Bunnies

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 30, 2014

We seem to always have one baby bunny in the Mitchell House yard. 2014’s baby has been a bit more respectful of the garden then his predecessors. He did not mow down all the morning glories like one of the baby bunnies before him, nor did he munch his way through the nasturtiums.


What he did do was create a burrow under one of the rosemary plants that we have had growing for several years out front. This rosemary has made it through quite a few winters, including the ten inches of snow we got this past March – that late blizzard that did in some of my own plants at home, including my Japanese anemones. So we shall see if his burrow harms the rosemary but so far, no harm done. He, like his friends before him, scoots between front and backyards one of two ways. He either nips under a portion of the House that is open underneath or he runs around to the front and goes under the front porch. The bunnies before him never really did that last route so I give him – or her! – credit for some intelligence on that. This bunny has an escape route! 

However, where he is lacking is in his danger instinct. He has become so used to us that he has now taken, especially with the last few really hot and humid days – the first of the summer but in September! – to sitting next to the hydrangea in the backyard of the House. He is just far enough away from the crawlspace to be where the air is better but close enough to run under. But, he just sits there. I move in and out of the Cottage, sometimes accidentally allowing the screen door to slip and slam and he just sits there. In this photograph, though it’s hard to see, he actually has his back legs crossed. He has an enormous grown up tail – he has not met it yet with the rest of his body size – and a beautiful white belly. I actually thought due to his calm and lazy demeanor that he was not feeling well yesterday as he did not leave the spot for several hours! But he was back at it again today so I took the opportunity to take this photograph of him. (I did not ask him to sign a release form.) He was there when I got in this morning and two hours later, he is still there just now facing a different direction. So, I think he is just too trusting of us. Not that we would harm him.


JNLF


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By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 27, 2025
This is what our landscaper for MMA calls it. “The ancient vine.” He tells the people who work for him not to touch the “ancient vine.” I have probably made him – and all of them – terrified of it. I am even terrified of it to some degree. I refer to the grape vine behind the Mitchell House this is supposed to be Peleg Mitchell Junior’s grape vine – Maria Mitchell’s uncle who inhabited the house from about 1836 to his death in 1882. It has two trunks but one died several years ago. Because of that, each year I try to root shoots. It’s fairly easy to do – when you cut back the vine in late fall/early winter. I have had success but not success protecting the shoots I baby all winter from bunnies and other critters try as I might. I started doing this when the one trunk died – I was PANICKED! The landscaper stays away because I have told him if anyone is going to accidentally harm or worse yet, kill, this grape vine it would be me so I only have myself to blame. So each November/December – once ALL the leaves have fallen off – I climb my ladder and quietly, carefully, and fearfully cut back the stems typically to two buds. I have been somewhat successful in spurring grape production – and these grapes attract some amazing birds in the fall. It takes me some time – and I pretty much hyperventilate the entire time – and then, I stare at it all winter. Passing under it multiple times a day to reach my office. Hoping, and yes, praying, it will come out in the spring. It’s a late budder so just recently the buds started to show themselves – thank goodness! – and I was rewarded today (May 5, 2025) with this wonderful hot pink color on the edges of the leaves as they are uncurling. JNLF
By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 19, 2025
May 27. {1857} There is this great difference between Niagara and other wonders of the world, that is you get no idea from descriptions or even from paintings. Of the Mammoth Cave you have a conception from what you are told, of the Natural Bridge you get really a truthful impression from a picture. But Cave and Bridge are in still life, Niagara is all activity and change. No picture gives you the varying form of the water of the change of color; no description conveys to your mind the ceaseless roar. So too the ocean must be unrepresentable to those who have not looked upon it. Maria Mitchell would tour the Mammoth Cave and the Natural Bridge during her trip to the southern United States as Prudence Swift’s chaperone – I have written of these travels and Prudence before. Niagara Falls is a place she likely saw on her way to visit her younger sister Phebe Mitchell Kendall, who once lived with her husband in Pennsylvania. I was a bit surprised that she feels the way she does about the Cave and Bridge being well-represented by images but I do kind of se her point. But Niagara, the ocean, any moving body of water – she is right. You don’t fully comprehend it until you hear it, touch and taste it, see its colors, and feel it splash, sprinkle, or mist across your face. Niagara certainly mists across your face – sort of like a breezy day at the beach and the salt mist that slowly builds across your face and coats the beach grass so that it shimmers in the sunlight. JNLF
By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger May 12, 2025
I have been watching it. Waiting. Today, I was rewarded with the scent as they have now started to open. From late fall, all through the winter and early spring, there is a very large patch of dirt with traces of roots and purple-like portions of some sort of plant. Then, they slowly start to send their shoots forth – up from that dusty pile of dirt come little greenish pips that become the leaves. Then, you start to see the stems tightened against the leaves and then lovely chartreuse buds are visible that then turn to white and slowly open from top to bottom. As soon as they star to open, I wait. Knowing that one morning I will walk by soon and then I will get a delicious waft of Lily of the Valley. I have written about this patch at the Mitchell House before. I have always been fascinated by the fact that these grow in full sun – they have no shade whatsoever. And this patch is old. I’m not sure how old – I do not think late nineteenth century but possibly – or maybe very early twentieth century. We have one or two images in the collection from the early 1900s but one does not show the ground, and the other not so much either. I also think this is one of the earliest flowering patches of Lily of the Valley on island – let me know if you’ve seen others this early. And in FULL sun to boot! But in any case, today was the day – May 5, 2025 – that I got the first waft. Saturday when I was here, they were not ready yet. But now, they are! And when I smell it, I know why it was my mother-in-law’s favorite flower. JNLF
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