May 2026 Book talks, Art in Bloom, spring!

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Book display for a talk at the Wellfleet Audubon sanctuary on Cape Cod.

I've been busy giving book talks this month - at the MIT Museum and the MIT class reunion around graduation; at 3 Mass Audubon sanctuaries; and at a couple of bird clubs. Also doing some podcasts and radio interviews.  It's all going very well - the MIT Press bookseller says that that book is selling "gangbusters"!  They've already sold over 3/4 of the initial print run of 3000 and have it in the printer's queue to print another 1000. I think they're going to need more...

Friday May 1 Susan and I went to the Art in Bloom show at the Museum of Fine Arts. Local garden clubs are assigned a work of art on which to base a floral arrangement. It was spectacular - dozens and dozens of arrangements, cleverly done. 


 

Tuesday May 5 The spring songbirds are coming back. Hearing lots of warblers (but can't seem to find them). And here's an oriole in a bush at the end of my street.

 

Friday May 8 I'm in Provincetown with Susan this weekend to give a couple of talks on the Cape, one for Mass Audubon and another for the Cape Cod Bird Club. Sunset at Herring Cove Beach.

 Monday May 18 My friends, Beth and Dale, sent me this photo from Ptown, of a pair of horseshoe crabs scooting through the sand, getting ready to mate, leaving tracks behind them. I'd never seen anything like this before.

Dale Archer

 Sunday May 31 Went for a tour of the bonsai collection at the Arb, given by the bonsai specialist, Jun Imabayashi. The collection began when Larz Anderson donated his collection, started when he was Ambassador to Japan, to the Arb in 1913. Jun talked about how he prunes the trees to limit their height and to allow sunlight to reach the inner regions, to enable the tree to grow in width. In addition to the bonsai on display in their outdoor pavilion, there are several other rooms for caring for them: one "room" with slatted wood walls to let the sun and breeze in; an unheated, air-conditioned bunker-like building with no windows to store them over the winter at temperatures around 38F; and a preparation room, where Jun carefully and precisely trims them.

Bonsai preparation room

 On my way out of the Arb, I noticed that the big tulip tree near the Hunnewell Building is blossoming.


 

 

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