BOTANY IS AWESOME

If you remember, I last left you wandering the greenhouses of Planting Fields Arboretum.

There is a lot of weird stuff in there. These, for example, are called staghorn ferns:

It's nice to have options if you want antlers on your wall, but you don't want to shoot anything. If I ever own a rustic cabin, I'm putting one of these above the mantle.

These two hanging things also struck me as odd, but I don't know what they are.

Tiny bananas? Peas on a rope?

Here is a freak flower my sister discovered in the dahlia garden:

And one she pointed out in the greenhouse just because it was bizarre and beautiful:

 
I am going to tell you a secret now. This entire post so far has been a way of working up to the subject of Golden Shrimp Plants. They're fascinating, but they do not sound like it, which is why I did not title this post GOLDEN SHRIMP PLANTS ARE AWESOME. It's all about marketing. Why are they so fascinating and awesome? The clue is in this picture?

This flower is not a flower! As that half-yellow, half-green part in the center kindly demonstrated for me, those things that look like petals are actually leaves. LEAVES! Omigosh. The yellow cone is really a "bract," a modified or specialized leaf protecting a blossom. The funny white wings are the flowers:

I KNOW. CRAZY. HERE'S ANOTHER.

 AND ANOTHER. They're everywhere! I didn't even realize it when I was taking the pictures.

Once you start seeing them, you can't stop. Even the big white petal on a calla lily isn't a petal, it's a bract.

The tall part sticking out of the middle is called a spadix, and the flowers are on that. They're teeny tiny. When the bract is particularly wide and surrounds a spadix, it's called a spathe.When a flower has no petals and no sepals, like calla lilies, the technical term for them is "naked."

Bracts! Spathes! Spadices! Nakedness! Is this blog exciting or what?

Planting Fields Arboretum & Coe Hall

Coe Hall is a Tudor Revival mansion built in 1904 for the purpose, I can only assume, of thrilling imaginative little girls. I think I reverted about 15 years when I saw it. It puts one in the mind of Thornfield Hall, particularly if one is ready at all times to put in mind of Thornfield Hall, which I am.

Mr. Coe came from England to America in 1883 when he was 15. He worked his way up through insurance and railway companies and eventually became obscenely rich. It's a shame you are never allowed to take pictures inside of places like this, because the inside of Coe Hall was as magnificent as its grounds. It might not be a place you'd actually want to live in for any period, because the rooms are too big to be friendly, but it was marvelous. It was what you imagine a castle to be like when you are twelve. Dark wood panelling, big tapestries, great dining halls, windows of leaded glass and stained glass, stone floors. You could easily imagine Prince Humperdinck living there, although I don't know why you'd want to.

The end of the inside tour brought us into an exhibit about Natalie Coe's marriage to an Italian count, the social event of 1934. What chiefly interested me about this exhibit was a letter on display from Natalie to her husband-to-be. Previous to reading this letter, I thought F. Scott Fitzgerald just didn't know how to write women and made them all sound like airheads because he thought women were shallow. I now realize he didn't make up that "oh darlingest" style, he copied it directly from real life. I don't know whether I am relieved or more concerned.

But back to business. Coe Hall is surrounded by Planting Fields Arboretum, which would be a marvelous place to explore at length in all seasons. Here are a few pictures of the Italian garden, complete with a tea house at one end that I would happily move into at a moment's notice.

If you turned directly around in the last picture, you'd see this path to the house:

Next, the play house. If you think you've never seen anything so adorable, if perhaps slightly too pink, just wait til Old Westbury Gardens. That's a play house. Still, I'd happily move into this if the tea house was taken. I am a big fan of the curving roof; it gives the impression of a hobbit house.

Here's a walkway covered with hemlock, for the fun of it:

You must have known there would be a greenhouse component to all these mansion posts, and here it is. Great big greenhouses beautifully arranged and filled with fascinating plants. I recommend clicking on them and looking at them full size.

There is so much in here that is supremely cool, I have to save it for the next post. I swear it's interesting, please come back.

Witchery

It has come to my attention that my mother's side of the family is related to one of the victims of the Salem witch trials, Rebecca Towne Nurse. You can read about her in the Wikipedia article here, and there's slightly more detail here. As you'd expect, it's not a funny story.

To sum up: Rebecca and her husband were respected members of the community, but another family, the Putnams, had a dispute with them. That may or may not have prompted Ann Putnam to include Rebecca among those she accused of sending her into fits. Rebecca was 71 at the time. At first she was judged not guilty, and then, because people are idiots, she was judged guilty and executed. One of her sisters was also executed, and another was accused, but lived.

Apparently Rebecca behaved in a dignified manner on the gallows. (That is possibly the most horrible sentence ever.) This is one situation in which an overdeveloped sense of piety could be really helpful in facing an inescapable and terrible fate. On the other hand, it was religious fervor and superstition (one and the same in my book) that made the entire ugly episode possible. So. I guess if the faith that gets you hanged is the same faith that allows you to peacefully accept being hanged, it evens out, right? Wrong! And, I think I might throw up.

