Living Rocks, Mighty Chains

In 1938 Harvey Fite bought an unused bluestone quarry in Saugerties, New York near the Hudson River. He wanted it for a supply of stones for his sculpting work. He was the director of Fine Arts at Bard College nearby, and he was a sculptor, although he got there after early attempts at law school, the seminary and a few other occupations, none of which took hold until he discovered he could sculpt.

About the same time in the late 1930s he went on an expedition to Honduras and was awed by the dry stone stacked walls built by the Mayans. He came home, built a house next to the lip of the quarry and began cutting, moving, stacking and fitting rocks into place using no mortar.

Bluestone is not blue -- it's rust colored and slate gray and charcoal. Look at how the walls of the quarry show exactly where the stones want to be split into flat pieces for stacking.

He used only hand tools to break and cut the rocks.

At first his idea was to build rock platforms to display the statues he had carved. But after a few years he realized that the quarry itself was the sculpture, and the Adirondack mountains in the distance called for something of much greater scale.

So he moved his carved statues and began building giant ramps and walls and deep pools out of the quarry rock. He kept building. And kept building. And kept building.

Over 37 years he built the world's largest sculpture measured by surface area. He just kept adding walls and stone alleys and crevasses and steps. He quarried, cut, and stacked every single stone by hand by himself. He used no power tools. He did it alone. Each stone, individually placed.

The main quarry is an undulating, twisting structure capped with a 9 ton obelisk. He found this stone in a stream and winched it into place using ancient Egyptian pulley techniques (there's a grainy black and white film of it at the visitor center). The winding ramps and stepped pits cover several acres.

Then you wander away into the woods around the quarry and the walls just keep going and going and going. In all there are over six acres of stone structures -- the original quarry and the long alleys of walls winding through the woods.

There are steps and stone seats all along the woodland walls inviting you to sit or to climb up a slope. Some walls are unfinished, ending in rubble where unstacked stones lay ready to be picked up and fitted someday to keep the wall going.

Everywhere it looked like the rocks, which were strewn about in mossy stone piles in the woods, had tumbled down the slope and self assembled into fitted walls. I think that was the sculptor's intent, that it should look like the living rocks built this themselves by just falling into place.

As people began viewing the immensity of the structure being built, they asked Harvey Fite what he called it, and he finally came up with Opus 40 -- he said when he hit the 40 year mark it would be finished. After 40 years his masterpiece would be done.

He did not get there. It is still unfinished. At the age of 72, after 37 years of herculean work on his great opus, he died in the quarry, in a catastrophic accident when his riding lawnmower stuck in forward gear and catapulted him over the front edge of the quarry and onto the rocks below.

Deep quarries are dangerous places and walking the ramps of the main sculpture was unnerving -- there are no rails, and the drop offs are 12 feet or more. The slopes are steep and the footing is uneven over the rocks.

But kids are encouraged to clamber over the ramps and walls, and to build cairns out of scrap stones.
The whole place is a kid's delight with hidden pools, tiny alleys, and mysterious crevices you can climb into. Picnics are encouraged.

The intimacy of the spaces surprised me. I was prepared for grand scale and giant proportions and was not disappointed. But it was the small details that amazed me.

Like all great sculptors, Harvey Fite wanted us to see the living spirit in the rock. Like the impression he gave of rock piles in the woods tumbling down on their own to form tidy walls, he built areas in the quarry where the wall gradually became cut stone and then became fitted pieces. Here's a picture of how he did that:

Details like that are everywhere and all the hidden spaces invite lingering. I could have spent hours peeking into deep alleys and discovering little details. But the day was humid, it was noon and the sun was high. And climbing up and over so much rock is surprisingly hard on the legs.

So we took a last look at this amazing structure and the beautiful mountains around it and headed home.

To get back home we had to cross the mighty mighty Hudson. Here's a shot of it, right at the spot where American revolutionaries stretched a big iron chain across the river to keep British ships from going upriver. There were several places up and down the Hudson where this tactic was used in 1776, including at West Point. This picture is where Ft. Montgomery was located, and apparently the mighty chain obstacle worked pretty well.

Moving a Few Plants Around

Sunday June 7 was a top ten day. Dry, cool, breezy and abundantly sunny. Just a really lovely late spring day.

The light was beautiful, the air was fresh and the day was perfect.

I took advantage of the cool weather and made some moves that involved digging and hauling and hacking.

