eBotanical Prints – September 2023

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Twenty-two more books were added to the botanical print collection this month – available for browsing on Internet Archive. More than half of the books are Harvard’s Botanical Museum Leaflets from 1932 to 1954…roughly the years between my parents’ births to my own. The publication was dominated by orchids!

The last two books were added well after I had finished the first 20; I opted to include the botanical books from the Natural History of New York series published in the 1800s. The last picture in the mosaic below is of the American Chestnut; I wondered how many other plants documented as being in New York are missing today, like that tree.

The whole list of 2,717 botanical eBooks can be accessed here. The list for the September 2023 books with links to the volumes and sample images is at the bottom of this post.

Click on any sample images in the mosaic below to get an enlarged version. Enjoy the September 2023 eBotanical Prints!

Orchid culture in Ceylon and the East  * Price, F. A. E. * sample image * 1918

Cactaceae of the Boundary * Engelmann, George * sample image * 1858

Botanic contributions relating to the flora of western North America * Engelmann, George; Gray, Asa; Fremont, John Charles0; Torrey, John * sample image * 1853

Report on the botany of the expedition * Torrey, John; Bigelow, John Milton; Engelmann, George * sample image * 1857

Botanical Museum leaflets V1 * Harvard University * sample image * 1932

Botanical Museum leaflets V2 * Harvard University * sample image * 1934

Botanical Museum leaflets V3 * Harvard University * sample image * 1935

Botanical Museum leaflets V4 * Harvard University * sample image * 1937

Botanical Museum leaflets V5 * Harvard University * sample image * 1938

Botanical Museum leaflets V6 * Harvard University * sample image * 1938

Botanical Museum leaflets V7 * Harvard University * sample image * 1939

Botanical Museum leaflets V8 * Harvard University * sample image * 1940

Botanical Museum leaflets V9 * Harvard University * sample image * 1941

Botanical Museum leaflets V10 * Harvard University * sample image * 1942

Botanical Museum leaflets V11 * Harvard University * sample image * 1945

Botanical Museum leaflets V12 * Harvard University * sample image * 1947

Botanical Museum leaflets V13 * Harvard University * sample image * 1949

Botanical Museum leaflets V14 * Harvard University * sample image * 1951

Botanical Museum leaflets V15 * Harvard University * sample image * 1952

Botanical Museum leaflets V16 * Harvard University * sample image * 1954

Natural History of New York Div 2 Part 1 * Kay, James, e. De * sample image * 1843

Natural History of New York Div 2 Part 2 * Kay, James, e. De * sample image * 1843

Sophia M. Sachs Butterly House

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After a day at the Missouri Botanical Garden – we headed to the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House near St. Louis MO the next morning. Its another facility that is part of the Missouri Botanical Garden. We were there a few minutes before it opened and walked around the outside gardens. It included a giant butterfly and caterpillar sculpture!

There was also a butterfly bench like the ones in Brookside Gardens in Maryland!

There were many fall plants blooming too – including cone flowers, butterfly weed, and goldenrod.

We entered the building as it opened. Everything had a butterfly theme – even a wall sculpture near the restrooms.

The conservatory is a year-round climate-controlled space for butterflies. We were familiar with many of the butterflies there because of our experiences at Brookside. Some of the butterflies were tagged – not sure why. We enjoyed watching the children with their families experience the butterflies – noticing butterflies in the air…looking to see them on the fruit or in the foliage.

The exit  from the conservatory leads to another garden with a water feature and sculpture of a child with butterflies on her hand and knee.

It was a good morning activity. We enjoyed photographing the gardens and butterflies (would be even more appealing in the winter when the conservatory would be pleasantly warm compared to outdoors) and we headed home afterward.

Missouri Botanical Garden – Chihuly

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I enjoyed the Chihuly glass exhibition at the Missouri Botanical Garden the second time as much as I did the first time…. photographing the pieces during the day and then in the evening. There were some differences between the two visits.

My husband was enjoying photographing them too, so the pacing of our visit was slower around the glass than it had been with my daughter (who did not bring a camera other than her phone).

It rained for about 30 minutes during the Chihuly Night event! We spent most of it in the visitor center then made a quick round of the pieces we wanted to see when it stopped – with lightning in the distance. It was not a leisurely stroll…rather an exhaustive power walk between the glass installations.

