34F at 8am rising to 39F. Wet and overcast: mud season continues unabated.

© Margaret Helthaler The Reformed Church in Grahamsville
34F at 8am rising to 39F. Wet and overcast: mud season continues unabated.
© Margaret Helthaler The Reformed Church in Grahamsville
There’s nothing more majestic than a towering hemlock, a evergreen conifer that seems to be loosely draped in its elegantly weeping branches that dangle delicately towards the earth. It can live to 800 years or more and grow to statuesque heights of more than 70 feet. Last year’s call for illustrations of the Hemlock for an exhibition ignited interest among artists of the Catskills and once I started looking for hemlock, I found them everywhere. I even found a short sapling on my property and it will outlive me by many many hundreds of years, if it’s not attacked by the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid, an invasive species native to Asia. The Catskills Center has a new programme for the pest that’s thought to have arrived in New York in the eighties.
From their website: