Summer Night Sounds

As summer began, I asked readers about iconic summer experiences. My friend Maureen Franz, from Staten Island, replied that she enjoys, “the chirping of the crickets in late summer evenings. There's nothing like sitting on the back porch and hearing their symphony. The cicadas, crickets and chasing fireflies are among my favorite summer memories.”

The fireflies are gone, although I saw a single, elegiac firefly in the grass a week or two ago. Yet, the symphony by night insects is still going strong.

To write about sound is challenging; I may not be up to the task. As a backstop, I listed two excellent audio resources at the end of this post.

Nevertheless, here goes . . .

Crickets and katydids make most night sounds. You may also hear a frog, toad or mammal making noise in the night.

Insects may not be Beethoven, or even hip-hop stars. However, hearing the buzzing, whirring, twirring and croaking is soothing and reminds us that life is lively, even if day lilies, lightning bugs and raspberries have come and gone.

Most of what I now know about night insects, beyond my sense of wonder about night sounds, came from a recent discovery of Tom Ashbrook’s March 16, 2011 interview of John Himmelman, a naturalist who loves the night and wrote the book Cricket Radio: Tuning in the Night-Singing Insects. Although I have not yet read this book, based on the interview it sounds, sorry for the pun, like a great book.

Himmelman states “the main reasons night insects sing are to establish - - or challenge - - territories and attract mates.” He goes on to say that sound character is set by temperature; insects are cold-blooded, fertility of each insect and the reaction of insects to each other.

There might be a tendency to think that singing insects at night are found only in the eastern United States. However, in a recent e-mail, Himmelman said, “yes, there are singing insects in the West.”

Night insects are almost uniformly some of the ugliest of insects. They are not as attractive or streamlined as butterflies or lightning bugs. However, it’s not likely you will see the insects - - and there is nothing like the sounds they make.

It’s great to listen to crickets and katydids in a giant natural symphony. However, there are specific voices in the insect symphony, such as Round Tipped Cone-Heads, a kind of katydid that sounds like a live wire and Greater Angle-Wings.

The Snow Tree Cricket, or “thermometer cricket;” speeds or slows it call as nights warm or cool. Himmelman explains that if you count the number of chirps in 13 seconds and add forty to it, you get an approximate air temperature.

Carolina Ground Crickets are typically the last audible insects. A single Ground Cricket will intrepidly call out as the nights get frosty - - sometimes it finds a refuge and sings into November.

Audio resources: On March 16, 2011, on Tom Ashbrook’s program On Point, Ashbrook and Himmelman, play and identify several species of crickets and katydids. Himmelman has his own website, with the sounds of night insects. At Music of Nature, one can listen to snippets of night insects or buy mp3 downloads of night sounds.

Italian Ways: A New Book about Italians and Their Trains

Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo, by Tim Parks, W.W. Norton and Company, 264 pages, $25.95

Why is an essay on Italy, its trains and people appearing in a blog on America’s East Coast, West Coast and Great Lakes?

Trains and people are a universal interest in travel writing. You can read this book to learn more about trains and people. Or you can read it as one of the best travel books of the year: well-written and dryly witty.

The first four chapters in Italian Ways are about travel between Verona and Milan. Parks devotes two of these chapters to a commuter train and two to first class travel on one of Italy’s new high speed trains. The remaining three chapters are about trips elsewhere in Italy, including a trip to from Verona to Sicily and the heel of the Italian boot.

My favorite train writer is E.M. Frimbo, whose essays appeared in The New Yorker. In Frimbo’s stories, the writers, Rogers E.M. Whitaker and Tony Hiss, said just the right amount about the technology and people of rail travel and the communities along the tracks.

In Italian Ways, Parks shows himself to be an heir to Frimbo. He writes well about everything: trains, the railroad system and people on the trains: passengers and train crews.

Here’s a sample of his writing . . .

This hiss of metal on metal, the very slight swaying of the carriage, the feeling of being enclosed in a comfortable, well-lighted space while the world is flung by in glossy darkness outside, all this puts me in a mood to read, as if the material world had been suspended and I were entirely in the world of the mind.

Parks is an organized writer and thorough researcher. The book’s organization is helped with illustrations by David Atkins, maps with small drawings of the trains Parks rides.

You may have no idea of how Italian train travel works or where the train is taking the author. Yet Parks has a gift for giving the reader the feeling that he or she will not get lost or in trouble - - even if he does occasionally.

Parks writes truthfully and respectfully about his subjects. Some travel writers are besotted and say nothing negative about their subject. Others focus on the negatives. He clearly explains the challenges of riding Italian trains.