The lightning for the Chihuly night was not as robust. It seemed that the lights were configured at the beginning of the installation and then not maintained for the duration of the exhibition (i.e. some were poorly illuminated during the second visit).

I attempted to capture the structure within the glass more than I did the first time.

The Fiori boat has a lot of interesting shapes that I hadn’t noticed during the first visit!

Last time, I photographed the yellow glass on the rose garden arches…but didn’t realize that they were owned by the garden and not in the exhibit brochure. I remembered to look for the name of the piece in this second visit: Trellisses.

I’m glad we made the effort to go again…in September when the Chihuly Nights were still being offered. The exhibition will end in mid-October. Next time I visit the garden, I want to tour the Tower Grove House!

Missouri Botanical Garden – September 2023

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I visited the Missouri Botanical Garden for the second time – this time with my husband rather than my daughter. Both of us enjoy garden photography! We timed our visit to see the Chihuly glass exhibition before it ended…more on that in tomorrow’s post. Today I am focused on the garden itself. The month since my previous visit had brought some seasonal changes: Fall leaves were thick near the entrance and scattered elsewhere in the garden.

Fall crocus were blooming.

I like to experiment with light – the center of a flower very bright…the background black.

Sometimes there are plants that catch my attention and I take a single picture to capture what I saw.

Waterlilies are always worth close looks.

The Climatron houses plants that would not survive in Missouri weather. It even includes a walkway behind a waterfall!

There were bees and butterflies that were busy – but still enough for portraits.

The Japanese Garden is one of my favorites: the foliage changing color, very large koi, lanterns…zigzag walkway over the water.

It was a good day in the garden – not as hot as a month earlier!

Clouds at Sunrise

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My husband and I started a road trip to St. Louis just before dawn on a damp morning. I thought at first that the sunrise was going to be completely obliterated by clouds. My husband said it was a good thing since we were heading east and would have had the sun glaring in our faces.

After the sun was up for about 10 minutes – the color became spectacular and I started taking pictures, enjoying that on this road trip I was a passenger rather than the driver!

The clouds were prolonging the sunrise color --- partially blocking the sun…wrapping the disk in gray.

Later the color skewed toward the yellow….and the clouds made it just as interesting.

By the time the clouds cleared – the sun was up high enough for our visors to be effective. It was a great start to our road trip!

Zentangle® – September 2023

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30 tiles for September. Most of the tiles this were made after I read about Neurographica™ and started making strings for Zentangle tiles with that technique (at first using the ‘penny pushing’ idea). I’ve opted to show the tiles in roughly the order I produced them….without rounding at first.

Then I started making a dark circle at the intersections rather than rounding…and making a pattern in the spaces open to the edge to make a frame.

I progressed to filling in the center too…using color (sometimes). Making these tiles was very ‘Zen’ but they became almost too dense!

Here was one tile that I made with the 8 wedge strategy from August (adding to that ‘set’).

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. “Zentangle” is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 30, 2023

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Water-quality risks linked more to social factors than money - Low population density, high housing vacancy, disability, and race -- can have a stronger influence than median household income on whether a community's municipal water supply is more likely to have health-based water-quality violations. Many of the water-quality challenges are downstream of demographics, with many community water systems lacking the financial, managerial, and technical abilities to address the water-quality issues.

Step Inside Artist Dale Chihuly’s Stunning Seattle Studio, Filled with an Epic Antiques Collection and His Otherworldly Glass Forms – Interesting pictures.

Archaeological Tropes That Perpetuate Colonialism - We need to start with presence rather than absence. How did Indigenous communities survive, persist, and come to live at the places where they are today? How do Indigenous people conceptualize and engage with the places of their Ancestors? What stories do they share with their grandchildren?

The US is spending billions to reduce forest fire risks – we mapped the hot spots where treatment offers the biggest payoff for people and climate – Where forest-thinning and controlled burns could have the most impact in the western US….for reducing wild-fire caused carbon loss, protecting human communities, and both.

The gold jewelry made from old phones - "We're trying to encourage the idea that one person's waste is someone else's raw material." An article about what is happening at the UK Royal Mint re circuit boards from electronic waste.

