A One-Two Punch for the East Coast: Punch #1, the Earthquake

On August 23, as most people heard, there was a hefty but not catastrophic earthquake centered in Virginia, felt all the way up and down the eastern seaboard. Here in Vermont, many hundreds of miles north, we had the odd experience of hearing it.

Hubby and I were a couple hours into a paddling trip down a 14-mile segment of the Battenkill River between Arlington, VT, and Shushan, NY, which placed us between the southern Green Mountains / Taconic Hills and the Hudson Valley, snaking through the Battenkill's own river valley. Although the river loosely follows VT/NY Route 313, there is no regular rumbling of traffic, so things in general are very quiet, with just the chuckling water providing ambient noise. Recent rains had the river cantering along at 5+ mph, but there are no big rapids or cascades, so the sound level is essentially constant. A light westerly breeze stirred the foliage but that, too, was a low-level, susurrant background noise.

Weather was bright sun with big puffy clouds, occasionally darkening as a larger, possibly threatening cloud crossed the sun, but with low humidity and no storms forecast. Now and then between the clouds we saw high silver jet contrails but no low-flying aircraft, either private or on approach to airports or air bases (none in area), making for a dramatically fair-weather summer sky.

So, given all that, we were surprised to hear what at first sounded like a distant growling thunder; but it was prolonged and got louder, stronger, sounding at first like a commercial jet flying too low for the contrails we'd seen; but then started to sound like a military jet flying way too low on afterburners, yet not moving through space; it was stationary behind us, too low altogether to be a plane, and it stopped abruptly instead of fading off like a passing craft would. Conversely, it lacked the explosive quality of either thunder or something blowing up in the distance, or violent impact like an auto or train wreck. It lasted, I don't know, somewhere in the 10-20 seconds range, enough to get us looking over our shoulders and up in the sky and suggesting then dismissing the above explanations.

Ultimately my husband quipped, "Get ready for a tsumani!" since it reminded him of earthquakes. I felt kinda the same way. Then we forgot about it as the next section of quickwater came up and required our attention.

At the time of the noise, we were on one of the "rest" sections of the river, where the surface is still lively but you don't have to maneuver, can just float along side by side and talk or gaze around.

At end of day, when we returned to the outfitter's shop (where they provide shuttle service for paddlers), the owner greeted us at the door with "Did you hear the earthquake?" Perhaps she said, "Did you hear about the earthquake" -- unclear in the excited babble among us that followed. For all the rest of the day we looked up information about it online, talked about it with everyone, trying to understand how something so far away could have been audible.

We did not take a time note of when we heard the noise, but in reconstructing the incident realized it was near the time of the reported quake in Virginia. Could we have heard an air release through an existing fissure? An earth burp?

That's my guess. There's a phenomenon in Connecticut called the "Moodus noises" where the earth makes rumbling sounds and occasionally eerie ones in response to minor seismic activity. Since the eastern seaboard, especially the Appalachian chain, is networked with small, constantly busy movement at the micro level, it seems credible to me that we could have heard the quake as its tremors zipped all the way to Quebec.

At least, it's the only explanation that fits the nature and approximate timing of the noise.

The closest similar experience was two years ago, when a high-altitude beaver dam gave way after big rains and dumped a gazillion gallons of water down 600 feet, to carve a new canyon in the mountainside and wipe out the main road in our area. We live perhaps 2-3 miles away as the crow flies, and at the same time the deluge occurred (unbenownst to us), we suddenly heard a strange, not-quite-thunder roar out of a perfectly clear sky that lasted too many seconds. Turns out it was the sound of many tons of rock, water, and broken trees hurtling down the other side of the hill.

A bit creepy, on one hand, but fascinating and exciting, on the other.

A berry good year

Why some garden crops come in well and others don’t remains a mystery to me. Twelve years into gardening now, I feel that I’ve learned nothing, since every year is completely different. The obvious factors are varieties planted and a season’s worth of weather. Aside from that, it’s the same routine in the same ground year after year, with crapshoot results.