I took out the bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) at the back of Meadow's Edge. It's a pretty plant, and in summer it is leafy and screens the weeds behind this garden. But it leafs out so very late, and looks ratty until it does. It gets such winter damage and it just wasn't making me happy. Out.

The purpleleaf sand cherry that was hidden behind the viburnum in Meadow's Edge was dug up (oomph) and moved just a few feet to the spot where the bayberry had been. It is now visible from the patio. Big improvement.

It's a bit misshapen from being crammed in behind the viburnum, but it will fill out.

I like the way its wine colored shimmery foliage is an echo of the 'Forest Pansy' redbud's leaves. The redbud is alive, despite my misgivings this spring, and once I cut away all the winterkilled branches (about third of the total), it looks okay, although much smaller than last year.

Then I moved some 'Husker's Red' penstemons to the spot next to the sand cherry. A nice complement with its red tinged foliage.

Then Jim and I dug out the rest of the 'Bloodgood' maple stump. What a job. The John Deere riding mower had to be called into service. We chopped off all the roots we could get to, then tied a cord to the stump and attached it to the John Deere. We rocked the tractor back and forth and eventually loosened the stump enough to wrangle it out. It took a couple hours and Jim's back is toast.

I dug up the seedling 'Bloodgood' Japanese maple that Cassidys gave us last year. It had been in the border along the gravel garden, but with all the dark purple leaved plants on that side of the garden, it would have been too much, and I wanted to move it to the east side where there are no dark leaved plants.

I put it in a pot, and put the pot in the place where the original Japanese maple had been. Once the deck is redone later this summer, I'll plant it in its permanent spot exactly where the original 'Bloodgood' maple had been. For now it will hold the spot in its container.

In the spot next to the gravel garden vacated by the little seedling Japanese maple, I planted a small American hornbeam.

It is Carpinus caroliniana. It has excellent blue muscular looking bark, and is called blue beech, or musclewood, for that reason. The cool looking bark will be easily visible so close to the seating area.

This small sapling had been out in the meadow but was not thriving. An animal scraped the bark and it barely leafed out last year. This year it still looked wimpy. So I dug it up and put it in a container and all of a sudden it leafed out and started looking good.

Well, okay then.

It wants to live after all, and in the new spot of prominence by the gravel garden I hope it does. It will get to 25 feet tall, slowly, and provide shade just where I need it. I will have to keep it limbed up to see the bark, and to keep it from swamping the small area it is in.

This all sounds so routine -- moving a few plants around, pffft. But it was very, very hard work, and digging up the Japanese maple stump was a job that young men with power tools should have done, not two 65 year olds with pruning handsaws and an underpowered lawnmower.

But we did it and I am very happy with the results. I like the purpleleaf sand cherry in its new site, next to the dark leaved penstemons and now visible from the patio. I like the hornbeam that will provide shade along the gravel garden in a few decades or so.

And I really like replacing the deceased Japanese maple with another one in exactly the same spot. It just looks right there, even while it is still in a container waiting to be planted.

Where the Wild Things Grow

We got two and a quarter inches of rain from the soaker storm earlier this week. Everything looks so much better. Especially the weeds.

Multiflora roses are blooming now and they are pretty, but they are absolutely everywhere that isn't paved or mowed. They were introduced in this area for use as pasture fences -- no cattle can get through the dense thickets -- and it seems to work; I have not seen any cows in the meadow around our house in all the years we have lived here.

Out in the wild meadow I have been trying to identify the woody volunteers, other than roses, that pop up. There are several that grow taller than the weeds and I try to i.d. what they are.

I posted a week ago about Siberian elm. That's a tree I don't want here, but I am barely controlling all the thickets and saplings that are spreading about.

There are oak tree seedlings anywhere an acorn was dropped or buried, and that's fine. I like oaks, although I move some of the volunteers around so there won't be a massive tree in the wrong spot in a few decades.

I was not sure what these glossy leaved saplings were; they appear in the meadow in a couple spots:

I think they are Prunus serotina, or wild cherry. Shiny leaves, finely toothed margins, and I could even see little shiny lenticels on the stems. We do have cherry trees growing in the woods nearby. This is an aggressive tree that takes over disturbed land. That's our meadow -- a torn up swath of earth ready for anything invasive.

I'm letting them be. Cherry trees in the meadow are okay.

A Chinese mulberry tree, Morus alba, has leaped up out of the tall grass and I see some other seedlings nearby. The leaves are distinct and easy to identify. It's growing like gangbusters, a tall weedy thing. I'll leave it for now, but it is an alien invader that can take over sunny open spots.

