Letter: Fast fading summer treats still abound

Posted 8/11/16

To the editor:

If you are an early riser and if you can find a chicory plant, look long and carefully as the flowers are truly blue, that elusive color which is so often promised in the seed …

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Letter: Fast fading summer treats still abound

Posted

To the editor:

If you are an early riser and if you can find a chicory plant, look long and carefully as the flowers are truly blue, that elusive color which is so often promised in the seed catalogues and which turn out to be out-and-out lies. Perhaps you’ll find it in a grape hyacinth in the early spring and if you are lucky enough to visit Sakonnet Garden, their Himalayan poppy will be like a slap to your eyes.

But by ten a.m. the flowers will have faded and by noon the plant is a miserable, tangled mess — if you didn’t know better you would wonder why I let such an eyesore remain at the edge of the goldfish pool.

With Clethra aka sweet pepper bush in full flower as you drive by shady, damp areas, breathe deeply as their sweet fragrance is the last of our summer scents. Remember the musky smell of the invasive Russian olive, and then the one time we forgave the equally invasive Rosa multiflora when its tiny white flowers were flung over every bush and high into the trees? Thank goodness Clethra is native and we don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying it. If you want to learn more about invasives – and I can name six - there is a free lecture on September 10 at the Little Compton Community Center at 9 a.m. followed by a field trip after lunch to see how landowners are coping.

There is no doubt but we are in a drought. For a while the dry air was good for haying, but it has gone on so long that the grass isn’t growing. The birds however are really enjoying my continuous dripping bird bath and I have seen some “firsts” the likes of which I will not bore you.

As for caterpillar damage – the winter moths didn’t attack our area but the larger, more disgusting ones did. The forestry people say a tree can be defoliated any number of times as long as it is not stressed. I am afraid that lack of rain is pretty stressful and I will wait to see if my poor, denuded red twigged dogwood survives.

Perhaps like me you are wondering how the summer has gone so quickly after waiting for it so long. I guess I say that every year, but it is always a surprise. We do have seven more weeks but somehow the September days don’t seem like summer, beautiful though they may be.

Sidney Tynan

Little Compton

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Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.