Coneflower Attracts Monarch and Much More

Typically, my random butterfly sightings don't go much beyond a tiger swallowtail fluttering in the distance. But on July 19, the purple coneflowers in the frontyard raingarden drew a diverse crowd, including this beautiful monarch. This sighting added to a few sightings elsewhere to suggest that monarchs are rebounding from a couple very tough years in which the overwintering area they occupied in the mountains of Mexico dropped to only a few acres. The blog at monarchwatch.org confirms that they are having a comparatively good year. The magnificent monarch with its matchless migration will always be vulnerable, particularly given the destabilizing effects of climate change, the loss of milkweed in farm fields now that Roundup-Ready corn and soybeans allow elimination of weeds, and the ongoing threats to the evergreen forests the monarchs congregate in every winter. There's a lot more work to do to make their population more resilient, but it's heartening to see them on the upswing.

A black tiger swallowtail in particularly good condition.

This looks to be a variegated fritillary,

with a different pattern on the underside.

A skipper,

a bumblebee, of which there are many species.

It was an oak in the backyard that attracted this moth, possibly a tulip tree beauty moth.

A few days later, we were back to the tiger swallowtail.

Mile a Minute--A Wave Growing Across NJ's Countryside

You can spot it a mile away. Early summer, and already this annual, thorn-covered vine called Mile-a-Minute is rising like a wave along fencelines in New Jersey's countryside. Thus far, in my ramblings around Princeton, I have found only two tiny patches--at the Battlefield and along the driveway into Rogers Refuge--both of which have been knocked out the past two years. Is this sort of early intervention and annual followup worth it? The answer becomes abundantly clear just outside of town, halfway to Hopewell, where Mile-a-Minute vine is demonstrating just how much of a prickly menace it can be if not caught early.

It's a plant that seeks to be seen everywhere, and with all the other players on the plant scene. Here it is growing up a tree,

and sprawling over another invasive, garlic mustard.

Even those thistles with their prickly personalities aren't off-putting for a Mile-a-Minute vine.

It's said to have been an accidental introduction from eastern Asia via the nursery trade, originally gaining a foothold in York County, PA, in the 1930s and spreading from there.

Rampancy rules in this photo, as mile-a-minute swarms an autumn olive--a highly invasive shrub. When mile-a-minute's around, the curtain doesn't fall on other plants, but rises, in a wave of triangular leaves.

Here's Mile-a-Minute chasing the growth tip of a blackberry. Check back in a month to see who won the race.

Here, a privet's growing a prickly skirt.

Those pink flowers are Canada thistle, invader of many a garden bed, which is about to meet its match.

Long-time ubiquitous invasives, multiflora rose and Japanese honeysuckle, are joined by Mile-a-Minute.

You'd think perennial vines like wild grape would have a big advantage over an annual vine that has to spring anew from the soil every year, but Mile-a-Minute is looking up to the challenge.

Note the holes in the Mile-a-Minute leaves. Those are most likely from a weevil that was introduced as a biological control. The hope is that the weevil will become numerous enough, and consume enough triangular leaves to slow the wave of Mile-a-Minute engulfing the countryside.

Thus far, the Mile-a-Minute looks undeterred, growing over the slowly maturing fruits of wineberry,

and the pale stems of native black raspberry.

Beyond any ecological impact of such rampancy, it's interesting to reflect on the aesthetic and emotional impact of seeing a landscape being overrun by Mile-a-Minute. A healthy native prairie, for example, teaming with many species of grasses and wildflowers, all reaching for the sun with no inclination to crawl over one another, gives a feeling of striving, freedom, diversity, peaceful cohabitation, tolerance of one species for another. In contrast, a vine like Mile-a-Minute creates a smothering effect, a sense of clutter and thorny entanglement, a suppression of difference, an oppressive dependency that plays out as a punishment for any plant that dare reach a sturdy stem for the sky.

Graupel--A Special Form of Snow

All snow is special. Like children, except more numerous and lower maintenance, no two snowflakes are the same. As we know, snow that falls in Princeton's coveted 08540 zip code is extra special, and on the last day of January, there fell a particularly special kind of Principitation. Instead of flakes, the snow looked more like small beads of styrofoam.

When it fell one day two years ago, thinking it needed a name, I coined what seemed like a new term: snubbins. A recent google search, however, revealed that the word "snubbins" is sometimes used to refer to medium sized breasts. Who knew?

