Links that may or may not be related to gardens, food, travel, nature, or heterotopias and liminal spaces but probably are. Sources in parentheses. Unless mentioned, all links should be free of paywalls.
photo essay: Landscapes of Uniqueness, Inner and Outer, on a Walk Through Japan (Tomonori Tanaka/NatGeo). A 50-year-old native Japanese man, who had previously skateboarded, snowboarded, and surfed, walks 1,100 km in 70 days, slowly, and reflects on his experience. “On my walk … I have embraced that ancient Japanese concept of ichigo ichie— the belief that every moment, every meeting is special, undergirding human connections. Once I slowed down to the pace of my heartbeat, I understood that relationships, whether with friends I grew up with or see often or with people I meet once by happenstance, carry immense significance.”
short report: Why Do Yellow Jackets Sting More As Fall Approaches? (Mary Holland/Naturally Curious) Have you heard of trophallaxis?
photo essay: The Good, Bad, and Ugly of Summer (Jared Barnes/Meristem) He’s in Texas but we have a lot of these perennials in New England as well, including mountain mint, Stokesia, cup plant, obedient plant, baptisia, asters, bee balm, Eryngium. “Good years are just as helpful to evaluate the garden and see what thrives as bad years. What can stand up with abundant rain and wet soil? [which he’s had this year] What flops? What has clean foliage? And, what looks like trash?” But, as he reminds us, “I know Piet Oudolf says brown is a color, too.” It’s nice to see other people’s crumpled brown foliage as I look out on my own.
short article: Beneficial Native Wasps (Mt. Cuba Center). These wasps are native in the mid-Atlantic (where Mt Cuba is located) and also in other parts of the U.S. I’ve seen cicada-killer wasps here in NH (they range from Canada to Mexico and in the eastern and midwest U.S.) and a quick online search shows that Blue-winged scoliid wasps (Scolia dubia) are found from New England to Florida and west to the Rocky Mountains; organ pipe mud daubers (Trypoxylon politum) range from southeastern Canada to Florida and from Kansas to Texas; and the Guinea paper wasp (Polistes exclamans) is found from Canada to Mexico and in the eastern United States from Illinois to Florida and west to Nebraska and California.
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