Spring in Mt. Auburn

Today was a beautiful, sunny spring day, which finally started feeling like spring was finally here.  After the long, cold winter, the trees are a little late in budding and flowering.

I took a walk through the beautiful landscapes of the Mt. Auburn Cemetery, here in my home town of Cambridge.  Some of the photos I took are in a reflective blog post.  But there were so many wonderful vista that I decided to post some more of them here.

Views of a Muted Autumn

Perhaps it's been a bit dry, or it was too wet, or the temperatures too warm.  I'm not sure, but the colors have been fairly muted this fall.  

Often we witness truly brilliant colors.  We have the bright oranges and reds of the sugar maples, the brilliant yellows of the honey locusts, birch and flowering pears.  Each tree's timing is a little different, creating a magnificent backdrop of color. 

In past years, the colors were simply more brilliant.  Here are some examples from my blog posts:  Boston's Public Garden in 2009,  Mt. Auburn Cemetery, also in 2009, or this slideshow of fall views around my fair city of Cambridge.

In contrast, here's a few views of fall 2013 in Boston and vicinity.

Early in the season, muted red browns along the Charles River

Some colors mix with greens and bare branches along a busy street in Cambridge.

Going way out to the 'burbs, one can find colorful stands of trees, like these in Methuen.

Nice work by the architect to coordinate the exterior color with the fall hues of the street trees.

Returning to the 'burbs, brilliant oranges of the maples mix with the greens and yellows in Wellesley.

Stand of paper birch near a playground in Cambridge.

Deer Island: Urban Wilds, Harbor Views and a Treatment Plant

A few weeks ago, one of my sobrinas (a niece on the Peruvian side of the family) who is also an engineer paid us a visit.  Where to take her?  On a tour of her tia's engineering projects, where else!

After picking her up at Boston's Logan Airport, we took a short drive to Deer Island, which includes some of my projects from the 1990s when the island went through a major decade-long reconstruction.

Historically, the isle was home to the outcast, from a hospital to treat the incoming refugees from the Irish Potato Famine to a prison as well as the city's wastewater treatment plant.  It was not a place to visit!

In the remake of Deer Island, an
urban wild was created to buffer the
wastewater treatment plan.

The 1990s saw an extreme make-over of Deer Island.  The state of Massachusetts was under a court order to clean up Boston Harbor and end the dumping of partially treated (i.e., primary treated) sewage just off the tip of the island.  A brand new treatment plant would replace the prison and old plant.  To hide the facility from the nearby residents in Winthrop, they would take the drumlin (glacially-deposited hill) in the middle of the island and move it to the north side, creating an urban wild to buffer the plant.

The public access plan we developed
called for full-perimeter public access.
This section, designed by a different
firm, shows the perimeter walkway
above the 8-ton revetment that
protects the shoreline.

Many of us civil engineers worked on various facets of the treatment plant and surroundings.  My work was to manage a bit of the design of part of the plant, but mostly involved the sitework in and around the various structures.  While much of the work was utilities buried in the ground, the public access plan and shoreline protection are what is most visible to the visiting public.

The public access plan we developed called for full-perimeter public access.  The views are spectacular:

• To the east is Massachusetts Bay and the outer harbor islands.  
• To the west is Boston Harbor, the inner islands, the Boston skyline and Logan Airport.  

A previous effort by another firm said this was not feasible near the marine facility (dock and pier), but our plan moved the pathway landward so as to keep the public away from the hazardous area.

The western shoreline protection at
Deer Island was the product of  a
design that I managed.

I was design manager for two major sitework con-tracts.  The  shoreline pro-tection shown above on the right was designed by another firm, but included in the first of these con-tracts.  In the second con-tract, the western shore-line protection (see photo at left) was the product of our design work.  Along each of these shorelines, public pathways (see photo above) were designed by another firm and build in a subsequent sitework contract.

With With great views from the top of the new drumlin, the design of the buffer included a series of pathways up and around.  The photos below will give you a tour of the urban wilds and the vistas available to the public

Pathways circle and climb the buffering drumlin on the north side of Deer
Island.  The following photos illustrate the views from the pathways.

Large meadow in a nook of the new drumlin, with views of Spectacle and
Thompson Islands and Dorchester on the mainland beyond.

View to the north shows the silhouette of the Town of Winthrop.

Two views of the new treatment plan.  In the view on the right, Long
Island  is visible in the background.

Overview of the treatment plant:  from the foreground is the secondary
clarifires, then the aerobic and anaerobic selectors,  the primary clarifiers,
the grit removal facilities, with the egg-shaped sludge digesters in the
background.

Only 2 miles from Logan Airport, a plane is on a landing pattern over the
nearby Town of Winthrop.

Also visible is the skyline of Boston, only about 4 miles away.

With the dusk settling in, we left Deer Island on the one access road
(designed  by the author!)

The Budding Out

Boston's Public Garden

Spring is my favorite of the seasons.  We have the beauty of rebirth to ac-company the warmer days and the end of that season of frigidness and the all-too-many forms of frozen precipitation.

While many consider it a season, but for the observer of the signs in nature, spring consists of many subseasons.   One of the first subseasons is the "Almost Spring" with the first signs of crocuses blooming and  the sign of buds on the limbs of trees and bushes.

Forsythia flowers transition to
green buds.  The forest  prepares
for The Budding Out

Right now we're come to "The Budding Out."  This is a short 2 to 3-week subseason.  Yet it is the most transformative subseason of the entire Spring.  In these few weeks, bare limbs become enveloped in the new greens of spring. 

Once The Budding Out has transpired, we're just about ready for summer.  Lawns need mowing.  There is shade on those days when the temperature gets up there.  There is no question any more:  spring has come!

The wonderful colors of the budding out:  the delicate yellows and deep red buds.

Forsythia flowering amid the early buds, in a field of bare branches.  It is The Budding Out.

Fall Landscapes at Mount Auburn Cemetery

Here in my home town is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the United States. The Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts blends beautiful landscape vistas that take full advantage of a post-glacial terrain of hills (drumlins) and ponds (kettle holes).

The official website summarizes its history: "Founded in 1831, it was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in the United States. Today its beauty, historical associations and horticultural collections are internationally renowned."

"Our founders believed that burying and commemorating the dead was best done in a tranquil and beautiful natural setting at a short distance from the city center. They also believed that the Cemetery should be a place for the living, "embellishing" the natural landscape with ornamental plantings, monuments, fences, fountains and chapels. This inspired concept was copied widely throughout the United States, giving birth to the rural cemetery movement and the tradition of garden cemeteries. Their popularity led, in turn, to the establishment of America's public parks."

I took a late fall day off from work and spend part of the mornning strolling around and capturing some of the scenery. Below are some of them, featuring the last fall colors. (See other photos in my post from last year: El Día de los Muertos.)