A less conflicted name came out of the blue during a trip to the Whole Earth Center, when longtime employee Bill excitedly showed me a printout from Wikipedia, describing this special snow as "graupel". To quote: "Graupel, also called soft hail or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm balls of rime." These supercooled droplets, suspended high in the air and still liquid down to -40 F, collect and freeze around the snowflakes as they fall towards earth. The behavior of supercooled water came up in another recent post admiring the patterns the minipond water makes when it freezes.

In this photo of the graupel collected on our backyard fillable/spillable minipond, or mini-rink this time of year, you can see their shape. In the middle of the photo there's a snowflake still visible, only partly covered in rime.

In this photo, some of the graupel takes the shape of corn kernels.

Favorites from the archive:

Principitation: Coins and defines useful terms for various kinds of snow and snowy objects, e.g. snirt, snoodle, kerfluffle, and we-cicles (plural of i-cycles).

Snowbound Language: A Victor Borgesque story about what happens when snow blankets the english language.

Charismatic Chickens Explore Their Wild Side

For a long time, our chickens stuck to the straight and narrow. They lived as everyone expected them to, spending their days scratching and pecking at bugs and worms in the yard, nibbling seeds off the grass, turning all that foraging into eggs, then dutifully returning to the coop each night to sleep, or whatever trance-like state chickens attain while roosting.

We in turn would dutifully feed them, open and close the coop door each day and night, and gratefully, somewhat guiltily, make off with the eggs. My respect grew for these gentle Araucanas, going about their days, so purposeful, so competent, so giving in their convenient repackaging of nature's abundance. When arctic air swept through, they would roost in the unheated coop as always, then step spryly out of the coop the next morning, impervious, as if antifreeze coursed through their veins.

The relationship started to change, though, a year or so ago. Perhaps the four chickens had depleted our yard's supply of wild food. They discovered they could cross over the back fence, and find fresh gleanings in the town park. I began getting reports of the great delight they were bringing to kids and parents. Then they ranged farther afield, three doors up to our neighbors' backyard, where they could gorge on birdseed spilled onto the ground from the birdfeeder. They still dabbled in our tray of standard issue chickenfeed from the farm supply store now and then, but you could tell their standards had changed. They were developing new tastes, new friendships.

They continued returning each night to sleep in the coop, and continued supplying eggs. We thought ourselves so lucky, to be reaping the harvest of eggs and pleasant anecdotes these beneficent creatures produced. They were like salmon, feeding broadly, then returning with an uncanny homing instinct to feed us generously. But then one of the chickens stopped showing up at the coop at dusk. We worried that a hawk might have gotten it, but our neighbors would report seeing it during the day. Another chicken disappeared altogether, considered gone for sure until a neighbor on the other side of the park sent word that it had adopted her yard. She loved how it would come running to her when she brought it food and water. I tried to retrieve it, but the chicken clearly did not want to be caught.

The freedom of coopless living ultimately seduced them all. Our coop lay abandoned by the birds it was meant to protect. We'd spot them sporadically, in front yard or back, or up at the neighbors' as they made their daily rounds. No one knew where they were roosting, nor where the eggs, if any, were getting laid. We thought of catching them and closing them in the coop for a few days to get them back into old habits, but in a way they've outgrown that old domestic servitude, the grind of laying egg after egg to serve the master. They've discovered an old forgotten resourcefulness, awakened dormant capacities deep in their genes. It seems a dangerous life, unprotected at night, and yet they survive. It helps that the foxes don't get up this way, and raccoon sightings are rare.

Last week, I had been up very early and was just heading back to bed at 7am for a brief doze when I heard a blood curdling screech just outside our bedroom window. I ran outside with a coat over my pajamas and peered into the bushes. A coopers hawk burst out, flying right past me and up to a tree nearby. Such magnificent creatures they are. I peered more closely at the ground next to the house and saw the brown chicken, motionless in the window well. Surely it couldn't have survived such an attack, but then its head suddenly popped up. It jumped up out of the window well, gave me a quick look, then disappeared under the shrub. It had lost a few feathers, but otherwise looked fine. The feathers of a chicken, I'm realizing, provide not only magnificent insulation and some modest flying power, but also serve as a shield that confounds predators' attempts to penetrate it. The predator ends up with a feather in its mouth while the bird scurries away, and the rachis--that stiff central stem of the feather--serves collectively as body armor.