There is one woody seedling that has puzzled me. The newest leaves are simple, but older ones develop three lobes, very distinctly shaped and cut at the bottom. These seedlings are reddish purple so they stand out against the green grasses and weeds.

There are actually two plants, and they are woody and tree-like, even though both are only a foot tall right now. One was found on the west side of the meadow, the other growing on the east side, 200 feet away.

I have to assume anything growing easily in disturbed ground is an invasive or aggressive seeder, so this can't be some unusual, unique specimen. It has to be something common or alien.

But . . . . the leaf shape, size, and color, and the alternate arrangement all look exactly like a purple cutleaf crabapple called Malus 'Royal Raindrops'. Can it be? Could birds have dropped crabapples in the meadow from someone's landscape tree nearby?

images of 'Royal Raindrops' look like the leaves on my seedlings

I'll definitely keep growing these two volunteers out in the meadow -- if they really are 'Royal Raindrops' crabapples, they will be lovely trees and I might transplant them to a nice spot.

'Royal Raindrops' crabapple in flower

Wow. After all the unwanted Siberian elms, trashy Ailanthus, nightmare Oriental bittersweet and multiflora roses, and after all the cottonwood volunteers and wild cherries and mulberries overtaking the meadow and hill in back, could it really be that a very nice specimen cultivar is growing where the wild things are?

Into June

Rain finally! Lots of it.

As we round the path into June, dragging spring drought and winter damage behind us, summer is opening up in front of us with much to notice.

First of all, even as June arrives, I am still toting up what winter did here. The redbud (Cercis canadensis) 'Forest Pansy' struggles. This is not the look I want in the center of the garden.

Lots of dieback, few leaves, late emergence. . . .

It barely bloomed, but did put out some pink flowers very late. It did not leaf out at all for ages, then finally tentatively opened some leaves last week but left many branches bare.

Like my Stewartias, redbuds are just not reliably winter hardy here at all. This is my third attempt. A 'Silver Cloud' redbud never made it through even one winter. A small 'Forest Pansy' was simply decapitated one winter, with its top lying on the ground a few feet away. I replaced it with this nice sized 'Forest Pansy' but for two winters in a row this one has struggled.

Does it make sense to keep it? It's potentially beautiful, but not when it looks so scraggly each year.

I dunno. Could you live with this?
Potential for a beautiful tree is there, maybe it will outgrow its winter wimpiness in time?

This past winter was also the first time my Rose of Sharon got zapped. It is one of the latest to leaf out, so just now as June arrives, I can see all the dead twigs at the top. It lives, but is filling out only on its lower branches, leaving a lot of dieback at the top.

The red buckeye, Aesculus pavia, put out one, and only one, bloom this year. Winter zapped all the rest of the buds, just as it did with the flowering dogwood, which had no flowers this year at all.

The lone buckeye flower spike

This buckeye is young, but had been a heavy bloomer even at a young age in past years. I was really looking forward to seeing it covered in red firecrackers to match my new red chairs, but winter got to this tree along with so many others.

Even without blooms though, the little red buckeye is looking okay, all leafed out and growing nicely.

It's little, but it's leafy. Wouldn't that twiggy sapling have looked great dressed in red explosions,
right in front of the red chairs? Yeah, I thought so too.

I am so done with looking at the havoc of last winter in my garden. It's June already. There are summery sights to see, and I am going to go look.

Kintzley's Ghost honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata)
Later the round bracts turn ghostly silver.

Dwarf deutzia 'Nikko' is stunning, and a workhorse, covering ground, blooming beautifully.
I have it all along the west walk, and planted a big swath along the east side of the house too.

The Birch garden has issues --
I had to lop off much of the sweetspire shrubs (itea virginica) in the center of this garden because of winter dieback.
But "May Night' salvia, 'Blaze' peony and the bright 'Orange Dream' Japanese maple look wonderful!

Amsonias this year were the best I've seen them. The dry spring was to their liking.
Usually they bloom briefly and look washed out.
This year they flowered for a long time, and kept their delicate blue hue.

The amsonias above are A. tabernaemontana and A. hubrichtii, two varieties of bluestar. A low growing cultivar called 'Blue Ice' flowers a week or two later. It's just blooming as June arrives, and has purple, rather than pale blue flowers.

I am absurdly happy with how 'Blue Ice' amsonias flank a yellow creeping sedum called 'Weihenstephaner's Gold'. I like how their shapes and colors go together.

