Polyphemus moth

All day was spent riding SEPTA around the City Of Philadelphia. Past neighborhoods and factories, many of them in various states of decay. Still beautiful, like this Polyphemus moth in its final moments at the Chestnut Hill West SEPTA station.

The Polyphemus moth
The Polyphemus moth

It was still alive and fluttering among the weeds. Had never seen one before. This is a memorable moth!

The Polyphemus moth
The Polyphemus moth

This moth has seen better days. It still has all of the elements retained to just imagine what it was like. Its delicate wings are reminiscent of the flower petals of the Hibiscus moschutoes, the Rose Mallow, a  large six inch wide flower that is currently blooming in our area, which lasts only one day, sometimes two. The Polyphemus mothalso breaks ground in its size, reaching four inches in its span. The fleeting flower of the Rose mallow, like the Polyphemus moth, is a stunning display of size and color in the middle of the summer.

Hibiscus Moscheutos, Sanguine Root Native Plant Garden, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hibiscus Moscheutos, Sanguine Root Native Plant Garden, Morris Park Road, Overbrook, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

One day, the Polyphemus moth in its peak will find its way to these pages full of flowers. The Hibiscus Moscheutos can be found in the sunny watery habitats in and around the City of Philadelphia. The ephemeral flowers drop to the ground in a withered state, like the Polyphemus moth yet still remaining a picture of beauty.

The flowers in our garden have lived a day-long life full of visits by pollinating bees.

In just a few days, what was once a magnificent flower will have decayed and returned to the soil of the earth.

Hibiscus moschuetos
Hibiscus moschuetos

We return to thoughts of our fair city and the state of our own habitat:

Chester Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Chester Avenue, Southwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The City Of Philadelphia has many blocks of buildings in their final moments. Unlike the Polyphemus moth, these individual specimens could be saved and revitalized.

Memorial Avenue, East Parkside, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Memorial Avenue, East Parkside, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This West Philadelphia block, around the corner from our Parkside office, has suffered decay for many years, and it still has 2 blighted properties and a vacant lot on the row.  However, in just the past year, the second house from the left has been redeveloped by an investor, and because of the local historic designation of the neighborhood, the facade was restored in a sensible manner, as required by law.

Viola Street, East Parkside, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Viola Street, East Parkside, West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This block has undergone a transformation. The Sanguine Root Parkside property is the 4th house from right, with the unpainted copper trimmings and bay window. This revitalized row of houses, also under the protection of historic status, has been endowed with new trees, and the gracious porches and stoops, freshly painted, enhance  the neighborhood’s street life.   Once blighted, with 2 houses slated for demolition, this row was saved and enhanced, and is now a cheerful and livable neighborhood.

Beauty is often fleeting. Great works of art and architecture often need the protection of an economically (and militarily) powerful state in order to be preserved for the few centuries at the most before the next violent upheaval.  Usually this is not good enough and if a piece of art is to last even 1000 years it often needs to be buried by the dust and accumulations of society, a hidden tomb, or by a catastrophic event, like Pompeii. The rest is left with us, our collective thoughts and feelings, often expressed emphatically, and also often enough felt and thought personally. Beauty is what is on our minds collectively though, and the natural world is our inspiration, once our earthly needs are met.

Only thin vestiges survive of our appreciation of nature and human society, usually carved in stone or left on a ceramic tile floor, sometimes paintings found in a cave, or in the intricacies of our languages and writing; our cultures survive as things of beauty, they are beatific, collective manifestations that we live in daily and do our best to maintain.

Beauty has become us, we strive for it to continue, and persevere, like nature, like the Polyphemus moth or the trees that grow from the once mowed fields and vacant lots. We look to something broader in scope than ourselves, our individual specimens. The culture is not enough beauty to satisfy our longings and innate comprehension of the universe. Our world has obvious connections that go beyond the collective culture and the societies of states and their need to militarize, subjugate, classify and control.

