After this urban week, we found our warm little cottage, and the greenery of the Massachusetts countryside. The little new thing is that we came home equipped with a car. We are now autonomous. Barely back we had to get back on the road to New York State. Head for the mountain Catskills, west, where we had a meeting with Carolyn Summers in Liberty. Carolyn Summers is a landscape designer, author and professor. She spent her entire career in U.S. environmental administrations where she was in charge of plans to restore and protect natural areas. We found his contact through the Ecological Landscape Alliance. It is an association that brings together gardeners, landscapers, architects, designers, nursery practitioners committed to living practices.
Most of them work on projects to create, restore and maintain parks and gardens. Their main common feature is to use local plants in their projects. This is the most interesting subject we have seen in the region. Carolyn Summers pushed the reflection far enough in the use of these plants. She even wrote a guide with her daughter, who took over the design work. Before entering Carolyn's garden, we had to take the road.
Let us open a small parenthesis on driving in the United States because this is what we call an experiment.
Freshly equipped on the eve of our Toyota Camra, we went carefully to our destination. It was the first conduct in the United States. We all have the image of these gigantic 2×5-way interchanges filled with cars. It was with some apprehension that we embarked on these giant roads. We are rather in favour of orientation with maps, but here we must admit that the gps really helped us to ride calmly. Manue, our host, had been a little brief on the rules of conduct. The first disturbing fact is that the lights are on the other side of the track where it must stop. Since there are lights at almost every crossroads we quickly took the fold. One amazing thing is the fact that in some cases you can go red when you turn right. You have to be confident, in doubt you don't move. Overall Americans are pretty cool at the wheel, it doesn't run very fast, and the traffic is quite fluid. Above all, do not exceed the speed limits, otherwise the police can appear behind you any flashing gyrophare and ask you to put yourself on the side. It's like customs, especially avoid the little joke! Another important point is the crossing with emergency vehicles. They are of course priority, but we must not just let them pass, we must stop and wait for them to pass. There are some rare roundabouts, which take a little to the little happiness. Finally, the last destabilising thing as a French driver is the excesses
We had 5 hours' drive to our destination, including 4 hours on the motorway, the habit was quickly taken. Unlike France, motorways are public. They are not very expensive and have nothing to do with our private motorways that are always well maintained.
The interview here is the responsibility of the State. If you don't know what to do, you can volunteer and come to maintain the highways. On the programme, cleaning of waste, graffiti and graffiti « Weeds ». Nice summer camp program for teens!
End of the parenthesis, let us return to our botanical subject of the day, the guided tour of Flying Trillium. Trilliums are pretty flowering plants in the area. Several species grow in the garden and have become the emblem. Carolyn warmly welcomed us, and we immediately started the visit. We were lucky because a few minutes earlier we were stuck in the car under a huge stormstorm.
Our guide took us to the start of the visit, at the foot of a beautiful pergola ingeniously used as a fence against deer. We haven't told you yet, but these lovely ungulates are a plague here. They are overpopulation and cause a lot of damage on young plants. Whoever wants a garden in the area must first close against the deer.
Let's continue the visit. Carolyn makes us pass several massifs, composed only of local wild plants. She was able to marry these plants with a lot of subtlety and finesse. The result is very aesthetic. Massifs seem to have always been present and are perfectly integrated into the rest of the landscape. The visit continues, and a thinning came to illuminate the Catskills mountains around. A magnificent plumbed sky that came to contrast with the shades of green in the garden. Walking through the different places of the garden we were able to admire all Carolyn's creations, its collections of dwarf conifers and its orchard. The visit was effective. We left, an hour and a half later, inspired by the garden and the careful work of composition that the gardener strives to implement.
Lost in the middle of the mountains we now had to find our way to our hotel for the night.
It was in Liberty that we found one of the few hotels available. The Days Inn by Wyndham, located between the hotel and the motel, opened its doors. In the evening we went to eat next door in a local dinner. Back with some a priori facing the decor a little kitch, we were super well received. It is not known whether it was because we represented a change in their usual clientele or whether it was because we were French, but the waitress and manager of the restaurant were very generous. We each ordered a dish. The proportion was perfect, just what it took for one night. So far, the few restaurants we went to eat had served us American portions: one dish could have been enough for two.
It is not known what happened but the waitress came back with another portion of lasagna, considering that Manu had not had enough and wanted to be pardoned. We were sorry, we couldn't swallow anything else. She offered to take it away, as is much done here, but we had nothing to store it properly or to eat it the next day. The manager didn't stay there and brought us a big piece of chocolate cake that she pulled out of her window. We couldn't refuse, so we left with our doggy bag and our piece of cake.
The next morning we had our breakfast in the hotel room, accompanied by two large screens, one of which was plugged into Fox news. We consider ourselves open enough and curious enough to discuss and go beyond the a priori, but the, it was too much.
We needed nature to erase this bad feeling. Looking on the map, we found a walking path in a small forest. The trail was pleasant without being exceptional, but offered us a beautiful view of the mountain Catskills and a beautiful encounter.
In different places of the ballad, we met a man who spoke to us several times. Very nice and curious to know where we came from with our accent, he asked us if we knew what this great green rectangle was that we could see in the middle of the woods.
Of course we had no idea. It was the mythical place where the Woodstock festival took place in 1969. We were 15 minutes away without knowing. We had to go back to Holliston, but we said we couldn't miss it. So we made this little detour and we were able to see this site that millions of people know. It is a large meadow surrounded by trees. One wonders how 450,000 people were able to settle down on this surface. Today, there remains a sculpture in memory of the event and a museum space. Judging by the size of the parking lot, the site is still well attended and the annual commemoration must gather a package of nostalgia of the time.
Very happy with our unexpected little crochet, we swallowed our cake the day before and took the road back to Holliston, where we were waiting for the evening for the surprise party of the diploma of Margot, the eldest daughter of our hosts.