Of course, if I hadn't shown up, the coopers hawk would have ultimately had its breakfast, lunch and dinner, and we would have grieved. The chickens' choice of freedom comes with risks.

Just a few days ago, my daughter reported that the chickens were now roosting at night in an evergreen shrub at the corner of our house, eight feet up from the ground. It's comforting to know they are near. Each evening, I stop by to say hello,

and leave food nearby, under a recycling bin that got broken being used as a target for backyard lacrosse practice, then got partly consumed making trail signs for a local preserve, and now has a new life keeping rain and snow out of the chicken feed. There's collected rainwater to drink in the fillable-spillable tub in the backyard.

If a big snowstorm comes, we may pluck the sleepy chickens from their roost and put them in the coop for the night. We're letting them make up their own life as they go along, which may include a return to the coop. Yesterday, I saw the brown chicken walk over and disappear into the coop. Later on, I stopped in to find two fresh eggs, the first laid there in months. Maybe that's how a chicken says thank you if you save its life.

UPDATE: After six inches of snow fell, the chickens looked like they were going to stay up in the bushes all day, to keep their feet warm. We plucked them down and closed them in the coop for a couple days until the snow melted (this winter's like North Carolina, not New Jersey).

Any hopes that two days in the coop would rehabituate them to returning there each night were dashed, however. A few pecks at the cracked corn in morning light and they were back to their accustomed rounds,

then roosting again in the bushes next to our house for the night. It's interesting to see how they keep their feet warm while roosting, by squatting down so their feet disappear under the puffed up feathers.

Eggs from our "Easter egg chickens". In a new twist, the egg on the right has two shades of green.

An Unexpected Halloween Visitor

When my daughters came in the house yesterday evening to report that a raccoon had scared them en route to closing up the chicken coop, it didn't even occur to me that it happened to be Halloween night.

True, there had been a curious masked visitor in the backyard earlier in the day, someone wearing a wig and his favorite CD. That two minute selfie session with a cellphone had been the full extent of our observance of Halloween, other than the white plastic pumpkin decorating the "Wishing the Earth Well" leaf corral out front next to the sidewalk. Our street is not popular with trick or treaters to begin with, and we did nothing to lure them.

The lack of lights and decoration did not deter the night's one trick or treater from showing up, however, not at the front door but behind the house. Though raccoons are considered ubiquitous urban denizens, we had not seen one in the neighborhood since 2004, when a confused specimen passed through our backyard, looking lost.

My daughter's sighting didn't come as a complete surprise, though.

First, it explained what, or who, had been bending the wire fencing of one of my backyard leaf corrals, in a recurrent and unsuccessful attempt to get at its inner core of kitchen scraps. The rotting lettuce and old dogfood, out of reach behind hardware cloth, was the treat, and it was surprising the raccoon hadn't figure out a trick to get at it.

Second, there was the question of whether the raccoon's interest went beyond kitchen scraps to include our four chickens, two of which had taken to roosting in nearby evergreens and bushes rather than taking shelter in the coop. The assumption is that, come winter, if winter comes, the chickens would drop their summer dalliance with self-sufficiency and take refuge in the coop at night.

The girls gave me the flashlight, to lead the daring expedition back to where the raccoon had been spotted.

"Do you think it has rabies?", one of my daughters asked from behind me, not understanding why I wasn't more fearful. When I see a raccoon, I'm cautious of course, but inside, my heart begins to melt. My thoughts return to when they would visit my childhood home, surrounded by woods at the end of a road on the outskirts of a small Wisconsin town. They had been getting into our garbage cans, and all attempts to keep them out had failed.

One day, in broad daylight, a raccoon showed up in our side yard, sad looking, weak, clearly a reject from raccoon society. We named it Rangy, for its bedraggled appearance, took pity on it and gave it some food.

It may have been about this time that my father realized that, if we put our food scraps in a pan next to the woods, the raccoons would leave our garbage cans alone. This proved to be the beginning of a wonderful friendship. As the raccoons began to visit the pan, we decided to install a light to illuminate the edge of the woods, the better to see them. Soon we were tossing them peanuts in the shell from an open window. Closer they came, caution slowly yielding on both sides, until we reached the point where we could step out onto the back patio, hold a peanut out, and they would approach. They'd stand up gracefully and reach for it with those wonderful, delicate paws, take the peanut gently and scoot a short distance away to feast upon it. More and more came. The grownups would bring their young the next year. One night we counted 16. Rangy the Reject had spawned a coming together of human and raccoon society.

