Nature – Page 11 – Birding Boomers

Return to Alaska (Part 1)

July 10, 2015joannie65354 Comments

It is hot…..and humid….and buggy……and I’m outside weeding in a flower bed filled with weeds and plants I love that have gotten totally out of control. I really don’t like to garden in July. It is just way too hot and I can come up with about two dozen good reasons not to be out there up to my elbows in dirt and weeds. Of course, I have one big reason to be there….the weeds are taking over the flower beds and I haven’t spent any quality time lately with my flowers. So I’m there and I’m getting it done, at least some of it, but my mind is elsewhere. My thoughts drift back a few weeks to Alaska where it is cool….well, it was downright cold some days and I shivered my way through that but, right now, sitting here sweating and scratching, I’m thinking how nice it was to be somewhere cool.

I have to admit, it was buggy up in Alaska too. Our favorite of all the bug jokes was the one about us coming to Alaska because we heard they had the world’s biggest mojitos only to find out they meant mosquitos. (It is always good to get a joke in somewhere in the blog…getting it in right at the beginning sort of takes the pressure off……now back to the trip.)

We had been thinking about going to Alaska for some time and it was certainly on the old bucket list so when it floated up to the top, we figured we might as well get to it. I have to say that any delays in planning the trip were of my own doing since I had way too many ideas on what we should do and how we should make the trip. You see, I had been there before and this would be a return trip for me and there were some things I missed seeing the first time I was there so I wanted to make sure I got to them on this trip. (That’s right – it is all about me!)

It is 1978 and I had been traveling for about eighteen hours with a five year old and I was dead tired and not in much mood for anything but a good meal and a soft bed. But it was getting close to midnight and I wasn’t there yet. I had merely made it to Fairbanks. Little did I know when my husband (then) picked me up at the airport that I had roughly another hundred miles of bad road to go before arriving at Delta Junction which is a junction – a wide spot in the road per some folks.

The town is known for being the terminus of the Alaska-Canadian (ALCAN) highway unless you side with the good folks of Fairbanks who say the road ends there. Delta Junction is also known for its location on the Tanana River and another river whose name I cannot recall. Finally, Delta Junction is the home of Fort Greely which is why I was there.

Before I go further down memory lane, let me take a short break to share something I did not learn the first time I went to Alaska. Okay, I might have learned it but somewhere along the line, I promptly forgot it. “Na” is an aboriginal (Athabascan?) word meaning “river” so adding “na” to the end of a word like “Tana” becomes “Tanana” which means Tana River (more or less). So the Chena is the Che River and the Nenana is the Nena River (again, more or less since I am not really schooled in native languages of Alaska). So, when I say, “Tanana River”, I am being totally redundant and saying, “Tana River River” but had I simply said, “Delta Junction is on the Tanana”, you might not have understood I was talking about a big ole river and you might actually have gone off in another direction and maybe thought it was a mountain or railroad or something.

Now, getting back to Fort Greely, it is situated such that you have beautiful views of Brooks Range (which are mountains and not rivers, of course) and the view from the kitchen of our lovely government quarters was of those beautiful mountains. And the view of the mountains was something I wanted to see again.

As you will surmise, I have digressed again. So, back to 1978, it is midnight and there is no midnight sun because it is February. In February in Alaska, you just get midnight dark for the most part….and cold. You get lots of cold in Alaska in February. I think it was something like 20 below that night and I had on way too few layers (I’m not sure I even knew about dressing in layers then) and my coat was way too small. I remember telling myself, “I have got to get a better coat or I will never survive this tour.” I remember that long drive to Delta Junction and I remember the northern lights dancing like some magical swaying curtain across the night sky. I particularly remember the lights dancing over the newly built Alaska Pipeline where it was shining silver steel ribbon suspended across the Tanana all sparkling color and silver reflected back from the frozen river below. I remember that it was breathtakingly beautiful.

It was this kind of experience I wanted again and that I wanted to share with my (now) husband. So I had lots of ideas about going to Alaska again and what to see and do. But Alaska is HUGE…I mean really BIG. They say you can set Alaska inside the continental US (i.e., lower 48) and Alaska will reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific. (Okay, that’s tip to tip if you lay it sideways and include all the islands. It would be difficult to do…. so just trust me that this was said to give you an idea of how big the 49^th state really is.)

