Oh No it Isn't!

" 

Platanus Occidentalis

I asked the Red Dirt Girl what kind of tree this was, on a Houston street, a pretty tree, with these interesting leaves, so contrastingly pale on the undersides, creamy bark, little round spiky fruits. 

I knew she'd be able to tell me, she being the garden-designing woman that she is. 

"Sycamore" she says. 

I look at her, stunned. "Oh no it isn't!",
"Yes it is!"...

We argue a lot.
I truly can't believe that she'd get such a simple tree identification wrong. Sycamores don't have little round seed bodies, they have helicopters, little paired wings which flutter in a spiral to the ground, big trees that are probably the easiest trees in the world to grow, a gardener's bane in Britain. 

Introduced here from continental europe, (I'd been taught that it was introduced in the Norman era, as a fast growing shade-tree, but on attempting to research that, I find there's no consensus. We find that there's no evidence in bronze-age charcoal of sycamore, which suggests it was not found here then, but other 'experts' assert all manner of eras for its introduction from Roman times to the 1700s. 14th century carved leaves, Chaucer etc., there's so much conflicting opinion. 1500s in Scotland).
The wood's traditionally used for butchers blocks and breadboards, rolling pins, bowls, furniture frames and kitchen tabletops. Fiddle backs, carved ornamentation, hard, close-grained, but not much good as construction timber. I'm no stranger to sycamores, I've cut a few down, fallen out of others, and brushed and raked many tons of sycamore leaves over the years. They're pretty enough, but if you park your car under one you'll curse, as within a few hours it will be covered in sticky spots of sugary sap,  aphids, caterpillars... Sycamores are far better as somebody else's tree, to look at from a distance. 

My mantelpiece over the fireplace at the old cottage was a thick sycamore beam, 6ft by 8"x4".

Well, we were both right. The tree we were looking at is Platanus Orientalis, also known as the American Sycamore.

But the Sycamore of Britain is Acer Pseudoplatanus.

The true Sycamore is neither. It's not even vaguely similar, it's the sycamore (sycomore) of the bible, and it's surmised the 'newly' arrived tree was so called by monks returning from the crusades. why?, I ask, as there seems to be no similarity whatsoever, bark, leaves, fruit.... just none. Not a jot.

Ficus Sycomorus, the Sycamore Fig. Abundant through Egypt, Israel, the Lebanon.

1 Kings 10:27 "And the king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycomore trees that are in the vale, for abundance."

She was right, and I was wrong.

And vice-versa. It's a sycamore. Just not the sycamore I'm used to.

I'm used to being able to identify the trees, wildflowers, crops around me, but of course, in north america, everything's different. I look at it and I've no idea what kind of tree I'm looking at, what birds nest in it, what the uses of its wood, bark, seeds, leaves, or sap. And that makes me aware of all the stuff I don't even know I know about things that grow here, stuff my grandfather started to teach me as soon as I could listen.
I've got a whole big new stack of learning to do.

P.S. Blogger's new interface is driving me mad. If there is some strange spacing and layout on your screen, well, I'm trying to find the errant html, but I'm not an html person, and I'm ready to throw bricks at the computer. Curse you, blogger!

Good Grief!

 

Ah, My Favourite Sort of Sugar!

 

Yes it's in Foreign,

Without subtitles too. The title translates as "open your eyes".
There's a little story in there too.

More Floyd.

Pink Floyd: Grantchester Meadows.

Reminds me of my student days.

Houses I Liked

This photo's not tagged with a location, (the camera I bought before my travels has a gps chip, and about a million settings, it would take a year or three to learn them all. The gps eats battery life, so as the camera doesn't recharge off a car's power socket, I kept turning the feature on and off). However, I'm moderately confident it's in Senoia, Georgia.  I like a lot about this little house, the pastel colours, the wrap-around porch, the combination of curved and straight lines, the fancy detail-work, the white picket-fence, the surrounding greenery, even the brick paving.

I'll bet that tree out front was a fraction of today's size when the house was built.

This one I can be sure about, it's got a sign out front, Senoia Historical Society's H.Q. and museum. Again, like the colours, the busy roof-lines, the porch, the history. I'd guess the original house might well be the one in the middle, the porch house being built on at the front of the first as the original owner became more affluent. Just a guess, we didn't stop.

Love this. A very simple box construction, enlivened by a pillared porch with ornate detailing. Micro-house, but pretty in pink.

This one's not in Senoia, I think it might be Tomball, Texas, more modern, not a patch on the fancy ones above, but...

RDG's sister's place, a house built to look, externally, somewhat like a barn, but internally, an interesting mix of levels, full and half-height spaces. Vertiginous bookshelves. Top marks: I like it.

This one's a modern house, but incorporating a lot of those features I like, porches, decks, changes in roofline, levels, surrounded by greenery (RDG planned the landscaping, it's her professional qualification, Landscape Architect, clever woman!)
The house is built on sloping land, so there's a big basement below, Ha, yours truly looks at it, thinks "pottery, workshop!", the garage has space above. It's for sale, Newnan, Georgia.
And no. I can't afford it.

My aspirations might be better confined to a crumbling trailer-home in the woods.

So. All of the above are houses I like for varying reasons. Many are older houses, with history and stories attached, Porches are a factor. In the various parts of the country that I visited, a major factor for much of the year is heat. More modern houses seem to have very little thought given to passive energy efficiency, they rely on powered air-con totally.
But the earlier builders didn't have access to whole-house refrigeration, and so they designed their houses to take advantage of shade. Simply by building porches, in the sides facing the most of the day's sun, you can keep walls and windows in shadow, and dramatically reduce solar gain.
Energy efficiency matters as much in hot climates as it does in cold ones, and without getting into global warming and renewable resource preaching, it makes sense to build passive energy efficiency in, because both cooling and heating cost you money.  Yes, I appeal not to your sense of not despoiling the planet, because, let's face it, the reality is that most people don't really care, but we all would prefer to keep our money from being given to sheikhs so they can buy Ferraris, because they have the oil and we need it to keep our houses cool. Okay. That argument didn't work, but its 1:30 in the morning and my brain's slowing.
let it just be said, I have an interest in zero-energy-input building, passive houses, and my travels have led me to thinking a lot on the subject.
We humans are capable of building houses which require little or no electricity or fuel to stay warm or cool, at very little difference in cost from less efficient buildings.
Somehow, our current construction methods fall far short of what might be deemed desirable.

A story in the news, just before I left, was about deaths in the Houston area, related to the heat. It was said of at least two victims "They died because their air-conditioning units had been stolen". And the news report went on to say how poorer people couldn't afford the running costs. Which led me to thinking just how recent air-con really is, especially for the less well-off, and yet, Texas, the south, was colonised and thrived, long before refrigeration.
Maybe they died of heat back then too, of course some did, but at least they had the sense to build porches out, to shadow the walls of their homes, and designed their houses to allow passive cooling. Which seems not to be the norm now.

Snappy Dressing, in Newnan, Georgia.

I should maybe mention that Newnan is one of the many locations used in the Zombie series "The Walking Dead" I like to think Newnan has a better dressed class of Zombie. If they dress from this store, it gives a whole new look to zombiedom, the "Zombie Pimp Look".