This year started with yet another cold, wet spring, but apparently which days that combo hits makes a huge difference. One year, it interfered with pollination so the wild mast crop (nuts and berries) was a disaster, which was reflected in our domestic berry patch. Another year, there was a shortage of bees. This year, the mushy start must have given plants what they needed, especially since hot dry weather soon followed—so dry, I used up both rain barrels in April just from watering the newly planted annuals and vegetables. Usually that doesn’t happen until August.

For the rest of the season, we had more hot and dry than wet, with rain coming just in the nick of time to keep the garden watered. And boy, did it grow! Weak and stunted veggy transplants turned into lush producers. I expect too many tomatoes this year, after a successive years of losing them to disease, pests, and wrong variety/wrong soil mixtures. But the award winner was the berry patch, which produced so extravagantly, we had to buy a stand-alone freezer to accommodate the abundance.

We got a good load of strawberries, too, and blueberries are still coming, though I’ve dropped the ball in getting them picked. This year we focused on keeping pace with the raspberries, and for once caught the entire crop. Briefly, we considered selling the extra, but after doing the math decided not to. The extra cash we might earn would be canceled by purchasing containers suitable for transporting and selling them to the public (we don’t have road frontage so can’t set up a little farmstand), plus fuel for getting back and forth to farmers markets, and paying for vendor space therein. This equation doesn’t factor in our time: 1-2 hours per person per day for 3-4 weeks. As well, it’s one thing to have 30 pounds of berries; it’s another to salvage 10-15 pounds of perfect ones to present to the world, and keeping them undamaged during handling.

That calculating exercise gave me an idea of what farmers must go through, year in and year out, to stay afloat. It also highlighted the different meanings of “assets.” Here we are, afloat in food, for which we spend more than we save in order to grow, and must spend much more in order to generate income from it. What’s wrong with that picture?

What’s right for us is that the rapsberries and blueberries are free. The bushes were planted decades ago by some previous homeowner and thrived from neglect. There’s also an apple tree, normally a scraggly remnant, but this year because of the just-right conditions it set fruit so heavily that I now have an apple problem, because after fruiting things turned so dry that it’s been shedding apples since May, several dozen a day, to the point of making the ground hazardous to walk across. So far I have picked up two wheelbarrows’ worth of apples to compost and a bushel’s worth of keepers. Guess it’s time to learn how to make applesauce, or to bake a slew of apple pies.

At least we now have a freezer to store the extra in, and will be enjoying fresh-grown, pesticide-free fruit all year.

Backyard butchery

Every time I mow the lawn, I feel like a mass murderer. Because we don't do the poison thing to create a greensward as perfect as a golf course, our lawn is chock-full of plants other than grass, many of which bloom -- and many of which I recognize as traditional edible and medicinal wildflowers. All of which feed bees, butterflies, and bugs, if not ourselves, and give shelter to snakes and toads.

For reasons I don't understand, most of those critters don't hear or feel the racket of the approaching mower and fail to get out of the way before it ravages through. I avoid anything I see but am often too late. It breaks my heart and pounds my environmental conscience every time.

You'd think that if I had an environmental conscience I either wouldn't mow at all or would use something besides fossil-fuel-consuming, air-polluting power mowers (one lawn tractor, one walk-behind). But country living has its own rules, and we live in a continual thrust and parry with nature that nobody wins. At best, we maintain an armed truce.

"Lawn" at our place means 2+ acres of open or oddly configured space surrounding a large house with four entrances and three driveways that must be kept open; two outbuildings, three gardens, massive woodpiles, parts vehicles, and materials storage that all must remain accessible by foot or vehicle. It's not the sort of space you putter through with a hand pushmower. (Believe me, I tried!)

Sure, we could wade around up to our armpits in growth and become tick magnets and be pestered intolerably by mosquitoes and biting flies. The moat of lawn keeps them to manageable levels in our living area, and also constrains predators: the cats can't ambush the birds from cover, and neither can the the foxes, coyotes, and fishers ambush the cats.

