Water, Water, Everywhere

Water's everywhere in Princeton, but it's not always easy to get it to where it's needed. Take the raised beds at the Princeton High School as a for instance--seventeen beds, installed in a sunny patch behind the school in the fall of 2009 with great spirit and optimism. There must have been thirty of us, kids and adults, cutting, nailing, hauling, filling. Piles of lumber and rich soil, a table with hot cider and chili on a cool autumn morning. It takes a village to make a school garden. And the designers made sure to put the gardens close to a spigot.

Only one problem. No one could get the spigot to work. Facilities staff tried to fix it, but it could only be accessed through some long tunnel deep in the bowels of the building, and somehow the fix never happened. For lack of water, many of the beds went unplanted, students came and went, interest rose but mostly fell, and except for some planting by the horticulture class, most of the beds grew weeds.

Fast forward six years, my younger daughter is a freshman, expresses some interest, and so she and a friend plant one of the beds with native wildflowers. I check the spigot. Still not working. I figure, why not try one more time. So I email facilities staff, and boom. They have a guy, Dan Galatro, crawl into the tunnel. He was apparently unfazed by whatever had proved intimidating before, because a day later, he emails that the spigot's fixed. How great is that? From my experience, once the water's flowing in the right place, all sorts of good things can flow from that.

So, the moral of that story is that good things can happen when people forget to be discouraged.

Meanwhile, there's the water situation at Potts Park, the little pocket park on Tee-Ar Place.

(I google "T R Potts princeton", thinking Tee-Ar Place and Potts Park are named after the developer of the neighborhood, who I'm guessing had daughters named Dorothy and Ann, because there's also a street called Dorann Avenue, and up pops a page from an ebook entitled "The Ancestry, Life, and Times of Hon. Henry Hastings Sibley", by Nathaniel West. It appears to say that T.R. Potts was brother of a director of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Rev. George Potts, a man of "majestic presence" and "universal esteem". The wife of the Dr. T.R. Potts in the book was named Abbie Ann.) 

Note, 9.9.2018: Just researched this further. There's a Dorothy Ann Potts living in Florida who appears to be related to Dorothea S. Potts and Theodore R. Potts, and lived in Princeton at one time. Theodore's development firm built the shopping center in 1954, and was called Clearview Associates, which explains the street named "Clearview," which may well have had a clear view southward across Princeton back in the 1950s when it was built. ("Relict" means widow.)

But I was writing about the drinking water issue at Potts Park, where children love to put sand from the sandbox into the bowl of the drinking fountain, thereby gumming up, or sanding up, the works and causing the parks dept. to turn off the water and leave an "out of order" sign posted nearby.

This has been going on for years, so my idea is, buy a drinking fountain that doesn't have a bowl, but instead drains to a raingarden. Here's one that drains down a ramp where kids presumably can put sand and see the water flow through it. Here's one that flows first to where dogs can take a sip, before draining into the ground.

The fountain will cost more, but maintenance will be less, kids will be able to play with sand and water in a positive way, and everyone will see how drainage can be used to grow native wildflowers. Call me an armchair optimist on a lazy Sunday morning, but I'm cooling down that bottle of "Wyn, Wyn, Wyn" champaign, and preparing a toast to working with gravity, nature, and children's nature, rather than struggling against them.

Potts Park Update

Heavy rains have slowed installation of new play equipment at Potts Park, the little pocket park that time almost forgot and most Princetonians don't know exists.

















Construction vehicles were trapped in high water, causing further delays. Bob the Builder says he's doing everything he can to get the project back on track.















Meanwhile, a small, climbable forest has been planted on the south side of the park, and is expected to grow in fun potential over the next few days.

Homage to the Next Generation of Trees

One fairly rare sighting, both in Princeton's woodlands and parks and along streets, is a young tree. The great Mercer Oak that was finally blown down after 300 years of life was replaced in 2000 with an offspring, but how about all the other trees that have been lost in recent years, and will be lost if the predictions of Princeton's recently completed tree inventory prove correct? Perhaps we've gotten out of the habit of planting trees, having long been spoiled by their abundance.

This blog takes all sides on trees, praising one tree, ruing another, finding tranquility in a deep forest or opportunity in the sun-filled opening a fallen tree leaves behind, and ever thankful for how they give both in life and death.

This post offers examples of young trees growing in auspicious locations, and all the wonderful work they are already doing.

First, I'd like to thank a neighbor for letting a volunteer red oak grow in a perfect spot to shade my driveway and pickup truck. They probably haven't even noticed it, but I do. Seems like just the other day it was a little sprig peeking over the fence.

And thanks to the folks, too, who paid for a tree to be planted in Potts Park to celebrate the birth of their son. We chose the spot carefully, wanting it to eventually shade the play equipment through the summer, but not be out in the field where it might intersect with a kid running after a ball. Many swings and play structures around the world are not being allowed to live up to their full potential, abandoned by kids when they overheat in summer for lack of a tree.

