i begin all of my posts this way.
Wow, I've been awful about posting lately. I've been working various temporary office jobs of the 9-5 nature, which has given me the opportunity to plan lots of great weekends, including:
- various daytrips to explore Boston neighborhoods I hadn't been to yet. There are pictures, but I haven't developed them yet, much less scanned them.
- attending part of the Lowell Folk Festival, which was all kinds of awesome...until the rain started and everything had to shut down early. The festival was free, but the caliber of the musicians and dancers there was quite high. Quebecois folk music is my new interest.
- going to Providence and Newport, RI. This trip turned out to be a little more of an adventure than I bargained for, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I wandered about a lot, gawking at buildings and boats and landscaping. I did not manage to find good food. I rode a ferry the length of the bay. I narrowly escaped arousing the ire of two skunks and getting attacked by a third, whose ire seemed quite well roused already. The skunk attack freaked me out a bit, so I slept fitfully. I also got a ton of mosquito bites because, as it turns out, using my screen tent without a sleeping bag is a bad, bad idea. Spent a half hour sitting on a trolley listening to an old man cussing out everybody. Walked along Providence's canals while they were setting up for Waterfire in the rain--saw gondoliers lounging under the bridge smoking and enjoyed how the music echoed all around off the water and the canal walls so it sounded like it was coming from everywhere underground at once. Enjoyed seeing all the sailboats, sun on water, fieldstone structures, and silly summer vacation ambience.
- trying to go to New York, but I had to cancel. If I can get my personal effects packed in time, I'll try again this weekend.
- spending a day out on one of the Boston Harbor Islands helping control exotic species. The islands are cool, got a good harbor tour on the boat ride out, and sat in the harbor spinning in circles for a half hour waiting for a tanker ship to pass. Being on the islands and working in the sun was pleasant, but it was also fascinating to see the way the native ecosystems were responding to these exotic plants.
In the damp meadow, there was a smallish area where the dominant species appeared to be the exotic we were working to eradicate. It also appeared sporadically around the rest of the peninsula, but it was spotted with insect damage all over the plant (on almost all the leaves and even the stem!), while there was next to no insect damage visible on the native plants surrounding it. There was also a parasitic plant that climbed a number of these exotic ones, but it also climbed a few of the native plants in that area and it wasn't clear if this plant was strong enough to do significant damage to the host plant.
Similarly, in the wooded area where we worked in the afternoon, the aspen trees, which were exotic to this island, were in really rough shape. Only about 65-75% of the branches had leafed out this season, and many of the other leaves were either black and withered or had black spots on them. I assume it was fungus damage, but I don't know enough about trees to tell for sure. Either way, they didn't look like they would be around for many more years. It's not all good news on the island, because bittersweet, the other exotic we were working to control, didn't appear to be encountering any major problems yet.
There is more to these stories; details by request. Stay tuned for New York v.2, Vermont Mountains immediately following that, and Caravan to Minnesota immediately thereafter. Hi, I'm insane sometimes.