Unfortunately the amsonia and sedum are directly below the struggling redbud, but if I try hard I can ignore the redbud and just see the parts that make me happy.

After all my complaining about winterkill and dieback and trees that are stunted and shrubs that wintered poorly, I have to say some things came through fine. The red maples, the conifers, the river birches and many others shrugged at arctic conditions.

Surprisingly, American holly, Ilex opaca, which is at the very northern fringe of its range here and which is subject to winterburn, came through with absolutely no unsightly leaf issues and not a bit of damage. Really. I did not see that coming, and had prepared for heartbreak this spring, but it looks great.

Ameircan holly - Ilex opaca - showing no damage after this winter.
The big silver maple behind it in the distance didn't make it, though.

The holly has the normal yellowing of last year's leaves that are dropping off now as new growth emerges, but not a bit of browning or desiccation. It's rangy, still in its adolescent shape, but if this holly continues to survive our winters as it has so far, it will be a lovely big shapely tree.

And here's another one that sailed through winter, looking better this year than ever: the paperbark maple.

As we move into June, I am making a pact with myself to stop looking at winter damage. Spring is going by, losses have been noted, pruning surgeries have been conducted, and some damage is just going to have to be tolerated. Okay?

Peony Heaven

I went searching for a peony to add to my garden, and found myself in peony heaven, just a short distance from my house.

Peony heaven is a real place. It is Cricket Hill Garden, in Thomaston, Connecticut. It's a nursery and show garden dedicated to every kind of herbaceous, intersectional and tree peony you could want.

Since it was late May, the herbaceous peonies were blooming, but the intersectionals and the later tree peonies weren't out yet. The herbaceous peonies need umbrellas to keep their heavy blooms out of damaging rain, but we have had so little rain in Connecticut this spring that they really weren't necessary. But they were decorative.

An entire wooded hillside, an area around a pond, and a stretch of stepped terraces had hundreds of peonies growing. There were paths to wander that let you get up close to see each special peony.

Milkweed and clover and dandelions and weeds of every kind were allowed to complement the peonies and I was surprised at how well that worked, growing so closely together. There were alliums and roses and viburnums too. Everything looked naturalized, but of course it was all highly tended.

Scattered among the peonies were glass sculptures by Mundy Hepburn, a nephew of the actress Katherine Hepburn. He makes these Chihuly-type big garden glass shapes, and they are filled with inert gas (like neon) so they must glow at night, although we were only there in the daytime.

Big multi-petal peony bombs in pinks and magentas stole the show. And there were quite a few fried egg peonies -- the clear white ones with egg yolk centers. But my favorites were the demure single blooms in creamy soft colors. Like this delicate yellow single petal variety.

In my own garden I have only one herbaceous peony, a fire engine red one called 'Blaze'. It is open now, but does not bloom for more than a week. It's brief but intense.

At Cricket Hill I picked up another, this time an intersectional called 'Bartzella' that is a lovely upright shape, and has yellow double and semi double blooms that flower in June. It's a popular variety and quite showy.

The staff at Cricket Hill were friendly and informative and I had a long chat with a woman who clearly loves these beautiful plants and thinks she works in a place close to heaven.

Here is what she told me to do with my new 'Bartzella" -- I must not disturb it right now. I am to put the whole pot in the ground now, enjoy it this summer, and then when the leaves turn brown in fall, and only then, I can take it out of the ground, unpot it and plant it in its permanent spot. Peonies don't like disturbance unless they are going dormant for winter.

It won't flower this year, and maybe not next year, but she spent so much time picking out just the right container with the best looking stems and the most promise, that I felt I was adopting a pet and not buying a plant. Her care and concern was touching.

I think I am supposed to send her postcards every year showing its progress as it grows up.

Cricket Hill Garden

Comments

To anyone who reads this diary:

A couple people have noted that I don't have comments enabled on this blog.

Actually, if you click on the title of the post it will bring up the post with the comment field opened at the bottom and you can leave any notes there you would like to -- I do read them.

I am not trying to discourage anyone who is interested in contact, but I am trying to control spam on what is my personal journal.

My other blog (now no longer active) had the title My Weeds Are Very Sorry, and even with word verification and spam filters, I struggled with way too many off topic comments because the word "weed" was searched. Go figure.

At least this journal doesn't have trigger words in the title, but even so, I'm keeping a low profile for random commenters who are not interested in gardening. But for those of you who I follow and those of you who are interested in my garden woes and successes, you can leave a comment if you don't mind clicking the post title to open up the comments section.