This was the era of books like Rascal, and Raccoons are the Smartest People. We knew what rabies was, had seen it occasionally in the odd behavior of an animal--like the groundhog that confronted me on a town street while biking home from school--and we respected the wildness of raccoons too much to consider having one as a pet. But that didn't deter us from appreciating all that is wonderful about them. One evening, we opened the kitchen door to see four raccoon cubs climbing on the screen door, their mother on the porch behind them. The mother was Whitey, the tamest and most gentle of them all, named for the beautiful white fur on her underside. She had brought her new family to meet us. By then, we were actually letting her come in the kitchen door a few feet to get peanuts. Somewhere, there's a photo of her reaching up to touch the knob on our little black and white TV. Of course, we always made sure she had an escape route, so as not to feel trapped. No one ever dared get between her and the open door.

The raccoon that visited us last night, like Rangy long ago, also seemed like a reject. It didn't run away at our approach, but instead remained perched on the fence, looking at us. Though large, it seemed weak and slow. Finally, it climbed awkwardly down the fence and disappeared into the dark.

To be on the safe side, we decided to pluck Buffy, the last of our first batch of chickens from five years ago, from her perch in a nearby lilac bush, and put her in the coop with two others. We closed the coop and headed back in.

To some extent, our free range chickens offer a similar experience to what I had as a child. We feed them, but mostly they forage for themselves, tame and yet living their own lives. Where once I delighted as the wild became more tame, with the chickens we watch as the tame explore aspects of the wild. Last night, those two worlds intersected next to the chicken coop. I thought of leaving some food out for the raccoon in nights to come, but then thought again. How to handle this convergence, for the good of all involved, is not at all clear. I don't expect any reprise of a childhood in small town Wisconsin. Whether the answer is trick or treat, our backyard Halloween is just beginning.

Conquering Backyard Ivy in an Ivy League Town

After weeks of inaction, paralyzed by inertia and wondering if once again the garden would bowl me over with its growing power, I finally ventured out with gloves, dirt-friendly clothing, and some clippers to take on some of the backyard's longstanding "issues". To my surprise, there was satisfying progress to be made, that actually built on progress past.

Many gardeners have "border issues", that is, plants invading their yards from their neighbors', or vice versa. A friend recently showed me how lesser celandine was continually spreading into his yard from his uphill neighbor, and there are many stories of bamboo's indifference to society's artificial boundaries.

For years, my yard had waves of english ivy coming in from three sides, but two of my neighbors, without my saying a word, got rid of all of theirs. And where my yard abuts the park in back, I was able to get rid of the parkside ivy by taking the liberty of mowing it, after which the parks crews apparently have been weedwhipping any resprouts.

Taking advantage of the soft soil after yesterday's rain, I finally took on the legacy of ivy on my side of the fence, using physical means. The first phase was an on-hands-and-knees approach, pulling and cutting off any ivy growing on the fence.

Ivy heading up a tree got cut at the bottom. No need to pull it down. Cutting at the base is enough, though some people find it more satisfying to pull it all off.

For phase two, large pieces of cardboard were placed along the fence, overlapping, and any ivy still exposed further in was pulled out and thrown on top of the cardboard, where it will dry out. Some native vines--virginia creeper, wild grape, and poison ivy--were pulled as well, though the main goal was to eliminate english ivy. Gloves, long sleeves, and periodic washing of any potentially exposed skin with water should be enough to avoid poison ivy's effects, but we'll see.

The chickens came over to inspect my work, and seemed satisfied. Phase three would be to cover up the cardboard with chips or some other organic material that will hide the cardboard and keep it from getting blown by the wind. But the cardboard will quickly disappear behind a screen of growth in the yard, and some exposed cardboard may prove instructive to park users, who may decide to try using cardboard to deal with their own border issues.

Elsewhere in the yard was additional proof of how even intimidating weeds can be controlled by timely intervention. Only a few garlic mustards came up this year, because they've been getting pulled each spring before they go to seed.

And the big bamboo patch that once was advancing across the fence on the north side is down to a few weak sprouts easily cut. Other weeds--the Canada thistle and the dandelions--got the undercut treatment with a shovel.

