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In a Geologic Instant

When I was a teenager my very best friend was Susan. Her mother was a diminutive Polish dynamo, with a brash personality and a penchant for taking any occasion to make old-wives-tale type pronouncements and predictions. She had a lot to say about the pernicious effects of eating oysters, for instance. (She was also very kind to me and I don't know that I ever let her know how I appreciated it. Thank you Mrs. Marshall!)

In the days before you could get radar in motion on your computer screen to plot precipitation, she relied on the leaves of trees. According to her, when the wind blew in updrafts so that you could see the silvery undersides of leaves, that meant a rainstorm was on the way. As it turned out, I found this was usually an accurate indicator and I have relied on it lo these many years.

Hence the photograph here. This summer, the slightest breeze turns the leaves up and they look silver. It's quite peculiar. If you just look at the trees when this is happening, you would think we were in the midst of wild winds. But they are so limp that even if the air is barely moving they uniformly mimic a maelstrom.

Also there is a photograph of oak leaves, just to show the general loss of leaves. The purpose of the maple leaves is to demonstrate the other issue, which is that the leaves are smaller than normal. They should be full size by now and block out all sunlight.
















http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090621143315.htm

Thanks to mudflats for posting this link, it is fabulous!
http://www.themudflats.net/2009/06/22/open-thread-gotta-love-nerds/

And then I came across this:

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
— Yeats, “The Second Coming”

Movie Time!

http://www.cna.org/nationalsecurity/energy/video/

Watch it and ask yourself - do these guys look like wild-haired pot-smoking latte-drinking Birkenstock-wearing libtards?

The peach orchard

Today in a brief break from the gloom I ventured up to the peach orchard as a side trip while doing errands. Which would consist of procuring a fiberglass tape measure for youngest daughter's excursion to Hoga Island to study coral reefs, and acquiring ingredients to cook her favorite dinner before she is subjected to the horrid prospect of not much to eat but fish, which she loathes.

First just out of nostalgia here is a picture I drew of 2 older daughters in the very same peach orchard of which I write, oh so many years ago when they were very little girls.

Today was a bit scary. I couldn't get very close because the orchard is now fenced for deer so I had to peer and take pictures through the wire (and probably will have poison ivy rash all over my feet for that). I can't really say much about the look of the trees because they are always harshly pruned to force them to produce fruit.

But I can report that there were far more peaches on the ground than on the trees. At this stage they are small, about the size of a walnut. And many of those on the ground are red. Fruit ripening early and dropping is not a good indication for harvest.

No wonder Farmer John looked nervous.

A click on a photo and this will become clear.

Also I have some garden pictures, the first of the day lilies have begun to bloom. Somewhere in the mix (I don't seem to have any control over which picture appears with what text so it's all a jumble!) is my Robinia p. contorta, which is a locust with an odd habit to most non-latin name literates. Oldest daughter absolutely loves this tree, because it is TWISTED, see? Make of that what you will!

In any event, it had seriously wilted by the end of last summer in the dryness and heat, and this year as I expected, and am sad to confirm, it is barely leafed out. Some branches have no leaves at all and those that are present are half the size they should be. Really stunted. What's more, the leaves are dry and thin as paper and when I shake them, they drift down to the ground.

What else?

A couple of horse chestnut trees represent the condition of their species, as does a pair of willows.

A close up of the leaves of wild cherry, limp.

Views at Early Evening, Summer Solstice

Views of the J&J farm visited by Joyce Kilmer of "I think that I shall never see" fame; and nearby fields and hills.

It is now possible to discern even from a distant vantage that the treelines are thin. It used to be that they appeared solid - no light came through below the line of the horizon where treetops met the sky. Leaves that emerged this spring are dropping off.

What a beautiful landscape, surrounding Wit's End.

Oak leaves up close, and a yellowing crabapple (they all are), plus frantic over-production of cones.

And of course there is no drought, part III, linked below:

http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/02/videos-of-droughts-around-world.html

And just for fun whilst waiting for photos to upload here on the blog, I left a comment at whitehouse.gov as follows (you can send your own if you like!)

Dear President Obama,

I have two points.

1. Please get Americans a real universal health care plan. If you don't want single payer at first, fine, give us a public, NOT FOR PROFIT alternative and let the private insurers wither away.

2. Please visit my blog about climate change:

witsendnj.blogspot.com

All of the trees are dying on the Eastern Seaboard due to a long-term change in climate. They just can't keep up with an altered environment and the evidence of their demise is obvious.

This is important to bring to the attention of Congress because it is concrete evidence of the deleterious consequences of AGW. Perhaps when they understand the implications - no more apples, no more nuts, the positive feedback of a CO2 sink becoming a CO2 source - they will stop dithering over legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and recognize the emergency status of our planet.

We are already on track for catastrophic droughts and extremely violent weather. Please stop this before humans are doomed to extinction as well.

Yes, you can!

Thank you,
Gail Zawacki

Climate Emergency

thank you Richard Pauli for sending me this link

http://BeyondTalk.net/

which is what I have been looking for, hoping for, and wholly endorse.

SIGN UP.

A Poem About a Tree

I can still hear my mother's voice reciting this old poem, from when I was very little and we lived in West Virginia, before we moved to Ipswich by the sea:

Trees

(For Mrs. Henry Mills Alden)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.