The fleeting beauty of the natural world has been a constant presence through all of the various societal manifestations. We are becoming aware that we are in fact a species evolving within an ecosystem, just like every other plant, butterfly and moth among us. We have created a language and understanding of spiritual dimensions, which allows us to accept the changes we need to adapt to the nature of the universe. We have also created a language and regimen of observation, which allows us to quantify and evaluate certain sections of the universe, to help us evolve. With these practices, we are collectively developing a curiosity for the beautiful.

The Polyphemus moth , a species older than all of humanity’s various attempts at sustaining beauty, a species that is still found on the thin layer of life on this earth, amidst the constantly changing City Of Philadelphia, still found decaying among the same old Oak Trees and Jewelweed that have been growing in this same spot for millennia, the Polyphemus moth is a species evolved and still surviving, it is a thing of beauty to be beholden by only us humans, who have evolved in our culture the sense of beauty and the sense to cultivate and propagate that sensibility and hopefully pass it on to the willing and interested.

Polyphemus moth
Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia Photo by Brian_Solomon_

 

RINGING ROCKS

We heard about this place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania for years and we finally made it up there. It is this place where there is a field of rocks that ring musically when they are lightly struck with a hammer. We heard that there is a lot of Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense)  growing in this County park.

Dont forget your hammer! – Our recollection of the guidebook we forgot suggested.

In a flurry of backpacks, maps, batteries, weather forecasts, traffic reports, lunch preparations, digital devices, shoe choices and hat combinations, we forgot the hammer.

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

The tire iron found in the spare tire compartment turned out to be the thing-a-ma-bob that did the job!  We tapped on a multitude of different rocks in this 4 acre boulder field and heard lots of different musical tones.  Many of these rocks have been tapped on for years and all the right spots were long ago discovered, so much so that the best rocks had depressions in them where they had been hit so many times at the best spots.  This made for a self-guided tapping tour of the Ringing Rocks Park boulder field pictured above.

The rocks made for great entertainment, and hearing them ring so musically was enchanting.

It all started about 200 million years ago, in a time named the Early Jurassic Period. Liquified rock from the upper mantle of the earth called Diabase forced its way into the solidified part of the earth called the crust, and broke into a space between the hardened sedimentary Shale rock layers filling up a huge area spanning from what is now Pennsylvania into New Jersey.  This horizontal layer of the igneous rock, Diabase is called a Sill. The sill was created when the diabase in magma form was able to break through to the higher layers of sedimentary rock because the continental mass was stretching apart, creating cracks in the upper surface of the earth. The magma was under intense pressure from the weight of rock above it and was squeezed through the cracks into a narrow space between the sedimentary layers.  Once the magma settled into its spot, it began to cool.

During the process of cooling, minerals began to form as elements that were attracted to each other were able to connect within the superheated amorphous mass. The longer it takes to cool, the more complex and interesting developments of mineral combinations can be found. In the case of our diabase sill, The minerals Olivine and Pyroxene formed into crystals, which were denser and heavier than the liquid, and they settled to the bottom of the cooling sill, in a layer about 10 feet thick.  Eventually the whole sill cooled into a hard rock, and this rock can be found today, in outcrops across portions of Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.  The bottom of the sill, the ten foot thick layer containing the Olivine and Pyroxene crystals is the one that created the boulder fields of ringing rocks.

However, there are only a handful of boulder fields of ringing rocks  that exist, because to get to such a state that not only is there a boulder field, but to have that boulder field have ringing boulders requires very specific conditions. The ‘live’ rocks that actually ring are the product of a very specific series of events and conditions.

While very little is known beyond conjecture of what exactly makes them ring in the way they do, it has been established that specific geological conditions predate the boulder fields:  The diabase sill was close to a mile below the surface of the earth and had undergone severe compression from the weight of the rock above it, creating internal stresses.  There was the uplifting of the diabase sill from the erosion of rock overhead over the past 200 million years.  There was an ice age with massive glaciers which never reached the Diabase sill, but created the conditions of  periglacial freezing and thawing of ice around the sill, enough to break it apart into boulders. And lastly, the newly broken up boulder field must be on a slope of less than 25 degrees dip, but not flat either, somewhere around 15 degrees slope.  If the slope is too steep the rocks will roll away from the force of gravity.  If the slope is too gradual, sand and silt will accumulate into soil instead of washing away, and the boulder field will disappear under the roots of a forest.