Iron Age Child’s Shoe Found in Austria – Found in a salt mine in north-west Austria…a 2,000 year old shoe that once belonged to a child that lived or worked underground.

New Satellite Tracking Air Pollution Releases Its First Images – The TEMPO (Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution) instrument makes hourly measurements of pollutants over North America. NASA will share observations with agencies that provide weather forecasts in hopes of reducing exposure to pollutants such as ozone.

Fine Particulates Are Slowly Killing Us All - People who live in Delhi, the most polluted big city on the planet, are living 11.9 fewer years because of air pollution. People in Bangladesh, the world’s most polluted country, stand to lose 6.8 years of life compared to 3.6 months in the United States. Acknowledging the benefits to society from burning fossil fuels in the past is no reason to continue embracing them in the future. We have created a system that kills people. We have access to clean energy technologies that do not make negative health outcomes one of their embedded features.

New cause of Alzheimer's, vascular dementia - A form of cell death known as ferroptosis -- caused by a buildup of iron in cells -- destroys microglia cells, a type of cell involved in the brain's immune response, in cases of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.

 Windows to the Past at Great Smoky Mountains National Park – History told through structures left behind (and maintained). Forever Places. A former resident said, ““…it was more like livin’ in the Garden of Eden than anything else I can think of.”

Teotihuacan in 1906

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Leopoldo Batres, a pioneer of the archaeology of Mexico, published a picture book of the Teotihuacan site as it was in 1906…during early excavations. His reconstruction of the Pyramid of the Sun was evidently flawed but the book is still worth browsing to understand why the place was never ‘lost’ once it was created; the structures are large and dominate the scene even before excavation.

Teotihuacan : memoria que presenta Leopoldo Batres ... año de 1906

Looking at the book reminded me of a trip to Mexico City with my parents in 1966; one of the places we visited was Teotihuacan and I remember it vividly; it was interesting to think about all the changes that had happened at the site in the 60 years between when this book was published and when I visited. This book prompted me to search/read more about recent work at the site; a lot has been discovered there between 1966 and now!

Zooming – September 2023

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The beauty of the early morning in Texas - Hagerman and Josey Ranch and my parents’ yard….the wildness of Shaw Nature Reserve (near St. Louis MO) in the early afternoon…the joys of nature in my neighborhood (Nixa MO). These are the locations where my selections of zoomed images for September were made. The month was very much between summer and fall – starting hot and getting a bit cooler as the month progressed, still very green but the occasional beginning of fall color. Enjoy the September slideshow!

Ten Little Celebrations – September 2023

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Welcoming cooler temperatures…the beginning of fall. Lots to celebrate!

Shaw Nature Reserve. A first visit…a short hike. Celebrating the place and an early fall day with my daughter.

Pawpaw. Celebrating a new fruit…and its native to North America. I planted the seeds; maybe they’ll come up next spring/summer and I’ll have pawpaws from my yard in 5-7 years.

Wood Duck in an Egret picture. I was taking a picture of an egret catching a fish but celebrated the wood duck in the background when I looked at the image on a big monitor!

Pineapple Whip. Celebrating a birthday with a unique-to-Springfield MO treat!

New addition for my travel computer. Celebrating a new mouse, mini-keyboard, and portable monitor to travel with my laptop. It will make packing easier and using my laptop more comfortable for my week in Texas every month.

Yellow/orange Watermelon. Cutting the watermelon, we got from our CSA revealed something different than the usual red! I celebrated a great watermelon and the memory of the yellow watermelon that my paternal grandparents grew (along with red ones) during my childhood.

Green Heron at the Neighborhood Pond. Surprise! The bird was hiding in plain sight, but I didn’t see it until it flew…and celebrated that I was able to photograph it in the place where it landed. Green herons are one of my favorite birds to watch because they can change their shape (extending or contracting their neck) so quickly.

Beautyberry. Buying a beautyberry for my yard had been on my list for a bit….I celebrated that I found one at the Shaw Nature Reserve’s Wildflower Festival.

Vaccinations. My husband and I celebrated that we could easily schedule getting both the updated flu and COVID-19 vaccinations…increasing our confidence of staying well as we travel more this fall.

