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Phragmites australis australis in North Canaan.
Finally rain. For weeks, the only place there had been moisture was in the marsh and even there, areas that usually catch my boots in the mud were dry. I could not see the footprints of the bear (or is it deer?) that have been digging up and eating the underground skunk cabbage flowers. Not that I could do anything to stop it. A layer of snow that actually sticks around for a while seems like wishful thinking these days.
Masses of skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, appeared one spring, like magic, after we hired a team to remove the barberry from about an acre of the marsh adjacent to the driveway. Of course, it had been there all along, waiting patiently underground or hiding in the barberry’s thorny shrub-cages, but we had not seen it. That was about eight years ago; after the barberry’s removal there have been successive infestations of invasives but also, as with the skunk cabbage, some welcome new sightings of native plants.
I wrote in this column last year about Japanese stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum, and the success in using the weed torch on a large patch of it in the marsh. It remained largely free of this annual invasive grass this year but we switched to hand weeding the area as, given the dry weather, we could not use the torch even in the marsh. Over the course of three weeks, we pulled out what amounted to 6 trash bins stuffed solid with the hairlike strands. As many of them have seedheads we will burn them once the ban is lifted. I should have paid attention to the stiltgrass infestation earlier in the season but walking near Route 7 is not the most peaceful thing to do so I tend to avoid it.
Twice a year I make my way into the marsh as far as I can go until halted by barberry and multiflora rose to hold at bay another grass, this one a giant compared to stiltgrass. Phragmites australis is a tall reed with a pouf of a seed head that is abundant in moist and wet areas everywhere in the US. It is so aggressive in wetlands that it quickly becomes a monoculture- a sea of swaying beige. It not only crowds out other plants but changes the pH of the surrounding soil and water so nothing native can grow in it. It is a real habitat killer. Drive on route 41 toward Sharon from Hotchkiss school and you will see a large field of phragmites on the left-hand side of the road. Once identified you cannot unsee how it has hijacked our landscape.
Thanks to my gardener’s help cutting down barberry, multiflora rose and honeysuckle in the marsh last winter, this year my access was greatly improved to a stand of phragmites-about a third of an acre of it. With each visit I cut down as much of it as I could to eliminate the possibility for it to grow a seed head. Though loathe to use an herbicide, last year I experimented on a small area, dabbing the cut ends with a wetlands ‘safe’ herbicide. (No herbicide is really safe for the environment but often the chemicals that are added to the herbicide to help it penetrate the leaves are especially damaging.) That application seemed to work so I may repeat it next year on another area.
With all invasives, getting rid of them when you see a first few pop up will pay off. That is what is happening on Cream Hill Road in Cornwall where a small stand of phragmites was recently cut under the water line, a natural technique that attempts to ‘drown’ the plant. The next step will be to cover with a black tarp any remaining phragmites that come back from this first effort. According to Heidi Cunnick, who chairs the Cornwall Conservation Commission, their new policy prioritizes the invasive plants for removal so that small infestations can be eliminated early. Cunnick reminds me that there is a biological control for phragmites that remains under review by a US government department but the future possibility of such an eradication method is not stopping activities to reduce populations- now - in Cornwall.
Another example of successful eradication comes from the Twin Lakes area; a couple who moved to a property that came with a quarter-acre of phragmites colonizing in and around their pond. They valiantly did the work themselves as they could not find anyone who would do it for them. A cut and tarp method was used here for the on-land plants; the ones underwater were cut a foot below the water surface over several years. While most is gone, the battle continues with stragglers; these are tackled with aquatic use herbicide using a dabber on the cut end of a stem or sprayed on a glove that is rubbed over the green stem.
It is hard to stay positive; the work can be hard and tiresome. And it is always a gamble that the area you are working on will grow in with native plants rather than with more invasives. Sometimes you clear a patch of barberry and it gets filled with stiltgrass; you try again. Sometimes you get a patch of goldenrod- nice to have but you don’t want it crowding out the other native plants. And sometimes you get a big reward- the discovery of natives so new to you that you can’t identify them without an app on your phone. In the marsh, where I worked as the weather turned cooler, I noticed quite a few new grasses popping out of the damp soil, especially where the weed torch had been used the prior year. So far, I have identified: Carex albursina, White bear sedge; Carex pedunculata, Longstalk sedge; Carex obnupta, Slough sedge; Carex pennsyvanica, Pennsylvania sedge; Carex frankii, Frank’s sedge; Carex blanda, Eastern woodland sedge; Carex eburnean, Bristleleaf sedge; Danthonia spicata, Poverty oatgrass; Deschampsia cespitosa, Tufted hairgrass; Glyceria striata, Fowl mannagrass and Leersia virginica, Whitegrass. The deer have already helped themselves to a few of these but I am hopeful to see most of them again.
Dee Salomon ‘ungardens’ in Litchfield County.
'Cornwall reads Cornwall' returns
Roxana Robinson reads Cornwall, Nov. 30.
Bob Meyers, President and Publisher of the Cornwall Chronicle, kicked off the 5th annual Cornwall Reads Cornwall event at the UCC in Cornwall on Nov. 30 with a warm welcome and a gentle reminder to silence cell phones. Over the next hour, the audience was transported back in time as local writers, editors, luminaries, and students brought the Chronicle’s archives to life.