The more I planned and budgeted and ciphered and figured and planned some more, the more I realized that maybe I couldn’t possibly do everything in one trip. It may be a once in a lifetime trip but you just have to whittle down the options available and do what you can. Now, isn’t that the way it is with most vacations? Ultimately, we settled on taking a cruise and land tour which would hit most of the items on my list in about 15 days. It wouldn’t get it all but it would cover a nice mix of things I (we) wanted to see and do.

Up front, I realized that we’d not be doing too much birding although I’d heard so many stories about all the birds to see in Alaska. But birding Alaska was going to need more thought and planning specifically to take advantage of the locations where birding is best….and off the main tourist routes, as it were. So, we decided to go with the basic tour this time and maybe plan a birding trip later in the future…..if possible. Of course, that wouldn’t stop us from looking for birds along the way anyway….which we did.

But I definitely had a few things in mind I definitely wanted to see and do.

ONE: I wanted to see Mount McKinley, or as it was always known to the natives, Denali, “the great one”.

In the two plus years I’d spent at Fort Greely, I had missed the opportunity to get to Denali National Park and to see Mount McKinley. Well, I actually got to see the mountain briefly from the air on a business trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks but I hadn’t gotten to see it “for real”. I mean a brief flyover really doesn’t give you time to really experience the moment. I’m not sure why I never got to Denali back in the 70’s. It was quite a distance to drive but no further than we drove on other trips we took while we lived there. We did get to the Yukon and to Matanuska Valley and to Anchorage and to Seward and to Valdez but for whatever reason we did not get to the area between Fairbanks and Anchorage or drive down the Parks Highway. If I had to guess at this point, we just ran out of time. The Army sent orders and the tour was over. It is the way it always is when you are stationed somewhere with the military…..you spend your time working and living there and get to be a tourist when you can slip a trip in here and there. It was the same in Germany. How do you spend over three years in Germany and not get to Paris? It happens. And it gives you plenty of reasons to try again someday.

So I was going back and I really wanted to see that mountain. I had some concerns about seeing Denali because it is summer and less than 30% of the people who visit Alaska in the summer get to see the mountain. It is just too high and is cloud covered most of the time. Winter is a different story – I’ve heard the view is clear as a bell and cold as well…..heck in the winter time. But, then again, not too many people (tourists, that is) visit Alaska in the winter time.

This time, I thought, I am going to see Denali. And I’m going to visit that National Park. Done. Discussion over. No doubt about it. It was going to happen. And it did. We were delighted with the views and amazed at the beauty of the mountain. We even took a helicopter ride (my first except for a medivac ride that I was told did not count as being a real helicopter ride) and so I got views of the mountain from the ground and, again, from the air. It was amazing. I might have said that already. I took tons of photos….and, like everyone else, said “oh, my gosh” and “awesome” and “cool” way too many times. The mountain was enormous and beautiful and, well, just amazing.

We also enjoyed our time at the National Park and saw all the things you’re supposed to see – Grizzlies, Dall Sheep, Moose, Ptarmigans, Caribou – all except wolves. Okay, we didn’t see wolves but, we saw plenty of Bald Eagles and Golden Eagles and lots of wildflowers. But we didn’t really enjoy going 50+ miles in a converted school bus…really, National Parks Service……if you’re going to make everyone ride your bus through the park, at least get a decent one and wash the windows each morning! (You ride an NPS bus so they can limit the number of visitors and vehicles in the park in order to protect the wilderness and animals. It is a good thing to do….I’m just saying, get a better more comfortable bus.)

TWO: I wanted to go to Glacier Bay National Park.

Pretty much the only way to do this is to do the cruise (take your pick, Princess, Holland, Carnival, etc.). Okay, I’m thinking you can fly or boat or maybe even try to hike into the park but that is going to take more time and more roughing it than I care to do so the cruise it is. You can always drive through Canada and over the mountains into Skagway and then get on a boat to see the Bay…but, again, more time and effort. I have to say the cruise lines have a bit of a monopoly going in making it easy to see Glacier Bay. The only problem is that I get seasick.

When I came back from Alaska in 1980, we took the Alaska Ferry. Great Ferry system and I loved the trip…but hated getting seasick. So, I spent about five days getting sick every time that ferry went through open waters. As long as we were in the inland waterways, I was fine but open water and ground swells laid me out. So I knew I would have some issues with this trip and I packed the Dramamine but I never expected gale force winds on our first day out as the ship crossed Alaska Bay and open waters.