Once the boulders are surrounded by the trees, associated plant life, soil and the resulting moisture retained , they lose their ringing ability and go from ‘live’ to ‘dead’.  This is because the weathering moisture penetrates into the rock and loosens up its inner tension. As long as the boulder field has no soil or trees or continual moisture around it, it will continue to ring.

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

Here the slope was too steep for the boulder field and the rocks had rolled away. They ended up in this place that collected soil and now trees grow amidst the ‘dead’ boulders.

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

Onto other things, Isabelle was delighted to discover the native shrub Hydrangea arborescens, the straight species, just growing along the waterfalls in the Ringing Rocks Park. We have this plant in our garden, and it has been all the buzz.  The bees and a a multitude of interesting insects have been feasting on our native Hydrangea.  We feel like our shrub is supporting an ecosystem.

It is one of our favorite things to find one of our native plants we bought at a nursery just growing in the wild! Every time we find one, it is a memorable and fantastic discovery. It also helps us understand where to place our native plants if they are not doing well.

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

We were unable to identify this plant. We guess it is a Rue something or another.

 

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and Ginger (Asarum canadense) growing together on the moist rocky slope.

Ringing Rocks Park
Ringing Rocks Park

This ash tree was growing right over one of the boulders.

Ringing Rocks County Park
Ringing Rocks County Park

These christmas ferns (polystichum acrostichoides)give us some garden ideas and also remind us of the legacy of plant life on earth.

This is a great place to interact with  an interesting geological feature, giving us the opportunity to meditate upon the mind- bending age of the earth. All of us, including the plants are created from these rocks. The longer it takes for liquid magma to cool, the more complicated the interactions of the elements can be, creating a diverse array of minerals, many of which form the building blocks of life forms.

Likewise, the incredible age of these rocks, many of them having been created and broken down many times only to begin breaking down again before our eyes, has created a condition suitable for complex life forms to evolve. Now, life has created a chemistry of its own, further interacting with the geological layers, and even forming new geologic layers, such as coal.  In Pennsylvania, there are layers of shale rock that can be broken open with a hammer to reveal fern fossils, resembling the Christmas fern pictured above, as long as one can remember to bring the hammer!

 

 

 

 

CINNAMON FERN UNFURLS IN MONSON MASSACHUSETTS

Springtime on the Solomon Family woodlands in Monson Massachusetts.  We trudged through a wetland area full of Skunk Cabbage, Jack-In-The  Pulpit, Jewelweed, Christmas Fern, Spicebush, Winterberry,  Cedar, Red Maple, birch and Oak.

Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts

When we reached higher ground we visited a patch of Trillium erectum that was past its peak bloom, growing under an ancient white ash.  Than we found the Ferns.

Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts

Good thing Isabelle was wearing these boots, generously lent to her by Maureen Solomon, or this post may not have been possible.

Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts

We encountered White Pine, False Hellebore,  Witch Hazel, American Chestnut, High and low bush Blueberry, partridgeberry, Ironwood, and Hickory.  We hoped to find Pink Ladyslipper, which used to grow in these woods, and there were none seen.

Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts

 

Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon fern, Monson, Massachusetts

 

Skunk Cabbage, Monson, Massachusetts
Skunk Cabbage, Monson, Massachusetts

 

 

Trientalis borealis

The Starflower (Trientalis borealis)  was at peak Bloom and covered the forest floor.

Starflower, Monson, Massachusetts
Starflower, Monson, Massachusetts

 

Cinnamon Fern, Monson, Massachusetts
Cinnamon Fern, Monson, Massachusetts