Train schedules and ticket machines can be mysterious and hard to understand. It is often confusing if a person must line up and buy a ticket at a window. Some rail workers are capricious or officious. Yet, he appreciates and respects Italian trains, their crews and fellow passengers. When he relates frustrating events, he writes about them honestly but not peevishly.

He shows how a person who carefully prepares can get practically anywhere in Italy without a car. He reminds people that Italian railroad engineering is beyond world class. For example, Italy constructed three challenging long tunnels under the Alps. One of these, the Sempione, was the world’s longest tunnel for many decades, until in 1979 a Japanese tunnel was finished that went a mile longer.

If you love trains, you will love Parks’ wonderful, informed writing. If you wish to write about travel, you would do well to read Parks to see how a master does it. Whether you are on the beach or reading in the fall, put Italian Ways on your to-read list!

Black Raspberries

A Black Raspberry harvest, photograph courtesy of Marvin Pritts

Mid summer is prime time for picking raspberries.



Raspberries are at their peak. Strawberries and mulberries may have already peaked in generous harvests and blackberries and blueberries have yet to appear.


Perhaps my love of raspberries comes from my mother. Her father lived next door to the Cimonetti family in Glen Cove, on Long Island. Whenever we visited, Nicky would bring over fresh raspberries, just picked that morning.


While living in Bloomington, Indiana, we moved several times. My father may have made one of the moves for my mother; next door was a large garden with a healthy grove of raspberries. Other kids sneaked out at night to smoke; I was sneaked out and tried to tell the difference between ripe and hard fruit without a flashlight.


In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, someone said that a fungus was going to make the species extinct. So, when I found raspberries in a San Francisco Safeway, during a visit to friends Jim and Yvonne, I bought several pints and called my parents from the airport.


Even though the traffic to JFK was horrible that day, my parents met me between planes and were happy to get the berries.


In the supermarket, Driscoll’s is often the main brand of raspberries. But my favorite berries are in our backyard and on the local road in front of our house.

Black raspberry bushes: the red raspberries in this picture
are berries that are not yet ripe.
Photograph by Marvin Pritts

The biggest black raspberries, or black caps, as they are also called, in the backyard have a diameter no larger than a dime. According to Marvin Pritts, Chair of Cornell University’s Horticulture Department, and a raspberry fan himself, “Genetics tend to limit the size of wild black raspberries.” “Even if a person carefully tends the plants,” he continued, “they are still likely to be smaller than plants that have been bred and selected for larger fruit size.” Cornell has an excellent website with lots of information about raspberries and other appealing fruit.


I have a circuit through the backyard, which hits all the berry bushes. Most of the time, my companions include many mosquitoes and flies. On a good day, half an hour will yield about a pint of berries.

It's not a pint's worth of a good day, but this batch of
black raspberries made two bowls of cereal
a much better breakfast

Black raspberries always seem to be there but they have a precarious existence.

According to Pritts, black raspberries “prefer full sun and well-drained soils. They tend to die out once trees grow up and start to shade them.” They appear to prefer “habitats that receive periodic disturbances (e.g. fires, clear cutting) as the roots can persist for many years under shaded conditions. When the disturbance happens, they grow rapidly (since they are already present on the site) and tend to dominate a site for several years.”

This is consistent with berry life in the neighborhood. Three years ago, there were berry bushes along the road. Rose the Dog, a white Samoyed, and I were a distinctive sight as we walked along. I would eat the higher up berries; Rose would delicately lick and nip the berries off the lower canes.

These bushes are gone because of shading and my neighbor’s changed mowing pattern. But new bushes appeared in the backyard after Hurricane Irene dropped several trees. Some of the best berry patches near the house still get enough sun but are entangled in wild grape vines and goldenrod.

E.B. Poling from North Carolina State states black raspberry canes live for two years. In year one, the cane grows. At the beginning of year two, the cane flowers and then fruit forms. After the berries are gone, the cane dies. In addition to the North Carolina State University website, Virginia Tech has a nice electronic page on black raspberries.


Pritts explains that the ancestors of raspberries came from Asia. He suspects “the black raspberry evolved in North America, although there is a different species with black fruit from India.” “Regardless,” he concludes “we find black raspberries in eastern North America (naturally) and no where else in the world.”



Adding black raspberries to a morning bowl of cereal or snacking on them while mowing are great treats. Whether it’s a cool day or a humid blast furnace, the sweet taste and the way each fruit is delicious yet unique, a sort of horticultural snowflake.

Summers Second Starry Night

Lightning Bug
Photograph by Chris Meyer, courtesy of Indiana University

Thanks to lightning bugs, we can enjoy a second starry night sky in summer- - regardless of clouds or rain!



