There is a sad, shabby butternut in my backyard. Like virtually all of its kind since a devastating fungus took hold across its range, it festers with weeping cankers, and a number of its branches are bare and broken. The diseased wood beneath the bark is probably dark and spongy, which is a real shame for a lovely furniture wood, and it makes me sad for the tree.Still, it has been this way for nearly a decade and it struggles on from year to year. My poor Juglens cinerea is late to leaf but still manages to produce a crown of foliage sufficient for welcome shade, and in late summer there are sticky hulled nuts hanging alongside its compound leaves. Perhaps it has some resistance to the blight, a possibility I know I should not discount. My children love the tree. But I have plans for it. Butternut is among those tree species from which sugar syrup can be produced. It requires, I am told, as much as four times as much butternut sap as hard maple to produce syrup, but this year I am planning to set one spile as an experiment. I will sugar off as many gallons of sap as I can harvest and compare the result to the sugar from our backyard maple. If the experience is favorable, I will leave it be for an other year. If not, I plan to make a totem pole.Shagbark hickory is another sweet sap-producing species. The native peoples from Ohio to the edge of the Minnesota prairie made an earthy, smoky syrup from boiled hickory chips as well as from sap. The Iroquois, who were blessed with an abundant sugarbush of rock maples, utilized the shagbark hickory nutmeats in many other ways. Henry David Thoreau wrote about his red maple sugar camp, noting that four-and-a-half pints of sap yielded about an ounce and a half of granular sugar. I have not experimented with tapping soft maples, but understand that even the invasive Norway maple can be tapped and reduced to a sweet syrup. Box elder also has a sugar content, though I cannot attest to its flavor. Black walnut trees also can be used in this way. The twigs and sap of yellow and black birch, on the other hand, make a fine birch beer, and this I have tried and enjoyed.In just a few more weeks the sap will start to run. Sugarhouses across the Litchfield Hills will emit their clouds of sweet steam. In my kitchen there will be two evaporators at work on the stove. My sugar maple will provide the sap for one, my butternut the other. I will deem the outcome successful whether or not I practice my chiseler’s art on butternut wood this summer or let it stand another year to enjoy in shade and syrup. Tim Abbott is program director of Housatonic Valley Association’s Litchfield Hills Greenprint. His blog is at greensleeves.typepad.com.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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