Interestingly, I am also related to some Putnams, but I don't know whether they're the same Putnams. Either way, surely most Putnams don't go around accusing people of witchcraft.

The Nurse homestead is now a tourist attraction.

That's weird.

On the upside, my great (x11 or something) grandmother was living in Massachussetts at the same time as the poet Anne Bradstreet, which is neat. They came to America from England within ten years of each other. As an upside though, that's pretty weak.

Meadow Croft

I've spent much of the past ten days touring extravagant old Long Island mansions and their equally extravagant gardens, which is just about my favorite thing to do ever. Therefore I took many hundreds of pictures with which I shall be overwhelming you in the next few posts.

We will start with the least extravagant and work our way up.

Meadow Croft was built in 1891, commissioned by John Ellis Roosevelt as a summer home for his family. He was an investment banker and spent most of his time in New York. John was Teddy Roosevelt's cousin and served as a legal advisor during his presidency. He isn't a very famous Roosevelt, and I did not take notes during our tour, so I can't tell you any more specifics. In general, he was a lover of all things new, especially if they were mechanical. He would have camped out in front of the Apple store for the first iPhone, bugs and glitches be damned! I think he was the first person on Long Island to own an automobile (but I might have made that up), and he was a big fan of bicycles, which we still newish at the time. He seems like the kind of guy who had a need for speed, if you know what I mean. He also had a swimming pool, and created canoeing pathways through the wetlands around his property.

The house is a Colonial Revival mansion built around a much older farmhouse. It is not, as mansions go, opulent. I'd love to show you a picture but I never took one of the front of the house. Durr. Here's the view from the enormous front porch.

As you can tell from the state of the grass, it had not rained in approximately six years. Naturally, it began to pour as we were leaving. That long driveway goes through a corridor of cattails, over a bridge, and leads out to the road. It is quite lovely, though if you meet another car going the opposite direction, you are out of luck.

There is a lovely flower garden, which possibly contains herbs and perhaps vegetables also. You can see the side of the house here, where the porch wraps around.

It's definitely more farmlike than grand-estate-like, although I suppose it might not be all the way restored to its original gradeur yet. My impression is that it was built a little too early to compete with the extraordinarily lavish places on the north shore where all the raging parties were held in the twenties. That, or John Roosevelt was not as insecure as, say, William Vanderbilt (whom we shall discuss later), and did not need to show off his enormous wealth in this particular setting.

Roosevelt's wife died of typhoid (I think), at this house (I think), long before he himself died (I think) in 1939. It seems like things kind of fell apart and the house wasn't really used for a while, and then it ended up in the hands of the county (I think). Clearly I really should have taken notes. Barney Loughlin, the son of the Roosevelt's caretaker, is 85 and still lives on the property. He runs Loughlin Vineyards, which is half a mile in back of the main house. Note the vines in the background of this badly-edited photo:

Hee-haw. My grandmother bought some white wine there. I liked it. And that is all I know about Meadow Croft.

I shall have pretty things to show you when I get back, even though 50% of my readers were with me when I took these photos.

Click on ze fleurs to see full-size.

These trees shall be my books. Literally.

I have nothing to say today, so here's more from Sonnenberg. I stopped to look at this weeping beech the other day, and saw that some people had carved their initials in it. And I thought, oh, how charmingly old-fashioned. Then I looked closer and realized the number of carvings sort of bordered on vandalism. Is that unromantic of me? Maybe so. But at a certain point, this just isn't good for the tree. The bark is not your canvas, sweethearts! It reminds me of that part in As You Like It when Rosalind reads aloud the poems that Orlando has been writing about her and posting on trees, and they're absolutely terrible, and Touchstone says, "Truly, the tree yields bad fruit." Once in a while Shakespeare makes a joke that I don't need the OED to understand.

All that having been said, whoever did this last one gets points for climbing. Or having go-go-gadget arms.

In Which Simon Makes a Terrible Error at the Grocery Store

Sometimes you're really preoccupied with finishing your great work of American fiction (snort), and all you want is to remain alive until you're done. So, when it comes to food, you just eat whatever's around until you have nothing left but your own arms and legs.

If you really, really cannot do without every last one of your limbs, you go to the store and wander around for ten minutes throwing things into your cart willy-nilly (sweet corn? yes! applesauce? sure! strawberry jam? why not!) disregarding whether or not they will actually create a meal.

In situations like this you are particularly vulnerable to buying new things that you've never cooked before, or even seen before. You are also particularly vulnerable to buying things you would never, ever, in a million years, put in your mouth.