5 Native Plants. I celebrated when I got the 5 new native plants in the ground…and they seem to be doing well in my yard.

New Tech for Travel

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My monthly trips to Texas add up and I finally realized that I should improve my jerry-rigged laptop accessories that always seem not quite right….and fragile too because they are cumbersome to pack. My husband helped me make some improvements.

He suggested that I buy a second Bluetooth mouse that I could keep in my travel bag rather than always needing to grab the mouse from my desk at home. I bought the same Microsoft Mobile Mouse (different color) that I use at home; it is flatter than most mice making it easier to pack.

I had been traveling with my desktop keyboard (I don’t like to use the laptop keyboard but that makes the screen too low to be comfortable for long) but the keyboard is too long to fit in a laptop bag. So – my husband purchased a keyboard that didn’t have a number keypad (Logitech MX Keys Mini) which easily fit in a traditional laptop bag. It is very easy to make the adjustment between the keyboards since the keys I use are the same size as on the longer keyboard!

The most different upgrade was a travel sized external monitor – a 13.4-inch Intehill 4K Portable Monitor. My laptop is a Dell XPS 13; at home I have two large monitors and don’t used the PC screen; but when I travel, I run apps in full screen mode on that 13-inch screen…so having a second screen means that I can work more typically…with more than one app in view! It won’t be exactly the same…but a considerably improvement. I tested out the connection and power…the monitor works with one cable between itself and the laptop. Easy! The cover for the monitor makes a stand but it didn’t seem stable enough so I will probably add a bookstand that folds flat to my bag.

Everything fits neatly into a bag I’ve had since laptops were considerably thicker. The laptop, external monitor, and keyboard fit in the padded interior; the cables, charger, and mouse fit an outer pocket; the folded book stand fit in an outer zippered area that was originally for paper!

 I am looking forward to trying my new tech during my next week in Texas!

Fall Activities

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September is the beginning of fall activities. I am doing some fall cleaning inside the house and doing the last plantings in the yard (hoping the plants will be well established before the first frost). The Indian Corn is on the front door.

There are more events scheduled in our area now that the temperatures are a bit cooler. We trekked to Shaw Nature Reserve near St. Louis for their plant sale, bought puzzles at the Friends of the Greene County Library book sale, and walked through Cider Days in Springfield (enjoyed a Pineapple Whip as we walked…being part of a Saturday morning crowd) then enjoyed a BBQ lunch as a new place. My daughter went to an evening Brew at the Zoo; my husband and I enjoyed it vicariously – learning that the lions and other big cats were very active as it got dark…the lions ‘caroling.’ Toward the end of the month, my husband and I made a quick trip to St. Louis – another visit to the Missouri Botanical Garden (and their Chihuly glass) and the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House….blog posts coming soon re that adventure.

And we are anticipating more travel in the next few months (other than the monthly week in Texas) – a fall foliage trip to a state park in Oklahoma…a birding festival in New Mexico. Overall, fall is a great time of year to be out and about – between the heat of summer and the cold of winter; it is often the ‘just right’ season of the year!

Green Heron in the Neighborhood

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I took a walk around our neighborhood ponds on a pleasantly cool morning. I noticed the redbud tree that was damaged by a storm more than a month ago. One of the cut trunks was obviously not healthy and might have been why the tree was vulnerable to the wind. A small branch from another cut surface was already a ‘fall’ color rather than green…and became the subject of the most artsy image of the morning.

There were little fish in shallow (warmer) water. They probably have reduced the mosquito population!

Just after I photographed the fish, a green heron startled - flew up and away; fortunately, it did not go too far, and I had plenty of time to enjoy photographing the bird. Their coloring helps them blend in so well that they are often hard to spot so I take full advantage photographing the birds when I happen upon them. They change their shape…sometimes with a short neck…sometimes stretching out their neck (even though their neck is still thicker than many herons).

There was also a Great Blue Heron that I didn’t see until too late to photograph well – it is on the other side of the bridge in the image below.

There were turtles on the side of the pond at one point. The morning was still cool and they were soaking up the sun.

There were plants going to seed around the pond, the willow draping over the pathway, honeysuckle blooming, very young maple trees turning red, and grasses that were not totally green!