Another red maple, though perhaps better to have been planted on the house side of the sidewalk, is beginning to fill one of the many gaps along our streets. We need many more trees like this one to keep Princeton's pavement from baking in the summer. The more this tree shades and transpires, the less pedestrians will perspire.

Hard to believe that not long ago this pin oak and American elm were little two foot volunteer seedlings my neighbors transplanted to their front yard. Their faith in the growth force in modest saplings, and the remarkable way time has of passing, is quickly yielding a visual buffer and afternoon shade for their house.

This backyard tulip poplar was another volunteer transplanted to a spot well away from the house.

This young backyard white oak is doing a good imitation of Mercer Oak Jr. over at Princeton Battlefield. Just beyond the fence, in Potts Park, a grove of white oaks planted by the town has matured into a favorite spot for picnics and birthday parties.

Another friend has started a pawpaw patch in their "back 40",

and a fig tree bearing delicious figs in a protected spot next to the driveway.

Though ginkgoes don't support wildlife the way native trees do (a recent article in the NY Times reports that only a few insects feed on ginkgo, while an oak serves up food for more than 500 insect species), these stilty varieties are shading the way along an improbably narrow space over at the Princeton Healthcare Center.

I like to think that the proximity of young trees, with their dynamic growth happening at our level, puts us better in touch with an aspirational energy that can feed our own. When I hear Copland's Appalachian Spring, I think of young landscapes--prairies and early successional stages. In addition to the mature beauty of a forest, we need among us these renewing landscapes, these fresh beginnings, to feed our spirit.

Dragonflies Dazzle in Local Parks

If you're out in a park tomorrow, take a look up in the air.

First, a memory: A couple years ago (will have to check what time of year), I chanced to walk into Potts Park--the little pocket park just off North Harrison Street--to find the sky filled with hundreds of large dragonflies. A closer look revealed that they were feasting on small winged, antlike insects streaming up out of the ground. The dragonflies zigged and zagged, snatching flies from just above the lawn up to sixty feet or so. Above them, in turn, was a flock of swallows trying to catch the dragonflies. A plain park of grass and play equipment had been transformed into a dazzling airborne foodchain of hunters and hunted, all precipitated by the hatching of a colony of insects that had probably been quietly living under our feet the whole summer. The plain lawn proved not so plain after all.

This memory came quickly to mind when today, returning home around 5:30pm, I found a phone message from Peter Wolanin, former collegue on the Princeton Environmental Commission. He had called to tell me dragonflies were swarming in Quarry Park. There had been lots yesterday, but still quite a few today. I got there in time to find about twenty large dragonflies, bluish in tint, flying above the lawn. What, don't you see them in the photo? I had about as much luck photographing their zippings around as the swallows had two years ago catching them for dinner.

There were no swallows this time, but I was able to track down the source of the small insects the dragonflies were catching. They were emerging out of a plain patch of mowed grass and mugwort near a stormdrain.

These, too, were hard to photograph, but you can see their antlike shape and wings. They crawled around on the grass blades until ready to fly. Some appeared much smaller than the others.

They're tiny, but apparently worth the while for the dragonflies. It's a scene not unlike the hatching of sea turtle eggs on a beach, where the baby turtles then have to run the gauntlet from nest to surf before getting snagged by a seagull.

Though the dragonflies' approach could seem helter skelter, they will sometimes assume a very systematic search pattern. Staying head height off the ground, one will fly thirty feet in a straight line, then make two perfect 90 degree turns to return in the opposite direction, exactly parallel to its previous path, offset about five feet. The pattern seldom lasts long before they break it to snag another insect.

A few dragonflies were also found patrolling above Potts Park today, a quarter of a mile away, where a similar hatch must have occurred.

More distant memories of dragonfly swarms were more likely associated with migration, such as when I saw thousands of them flying what must have been north, above the freeway that parallels the shoreline in Chicago.

There are many, many videos of dragonflies swarming on youtube. Here's one from "thedragonflylady."

Shade Tree Donated For Potts Park

Earlier this month, I received an inquiry through the www.fopos.org website, asking if there was a park in Princeton where a couple could plant a tree in honor of their newborn son. I suggested Potts Park, which is right behind my house and is in great need of more shade for the play equipment.

On June 19, with friends and family on hand, Rebecca and Derek planted "Charlie's tree", an October Glory red maple. Borough council member Barbara Trelstad located a suitable tree at a local nursery, and coordinated with borough staff to have a hole dug prior to the ceremony. I'll be doing the watering.