The land tour had gone very well (another blog on another day) but the first twenty-four hours of the cruise were excruciating for me. And, being pill-phobic, I put off taking the Dramamine until it was too late. Ultimately, it hit and I got sick…..well, I had been queasy and nauseated the whole time but full force sea sickness did not hit until evening. I dare not gross you out with the details but I have to tell you about the HAZMAT team that came in to clean up the cabin. All my “sickness” had been in the bathroom but the cleaning team (gloves, masks, and the whole shebang) wiped down the whole cabin. Anything I might have touched had to be cleaned and disinfected. And, just to make sure it was all done properly, they did it again the next day. Of course, the next day, the ship was in the inland waters so there were no white caps or winds or rolling seas and I was perfectly fine but, no matter, the hazmat boys came back and wiped it all down again.

One more little note on my seasickness – we called room service for ginger ale and some saltines. I guess they just could not even consider just bringing a couple packs of crackers….they brought a tray with a plate filled with crackers……and utensils because I couldn’t possibly eat crackers without a fork, spoon, and knife!

But, at least the hazmat boys didn’t quarantine us and we were able to fully enjoy the trip through Glacier Bay and we got to see glaciers and more glaciers and scenery like you wouldn’t believe even existed.

And the glaciers were beautiful and way bigger than life and, well, dare I say it again, just amazing? I could have stayed there for several more hours watching Marjorie Glacier…..it wasn’t doing much, calving now and then, but even so, I could have sat there watching this blue wall of ice until past dark if I could have. (And we did get midnight sun here so dark would have been a good long time coming.)

THREE: I was determined, in spite of the potential for another bout of seasickness, to go whale watching.

And, what can I say but it turned out to be marvelous? We took the boat out of Juneau and had a great afternoon. We spent the morning at Mendenhall Glacier in what we thought was never ending rain. But, by afternoon and the time for the whale watching, the rain was mostly gone except for scattered showers. But the whales didn’t care about the rain so why should we? We were able to see Humpback Whales and Sea Lions and Dall’s Porpoises (no relation to the sheep), and Bald Eagles. And I did not get even a whimper of nausea.

And I would have liked for the boat to have gone on chasing those whales for hours but time ran out way too quickly. Just as an aside, the best way to find whales is to look for other whale watching boats…they seem to congregate once a whale or two is spotted. (Or, maybe that is how whales find humans when they go out human-watching.) We got one last “whale tale” before the boat turned and headed back into shore.

Mountains, whales, bears, moose…..we got a good sampling on our trip. And, yes, I will tell you more in later blogs. And, yes, I will admit that getting a second taste of Alaska does make me want to go back again. And, finally, yes, if I go back again, I would like to stay longer and do more roaming around on my own exploring the wilderness and looking for some of those birds I missed on this trip. I’d want to do it all……..as long as I can find places to stay with running water and hot showers and electricity and a warm comfortable bed to sleep in once my roaming is done each day.

Plant Sale at Paca House

May 16, 2015joannie65354 Comments

It’s spring and plant sales are popping up everywhere. And I love plant sales more than a hoarder loves yard sales. One of my favorite spring plant sales is at the Paca House and Gardens in Annapolis, Maryland. Really, what is not to like about a plant sale at a historical garden that you get to see without having to pay the usual entry fee? It has become a bit of an annual tradition for me and one of my gardening buddies and we pretty much turn it into an all day thing by lollygagging over lunch at a local haunt talking about what plants we bought and where we are going to plant them and so on and so on. And not to be left out, I’ve recruited my dear sweet husband to do all the driving and negotiating those tiny alley sized roads in downtown Annapolis. He just drops us off at the sale and then comes round to pick us up an hour or so later. We also let him buy lunch — it works out splendidly.

Never been to Paca House? Well, me neither – not actually. I’ve only seen the back of the place from the gardens. But I’m sure it is quite lovely inside the house and I’m sure I’ll go there one day but not this year. I’ve actually never seen the front of the house either since we always come in from the rear on East Street right by the Water Witch Fire Station #1 in Annapolis. And every year I take a photo of the Water Witch #1 and tell myself I will look this up on the internet and find out some more about a Water Witch Fire Station. And this year I did!

What I found out was that this is not a fire house anymore. It has been “re-purposed” into office space. Rats! What is the good of having a cool looking fire house when it is not used for a fire house anymore? Oh well, it once was one of three fire houses in Annapolis: Water Witch Company on East Street, Independent Fire Company No. 2 on Duke of Gloucester opposite City Hall, and Rescue Hose Company on West Street next to Loew’s Hotel. The three fire houses were consolidated into a new facility located on Taylor Avenue….so no more Water Witches….in Annapolis, that is. But there are Water Witches in Port Deposit/Conowingo and somewhere in Cecil County so all is not lost. Out there somewhere is a water witch just waiting to put out a fire or two. But knowing that doesn’t help me get to the bottom of why it is called a water witch rather than a pump house or a fire station in the first place.