Overall – a pleasant walk….with the Green Heron as the highlight….the other bits and pieces providing the context.

Gleanings of the Week Ending September 23, 2023

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The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

As the Mississippi Swerves, Can We Let Nature Regain Control? - After the lower Mississippi began pouring through and enlarging Neptune Pass in 2019, sediment began flowing into a sand-and-silt-starved Delta Bay. Now the Army Corps of Engineers — breaking with tradition — is considering letting at least part of the river have its way…..a change from always ‘filling the breach’ strategy of years past that has had positive economic impacts but caused environmental problems. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, since 1932, more than 2,000 square miles of land in the Mississippi Delta have disappeared under water.

Babcock Ranch: Florida's first hurricane-proof town - When Hurricane Ian made landfall on the southwest Florida coast, it brought 150 mph winds, 17 inches of rain within 24 hours, and storm surges of up to 18 ft. It was the costliest hurricane in Florida's history, causing more than $112 billion  in damage – and at least 150 deaths. Babcock Ranch is an 18,000-acre development that was sitting in the eye of the storm on the southwest of the state just north of Fort Myers. Built to withstand powerful storms, the town came out relatively unscathed. Is this type of development going to be the only kind economically viable for states like Florida in the future?

Year-round school: Difference-maker or waste of time? – No conclusion in this article….evidently there is renewed interest in the idea in the Southeast. But – the concept is not what most people probably assume. The implementation does not involve more days in school for students and often makes childcare more difficult!

What Are Heat Pump Air Conditioners? - Modern heat pumps are superefficient and can deliver heat down to -15 degrees Fahrenheit…but I had to look to find that they can deliver cool air up to 115 degrees which should have been in the article since it was about air conditioning!

Controversial dwarfism drugs spur growth — but do they improve health? – Hard choices.

Microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, cause behavioral changes – Especially in older mice…behaviors akin to dementia in humans. The changes became more profound in older animals. The microplastics in the study were delivered orally via drinking water…and not in high doses.  It’s scary to think about how microplastics might be impacting humans too.

Can California Cropland Be Repurposed for Community Solar? – Evidently the current farming practices are not sustainable, and some farmland needs to be retired. The idea is that the already disturbed land could be repurposed for new community solar projects. I wondered where the food we now are getting from California will be grown in the future…how robust is the US food production system?

TB research shows a good diet can cut infections by nearly 50% - Improved nutrition in family members of patients in India with lung TB reduced all forms of TB by nearly 40%, and infectious TB by nearly 50%. And…for the patients: An early weight gain in the first two months was associated with 60% lower risk of TB mortality. The other benefits were higher treatment success and better weight gain. During the six-month follow-up period, a remarkable treatment success rate of 94% was achieved.

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Wind Power – How many of these 10 did you know already? I knew 4 of the 10…and knew a little about several others. It’s good to see the progress being made. Kudos to Iowa and South Dakota where over 50% of their electricity generation is from wind energy.

Soils forming on the branches of trees are an overlooked forest habitat – This was a study of a tropical forest in Costa Rica, but it reminded me of a tree along a field trip hiking route in Maryland that I always pointed out to students. It was an old maple that had an indention in its trunk that contained soil about 6 feet above the base of the tree. The tree had grown some roots into that soil and there was moss there. Spider webs filled in. Once we found a shed snakeskin hanging from the area!

Louise Lamprey Books for 1920s Children

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Louise Lamprey wrote historical fiction for young readers. She was known for including careful historical backgrounds/details in her stories. I browsed 4 of her books from the 1920s available on Internet Archive recently.

Days of the colonists, (1922)

Masters of the Guild, (1920)

Children of Ancient Gaul, (1927)

Long-ago people: how they lived in Britain before history began, (1921)

 These books reflect the 1920s perception of historical time periods. It is thought provoking to think about how that perception has changed over the past 100 years…broadening to include more perspectives from non-elites (people that were behind the scenes like women, minorities…whole cultures that interacted within a hierarchy). These are not books that would be suitable for children now. It is startling to realize that in the 1920s, many children did not survive childhood because of whooping cough and other childhood diseases that are avoided via vaccination now. There were no computers or video games. The audience for Lamprey’s books were children with very different experiences than children today! And perhaps only children from wealthy families has access to books like these.