There is, of course, the option of eating the young leaves of garlic mustard, and I saw a chinese woman inspecting some bamboo clones across the street, in search of bamboo shoots.

Some of the more aggressive native species got a rebalancing. A native floodplain species of goldenrod that spreads via underground rhizomes got pulled out in places. In the photo is the base of a bottlebrush buckeye--a beautiful native shrub that can start grabbing territory once established. It was a relief to discover that its expansionist ambitions are realized via above ground stolons that can be easily cut.

Mixed with the pulling and digging and rebalancing was some appreciating, of the subtle pendulant blooms of a Bladdernut, a native shrub found in only a few isolated spots in Princeton.

Alert: Monitoring for Lesser Celandine

Memory was finally jogged that this is the time of year to be scouting Princeton's natural areas for the dreaded Ficaria verna, a.k.a. fig buttercup, or lesser celandine. Dreaded because it has an alluring yellow flower that makes one want to leave it be when it starts showing up in the yard or local preserves, but then quietly takes over, paving whole valleys. Pettoranello Gardens is carpeted with the plant. In Durham, NC, I once tracked an infestation upstream to a homeowner's yard. He was greatly relieved to find out what plant had taken over his garden, and proceeded over the next several years to completely eliminate it. Unfortunately, by then the plant had spread far downstream and would transform a whole watershed, from one small infestation in someone's yard. He was, however, able to remove some he had put in his son's yard elsewhere in town, before it had a chance to spread downstream. This is why it's so important to get the word out about these highly deceptive species.

When I was working at Mountain Lakes, I'd walk the valley leading down from Stuart School, searching for any small patches that could be eradicated before they expanded beyond remedy. It's satisfying to be able to nip invasions in the bud. Now that my focus is Herrontown Woods, the spring ritual is playing out there. Yesterday's walk yielded no sightings until the very end, when I checked the pawpaw patch we planted New Year's weekend, and headed back through the woods towards the parking lot. There, right where the groundwater seeps out of the ground in what originally may have been a primitive septic system, was a patch of lesser celandine. Already, it has spread down the ditch about fifty feet, but is still of a size that we can eradicate it before it spreads down the valley, beyond control.

Control options can be found at this link. A comparison of lesser celandine with other yellow spring flowers, such as marsh marigold and celandine poppy, can be found here. If possible, avoid hiking through an area with lesser celandine--there's a risk of inadvertently spreading it into new areas in the treads of your shoes.

Some Local Parks "Leave the Leaves"

According to a report by councilman Patrick Simon at the December Princeton Environmental Commission meeting, the town recreation department (Princeton has no parks department) is changing its management to "leave the leaves" in 8 of 15 parks in town. That means that leaves will be mulch-mowed back into the turf on non-sports fields, and left in back areas under trees. This represents an important step away from the notion that leaves are litter that must be exported from town, and a step towards acknowledging the important ecological role leaves have in the landscape, for nutrient recycling and as habitat that benefits birds and insects like fireflies.

After mulch mowing (most any mower blade will cut leaves into bits as it cuts the grass, and therefore "mulch mow"), the park looks like this.

The decision follows a number of emails I sent to director of recreation, Ben Stentz, requesting that the maintenance crews shift away from the noisy and labor- and fuel-intensive practice of blowing leaves into piles and then hauling them out of town to the composting site.

Because of this new approach, neighbors will no longer need to listen to a morning's worth of leaf blowing each year, rec staff will have more time for other work, and there will be less burning of carbon-based fuels to export nutrients from town parks. This is what they call a win-win-win-win.

The photo shows how the mowed bits of leaves nestle inbetween the leaf blades, and will begin to behave as slow-release fertilizer for the lawn.

In my emails to staff and council members, I had also requested permission to build and fill leaf corrals in a couple local parks, to demonstrate to park users this sustainable and easy approach that, like mulch mowing, helps homeowners "leave the leaves" on their property.

That proposal was not approved, so I'm using my front yard on North Harrison Street to demonstrate the benefits of leaf corrals. As the three leaf corrals of various sizes in the front yard show, they can be proudly displayed out in the open, integrated into perennial borders, or hidden behind shrubs. As the post at this link shows, leaf corrals can be used either to generate high quality compost for the homeowner, or to simply channel nutrients back into the yard.