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08/27/2018

Good Neighbors

Swallowtail.larvae
 Be kind to these guys (above) because they turn into these guys... DL-16.butterfly

 

Swallowtail larvae love parsley and, if you grow parsley, will eat it to the ground.  Solution: plant a special parsley bed away from the one you use for your kitchen and gently place any swallowtail larvae you find in the wrong patch onto the parsley in their designated patch.  (They also love dill...)  Currently there are five swallowtail caterpillars in this particular patch.  Two are visible in the photo.  They are as beautiful as the butterflies they turn into, but a lot more destructive!  Be a good neighbor and plant extra parsley for them.  You will be rewarded with floating, fluttering, black and yellow striped beauty throughout your summer.

Posted at 03:42 PM in Environment, Photography |

Tags: butterflies, parsley, swallowtail larvae

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Morocco 2022

  • 047 Guard, Hassan Tower
    In 2018, a friend from London told me he had purchased a riad (row house) in Marrakech. Enthusiastically, I promised to visit. I had never given a thought to visiting Morocco, to Morocco as a country, or anything about Morocco. Maybe I associated it vaguely with the film Casablanca or the French Foreign Legion, but certainly not with a modern Muslim society. Morocco had not even come up in news about the Arab Spring of 2010, but I wanted to be supportive. So in 1919 Steve and I made plans to visit my friend in Marrakech during his fall vacation the following year. However, by the time our plans had shipwrecked on the shoals of Covid, not once but twice, I began to seriously question my loyalties. Nevertheless, finally, serendipitously, in the spring of 2022, it all came together. The specter of Covid tests still hung over us, but we started out gamely and discovered a world of gracious people, amazing art and architecture, delicious food, and a fascinating history (that I am far from mastering). After visiting my friend and his beautiful riad in Marrakech, we joined a guided tour of Morocco’s “Imperial Cities,” i.e. those that had served as capitols to different rulers and dynasties from Roman times to the present. The following album contains the best of Steve’s photos from the trip.

The Best of Sandy and Rocky

  • 035 King of the Universe
    Sandy was a year old when he came to us in 2013 as a scrawny stray with one misshapen eyelid. A few months of hearty eating transformed him into a sandy-haired beauty, extraordinarily gentle and extremely fond of cuddling and schmoozing. About that time we adopted three-month-old Rocky, mischief-maker and comedian-in-chief. Where Sandy never saw a lap he didn’t like, Rocky never passed up a box or a bag if he could possibly get in it. When, in 2015, our permanent move to Mill Brook House enabled the cats to go outside, Sandy proved himself a fearsome hunter while Rocky fell in love with wild turkeys and domestic chickens. Sadly, at the end of his first outdoor summer, Sandy disappeared. Days of calling, searching and alerting neighbors turned up nothing. Devastated at first, Rocky eventually recovered his moxie, and he continues to romance the chickens across the street, play pirates in the claw foot tub, and fall asleep on the hand-hewn beams in the attic. This album commemorates our “cat years.”

Charlemont at 250

  • 027 Balloon Rides
    This year marks Charlemont's 250th Anniversary (incorporated 1765). See photographs here and read more at: http://www.millbrookhousenews.com/mill-brook-house-news/2015/06/charlemont-at-250.html. For permission to reproduce any of these photographs, please contact Steven Sternbach: [email protected].

Shelburne Falls' Bridge of Flowers

  • C014
    The Shelburne Falls trolley bridge, connecting the villages of Buckland and Shelburne, was built in 1908 to carry freight and passengers on a 7.5 mile line to Colrain. With the advent of the automobile, however, trucks began hauling freight, and in 1927 the company that built the bridge went bankrupt. Turning the abandoned bridge into a flower garden was the brainchild of Antoinette and Walter Burnham, who, with the Shelburne Falls Women’s Club, raised $1000 for loam, fertilizer and plants, and made this unique, historic landmark a reality in 1929. Then, as now, all the labor to start the garden and keep it going was donated. This album is a month by month chronicle of the ever-changing spectacle the bridge presents to tourists and residents every year from April to September.

Western Mass.

MassMoCA

  • MassMoCA, Exterior
    The photographs in this album record exhibits at MassMoCA in North Adams, MA, on January 1, 2011. All of these photographs are copyrighted by Steven Sternbach; for permission to reproduce them, contact the photographer at [email protected].

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