This project started February 2025.
Updated April 15, 2026.
persist along the roads and in the forests of Willington. Chestnut blight is visible, orange cracks where the bark is pulling together over an open wound.
Chestnut is completely absent from the witness tree data in the original eastern Massachusetts towns of Cambridge, Sudbury, Framingham, Hopkinton, and Grafton. In other words, for the first one-third of Mr. Hooker’s journey from Cambridge to Hartford, there is a good chance that his company saw few if any American chestnut trees. Not until Sutton, Massachusetts, would Mr. Hooker have begun to encounter chestnuts regularly. From Woodstock to Hartford, chestnut would have been a common tree in the forest.
Faison, Connecticut Woodlands
I am trialing many varieties.
Ribes 'Hinnomaki Red'
Ribes 'Oregon Champion'
The smell of marigolds takes me back to elementary school. The plant sale. A yearly adjustment to class schedule rivaling the scholastic book fair in terms of excitement. Flats of plants on plastic folding tables have been squeezed into the hallways. I remember flower heads in fiery colors. The thin black plastic of the flower 6-pack crinkles in my hands. I remember the smell of marigolds.
Tagetes (tah juh teez) is the marigold genus. Tagetes patula is the French marigold, not from France. Tagetes erecta is the African marigold, not from Africa. Tagetes tenuifolia is the signet marigold, my favorite.
Tagetes patula 'Mr Majestic'
Tagetes tenuifolia 'Orange Gem'