Macro Maple

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The sucker growing at the base of one of our red maples is now in a small vase in my office….and became an opportunity for some macro photography! The leaves had a lot of red pigment along with the green. The new leaves are red…the newer stems are red…and sometimes injured areas are red as well. The new leaves are the most obvious. In reality – even the green leaves have the red pigment; it is just overwhelmed by the green of the chlorophyll – until fall when the chlorophyll dies and leaves the whole tree full of red leaves!

As I moved around the sucker, I found a tiny spider….too small for my macro set up to capture. I lost track of it…so now the tiny spider could be roaming my office!

More Used Puzzles

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The county just north of where I live is more populous and their Friends of the Library sale was a lot larger – held in a building of the county fairgrounds. They filled the large building with tables loaded mostly with books but there were some CDs and a few puzzles/board games. I bought the best of the 500-piece puzzles to take to my parents – 17 boxes that contained 28 puzzles…for the bargain total of $52! I was grateful that my husband went with me to help get them into bags…through checkout…and into the car. I’ll be taking them to Carrollton in a few days….adding them to the stack I created last month (probably a little reduced with my parents finishing some of them). They enjoy having lots of puzzles to choose from!

In the 1990s, I went to used books sales…and staggered out with so many books I could hardly lift my bags. But now I am not tempted. I read eBooks…and for things like planning travel, I do searches to get the most current information rather than buy dated books. It felt a little strange to go to a large used book sale and buy nothing at all. My husband was not tempted either.

Pawpaw Experience

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The first ‘new-to-me’ food that appeared in my CSA share this season is pawpaw! I had heard about them but never eaten one. I cut the fruit in half….right along the seed-line evidently. The pulp was custard-like and very sweet. I like it so much that I planted the seeds in a corner of my yard…hoping to establish a pawpaw patch!

Pawpaw is native to North America and grows well in Missouri where I live. So – I am including it as another native that will eventually reduce the amount of lawn in my yard. It might be years before the trees produce fruit; I like the prospect of enjoying them in the future. Maybe the fruit will provide more food in our yard for the birds and squirrels too…and the leaves will feed zebra swallowtail larvae.

Spiders on Deck

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We haven’t been out on our deck very much this summer. A pair of barn swallows built a nest on one of the walls and became frantically active to divert attention from the nest if we ventured out there. They are gone now, and we are planning to knock down the nest and scrub the area under it.

But - our steering clear of the area has resulted in spiders moving in! One funnel spider made its funnel between the cushion and back of a chair! It must not have been a good spot since the funnel is abandoned.

The same is true of the large web (maybe not a funnel) in the corner of a window. This one was successful in trapping a cicada…which might have been more than the spider could handle!

We have lots of funnel spiders in our yard…and they are often still inhabited. I photographed one after out sprinklers ran (water droplets) and got a closer view of the spider lurking in the funnel!

Our deck is a story off the ground but perhaps the spiders drift upward under some conditions - with a silken parachute!

Native Plants for our Missouri Yard

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There are 5 new native plants at our house! I bought them at the Fall Wildflower Market located at the Shaw Nature Reserve about a week ago and have them all transplanted into our back yard:

Callicarpa americana - American Beautyberry

Solidago speciosa - Showy Goldenrod

Ratibida pinnata - Grayhead Coneflower

Pycnanthemum pilosum - American Mountain Mint

Aralia racemosa - American Spikenard

 The largest plant – and the one I had been wanting since I bought one for my sister last spring – is Callicarpa americana - American Beautyberry. The one I bought already has some berries on it which I hope will turn purple this fall. In a few years it should be the dominant plant in the area where a pine tree used to be in our yard (it fell over and had to be hauled away…the stump ground up).

I also planted three of the other plants (smaller) in that same area and will propagate them to other parts of the yard as they become established: showy goldenrod, grayhead coneflower, and American mountain mint.

The American Spikenard is planted at the edge of a flowerbed overflowing with violets where I can see it from my office window. It is a shade-loving plant that has red berries in the fall. It won’t this year but I hope it does next year….food for birds and a good scene from my window.

I’ll post again about how the native plants (these and the fragrant sumac I planted earlier last summer) survive (or not) in November.