Before I tell you what I bought, I must impress upon you that they LOOKED like vegetarian chicken nuggets. (It is another matter why I wanted vegetarian chicken nuggets in the first place. I have never wanted them before. I have never even wanted non-vegetarian ones.) Yes, there were clues. Such as the fact that the box said SOY-FREE in large letters. But it seems that I saw SOY and I disregarded the FREE.

Which is how it happened that I bought chicken nuggets made out of mushrooms.

I feel about mushrooms the same way I feel about inappropriate uses of bacon, except that my feelings are genuine. I joke about bacon, but mushrooms are not funny! They're slippery and slimy and look like slugs and have a dreadful texture and a funny taste and generally repulsive fungal properties that make them, in my opinion, inedible.

So you can what I said to myself when I happened to read this on the back of the box and realized I almost made mushroom nuggets for dinner:

MYCOPROTEIN?! PARDON? Now mushrooms have the ability to disguise themselves as other kinds of food? I ask you, what's next? Steak made out of marshmallows? Just because it's sculptable doesn't mean it's right!

I may try these, someday, when I have recovered from the shock, as part of a scientific experiment in the objective measurement of horror. But today I am sticking to my long grain and wild rice. Which I bought. For some reason. Even though I don't tend to like rice mixes. Honestly, sometimes I need a nanny.

Wandering Around Sonnenberg

It was really not smart of me to bring my camera on a blindingly sunny day without first learning how to adjust the light balance. Oops.

Delcious

A: We've ordered an appetizer.
I: What is it?
A: Bread.
I: And what are we putting on the bread?
A: Fat.

At this point I assumed something had been lost in translation, but we were indeed brought a bowl of lard. And it was good. Right on par with the squid ink risotto.

They're EVERYWHERE

My favorite part of this: Do not throw food-- the bear might demand more.

Polish bears don't even ask nicely, they DEMAND.

Greenhouses Galore

I have been volunteering as a gardener at what is officially named Sonnenberg Gardens & Mansion State Historic Park. Fancy! There are many lovely gardens, which I shall no doubt cover later, but my favorite part is the cluster of greenhouses just inside the admission booth. I am really enamored of Victorian greenhouses. These ones were built between 1903 and 1915, by the same company that built the New York Botanical Gardens. They are extremely charming.

How cheerful! Do you not want to just stick an armchair in here and read a book? Plus, check out that sweet ceiling fan that looks like it's from 1935. All this place needs is a jazz on a record player and someone named Jeeves to bring you a steady flow of cups of tea and/or gin and tonics.

But greenhouses aren't all fun and games! Sonnenberg's gardeners raise many if not a majority if not a vast majority of their own plants from seeds. I'm told there is much work done here in the winter.

There is also much work to be done in the summer, obviously. This is a sneak peak of the "head house," where all the pots and soil and watering cans and sinks are. My favorite spot in the whole place is this exact view, because it is what I see after I have just finished making things beautiful and washed the dirt off my hands and removed all thorns and splinters and am about to have a Fig Newton and go home. It smells like dirt and greenery, no one else is around, and in the next room a hidden radio is playing classical music. Perfect.

Frogge Pond

This water is ALGAL. Oh how glad I am that I know that word now.

Frogge blends in with pond scum so beautifully!

Look at those lovely sapphire eyes! Still would not kiss it, though.

Ghost Town

I went to Croatia last week and experienced many lovely things-- Islands full of peacocks, bars set into cliff sides (I assure you, there is no better way to watch the sunset over the sea), stalls of lavender, twisty-turny bus rides down the coast, a coffee on the steps of Diocletian's Palace, sea kayaking off the coast of Hvar, squid ink risotto, oysters, dancing to traditional Serbian folk music while dressed as a prostitute in Montenegro (the girls assured me I looked fabulous).

--What follows is a smattering of photos, mainly to appease Simon. And no, I have no photos of me dressed as a prostitute-- the obligatory pigeon would have covered up most of the black eyeliner anyway--










It was quite a trip. And when I returned to Rome on August 1st, it was empty. How can an entire city disappear overnight? And whenever I remark on this new silent city people go "just wait until Ferragosto". I threw that word into my little dictionary and here we go:

Considering I subsist on a diet of pizza and gelato, and those are the only stores still open, I'm guessing come August 15th, I am going to starve. Please send provisions...

Is it Morse Code for something?

I pass this sign about once a week.

If this makes sense to you, please comment and enlighten me. Because when I see an S followed by three dashes or symbols of some sort, a word I specifically do not think of is "site." But I don't know what else it could be intended to mean. And it isn't that some of the paint came off, because it says the exact same thing on the other side. And these people are not just stupid, because they planned ahead enough to use a lower-case d, having realized that a boxy uppercase D would have made the sign look like it read "CAMP S.-- WOOO," which would have been truly unintelligible. So. I feel I have exhausted all possibilities and I am stumped.