On the East Coast, North Coast (the Great Lakes) and place s in between, lightning bugs are brightening evenings.


In a recent e-mail conversation, Cole Gilbert, a Cornell University professor of entomology, shared two important facts: “Lightning bugs, or fireflies, are neither bugs nor flies.  They are adult lampyrid beetles.  ”Fireflies that flash in the evening," Gilbert continued, "are not found west of the 100th meridian.” The 100th meridian is at the western boundary of Oklahoma, just before the panhandle shoots many miles more to the west.


Lightning bugs start arriving, a few at a time, in mid-June. As the weeks progress, they become more numerous and it seems, more vivid in lighting the night.


Some evenings in our yard, the lightning bugs are so numerous that a person might think someone had installed miles of small lights in the grass and bushes. When Gilbert looks at lightning bugs, he is awed and delighted, and sees “the yellow green Morse Code magic of a summer evening.”


According to researchers Sara M. Lewis and Christopher K. Cratsley, lightning bugs flash at night to attract mates. Male lightning bugs fly through the night flashing certain patterns, perhaps the lightning bug equivalent of “Hey, come here often?” Female lightning bugs tend to stay on the ground and watch. When they see a pattern they like, they flash in reply and the male flies to them.


There are chemical reasons that lightning bugs can make light. However, I do not think I can explain the chemistry in a concise manner to fit the blog.


If something glows at night, one might think this is suicidal behavior, that the light will draw predators. Lewis and Cratsley summarize research that shows lightning bugs have certain chemicals that make them unpalatable to predators. However, the researchers also cite other research that there are predatory lightning bugs. One of them in the eastern United States can mimic the mating lights of a female, luring a male in and then making him dinner.


Lightning bugs are declining in parts of their range. The two main reasons for the decline are light pollution and habitat destruction. Firefly.org suggests that landowners can help by leaving rotting logs and leaf litter on some parts of their property for lightning bug habitat. Other suggestions include leaving some parts of a lawn unmowed or reducing pesticide use.


Another good source for lightning bug information, which one of my friends pointed out after this post went up, is the Boston Museum of Science's website. See the web address below.

Linda Brown and the Harvard Dialect Survey, suggest that the name a person uses for this insect suggest where they are from. Brown suggests that Southerners tend to call these insects “lightning bugs.” The Dialect Survey found that the term “lightning bug” tended to be used in the South, lower Midwest and parts of New York. The term “firefly” tended to be used in the upper Midwest, western New York and New England.

Lightning bugs appear in literature. My favorite is from Mark Twain, who once wrote, in a letter to George Bainton in 1888, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” My friend Seth discovered that Marilyn Kallet has a nice poem, about the many emotions triggered by seeing fireflies, on her website.

In the witty spirit of Mark Twain, one reader wrote that this post inspired "looking at fireflies in a whole new light."


It was fun to research this post. But now, it’s time to turn off the lights and go watch lightning bugs.

Tiger Daylilies

Tiger Daylilies on June 26th



Tiger Day Lilies on June 29th

 In just the last few days, the tiger daylilies in our yard have started to bloom. The plant’s vivid orange blooms are brightening yards and roadsides on the East, West and North Coasts - - and everywhere in between.




Researching this lovely plant shows the confusion that common plant names cause. My friend Don Stauffer, an excellent Master Gardener, calls the plant a “tiger lily.” I thought it was called simply a “daylily.” The plant is also called a “tawny daylily” or a “ditch lily.”



According to a blog post by James McInnis, the scientific name for the tiger daylily, Hemerocallis fulva, means “beautiful for a day.” Each bloom on the flower’s stem opens in the morning and lasts for just a day.

The same flower patch on Monday July 1st!  Note the wilted blooms that have already lasted for just a day.

However, each stem has many blooms. A patch of the plants will bloom for several weeks.



The tiger daylily came from Asia. In reading cooperative extension fact sheets found online, there is not a consensus on how the plant reached the United States. One explanation, also dismissed as a “legend,” is that the sea captains transplanted the flowers from Asia and brought them home to their wives. Another source said the plant came to the United States with English colonists.



Regardless of how the tiger daylily got here, it is a vivid and delightful presence. The mass of long green leaves, topped by scores of orange flowers, is a perfect expression of the vigor and bounty of mid-summer.



I love the orange of tiger daylily blooms. On Staten Island, we used to see the blooms on back roads throughout the Island’s pine-oak forests. The orange was an appealing contrast to the shade and forest greens.



When you find daylilies on a roadside or in a remote, undeveloped place, it takes thoughts back to summers past. You might wonder what the place looked like when the flowers were first planted. You may also wonder who planted the flowers and what happened to them. Did they move West or move into a city?

