced.

    Standing seam on our place would have cost $14,500 IIRC. With our pitches the architectural* just made more sense money wise.

    *I do believe the standard life expectancy for architectural shingles is 40 years. Our steep pitches could add 20 years to that.

  82. 82.

    Ken

    @Baud: In a Baud! administration, the clocks would only fall back.

    Baud! is for calendar reform?  Why didn’t you say this earlier, you could have swept the Democratic and Republican primaries.

    A logical extension of your idea would be to turn the clocks back an hour in the fall, and 23 hours in the spring.  That would make the year 364 days — one of them being 47 hours long,  but as with all calendar reform proposals, I will dismiss that as a quibble unworthy of discussion.

    That would mean every day of the year fell on the same day of the week, and we could move to a year of 13 months each exactly four weeks long.  Both of which have been proposed by previous calendar reforms.

    Even better, for leap years we could turn the clocks back 24 hours.  This has historical precedent, since the Roman leap year was done by having two February 24s in a row. In their calendar that was the 6th day before the end of the month (for some reason the Romans counted down), which gives us the vaguely-obscene-sounding term bissextus for Leap Day.

  84. 84.

    scribbler

    @StringOnAStick:  Congratulations!  Your new place sounds wonderful.  Having good bones should be the most important consideration when buying a house.  And what a brave way to buy-I’m glad it paid off!

    ETA: payed to paid.  oops.

  85. 85.

    frosty

    OT: Thanks to commenters last night we watched Addams Family Values for the first time. Good movie for Halloween – what a hoot! Great cast, it was hard to figure out who was having the most fun chewing the scenery, but I might have to give it to Joan Cusack. And the cameos, we’re like “Wait, was that Tony Shalhoub?” Yes it was!

  86. 86.

    J R in WV

    @dnfree:

    But I miss ash trees so much. They had a unique fall color that nothing else I see can replace.

    They were so valuable as lumber for special purposes. We bought hickory flooring from a mill up in the eastern mountains. Turns out the grader missed a few, there are two ash boards and one oak board in the otherwise hickory floor. And of course traditionally baseball bats were turned from ash, as well as many if not most tool handles were ash.

    A friend with a tiny old-fashioned mostly cast-iron saw mill had a  guy named Lurch drop hundreds of ash trees cut and propped up off the ground for future cutting. I’m not sure how they are holding up in the weather, and Joe doesn’t have building space to get them out of the weather.

    It’s pretty hard to grasp that a whole species has vanished right under our very eyes over the last 10 years. Gone forever, too, I suspect.

  88. 88.

    TaMara (HFG)

    I had a peony that didn’t bloom this year – but it put on a nice showy, full green bush all summer, so I left it. Normally after they bloom I have to cut the entire thing back because the blooms seem to take all the life out of the plant.

    I was SOOO surprised this fall when it turned gold and red. One of the prettiest bushes in my yard.

  89. 89.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: Well, cost is very much a factor too. I just don’t want to get stuck replacing another roof in my mid-eighties, assuming I’m still around and own the house.

    I know you hate skylights, but I really would love one for my huge attic room. There’s two tiny dormers with tiny almost useless for ventilation windows up there and it’s a huge, gloomy waste of space.

  90. 90.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Which left a dormer (that I need to reside), the stove pipe, and the electric as the only things needing to be flashed. I hate holes in a roof.

    Me too!! Which is why in AZ the house has an un-penetrated steel roof. The wood stovepipe goes out the wall and up beside the house.

  92. 92.

    StringOnAStick

    @scribbler: and everyone else who commented, buying by FaceTime is common now where the market is hot unless you are local. We moved to OR from CO and this house was only on the market for 12 hours. The owner didn’t want a bunch of bids to sort through and according to our realtor back in CO, accepting bids for more than a week doesn’t gain you anything; the person willing to throw down hard and fast is already watching the new listings like a hawk, just like we did.  Because of the overbidding required here and where we used to live, 100% cash offers only  and those close in two weeks so once we won the bid, we had to hustle to get moved so our old place can get sold quickly (we took out a HELOC on it to fill out our bid here).

    We met a neighbor yesterday, very nice and welcoming; she told us everyone in this loop loves it and gets along well, which I think is code for “no tRump fans”.  This is an island of deep blue on the east side of the Cascades; further east is redneck MAGA land, just like east of Denver or most rural areas. We are still pinching ourselves at our luck.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    All great ideas.  First things first, we need to bring America into the 21st Century and convert our calendars to the metric system.

  94. 94.

