October 28, 2018 Our trip east

Welcome to pictures from our trip east. We came home last Sunday.

There was so much to see. There is all this to share.

We are back in Iowa and will tell you about the garden next week.

This is Chincoteague, Virginia on a calm beautiful day in mid October, 2018. This is where we have gone every year since 1976. Chincoteague is a town on Chincoteague Island. It is located just off the coast, on a little two county part of Virginia which is east of the Chesapeake Bay, over there by Delaware. My father was born there in 1921. In fact we stay in the house and indeed the room where he was born. It is kind of special.

Between Chincoteague and the big and sometimes angry Atlantic Ocean is another island, called Assateague. It is the barrier island that protects Chincoteague from the vagaries of the ocean, hurricanes and nor'easters both.

As we now visit in the fall, sometimes we dodge those storms. This year there could have been the remnants of Hurricane Michael. It turned out it was not much by the time it got there.

Two years ago there was a storm out to sea. You can certainly tell the difference.

Our national government maintains a park presence on Assateague. They do a decent job. Yet I wish we lived in a country that took pride in its parks and places of wonder. Taking pride means being prepared to spend money, rather than letting corporations... I will stop that. It must be the time of year.

The beach was wonderful. One day we were over their without our coats, enjoying the wind and the sun, listening to the gulls, and smelling the salt marsh.
I particularly like the goldenrod on the dunes.

This was really amazing. If you look closely you will see circles around the clumps of grass. We believe these were made by the tips of the grass being bent over by the wind and rain and dragging around like a compass. (Do you remember a compass?) We saw those circles on quite a number of these little patches of grass.

October is Monarch butterfly migration time. Think about those tiny things going thousands of miles twice each year. We have seen quite a few of them the last two years. They particularly like the goldenrod. (I will admit there is not that much competition if you were looking for flowers.)
This was a particularly large and compact clump of goldenrod. It was along the causeway to the beach. We would go past several times each day. There it was, with its butterflies every time.

This is a clump of trees about a half mile from the beach. You can see the eagles nest in the tree on the right. The nest is enormous. The park service has a webcam up in the tree, for closeups of the eagles. They did not seem to be in residence the days we were there. I did see a pair of them high in the sky early one morning.

There are birds. The wildlife refuge (on Assateague) is on the eastern migration pattern for many birds each year. Snow geese are suppose to stay in quantity during the winter.

You might notice that in this picture the sky is a little out of focus. The birds, at least the white one in the center right, is rather sharp.

Well, if you did not figure it out, the picture above is upside down. The one on the right is reality.

One thing that  is really amazing about Chincoteague is that there are wonderful roses in October.  Several people who live there spend a good deal of their time tending roses. One group of perhaps 100 big plants is maintained by one of the hotels along the waterfront.

These are nicer roses than we have ever seen even in the professional gardens, such as Longwood.

I do not grow roses. I do understand how one can be drawn into this world. I also know how very much work they take.

Enjoy

More

And lastly.

Longwood

The Longwood Gardens is located about 30 miles east of Philadelphia, and about 60 miles north of Baltimore. It took us about three hours to get there from Chincoteague.
Longwood is the former estate of Pierre Dupont. He ran the chemical company and General Motors at the same time, back when rich people were learning how to be rich. I was going to say that rich people had manners, but I think that might have been a myth.
Dupont bought the place in 1906. He bought the place, it is said, to save the trees. Many of the trees had been planted by some previous rich person, over the previous 150 years. They apparently were about to be cut down.  So Dupont bought it, as sort of his guest estate. We visited the house at the Gardens where he would stay when he was there. We read about him. At some previous place he had hired a landscape person. He did not like the product. So he is said to have designed the Longwood Gardens himself.

Here is the link to the wikipedia article on Longwood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwood_Gardens

We got there late in the day on Thursday. The plan was to go to the gardens the next morning. However the evening was available. I looked on the website and discovered that there was a light show at the main fountains at the gardens. For the cost of 1.5 tickets we could go to the night light show and then go to the gardens in the morning. So we went. It was a first for us.
I recommend it. (Please note that the show is not available every night.
Here are a few videos. I am still testing the capacity of videos that I can place on the blog. These that are a little longer than 30 seconds are about the limit. They do give you a good feel for the show, which lasted about 30 minutes. We understand that on special occasions in the summer they add fireworks.

The next morning was a clear cool morning. There had not yet been a frost/freeze so some things were still good.
Just as I said I did not grow roses, I must tell you I do not grow dahlias. The really do need sun, and some staking. Well Longwood and its 1000 acres has plenty of sun and staff to do the staking.  They had dahlias.

Here is a representative group. As you can see there were many kinds.
Remembering the waterlilies I will give you big pictures.





Whew! Pretty good don't you think?
Let me put these two pictures together for comparison. Which would you prefer? I find it hard to choose.



Back on the farm... No, this is still Longwood.  One year we came to the Garden just when they were planting bulbs. They were planting many bulbs. This year we got to the bulb area when the workers were at lunch. It was still fun to watch the thousands of bulbs being ready. I do wonder what the M stands for.

I really like this picture. I think the bigger bulbs are tulips. But then there are so many more of those little bulbs, to go in around the tulips. Once the bulbs are laid out like that, how do they get planted? I assume from the outside in.

The formations were good. Once again I think those in back are tulips. There are big bulbs scattered in the part of the bed closer to the camera. I think those might be big allium.

