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Mesic Red Oak-Northern Hardwood Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- This well-drained kame terrace in the Salisbury Town Forest supports a dry example of this forest type with three oak species. The forest community is distinguished by the absence of sugar maple, an important component of hardwood forests on less droughty sites. It includes red oak, white oak, and chestnut oak, and I think at least one black oak (I have yet to get my hands on a leaf or acorn from it).
This GigaPan can be viewed in its geographic context here: http://conservation.townofsalisbury.org/panoramas/townforest/index.htm Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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In a few weeks, a Thursday evening will be much busier on Lake Dunmore. The shores of the lake are the most densely populated part of Salisbury, and the most scenic. By mid-June, when schools close, the summer residents are streaming in. Camps Keewaydin and Songadeewin can house a couple hundred boys and girls, and Kampersville can add several hundred car and RV campers. When the camps are full, the population of Salisbury is doubled. This big landscape offers much for everyone to do.
Community group: http://www.lakedunmorevt.com/ Author: C. Fastie |
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The town of Addison is the flattest and the most fertile part of Vermont. The plain extending west to Lake Champlain was the bottom of a glacial lake and post-glacial estuary from 14,000 to 11,000 years ago. The clayey sediments are more than 30m deep in places. The soils are slow to dry and require powerful equipment to work, but the high cation exchange capacity of the clays allows great natural fertility. About 90% of the field crops here are corn and hay for dairy feed -- this is where Ben and Jerry's ice cream starts.
I counted about 180 silos in the scene. |
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Since the first image of this garden was made on July 10 (http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=28793), my efforts here have been applied mostly to weeding, mulching, and eating. Normally we would be entering the most delightful three month season of fresh produce, but this year the late blight (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29toma.html) has killed all of the tomatoes (32 plants of 4 varieties), so it will be an impoverished season. The blight is the same one that caused the Great Famine in Ireland (1845-1852), although I am not yet contemplating starvation or emigration. My potatoes appear to be mostly unaffected, but the fungus-like pathogen might rot the tubers in storage.
Notes: Autofocus was called for, so I monitored the imager and intervened when autofocus failed and a photo was not taken in time (My attention waned and I had to recreate one missed photo.). Also, the kid does not have a twin, or two basketballs. |
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This vegetable garden is in the well-drained sandy loam of a 13,000 year old ice-contact alluvial fan. Soil fertility is enhanced by tilling under 30 cm of tree leaves each autumn, and several cm of composted cow manure each spring. During the growing season, beds are mulched with compost and old hay. Most of the produce is eaten fresh, but potatoes, onions, and garlic are stored, and 2 dozen quarts of tomatoes are preserved.
Notes: This panorama required variable focus, but some areas confounded the autofocus, so the imager was monitored and paused if the camera failed to take a shot in time. The shot was then completed manually before the imager was resumed. |
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My apologies to those whose knowledge of the fierce territoriality of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds might make the above scene a perplexing distortion of reality. Rarely will the local male allow birds others than his mate to use a food source in his territory, so a feeding flock like this is impossible, and has a biological spookiness to it, like cloned pets. In a sense, the distorted reality is due only to the integration over time that is a feature of all GigaPan panoramas. It’s just highlighted here by selectively capturing the moments to integrate. This image is a record of one visit to my patio by a male (dark throat) and three visits by females (probably the same one).
In case Mom asks: EVERY ONE OF THE BIRDS IN THE PANO IS SHAUN WHITE (and his boo). (see http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=15884) Notes: The Epic 100 did not capture any birds in the panorama, so afterwards I turned off the imager, set the D40 to continuous shutter at 1/1600 second and single area autofocus, and waited. One can get carried away with this, so I made sure to drop in birds (and insects) only where they were actually photographed in the scene. |
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In 1861, Joseph Battell remodeled a farmhouse into an inn (in distance left of center) which became a successful summer getaway and was incrementally enlarged during his lifetime. Today the inn and surrounding buildings are part of Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf Campus where the Bread Loaf School of English and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference take place each summer. During his life, Battell bought 40,000 acres in Vermont, and left much of it to Middlebury College in 1915. Most of this land was subsequently transferred to the Green Mountain National Forest and to the state of Vermont. The college still owns the land used for its Nordic and alpine ski areas and the Bread Loaf Campus.
Elevation: 440 m (1440 ft), Camera location from GPS: N43 57.199 W72 59.570 Notes: I used a Nikon D40 with a Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 AI-s lens at f/11, 1/400 second (lowest rows at 1/320 sec), ISO 200, NEF. 35mm equiv is 450mm, and field of view was set to 3.4 degrees. Focus was manually adjusted many times. Two second shutter delay was initiated by wireless remote. Lightroom was used to remove vignetting before outputting jpegs for stitching. Abundant misalignment errors may be due to insufficient overlap among photos, and/or to manually adjusting the focus. |
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The property and yellow buildings of the Bread Loaf Campus were bequeathed to Middlebury College by Joseph Battell in 1915 (the white buildings are more recent). Since 1920, this campus has been home to the Bread Loaf School of English, which offers summer graduate courses and an MA degree. In 1926, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference began operation here. Most of the buildings are vacant except in the summer months.
Elevation: 440 m (1440 ft), Camera location from GPS: N43 57.188 W73 59.550 Notes: I used a Nikon D40 with a Nikkor 300mm f/4.5 AI-s lens at f/11, 1/320 second, ISO 200, NEF. 35mm equiv is 450mm, and field of view was set to 3.1 degrees. Focus was manually adjusted many times. Two second shutter delay was initiated by wireless remote. Lightroom was used to remove vignetting before outputting jpegs for stitching. |