I seem to recall something from my childhood about water witching being another name for dowsing and guys who would come out to your property with bent willow sticks to help find water. But I never heard them called water witches. But this is pretty much what I found out when I checked good old reliable (sometimes) Wikipedia for water witch. But it doesn’t tell me how a fire station became a water witch…..was it the job of our very first volunteer firemen to go out and find water? Of course, there is the obvious connection of fire trucks pumping water but I’m not sure that really explains it. On the other hand, I can just imagine a volunteer fireman walking around with a bent willow stick witching out a good spot to dig while the town burns down all around him. Oh well, if anyone knows, leave me a comment so I can stop wondering about it and get back to the gardens at the back of the Paca House, which, by the way, was probably established right about the time that old Water Witch #1 was founded so the estate was, no doubt, a big potential customer for the Water Witch in case of fires.

So William Paca House (to be precise) was built by the gentlemen for which it is named between 1763 and 1765 making it, as the brochure says, a beautiful example of a “Pre-Revolutionary War” home and garden. Now, aren’t we thankful that those dastardly British skipped Annapolis on their way to burn Baltimore during the War of 1812? Otherwise, we’d not have this example of the houses built prior to the war. As for William Paca – he is known hereabouts as being a signer of the Declaration of Independence as well as for being the Governor of Maryland for three terms.

The house is a Georgian mansion and I realized I wasn’t exactly sure what made it a Georgian mansion as opposed to say, a Federalist mansion. I’m not really up on architecture so I had to take a moment and look that up too. (Now, you’re wondering if I will ever get to the part about buying plants. Maybe not, but I promise to show you something of the garden as we go.) Turns out Georgian architecture refers to the “styles” that were current between the years 1720 to 1830. And you know why? Because those were the years when Kings George I, II, III, and IV ruled in England. So for a hundred years or so the King was named George and the architecture became known as Georgian. If you want to know more about Georgian architecture, look here. Essentially, the houses are simple 1-2 stories, kind of boxy, and very symmetrical with the front door in the center of the house, with rectangular windows capped with elaborate crowns and cornices with decorative moldings/dentilwork. I think maybe when the Levitt Brothers pared them down in size, dropped the fancy moldings and made them affordable for all Americans (certainly on the East Coast), lost the “mansion” part and became those “colonials” so popular in America today…built some years after the Revolutionary War, of course. For those of you who live around here but didn’t know, the Belair section of Bowie, MD was built by Levitt and Sons.….the Levitts didn’t just build Levittown, you know……they were building those houses everywhere.

And moving right back to the gardens: So my friend, Glo, and I grabbed our cardboard plant boxes (or whatever they are called) and started filling them with herbs and native plants. The plant sale area is laid out such that you get to spend some time looking at herbs and vegetables, then you walk up through the wall and into the bottom part of the garden and then back up the walkway and through the garden wall (it is a walled garden after all) and into the area where the rest of the plants – annuals and perennials – are laid out to be sold. So, on your way, you get to tour the garden. So, with our boxes about halfway full, we found a nice place to stow them giving us plenty of time to explore the two acre walled garden before tackling the annuals and perennials.

One thing I always notice about this garden is the pollarded and espaliered fruit trees. Pollarding does get my attention and I do find myself thinking that it is really akin to butchering the trees. The pruning technique is radical (to me) but has been used in Europe for many (hundreds of) years. I recall seeing trees that had been pollarded when we visited Amsterdam several years ago.

The trees lined the streets but looked more like huge sculpted tree menorahs than trees. I asked about the trees and was told they were mostly Linden Trees and would look lovely when the foliage grew back in spring. In this country, we see this process used on Crepe Myrtles – extreme pruning leaving the trees looking pretty horrible (to me) in spring. But the trees do seem to recover okay although they look like sticks and then sticks with powder puff leaf balls before they ever start looking like trees again. I will say that I do not pollard the Crepe Myrtles in my yard and they bloom just fine…..for those who would say the process means more blooms. Proponents of the technique say that it makes the trees live longer because they [the trees] are always having to recover and renew themselves and are never allowed to grow old [as trees go]. (You should read that sentence like you are a snobby hoity toity landscape designer who never deigns to actually get his hands dirty.) I’m not sure I buy that explanation but I do like the explanation that, in Europe, they do not have a problem with large tree limbs falling into power lines in those towns with pollarded trees during storms……because there are no large limbs to fall….now that makes sense.