    J R in WV

    @satby:

    Any pros and cons I should know about? A lot of houses here have metal roofs and I was surprised by that.

    My good friend Joe was a roofer, and stopped doing shingle roofs long before he quit roofing. We did metal roofs on the last two buildings I built with him, a big shop on the farm in WV and the house in AZ.

    Get the heaviest gauge metal. Metal roofs go on pretty fast….

    ETA: Concur with Standing Seam. We used corrugated, I hope in the Sonoran desert it won’t make much difference.

  97. 97.

    Barbara

    My hubbie spent all of yesterday tilling, raking, laying topsoil, seeding and fertilizing part of our yard, completing the job he started in the summer when he cut down an ailing ornamental cherry. He enlisted son and two friends to do the heavy work. Now he is shaking his fist at the army of birds looking to feast on grass seed. It never ends!

  98. 98.

    NeenerNeener

    @J R in WV: I’ve got 15 ash trees in my yard; in order to keep them healthy I have to have them treated for emerald ash borer every 2 years. They are pretty in the fall, though.

  101. 101.

    Joe Falco

    I’ve been making progress on clearing out fallen tree branches and limbs from Thursday’s storms that smashed through Georgia. The big limbs have been cut into smaller pieces and there’s only a small patch of debris in the front yard left to clean up. Once that’s been done, I can move on to picking up all the pecans from the ground. It’s been a banner year for my pecan trees. I’ve already filled one large Halloween candy bowl with pecans and looking forward to filling up a second one before too long!

  102. 102.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Immanentize:

    now drying the sage….

    Hope you’ve laid in a good supply. We’ll need to smudge the whole country on January 20th.

    Fall is my favorite season too. Probably because it’s still associated with school and new beginnings for me.

  105. 105.

    Aleta

    @NeenerNeener: What is the treatment ?   Is it preventative, before exposure?  Or after the disease starts?  This summer Lowes shipped ash trees that were not supposed to be sent to northern NE into a large number of its stores in northern NE. The trees were sold and the error wasn’t even reported until recently.  Some buyers have been traced, some remain unknown. (I have nice old ash trees surrounding a building we live in summers, and one middle aged ash tree  in the back yard here.)

  106. 106.

    Barbara

    We don’t have much fall color in our yard, partly because it stays warm for so long. My favorite fall display comes from our three winter hollies, which turn a subtle shade of yellow, but sport large red berries. They will be all gone by midwinter, food for birds.

  107. 107.

    satby

    I’m off to early vote, went Friday after market but the line was too long, almost 3 hours I heard! Today is blustery and cold and it’s supposed to snow a little, so going today hoping it’s less crowded. Was going to bring my neighbor, but her son took her ?.

  108. 108.

    JanieM

    @J R in WV: I’m in a hurry, so skipping quickly through this thread, but I saw the mention of ash and wanted to say how lovely it is. When my “house” (actually an apartment, long story) was built 25 years ago I used ash for the woodwork and for the paneling on the cathedral ceiling, which is laid out in a pattern of my design. I also cut the boards and did some of the beveling and tongue-in-grooving, another long story.

    This is what it looks like, after a number of years of the sun softening the variegations of dark and light in the grain.

  110. 110.

    Kelly

    @StringOnAStick: Welcome to Oregon! We’re expected to pick up a House seat with the census reapportionment. Maybe the new district lines will be draw you into a Blue Congressional seat.

  112. 112.

    Steeplejack

    Gray and cool/​cold (47°) here in NoVA. Light rain pecking at the windows, which is a pleasant sound. Feels good to be inside and warm. I turned on the heat for the first time yesterday, and there was that slight “heat/​burn/​haven’t been on in a while” smell for a little bit that always makes me think of a newspaper headline: “Area Man Dies in Lint Explosion.” But the HVAC unit has settled into the groove and everything’s okay. I am due to change the filter, so I’ll tackle that tomorrow. Think I might have one on hand.

    No big plans for the day. Might stop by Sighthound Hall to drop off a few things, and if I’m out I’ll probably hit the grocery. Okay, back to sipping coffee and resetting my watches and devices that can’t reset themselves. Good times.

  114. 114.

    JanieM

    @Steeplejack: Thanks, and yes, that’s a light fixture, and skylights on the left. (Which have never leaked in 25 years, but do drip a bit of condensation sometimes.)

  115. 115.

    CaseyL

    @StringOnAStick: Congrats and best wishes on the new home!

