Hobart's Second Water Tower

This undated photograph shows the town's second* water tower (now gone) at the east end of what is now Jerry Pavese Park. The building to the right of it is, I believe, the water filtration plant (now gone) and to the right of that, the NIPSCO building (still standing).


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Image courtesy of the Eldon Harms family.


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*The first one was on New Street.

Hobart from the Other Water Tower, 1931

Not the one the librarian climbed, but the new water tower at the east end of what would someday be Jerry Pavese Park. (To see the water tower, look straight up from the first "i" in "Historical" in this circa 1959 photo.) This time, the tower-climber was probably a high-school student, who took these photos printed in the 1931 Aurora yearbook.


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The first photo looks eastward along the Nickel Plate tracks. You can see the white steeple of the Unitarian church south of the tracks. I am not sure what that tower is, north of the tracks near the lake — perhaps it's for the police/fire radio, if such a thing existed in 1931?




In the second photo, we see the streetcar barns in the foreground, and then Third Street crossing the lake into the heart of downtown.




The photographer turned more westerly for the third photo. We see Third Street across the foreground, dotted with houses, and beyond it, I believe you can see streets all set out and ready to be built up — Burling Place, Court Street, West 2nd Street …




The fourth photo looks across the lake toward Wisconsin Street. Not much to see!




The last photo takes in the residential area south of downtown Hobart, on the banks of the lake — that is, the area of Water, Lake, 5th, 6th, 7th Streets.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Smooth Sumac Berries

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The fruit of the smooth sumac.

I was just looking around to see what eats these nasty-looking berries, and came across this page, which (if you scroll down) has a chart showing everything that has any kind of relationship to this plant. Except for blogs.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Panicled Dogwood Berries

The panicled dogwoods in Jerry Pavese Park have borne fruit.


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Not very appetizing, if you ask me, but the birds don't ask me.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Sweet Viburnum Berries

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I have to go back to Extreme Summer Posting Time because I'm tired. So here's the fruit of the sweet viburnum. Which it appears that somebody likes to eat. Maybe somebody with wings.

Found in Jerry Pavese Park.

Wild Grasses of Ainsworth: Soft Rush

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Found by the dock in Jerry Pavese Park. In fact you can see the reflection of the dock in the water.

Here's a close-up of the inflorescence, and I know your life would not be complete without this:

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Chokecherries

We have already seen the blossoms. Here is the fruit.

In late June, ripening:

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In July, ripe:

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Burdock

It occurs to me that although I posted a photo of burdock gone to seed, I never got around to showing you its blossoms. Just look at what beauty you've been missing!


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Actually, you probably haven't been missing it at all, since you can hardly step out of your house without seeing one of these plants.

I already knew that burdock is ugly, prolific and unkillable, but until I did a little casual internet research, I did not know it had culinary and possibly medicinal uses. Now I don't hate it quite so much.



This particular specimen found in Jerry Pavese Park.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Spreading Dogbane

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Another not-very-abundant shrub in Jerry Pavese Park. My dog found it. It is mildly poisonous, and so could possibly kill a dog (or any mammal), or at least make it sick, but according to Jack Sanders: "No dog would be foolish enough to eat the leaves, which have an intensely acrid taste: the plant was once called bitterroot." While this plant was sometimes used in the past to treat people bitten by mad dogs, American dogbane likely got its name by being mistaken for some similar-looking European plant.

The interior construction of its pretty little blossoms is dangerous to flies, however. Apparently as they are sipping the nectar, their little tongues get wedged in by scales deep inside the blossom; and flies don't have the strength of larger insects, like butterflies and bees, to pull their tongues back out. And so sometimes they die there, hanging by their tongues. What a way to go.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Buttonbush

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Found by chance in Jerry Pavese Park. It doesn't seem abundant; I've come across only one, a little west of the dock, which is no accident because this species likes wet places.

There's nothing particularly interesting about this shrub, but it does have cute blossoms.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Smooth Sumac

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I believe this is smooth sumac, found in Jerry Pavese Park. (I keep calling everything "Wildflowers of Ainsworth" because this is the Ainsworth blog, gosh darn it.)

I used to think all sumac was poisonous, but now I've learned (thanks to Newcomb's Wildflower Guide) that poison sumac is only one variety, and it grows in swamps. It must be pretty dangerous stuff, as Mr. Newcomb includes an italicized comment in its description: "Very poisonous at all seasons."