“This reading has become an annual event,” said Meyers, “as well as a welcome distraction from Thanksgiving leftovers.” He then noted that the event “was the original brainchild of Roxana Robinson.” Meyers added, “She also arranged to have this take place on the day of her birth,” at which point the audience wished the celebrated local author a happy birthday.
Before inviting Robinson to be the first reader, Meyers spoke a bit about the Chronicle’s history. The Cornwall Chronicle is a monthly, nonpartisan, nonprofit newspaper run by volunteers and funded entirely by reader donations. Founded in 1991 by Tom and Margaret Bevans, it was born out of Tom’s frustration with Cornwall’s lack of local press coverage. A graphic artist and former design head at Simon & Schuster, Tom shaped the paper’s timeless format and mission: fostering community understanding and civic engagement.
Over the years, leadership transitioned to Spencer and Bobby Klaw, retired editors from major publications, and later to an editorial board supported by a network of volunteer writers and artists. For 22 years, the Chronicle has been published without missing an issue, drawing contributions from both seasoned journalists and local voices like farmers and social workers. Delivered free to Cornwall residents and out-of-town subscribers, the ad-free paper relies solely on donations.
Robinson read the first piece, an article about snow plowing from December 1994. She was followed by Emmy Award-winning journalist and Cornwall resident Richard Schlesinger, who read a piece about grandmothers from a June 1992 edition. Robinson held the mic for local activist Nita Colgate as she read from a July 1998 issue of the Chronicle. Other readers included Gillian Blake, senior vice president, publisher, and editor-in-chief at Crown, a division of Penguin Random House.
Local students Willow Berry and Willa Lesch took turns reading a piece together, and recent Vassar graduate Gloria Trevor read a piece about snakes. Martin Chalk, board member of the Cornwall Conservation Trust and long-time Cornwall resident, read from a June 2017 edition of the Chronicle. Author Leigh Newman read a recent piece from August 2024, and CEO and founder of Five Acre Farms, Daniel Horan, read a piece from April 2024.
With each reading, the room was filled with the spirit of shared history, as tales of local lore, humor, and heartache unfolded. The event was a reminder of a simpler time and a celebration of Cornwall’s enduring love for its stories and the people who tell them.
Norfolk Library screens Bette Davis film
Robert Dance, right, and his old friend Parker Stevenson, actor from "Hardy Boys" and "Baywatch."
Robert Dance, the author of “Fabulous Faces of Classic Hollywood” (2024), introduced the classic Bette Davis film “Now, Voyager” (1942) at the Norfolk Library on Friday, November 22.
Now Voyager plays the dowdy youngest daughter of a wealthy Boston family meant to stay behind the walls of her family’s Boston mansion caring for an elderly mother.
During her nearly six-decade career, Davis was nominated for eleven Oscars and won two (each of the films shown in Norfolk were Oscar nominated). Wildly popular, especially during the 1930s and 40s, Davis continues to be highly respected.
“She wasn’t a herald of fashion like her great rival Joan Crawford, but she represented the archetypal upper middle class American woman as presented by Hollywood (in her case by Warner Brothers). Davis defied glamor and beauty with her extraordinary screen talent, although in the end she could portray a sort of crisp glamor perhaps more in keeping with the pages of Vogue than Hollywood fan magazines,” Dance said.
Davis’s films are continually shown on TCM. She was even the subject of a song, “Bette Davis Eyes,” that was number one on the billboard chart for several weeks in the 1980s:
“Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips a sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She’s got Bette Davis eyes
She’ll turn her music on you
You won’t have to think twice
She’s pure as New York snow
She got Bette Davis eyes”
“The ‘Harlow’ is Jean Harlow, the movie’s original blond sex goddess back in the 1930s. She died at age 26 in 1937 but was one of the greatest stars of Hollywood’s golden age. Who remembers her now? Maybe we need a Jean Harlow series in Norfolk,” Dance said.
As a young student living in Manhattan, Dance went to see movies frequently, absorbing silents, musicals, classic German films. These outings solidified his love of movies and the celluloid heroes of yesteryear.
“Something like half of all Americans went to the movies every week from the 1920s to the 50s (when television changed entertainment). Cinema is one of the last century’s great technological and entertainment inventions, so it seemed necessary to become fluent in this culture. What is exciting today is that I am continually discovering something new made a century ago. Kino and the Criterion collection are among the invaluable services that discover little known works and return them to the public,” Dance explained.
Today, Davis seems to have slipped away in popular culture, while Joan Crawford remains popular with websites devoted to her, and Instagram has more than a hundred dedicated Crawford sites. But Davis continues to be revered by older generations.
“Davis survives because of an astonishing body of screen work. ‘Now Voyager’ is one of her best, although for some it might seem old-fashioned. Still, it has it all: perfect performances from the entire cast, a compelling story, superb direction. The American Film Institute’s rank of actresses lists her number two overall. ‘Now Voyager’ ranks high among dramas,” Dance says.
“Maybe Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd – see it if you haven’t) was right: “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”
