The Apple Tree

And often in my wanderings I promise myself that when I reach home I shall see the apple-tree as I had never seen it before. Even its bark and its gnarly trunk will hold converse with me, and its first tiny leaves of the budding spring will herald me a welcome. Once again I shall be a youth with the apple-tree, but feeling more than the turbulent affection of transient youth can understand. Life does not seem regular and established when there is no apple-tree in the yard and about the buildings, no orchards blooming in the May and laden in the September, no baskets heaped with the crisp smooth fruits; without all these I am still a foreigner, sojourning in a strange land. - L.H. Bailey, The Apple Tree

Upcoming Programs & Events At The Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum

APRIL PROGRAMS & EVENTS
    > NIGHT FOR MUSEUMS: Thursday, April 1st, 5:30-7:30 at Phoenix Cafe
    > MEMBERSHIP KICK-OFF OPEN HOUSE: Saturday, April 17th, 12 Noon- 3PM at the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum; Even if you are not a member, come on down and see the changes and opportunities for you and the family at America's National Historic Site for the Father of Modern Horticulture!

MAY PROGRAMS & EVENTS
    > KOUSA DOGWOOD SALE PICK-UP: Saturday, May 8th, 9 AM- 1PM at Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum: Pre-order the official flowering tree of South Haven. Trees measure approximate 36 inches for $30. Pre-order your tree by Wednesday May 5th! Call Anne French at 269-639-2412 or Esther Hanson at 269-637-2478:

JUNE PROGRAMS & EVENTS
    > STRAWBERRY ICE-CREAM FESTIVAL: Sunday, June 19th, 2PM-4PM: Bring the family and taste the season's best! Locally grown strawberries adorn locally made ice-cream. Being ecological never tasted so good!

Open to the Voices of Nature

"It is due to every child that his mind be opened to the voices of nature. The world is always quick with sounds, although our ears are closed to them. Every person hears the loud songs of birds, the sweep of heavy winds and the rush of rapid rivers or the sea; but the small voices with which we live are known not to one in ten thousand. To be able to distinguish the notes of the different birds is one of the choicest resources in life, and it should be one of the first results of a good education. It is but a step from this to the other small voices,—of the insects, the frogs and toads, the mice, the domestic animals, the flow of quiet waters, and the noises of the little winds. It is a great thing when one learns how to listen. At least once, every young person should sleep far out in the open, preferably in a wood or the margin of a wood, that he may know the spirit and the voices of the night and thereafter be free and unafraid." The Nature Study Idea, L.H. Bailey, 1909

Planting A Plant

    "Most persons are interested in plants, even though they do not know it. They enjoy the green verdure, the brilliant flower, the graceful form. They are interested in plants in general. I wish that every person were interested in some plant in particular. There is a pleasure in the companionship, merely because the plant is a living and a growing thing. It expresses power, vitality. It is a complete, self-sufficient organism. It makes its way in the world. It is alive.

    The companionship with a plant, as with a bird or an insect, means more than the feeling for the plant itself. It means that the person has interest in something real and genuine. It takes him out-of-doors. It invites him to the field. It is suggestive. It inculcates a habit of meditation and reflection. It enables one to discover himself." -L.H. Bailey, Planting a Plant, 'Nature-Study Quarterly, No. 8 : Leaflet 21, January, 1901

Visit the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory, NOW!

For those that can't make the trip out to Ithica currently, click on the title link for a short video tour of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Conservatory with Cornell plant biologist Ed Cobb.
    In 1935, Bailey donated his herbarium and its library to Cornell University: "Call it an Hortorium... A repository for things of the garden — a place for the scientific study of garden plants, their documentation, their classification, and their naming." This conservatory became the major U. S. center for the systematics of cultivated plants. Enjoy!

Restoring Liberty Hyde Bailey's Birthsite

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum is currently being restored to bring alive this Greek Revival farm house. With the help of Picasa, take a close peek at the process.

Getting Unplugged and Back in the Child's Realm

The Kaiser Family Foundation  reports that American children's use of iPods and MP3 players and other electronic media has increased more than an hour in the last five years. Today a child will spend over 7 hours plugged-in.  (Children's Media Use, By Platform - Kaiser Slides) Solution? Connect back to nature as Bailey confesses in this poem, where even the grand Dean of Cornell was snubbed by a child enthralled in their timeless world.

CHILD'S REALM


A little child sat on the sloping strand
Gazing at the flow and the free,
Thrusting its feet into the golden sand,
Playing with the waves and the sea.

I snatched a weed that was tossed on the flood
And unravelled its tangled skeins;
And I traced the course of the fertile blood
That lay deep in its meshed veins;

I told how the stars are garnered in space,
How the moon on its course is rolled;
How the earth is hung in its ceaseless place
As it whirls in its orbit old.
The little child paused with its busy hands
And gazed for a moment at me,
Then it dropped again to its golden sands
And played with the waves and the sea.

L.H. Bailey, Wind and Weather