Tiger daylilies in Winchester, Ct. 
Photograph courtesy of Seth Edelman

Deer will heavily graze tiger daylily shoots as the snow is melting.  In Virginia, my friend Steve Jaffe finds the deer wipe out his daylilies; in my backyard, the plant grows so exuberantly that it bounces back from the deers' attentions.



The vigorous growth that outlasts the deer can be a delight - - or a curse. They are likely to spread rapidly and take over. Some gardeners suggest planting them in places that are not likely to be used for other plants or in poor soil where nothing else will grow.



My friend, Seymour, sees flowers in Los Angeles florists that look like the tiger daylily. It also appears there are tiger daylily look-alikes that bloom longer than the original plants do - - or bloom in different colors.



Long lasting lilies are beautiful. They were the main flower at our wedding and brighten up a trip trudging around the supermarket when the weather is less temperate.


But seeing a flash of bright orange tiger lilies by the road for a week or so is an iconic view of mid-summer.  It happily reminds me of my wedding and sustains me through August heat or January cold.

Great Moments of Summer



Just as these day lilies are about to bloom, so too is this blog about to
bloom with stories about summers great moments!

 In the next few weeks, look for posts about the great moments of summer.  Some of mine include watching lightning bugs, enjoying the appearance of the riot of orange with day lilies, swimming and campfires.

If you have any moments you like, drop a line and let's see if we can fashion a post - - or a conversational string on a post - - about your favorite moments!

Green is Back!

The progress of spring offers a feast for the senses.


Wildflowers are in bloom. Even the smell of lilac blooms, whoch sends me into an allergy tail-spin, is a delight after the monochromatic winter.

Trout stream insects are appearing, dancing over fast-moving water. And one of these days soon, trout will be rising and taking these insects.

One of the most delightful parts of this season is the variety of light and color.

This morning, I enjoyed seeing the contrast of sunrise light and shadows from the woods. Seeing a sunny morning was even more delightful after a four days of rain and overcast.

But even the overcast offers gifts of light. For some reason, a rainy or overcast day energizes the greens in a landscape. Ferns and other plants become a deeper, more intense green.

I am not an expert on why this happens. However, until I learn why, I am going to enjoy the colors and experience!

Good Wine, Good Food and Good Fishing

Albany, New York is home to an almost warehouse-sized liquor store called Empire Wine and Spirits.


Empire is a festive place with a strong selection of almost every kind of wine. To find a wine in Empire, people use one of four strategies: choose an already known brand; ask the smart, helpful staff; buy what is offered at the frequent wine tastings; or make a pick by criteria unrelated to wine.

Recently at Empire, I saw a Pinot Blanc white wine. I knew nothing about Pinot Blanc but I bought it because the label had a vivid painting of a striped bass. Intrigued, I bought the bottle, went to the vineyard website and now know three guys who make great wine.

Mark Seymour, John Heus and Stephen Cary own High Hook Vineyards and offer East and West Coast residents appealing Pinot Noirs and Pinot Blancs. Pinot Noir is the red wine made famous by the movie Sideways; Pinot Blanc is a grape that is closely related to Pinot Grigio.

High Hook Vineyard came to life through a mix of friendship and serendipity.

Seymour, the Vineyard President, came to wine making after a 30 year career as a wine salesman. One day, at dinner with Heus, a former winemaker who is now a film maker, Seymour and Heus decided they would like to make and sell unoaked Chardonnay.

Seymour then asked his friend, Stephen Cary if he could make this kind of wine. Cary did not want to make a chardonnay but made a counter-offer. He proposed making a Pinot Blanc instead.

With Cary’s offer to make a Pinot Blanc, a business plan started taking shape. Seymour added a Pinot Noir because “I love Pinot Noir and I really love Oregon Pinot Noir.”

Cary works at an Oregon vineyard; Seymour and Heus live on the Atlantic coast. While working on the business plan, Seymour learned that striped bass, which he enjoys pursuing in the waters around Cape Cod, are also found in the Pacific. When he realized the winery would be a bi-coastal business, it seemed a perfect fit to have a bi-coastal fish in the brand.

High Hook Vineyards’ present production is 1,400 cases of Pinot Noir; 500 of Pinot Blanc. The partners are emphasizing quality over quantity; Seymour states, “Our objective is to make good wines that are terroir-based, that have a sense of place.” “Our wine,” he continued, “is made to go with food, not just to be a wine-tasting experience.”