    @MazeDancer:

    I’ve never heard of buying a home via video!  During my househunt a few weeks ago (suspended now that my job might last longer than I thought) I’d tour homes by video, but don’t think I could buy without setting foot inside.   It’s not so much that something might get missed – the buyer’s agent is very good at showing the bad along with the good – but I like to get a “feel” for the house.

    Winterizing my garden? Well, a balcony container garden doesn’t need much. I brought the amaryllis indoors.  When it gets frosty, I’ll shroud my strawberries in plastic wrapping (reusing the really good stuff from medical packages).  That’s about it.

  116. 116.

    JanieM

    @CaseyL: I had never heard of buying a house via video either, but a friend of mine just did it and ended up very happy with the result.

    *****

    Wanted to touch on the Emerald ash borer situation…which is grievous in general, but also for me selfishly, as a lover of that wood. Concerning the loss of tree species, this is an interesting book about the American chestnut. There are American chestnuts at the Viles Arboretum in Augusta, Maine, and there’s a place near me where the American Chestnut Foundation is growing crosses in the never-ending quest to bring the tree back. I don’t know that the ash situation is similar…the American chestnut fell to a blight; a bug is a different kind of problem.

  117. 117.

    laura

    Japa21’s photos are beautiful and Stringonastick’s home buying comments are welcome and altogether positive! It’s still warm – likey 80° this afternoon. The hydrangea continues to crank out deep blue blooms and every handful of days a gardenia unfurls and catches me by surprise. I’ve scored 2 bags of tulips to plant one’s a fancy parrot tricolor -green white and pink, the other is a ruffled pink.

    To me, Fall is a season of moments and if you miss a moment of spectacular and unexpected beauty, it’s gone. I love that brief part of the day as the sun comes in low and golden, just before the gloaming of the day. Just up the street is a boulevard park of two dozen or so Dutch Elms. Part of the last group that has barely survived disease here in Sacramento. In the fall, the leaves turn golden and hang against the rough dark bark until they begin a gentle rain to the ground. Once they’re gone, the trees look naked and forlorn and you know it’s going to be a long time until spring.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: French revolutionary time units divided the day into metric hours and minutes, but since the second is an SI unit, clearly we need to go the other direction and replace the “day” with a 100-kilosecond unit, kind of like in some of Vernor Vinge’s novels. Extra time to sleep in!

    The closest thing to a week would be a megasecond, though, which seems kind of long (about 1 and 2/3 weeks). We could have some extra 10^5 second intervals off somewhere in the middle. Go Agile and call them “sprints”.

  119. 119.

    J R in WV

    @JanieM:

    This is what it looks like, after a number of years of the sun softening the variegations of dark and light in the grain.

    Thanks for the link, the ceiling is beautiful. Our hickory has lots of differing grain, dark streaks in a mostly blond wood. I also bought several hundred sq feet of walnut to trim around edges, which is beautiful, but turned a carpentry job into cabinet-level trim work.

    So, many extra hours trimming ends to within 1/32 or 1/64 to fit tight.

  120. 120.

    JanieM

    @J R in WV: Oh, yes, I know about those tiny margins. I made a tiny mistake in the “threesies” (the most common length in the pattern) in cutting the boards, and my friend Bob, who hung the ceiling, was ready to kill me when he discovered it. I left for the day to give him time to cool down and figure it out, and by the time I got home from town, by god he had done it. But then, he’s very good at what he does, so I wasn’t surprised.

    On the other hand, he put a coat of poly over the linseed oil after we had agreed he wouldn’t, and I could have killed him for that. With just the linseed oil, the ceiling was so magical it was beyond description. But he was having problems with getting an even coat, and he didn’t want to keep putting one coat on after another, so he put the poly on, and once it was there, well, that was that.

    In his defense, hanging that ceiling was not fun. I kiddingly asked him if he wanted to do more of them — I would design them and cut the lengths, and he could hang them — and he basically said he’d never hang another if his life depended on it.

    If you have a picture of your hickory floor, I’d love to see it.

  121. 121.

    evodevo

    @J R in WV: According to our Ky forestry guy, ~15% of ash trees may be resistant to the emerald ash borer, but ALL of our mature trees are dead.  We have a LOT of ash tree babies in some sections of our woods, so I guess we’ll see when they get some bark on them how many are survivors.  The borer pretty much wiped them out in Ohio and Ky….

  122. 122.

    SWMBO

    @LivingInExile: Use a safety line, safety glasses, and don’t shoot a roofing nail in your leg (if you’re using a power nailer). My nephew is a construction worker and he shot a 4 inch nail through his right knee (missed the bone) trying to move the power cord around.

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