Wild Mushrooms of Ainsworth: Blusher

Here we go with another very tentative mushroom identification. I think this is a blusher.


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Its scientific name is Amanita rubescens. Of course I, as a Dorothy Sayers fan, got excited upon learning that — but a little more research taught me that the European species differs from the North American, so this may not be exactly the mushroom that played a central role in The Documents in the Case, though, like its European cousin, it can easily be confused with a deadly poisonous species.

The name "blusher" refers to the tendency of its skin to bruise reddish. I took an immature specimen and bruised its stem, just to see:



Looks somewhat reddish to me. That photo is interesting also in that it shows the partial veil stretching from the outer edge of the cap to the stem, covering the immature gills. As the cap expands, the veil ruptures and remains as a ring around the stem.



The stem thickens toward the base to form a club shape.

The Calls of Ainsworth

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John and Lillian (Buchfuehrer) Call. Undated.
Image courtesy of Norma Buchfuehrer Collins.

Just two years had passed since Lillian Buchfuehrer left her Ainsworth-area home with her parents; now, in the autumn of 1919, she left her Hobart home with her new husband, John Call.

According to the Gazette, the groom's parents, residents of South Bend, Indiana, "had at one time lived at Ainsworth." That's news to me! I never heard of them before. Their Ainsworth residence may have been pre-1899, or perhaps they slipped in and out so quietly and briefly that they escaped newspaper attention.

Lillian, now about 26, had spent most of 1919 working as a clerk at Scheidt & Keilman's store (the Bee Hive) in Hobart. As for the 24-year-old groom, he had spent the past 16 months in the Army, which had taken him to France and Germany, and brought him back only about a week before the wedding.

The quiet ceremony took place on the afternoon of Saturday, October 18, at the home of the Rev. E.R. Schuelke, witnessed by the bride's brother and sister, William and Augusta. Afterwards, the Buchfuehrers hosted a small reception and dinner at their home.

On Sunday, the young couple left for Harvey, Illinois, where they intended to live, as John held a position with the "car works" there. I do not know how long that lasted, but by January 1920 they had come back to Hobart to live, and John was working in a steel mill.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Call-Buchfuehrer." Hobart Gazette 24 Oct. 1919.
♦ "Call-Buchfuehrer." Hobart News 23 Oct. 1919.

"Our Farm"

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Images courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

"Our farm" was the Triebess farm. This photo comes from a little scrapbook put together by Evelyn Triebess after the family returned to Chicago, recording the events of her last year in high school. That scrapbook is now at the Hobart Historical Society museum.





So Evelyn spelled it "Triebes," but if you think I'm going to go back through this blog and correct every spelling of "Triebess," you overestimate me.

Unfortunately the scrapbook contains almost nothing relating directly to Ainsworth, aside from the photo of "our farm," which tells us very little — no date, and the young woman in the photo is not even identified, though I would guess it's Evelyn herself. I don't know where the orchard would have been. The Triebess land roughly coincides with John Wood Elementary School and the Christian Assembly church on the north side of 73rd, and, on the south side, Calumet Orthopedics and Prosthetics, and part of Veterans Memorial Park.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Flower-of-an-Hour Gone to Seed

I'm sure you all remember that flower-of-an-hour that hadn't quite opened yet, back in September 2009. This year I have a marvelous specimen in my flower bed, so I can get a photo of an opened blossom, as well as seed pods.


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I think the immature seed pods, with their translucent skins and decorative veining, are almost as pretty as the flowers, and goodness knows they last longer.



The seed pod, when it matures, splits open from the top to reveal several interior pods, like peapods, that also split open to spill out the seed nuggets.

Windmill On Its Way (Random Pointless Photos)

Now and then a windmill train will pass by on the Canadian National tracks: eastbound, loaded with parts for an electricity-generating windmill, heading for some wind farm somewhere, I suppose.

Here's one of the arms.


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It's hard to show how gigantic these things are.

Look! Down on the Ground!

From the Schavey envelope collection.


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Image courtesy of the Hobart Historical Society.

Handwritten on back: "Mable & Harry (right) 1923(?)" I don't doubt that's Mable and Harry, but I wonder about the date. The first photo I posted from the collection, dated 1924, showed them wearing (so far as I can tell) the same clothes, in roughly the same setting. On how many occasions did these people hang around the railroad tracks in their Sunday best?

Harry seems to be pointing out something on the ground, saying, "Look at that!" — perhaps that large piece of paper.

Mable had only one sister, Loretta, born 1914; if this is 1923 or 1924, that little girl at left could be Loretta. But that's just a wild guess. I have no clue who the woman in the plaid skirt is.

The configuration of railroad tracks and structures ahead of them doesn't look quite right to be southeast of the Pennsy Depot, so I'm in the dark about that too.

Wildflowers of Ainsworth: Japanese Knotweed

Intruder alert!


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These tiny white blossoms belong to an invasive species, Japanese knotweed.

This specimen was found in Deep River County Park, with plenty of company. Japanese knotweed spreads rapidly to establish colonies that crowd out native plants. It is very difficult to kill. I know — I have some of this stuff growing around my house. It was already growing there when I bought the house, and not knowing what it was, I let it alone, thinking it was rather pretty … until I noticed its tendency to take over all available space. Now I've got it pretty well confined to the crawlspace under my porch. Any leaf that dares poke out through the plastic lattice blocking off the crawlspace gets yanked off; any new plant that sprouts from the roots creeping outward under the soil gets sprayed with poison-ivy killer.

Japanese knotweed is characterized by zig-zagging stems that are hollow inside, with slightly swollen joints where each leaf sprouts off.