Seymour recommends serving their Pinot Blanc with white fish, shrimp, oysters, pesto; the Pinot Noir with roast chicken, pan seared or grilled salmon, sausages. We had the Pinot Noir with orecchiette pasta and sausage dish; it was very nice.

Along with good wines, the vineyard is a good neighbor and good corporate citizen. It donates part of its income to the Ocean Conservancy and encourages customers to participate in sporting and environmental groups. The winery operates with sustainable wine-making and publicizes local fishing guides.

Ruth Rudner and Forgotten Pleasures: An Appreciation

This 50th post is an appreciation of a nature book that remains readable and timely!

But, before we appreciate books, let’s appreciate readers and all the people who helped with this blog. Thank you for reading this blog, for trying to work around the software and for helping me make the posts accurate and attractive with art work!

In 1978, Ruth Rudner, a nature writer who now lives in Montana, wrote Forgotten Pleasures. By sharing simple and direct ways to enjoy nature, Forgotten Pleasures was as ingenious as Walden or John Burroughs’ intimate views of the outdoors.

Ruth Rudner (photo: David Muench)

“Our current enthusiasm for getting back to Nature,” Rudner wrote, “has made so great a mystique of equipment that the adventure seems nowhere near as important as the gear we must first purchase.” She went on to explain that adventure can be found in the simplest natural acts, grabbing a bucket and going berrying, or watching the night sky.

Following this vote for experience over equipment, Rudner described nearly 50 ways to simply enjoy the outdoors. Some are complex, such as building a replica of Huck and Jim’s raft.

Huck Finn rafts aside, most of the experiences might be summarized as “hiding in plain sight.” Rudner chronicles walking, hiking, flying kites, canoeing, learning about butterflies, collecting mussels, body surfing, collecting shells or rocks, skipping stones, sledding, skating and cross country skiing.

Rudner knows how to say just enough about a topic, opening a chapter on walking by writing, “When I was a child my father and I simply walked out the door, down the street and into the woods.” Later on she observes, “Nature is made up of grizzly bears and sequoias, but it is made up even more of spiderwebs and star flowers. You have to go gently to see them.”

In celebrating the particular, Rudner anticipated the revival of small farms, locavores and enjoying nature at a time when gasoline prices are climbing again. If a person does not want to spend a lot of money to go out of town, Rudner offers a vast array of great ideas for appreciating nature in the neighborhood.

In the late 1970’s, I found Forgotten Pleasures on a pleasant summer evening in a small bookstore in Amagansett, on eastern Long Island. But then, when I wanted to reread the book, I could not find it. I wasn’t sure of the author’s name or title. It was out of print.

Finally, a kind person on an ABE Books blog gave me the correct title and the author’s name. Then, thanks to a wonderful place called Watkins Books in Dolgeville (http://www.abebooks.com/home/WATKINBK), on the northern edge of the Mohawk valley, I found a replacement copy.

Since she wrote Forgotten Pleasures, Rudner has been writing about nature in general, animals and national parks, tackling the latter subject with her husband, the photographer, David Muench. In a recent note, she wrote, “Writing about wilderness has become important to me; it is one of the ways I can help preserve what we have left of wild country.” That’s a fitting vocation for someone who enjoyed walking out the door with her father, down the street and into the woods.

On the Edge: Late Winter and Spring?

On March 1st last week, I thought we had turned the corner on winter. Bathing suits are now prominently displayed in the department stores.

But then, winter returned and is queen again. The snow is present on both the East and West coasts, as this photo of the San Gabriels in LA county shows.

Photo courtesy of E. Rowen

With friends John and Rose, I enjoyed two excellent days of cross-country skiing. In the spirit of Ruth Rudner’s book Forgotten Pleasures, about simple outdoor excursions, and in honor of locavores everywhere, we needed only drive a mere 15 minutes to find great conditions.

From Pennsylvania north, a large storm dumped lots of snow on the eastern seaboard.  On the Virginia coast, my friend Steve reports, " We had about an inch accumulation, lots of rain, probably 2 plusinches, which melted the snow and some decent wind."

In Albany, in upstate New York, the storm set a record for Friday March 8th, with 6.5 inches of snow.  Fortunately, the snow accumulated gradually, but steadily, as the following two photographs show.  The other fortunate part of the storm was that the snowblower, which my friend Don gave me when he moved, started on the first pull and made fast work of the white stuff!

Thursday at dusk



Friday morning

By day’s end Friday, the snow had stopped and the snow had melted from most of the highways.

If the weather forecast is correct, it will soon be over 40 degrees and more of the snow will roll back. This coming Sunday, Daylight Savings Time will start. Having the extra time in the evening will help many people take another step to getting in the spring and summer mindset!