Then there's the neighborhood factor. Though nowhere near as bad here as in suburban areas, social or zoning pressure escalates when you leave the visible portion of your homestead in scruffy shape. This may change over time but remains an issue, because ungroomed yards make one's place look unoccupied or impoverished or just low-class. Most of us don't want to give that impression to the world.

We compromise by leaving lots of edges, and beyond the utility part of the property let everything run wild. This location backs up to other large parcels so a wildlife corridor remains, including diverse habitat for mammals, birds, and insects. So we feel free to maintain our piece of habitat within it.

When the day comes that disposable income allows replacing the mowers with more energy-efficient or alternative models, using "green" lubricants, and the like, we'll switch to less environmentally harsh tools. Until then, we mow high, not often enough, and cut interesting swaths around stands of wildflowers as they spring up -- and hit the brakes when we see small critters in the grass.

Pagan holiday

It saddens me that the old nature-based holidays have been replaced by institutional ones, at least in this country in this era. I would much rather celebrate the seasons than gods or anniversaries of people and events, because those seasons are intensely real and current, whereas those people and events are long past or, in the case of gods, debatable.

Four holidays exist on my personal calendar: two solstices and two equinoxes, which divide the year into birth, growth, maturity, and decline -- just like life. This cycle is universal, unlike institutional holidays. The important people, gods, and events in, say, China, have nothing to do with same in the United States. How can we ever hope for universal peace if we have nothing in common to celebrate?

Regardless, right now is the three-day window that comprises my personal high holy day, the summer solstice. Fifteen-and-a-half official hours of daylight at this location; unofficially, more like 17 hours -- 4:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. -- if you count being able to see while outdoors. I’ve often been tempted to move farther north to enjoy the spectacularly long days that go with higher latitudes; however, those are balanced by spectacularly long nights, so I remain in place. For someone who measures hours of light and darkness all year long, it would be the wrong plan to seek out more darkness!

Lacking the ancient rituals that went with pagan holidays, I don’t do anything specific for this one. It would be nice to have a big bonfire or a bacchanal or some sort of celebration with fellow light-worshipers. There aren’t too many around here, so I satisfy myself by just being as awake and aware as possible, spending as much time outdoors or looking out the windows as possible, and startling people by wishing them Happy Solstice. It won’t come around for another year; meanwhile, we begin the long slide back toward 9 hours of daylight.

The decrease will become noticeable by August. The plants seem to know this, timing their birth, growth, maturity, and decline around the equinoxes and solstices. It wasn’t until we moved to Vermont that I caught a real sense solstice-as-climax. Garden perennials that grow in my home turf of Connecticut break out 1-3 weeks later here but have caught up by this date in a spurt that makes the air crackle with energy, as if the solstice is the target they all share. Up north, it’s probably so accelerated that you can see the growth if you sit still and watch. Here, you notice it the next morning, when something you observed 24 hours ago is suddenly 2 inches taller.

Then there are the birds, the sky, the colors, the position of sun and moon, and all the different indicators of the season. This year we’ve been fortunate in having good weather concurrent with the holiday, making it doubly special. I’ve been making sure to be up at 4:30 and not in bed before 9:30 so I can enjoy every minute of it!

Shut the heck up, will ya?

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers normally summer in our region, though we don't get them in the yard every year. Usually they will blow in like a brass band (belying their quiet and retiring description in the field guides), well after the other migratory birds have settled in for the season; then disappear. Occasionally we'll see holes they leave behind, drilled precisely into a live tree trunk in parallel rows, from whence they get sap.

This year, the sapsuckers arrived earlier than usual, but they sneaked in instead of announcing themselves, blending in with our year-round fleet of downy and hairy woodpeckers. For the past week, however, two males have been disputing territory, first by chasing each other around and around tree trunks or through the canopy, chattering and shrieking, then by staging a hammering competition on our metal roof.

One of them figured out that the roof over the open shed attached to the house outside the kitchen gives reverberates excellently (which we learned years ago from falling pinecones). The other one -- or is it the same one switching off? -- likes a panel on the diagonally opposite corner, right outside the bedroom. He starts there between 4:45 and 5:15 a.m.

Yikes! That wakes you up with a jolt with no hope of returning to sleep. Good thing we normally get up early!