At Paca House, there are two ancient figs that are pollarded (or appear to be) and are also trained against the brick garden wall. As it is early spring when the plant sales are conducted, I have never been able to see the figs with leaves. But the ancient-looking gnarled tree trunks are quite impressive even without the leaves.

Now, the apple trees on the other hand are trained and espaliered to make a low edging to the walkways. I have never seen this before and I do not know what the technique is except to call it espaliering….or, making short walls out of trees. In years past, I have seen the trees filled out and marveled at the effect. And, yes, I have seen the tiny knee-high trees (some peach but mostly apple) with lots of setting fruit so I have to assume they are very productive trees regardless of their height. In the last couple years, the garden appears to have been re-vamped completely and the little apple tree walls have been removed (I suppose they get too old and start dying out) and new trees have now been planted and are now in training. Just the thing to get me back next year so I can see how the trees have progressed.

There is also an apple tree archway that provides a covered entrance to another part of the garden that is pretty neat – no other way to describe it. It is just pretty neat to walk through an archway that is an apple tree or maybe several apple trees together. I like to imagine just taking a stroll in the garden and reaching up overhead and picking a little snack and you go from the vegetable garden to the topiary garden….find a bench….read a book….gardens can affect you that way.

The garden is really pretty formal with gigantic hollies pruned into perfect cones and a centrally placed circular herb and rose garden that should be lovely later in the year.

There is a side/kitchen garden comprised of maybe ten raised beds that appear to have been planted in but so far no little sprouts are showing this early in the year although the Rosemary and Lavender is growing like weeds…..err, maybe more like herbs.

If you stand just at the back of the house, there is a broad graveled walk that goes all the way to the summer house at the very back of the property. There is also a pond with a lovely arched bridge just before you reach the summer house (or folly as I would think of it).

But what always grabs my attention is the beautiful and very large Buckeye just to the right of the summer house. It is always in full bloom just in time for the plant sale each year. I fell in love with it the first year I went to the plant sale. I guess I had never really seen or noticed a Buckeye Tree before so didn’t realize they bloomed. When I asked about it, I was informed that the tree was a very special Buckeye – it was a cutting from a tree that was on George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, down near Alexandria, Virginia. I am not clear on whether or not the seedling was taken from a tree that George Washington actually planted or just one that is planted there today as being consistent with trees that George might have had on his estate. I think maybe the latter because I do not think Buckeyes live so long….but you never know. For want of a better name, the lady I asked just called it the George Washington Buckeye but I think it is really a Red Buckeye Tree.

Well, you know I had to have one….and you know they just happened to have a seedling on sale right there at the plant sale that very day….and you know I had to buy it right on the spot. What else could I do? I brought it home and potted it up – it wasn’t much more than a stick after all – and I nurtured it (sort of) for a couple years and when it got big enough (bigger than a stick), I planted it in the ground. It is doing splendidly and this year produced its first bloom – a beautiful red bloom just like I had seen on the mother tree. Not a single regret do I have in buying that tree…..my very own bit of history and connection to good ole George right in my front yard.

So, now we’ve circled the garden and it was time to get back to the good part – buying flowers. And, as it turns out, there’s not much to talk about for that part. They had mostly native plants and plants that might have been planted in gardens back in the 1700’s. I bought a couple more hollyhocks to replace the one I had bought last year. Since hollyhocks are biennials, last year’s plant is doing well and should bloom this year before dying out. The two new plants will grow this year and bloom next year. It’s a circular process that means I’ll have to keep putting in new hollyhocks each year to replace the ones that bloom and die. Not as good as perennials but better than annuals. It keeps a gardener digging in the dirt year after year after year.

I also got the herbs I had mentioned and some Swamp Milkweed in my never ending quest to attract butterflies and, specifically, Monarchs to my flowerbeds. And a little Thyme and Bronze Fennel (love that color). I did not get Rosemary this year – just haven’t had luck with it in the past. But I did get a Cardoon plant to try…..it sounds so Madagascar so why not? And then there’s the Hyacinth bean vine for the trellis in the Hosta bed and a new little lemon colored miniature Hosta and a Moonflower vine for a hanging pot for the deck and……well, you get the gist of it, I filled my box so the good folks at the Paca House got their money’s worth out of me….til next year, that is. (Oh, in case you’re wondering, the box was full…..I just forgot to get a picture before some of the plants were planted.)