Finally we got to the Conservatory. Inside can be good in the fall, particularly if the weather has gotten cold, or rainy, or cold and rainy.
We had a nice day.
They had a theme this year with the paper balls.
First they were outside.

I liked this picture of the door. You can see the outside while balls reflected in the glass. The green and yellow balls are inside. Julia's reflection was also in there somewhere, but it is hard to see.

The colored paper balls were throughout the place. They must have been the theme for this year.

This was in the main entrance area. There actually is something grand about a conservatory so big that it can have perfect green grass there in the center.
Since it is October the mums are coming.

Off the main entrance square is the dance floor, which gets covered with water from time to time for maximum reflection.

From the main area there are corridors to little rooms or other corridors. This was an orchid room.

     After you visit several indoor rooms at the Conservatory you get to an interior courtyard. In that courtyard is one of the real treats of Longwood in the fall. There is the wonderful waterlily garden.
      How do they do it as the temperature cools in the fall? You guessed it. They heat the water.
But why not? The results are worth the visit.

I was going to do that text-next-to-each-picture thing. I decided that full screen was really what you would want  to see.

I really love the patterns on these leaves.










The shapes of the leaves continues as a theme.




These are tiny waterlilies.





The colors can be amazing.





Back inside you get to another room.

After roses and dahlias and waterlilies, now you get some hibiscus.

And all in one room.

Here are just a few other more random pictures.

This is a single chrysanthemum plant. While the work and the obsession is off the charts, the end product is truly amazing.

The flowers were not quite open when we were there.

This was perhaps the strangest flower we saw that day. I often will take a picture of the name tag, I did not do that this time. I guess it will remain a mystery.

Art Museum

The final group of pictures from our trip were taken the last day, in Baltimore. We now try to stop every time at the American Museum of Visionary Art. As I mentioned last week we do recommend not trying to get there with Google maps during the downtown marathon. We hope this was a one-time coincidence.

Somewhere I found this description of "Visionary Art" as the term is used at the Museum.
This is art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an intimate personal vision that reveals foremost in the creative act itself.

In one of the hallways at the museum, near the entrance, was this case of pez dispensers.
For those of you who collect these things, and you know who you are, this display was made for you.

The museum has some things on permanent display. Other artists were new to us. Here is the introduction to the Reverend Albert Lee Wagner.

This picture below was impressive. The photograph does not give you any idea of the size of the actual work. It is the parting of the Red Sea, in case you are wondering.

Many of the artists faced challenges during their lives.

Here was one of her crochet pieces.

This was a painting by J.J. Cromer.

This was the Lusitania...made from toothpicks. It is 15 feet long, or 194,000 toothpicks.

This haunting sculpture was done in an asylum by a person who never was identified. It was made from a single log.

And then we came home.
We are back at work, and Iowa seems much the same.

Here is Julia's recipe.

Banana Raita

Here is the link to the other blog with all of Julia's recipes.

https://mearskitchen.wordpress.com/

Raita is, I believe, intended  (in Indian cuisine) to be a cooling side dish when one is eating hot curry. Raita involves yogurt, and we are told that milk products cut the burn of hot food. My first acquaintance with Indian cooking came from the Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas, and there are several recipes for raita in her cookbook. This raita features bananas, and we serve it with curry, although not of necessity. Our curries are not fiery enough to require the soothing of milk products. But this is a good side dish, or even a sort-of dessert at the end of a meal. And it is another way to deal with the periodic problem of too many bananas.

Here are the ingredients: 2 cups of mashed bananas, scallions (I had about 1/3 cup, chopped), butter, salt, cayenne pepper, cumin seed, cinnamon, mustard seed (not pictured), a kind of black sesame seed called kalonji and honey. And of course, yogurt.

After mashing the bananas and slicing up the scallions, I measured all the spices into a little bowl: 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seed, 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon black sesame seeds.

You could use ground mustard or ground cumin instead of whole. And white sesame seeds instead of black. All good.

I melted 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet and added both the scallions and the spice mix. I stirred and cooked these things over medium to medium-high heat for just a few minutes. When you can smell the spices, you're there.

I added the 2 cups of mashed bananas and stirred everything together (still on medium-ish heat) until the mixture was bubbly. Then I stirred in 1 tablespoon of honey and that was that.

I put the banana mixture into a bowl and stuck it into the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to cool off a bit.

We served the raita with potato curry, cauliflower curry, some homemade peach chutney and rice. And a green salad. The raita was in one bowl, and the yogurt to go with it was in another bowl. You can also mix the yogurt in with the banana mixture before serving. For 2 cups of banana mixture, I would mix in 2 cups of yogurt.

As I said, we served them separately. One scoop of yogurt in the bottom of the dish followed by one scoop of banana raita. It is sweet (but not too sweet) and spicy (but not too spicy) with some tang from the yogurt.

Leftovers are good for breakfast.

Odds and ends

This little clump of fall crocuses continued all week. There must be a sizable group of these bulbs all together at this point. Some members have been blooming for several weeks.
I love the contrast between the vivid flowers and their stamen, and the surrounding background.

Compare that with this cropped picture. I expect you will see this in the winter picture contest.

That is it for this week. I hope you have had time to enjoy all of this. There was a lot. But as the landscape outside reverts to brown and gray, the color and wonder of flowers should warm you up a little.
Better times are coming.
Philip