Now okay, it's a bit odd, because my mother and father are devout atheists as am I. But the sentiment, of loving nature, and especially trees, is well expressed.

As it turns out, that poem was written by Joyce Kilmer, who I now have learned has numerous parks, monuments, and facilities named after him here in New Jersey. He died heroically in WWI.

I hadn't put any reference to that poem anywhere in my blog so far because it seemed so, I don't know, overused, overwrought, and such an antiqued cliche.

But then today by oddest of chances, in a search totally unrelated to this blog, a link turned up to the poem here, so I feel obliged to mention it:

http://www.kilmerhouse.com/?p=247

And it turns out that, amazingly enough, the author of the poem was the son of an early Science Director of J&J, which happens to be the family that still literally owns everything around my little farm Wit's End! And thus Joyce Kilmer spent summer days romping around the very same fields and woods that are photographed here, on my blog.

And BTW just so it isn't forgotten, I recalled today that I did too have about 15 seconds of fame myself!:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/28/heat-wave-new-york-times/

Thanks JoeR, you probably regret it now, ha ha!

"Blindingly Obvious"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090618161150.htm

Humor Break!

http://petehisameme.wordpress.com/

a primer on adaptation and mitigation

from Richard Pauli, an illuminating blog:

http://www.noenergytomorrow.org/2009/06/squabbling-twins-mitigate-and-adapt-will-grow-louder.html

Dying for a long time

When I got to the cider mill I ran into farmer John, who was just about to drive up to the peaches to spray. I asked him if I could take some pictures. He obligingly said "Sure" and then I asked him how he thought the trees were doing. "Oh, they're fine," he said, and added, "There's no drought!" Which was a little odd, since I hadn't mentioned drought, and he looked vaguely anxious. Maybe because the trees are behaving as though there is? I would like to point out here that the symptoms of drought appear one to two years after the event.

"Well," I said, "I only asked because so many trees look pretty bad to me. Like that one, over the tractor." I chose that because it happened to be right in front of us. I could just as well have pointed to the one in front of the mill, or across the field, or along the road.

"Oh, that's been dying for a long time," he said.

Right. The apple trees have strange tufts of leaves at the top which are shriveled, as are some of the baby apples. It's hard to see because yesterday was very gloomy, but the ground is covered in golf-ball sized apples. I didn't get to the peaches, because the pictures were coming out so badly anyway and I had errands to run. I'll go over on a sunny day.

Then I went to Pluckemin and photographed a maple in front of what used to be David's Country Roasters but is now for rent. Before the entire mountain was developed, it was a carriage house for the vast Schley estate, where they bred racehorses.

On the way to the orchard

Today, I went to our local orchard to check on the condition of the apple trees. I didn't have time to see the peaches, so I'll check that out later.

On the way, I passed a pair of ancient, venerable maples that don't look very robust.

I took a picture of how their remaining leaves look like, close up.

Sugar Maples

Thanks to Jenny Ross (go see her beautiful photography in her gallery at jennyross.com) for sending me this link:

http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=42708

There is no drought redux

"Even in areas where precipitation is projected to increase, higher temperatures will cause greater evaporation leading to a future where drought conditions are the normal state."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090616133944.htm

Kentucky

Copied below is a comment to the story about globalchange.gov (the new government website about the impacts of climate change) that I found on Daily Kos this morning, which reads like this:

"Extreme weather damaging the trees (4+ / 0-)
I live in a wooded area in Kentucky and for the last 3 years we’ve had extreme weather that’s damaged the forest. First it was drought. I would guess around 10% of the trees died outright. Then it was a late freeze in spring, which killed all the leaves. The freeze wasn’t too bad since trees are able to leaf out again. This spring was the ice storm, which was an eerie, end-of-the-world kind of experience. Every 20-30 seconds you could hear something breaking and falling to the ground. Usually a treetop but often an uprooted tree. Very few were undamaged, maybe as many as 5% are gone.

I’m starting to wonder if this woods I have lived most of my life in will be here ten years from now.

by Jack the R on Tue Jun 16, 2009 at 10:33:44 AM PDT"

I would have responded to Jack the R but I have to wait 24 hours after registering to make a comment on Kos. So tomorrow, I will try to track him down and compare notes. He and I may be the only people between Kentucky and Rhode Island, at least, who are actually looking at trees and understanding how critical is their condition. It's, like, an emergency.

These pictures illustrate some of the signs of decline. One young tree just fell over. My understanding is that swings of excessive dryness and heavy infrequent rains cause the roots to rot, so the tree has no anchor. The mature deciduous trees behind the cemetery are thin and frail as are the pines. There is a very large tree and a closeup reveals how the leaves are turning brown already, in June. If you click on a picture, it should enlarge for more detail.

Sometimes I wonder why I write this blog. By the end of the summer such a large percentage of the trees will be bare or have brown leaves that a mass extinction event will be undeniable.

And this is way way ahead of even the worst predictions. What might that mean for the other effects of climate change, do you suppose? The methane release, the melting polar ice and glaciers, the temperature rise, the extreme storms, the die-off of corals and life in the oceans?

I do not think it is a positive portent.