Muddy Waters.

9-11-11 VERMONT: It’s the tenth anniversary of the horrible terrorist attack on NYC and Washington, but I won’t comment other than to note that the Ground Zero Memorial looks beautiful, restful, reassuring and serene, and I look forward to visiting it.

As I drove to VT today, I noticed that the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers were both brown as were the Deerfield, Black, Green, White and other smaller rivers in MA and VT. All the water levels are high, and the rivers are flowing fast. We had another 2.65 inches in the rain gauge from the last week or so. They’re all caring a lot of sand, silt and mud that will end up in the Atlantic on the ocean bottom. Someday that mud and sand will be new sedimentary mudstone and sandstone deposits. Ordinarily those rivers have low flow and clear water at this time of year.

All that mud was eroded from the washed out river beds, roads, farms, fields and hillsides, and it is one step in the on-going process of leveling and flattening of New England. The Appalachians were once as tall as the Himalayas, but hundreds of millions of years of weathering and erosion have reduced them to what we see today—by events like what we have just experienced. We are seeing Geology happening, and, let me add, it is no fun being part of the action whether hurricane, flood, earthquake or volcano.

New blooms: more hosta, more asters.


The gardens have enjoyed the rain.

Perennial Chrysanthemum.