The hammering goes on at intervals all day like spurts from a machine gun against a hollow metal target, so loud it drowns out conversation anywhere near. It was a hot week so we had the windows open, and while working could hear his claws screeching down the metal like fingernails on the blackboard as gravity interrupted his show. It was starting to get reeeeeeeally annoying -- then, abruptly, the contest was over and the birds vanished. I'm hoping he/they found a mate and they're off making baby sapsuckers.

Meanwhile, our normal backyard percussionist, the ruffed grouse, hasn't been seen nor heard from this year. He used to sit on the rock wall bounding the back yard in plain sight and drum away with his wings. (My spouse used to think it was somebody in the area unable to get a lawn mower started who refused to give up.) This went on every spring for 12 of our 13 years here. This year I heard it faintly in the distance once at the beginning of the season, and flushed a grouse from the roadside bushes a few weeks later when taking a walk, but nothing else.

Why the change?

We'll never know, just as we'll never know why the sapsucker chose this year to beat his head against our roof, or why a robin attacked his reflection in the living room window for weeks, 2 or 3 successive years, then went away.

Things should be getting quiet soon as all the seasonal guests hunker down to brood eggs and raise fledglings. Then it will get busy again when an assortment of half-finished birds emerges to try out their wings and their voices before the season turns again.

Book review: Whole Earth Discipline

Outside, the yard and garden are burgeoning. Inside, reading and writing go on. I just read a book about the planet that thrilled me -- Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto, by Stewart Brand -- and reviewed it on the New York Journal of Books. Here is the link:

http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/whole-earth-discipline-ecopragmatist-manifesto

Book review: Vegetable Gardening in the North

At last—a gardening book germane to my reality!

And just in time for planting season here in the Northeast USA. Author Doug Green hails from Canada, our climatic neighbor, and presents in one concise e-book everything northerners need to know about growing vegetables. I read the book in one sitting and couldn’t wait to get started. But, true to our location, the weather disagreed with the calendar, so all I could do was prepare.

Doug maintains the popular Doug Green’s Garden website, newsletter, and blog (www.douggreensgarden.com), and publishes a steady stream of articles and e-books. Like most gardening gurus, he espouses certain horticultural techniques; but unlike most gurus, he also has a “whatever works” philosophy that encourages experimentation and enjoyment. In fact, his only two rules are (1) gardening is supposed to be fun and (2) it isn’t rocket science.

The feature I most appreciate in the book is his Rules of Thumb. I’m an unscientific gardener, and extremely lazy, so I look for basics and sloppily follow them. Doug provides useful, reliable guidelines that allow individual approaches while still leading to good results. He’s also one of the few pros who share my attitude about Zone Maps, which so many take as gospel, and which for so many years led me to planting the wrong things at the wrong times and thinking that gardening really is rocket science.

“A zone map is a guideline,” says Doug. “It isn’t a ‘rule’ to be carved in stone. That pretty much sums it up. These areas are more relevant to growing perennials and woody plants than they are to growing vegetables. . . . The important thing to understand is that the colder your zone (the lower your number), the shorter your growing season”—followed by information I’ve been seeking for 13 years: “For every zone colder than 4, wait a week [for planting]. For every zone warmer than 5, advance the date by a week.”

Thank you!

Doug also understands and addresses the ultimate gardening bugbear: microclimates. “Gardeners have more micro-zones than we have politicians,” he remarks, tongue in cheek, then provides tips on how to maximize microclimates to your (and the plants’) benefit.

The book emphasizes common sense and adaptability, general in the first half and specific in the second, with useful details about cultivating a broad range of vegetables. He writes it all in a friendly, shoot-from-the-hip voice that covers all bases without drowning you in data. Again, this is the right style for me, who just wants a few reliable guidelines to follow, plus a fingertip resource when I need particulars about my vegetables of choice.

Vegetable Gardening in the North includes tricks for dealing with insect and animal pests, as well as a straightforward glossary. In sum, I can throw away the library of gardening books I’ve amassed (and given up on), and just refer to this one for the rest of my northern life.