However, I can't find anyone who says that smooth sumac is poisonous. The worst I've found is this site, which calls it a "woody nuisance."

A close-up of the blossoms, which I've never paid much attention to before:

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Swamp Dock

Down by the dock in Jerry Pavese Park, in the muddy soil at the edge of the water, you can find swamp dock:

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The leaves are enthusiastically green, but beyond that the plant is unimpressive. Here, a few of the tiny white blossoms are still clinging:


Elsewhere, they've already borne fruit:


So, nothing interesting about the plant itself, but thanks to my research, I learned a new word: terete. Botany is full of weird words that have no use in daily life.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Panicled Dogwood

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A shrub growing abundantly on the slopes of Lake George in Jerry Pavese Park.

Apparently "dogwood" has nothing to do with man's best friend, if we look into the history of the name.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Cranesbill

Here we have some kind of cranesbill — Carolina cranesbill, I think. I found it blossoming in Jerry Pavese Park.


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And back in Ainsworth, beside the Canadian National tracks, we find it already fruiting. In this picture you can see the long, narrow fruit that supposedly resembles a crane's bill and gives the plant its name.



The most interesting thing I learned in reading up on this plant is that our word "geranium" derives from the Greek word for crane. Cranesbills are geraniums and vice versa — but we're talking about wild geraniums, because those domesticated geraniums you buy at the nursery are really pelargoniums, not true geraniums. Or so says Jack Sanders, anyway.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Poison Hemlock

A couple years ago, hanging out by the railroad tracks, we met a black sheep of the Parsley family. Now we meet another, in a more populated place: Jerry Pavese Park.

Allow me to introduce you to Poison Hemlock.


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These disgraces to the Parsley family name stand some six or seven feet tall. More about their poisonous personalities here. Yes, these are the guys who did Socrates in. And now you can find them loitering around the park, waiting for another victim.

The leaves:


Pretty, aren't they? And they look so much like wild carrots.

Their distinguishing characteristic is a purple-spotted stem.


The blossoms.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Yellow Iris

When I saw this lovely thing blooming by the pier in Jerry Pavese Park, I got all excited. Had I found a wild iris? But Newcomb's Wildflower Guide says of the yellow iris, "Escaped from cultivation to marshes and banks of streams." So … yes and no.


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Wildflowers of Ainsworth: American Vetch

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I believe what we have here is American vetch, aka purple vetch. It is a flowering vine. I found this one (along with many others like it) in Jerry Pavese Park, growing beneath the trees on the unmowed slope down to Lake George.

The flowers are pretty, but I didn't manage to get a very good picture of them.



Oh well.

In the picture below, that toothed ring around the stem at left is called a stipule. I just learned that, in the process of trying to identify this thing.



Yep, this is all you get today. Welcome to Extreme Summer Posting Time, aka Why Did I Think It Was a Good Idea to Start Building an Outdoor Storage Bin at the Busiest Time of Year? Posting Time.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Chokecherry

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Another from Jerry Pavese Park.

I was first introduced to these on one of my childhood visits to my grandparents in southern Missouri. A little neighbor girl there told me the trees got their name from the bitter taste of their fruit. She was brave enough to taste the fruit — and spit it out. I wasn't brave enough to taste it.

The Wikipedia entry on this topic includes a puzzling statement: "Chokecherry is toxic to horses, and moose, cattle, goats, deer, and other animals with segmented stomachs (rumens), especially after the leaves have wilted (such as after a frost or after branches have been broken) because wilting releases cyanide and makes the plant sweet" — puzzling, I say, because I would not expect the poisonous qualities of cyanide to be limited to the animals listed. But then, I have not closely studied either chokecherries or cyanide.

Here are some chokecherry bushes overlooking Lake George.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Pussytoes

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These flowers get their name from their resemblance to a cat's toes — with the claws retracted, of course. The blossoms are just little white puffs, the stems and leaves downy.

According to Jack Sanders, their other folk names include ladies' tobacco, love's nest, poverty weed, and pearly mouse-eared everlasting.

The only one of those names with any explanation is "poverty weed," for their ability to grow in poor soil. That name is also applied to other plants with the same ability.

I came across these in Jerry Pavese Park, or whatever they call that part of the park with the Scout cabin, but they are common.

Pussytoes tend to grow in colonies, and the plants in each colony are connection by runners beneath the surface of the soil.