Though the couple doesn't live in town, Rebecca describes herself as "a proud graduate of Princeton public schools and PHS." Her parents still live in Princeton township. Thanks to Rebecca and Derek for this wonderful gesture that will add to the pleasure of the park for decades to come!

Planting Trees Strategically to Shade Playground Equipment

People talk about planting trees, but there are still a lot of parks in the world with play equipment that gets burning hot in the summer for lack of shade. Why, I often wondered as a parent of young kids, aren't shade trees planted strategically, where their shade will do the most good? It takes some imagination, to envision the full-sized tree a sapling will ultimately become, and some belief in the future, whether one's going to be around to see it or not.

In 2010, Rebecca Kanarek contacted me with the desire to plant a tree in celebration of her and her husband's newborn son. Council woman Barbara Trelstad and I collaborated to choose a tree--an October Glory Red Maple--and arrange its planting. I suggested Potts Park, because it's playground equipment was roasting in the sun. My role was to decide where in the park to plant it. 

It can be surprisingly tricky to choose a good place to plant a tree. You have to imagine the sun's arc in summer and how the future tree will intercept it. At the same time, shade is not an unmitigated blessing. It's wanted some places and not others. In this case, I wanted to position the tree to ultimately shade both the climbing equipment and the swings, while keeping the tree's trunk out of the way of games and running kids. Planting it too close to other trees could slow its growth. And then there's the followup watering while it's getting established.

The spot chosen was a compromise, but sixteen years later, the tree is doing its job, cooling the play equipment in summer, then dropping its leaves to allow the sun to provide warmth in the winter. It's pretty straightforward. Trees grow, and the future comes.

Other posts about Potts Park and young trees

Leaves and People Win in Princeton Parks

You could say this is just a photo of a local park with a lawn and a couple trees, but that would be missing the big picture. What we have here is a win-win-win-win. Now, I've always wondered why win-wins, not to mention win-win-win-wins, don't get people more excited. Anyone interested in making the world a better place knows that, given what a fix the world is in, and how busy people tend to be, if we just get one win at a time there's no way we'll ever reach our goal in time to kick back and enjoy a nice cool drink on the veranda. With all the forces conspiring to make the world a worse place, we need wins in big batches--twos, threes, as many as we can get.

So, please, show a little excitement when I point out all the wins in this photo. They all have to do with those magical things called leaves. For twelve years, I've watched those white oaks grow, each year extending their branches to offer more shade for the picnic tables beneath them. As if calibrated to the shade, birthday parties seem to grow in size and frequency each year, centered under the trees and radiating out across the park. Clustered there next to the sandbox, they are the right trees in the right place, and whoever planted them should be given an award for creating an oasis of beauty and comfort where people can come together.

But what to do with those leaves when they fall, albeit very slowly through the winter, being oaks. That's where the other wins reside, for there was a time when the town would swoop in with a big crew and a big truck, then spend most of the day blowing the leaves into a pile, muscling them into the truck, and hauling them out of town to the compost center. Nice compost, you might think, but at what expense? There's the man-hours spent, the truck to buy and maintain, the extra time to drive out of town, the export of nutrients from the park, and all the while, greenhouse gases being scattered to the winds to further trouble the earth.

A few years ago, seeing all these negative impacts on budget, park and planet, I asked the parks director if the town (okay, "municipality") could return to the old borough approach of simply mowing the leaves back into the lawn. That way, the parks department would be modeling what its environmental commission has been recommending all along, that people utilize their leaves rather than blow them to the curb.

What a joy, then, to see that this year the parks department has adopted this approach in Potts Park and elsewhere. In this photo, you can see the mulch-mowed leaves nestled between the grass blades, where they will decompose, feed the lawn, reduce runoff, and maybe even make the ground a little softer when kids fall. There's a brown tint to the lawn, but that will quickly transition back to green.

This far into the blogpost, I've lost count on how many wins this simple change in lawncare has achieved, and the tally wouldn't even include all those lower priority tasks the parks crews will now have time to do. So, grab a mower or fashion a leaf corral, and see how many wins you can gather in your own yard, and later, while sitting on the veranda, make a toast to a better world.

On 11.11.11, Some Princeton Trees

In honor of 11.11.11--a uniquely unique, highly vertical day--some Princeton trees of note, in no particular order:

The brilliant red maples at Princeton Shopping Center in a photo taken today, with Fothergilla shrubs adding orange in the foreground;

A clock tower looking very one-ish today next to the trees;

A photo my daughter took beneath a red oak in the backyard;

A descendant of the famous Mercer Oak at the Princeton Battlefield;

A 15/16th native chestnut planted at Princeton Battlefield in front of the Clark House;

A hican behind Clark House, showing the change in bark where a pecan/hickory hybrid was grafted to a hickory base.

Another red maple, planted by a couple in honor of their newborn son at Potts Park in the borough, positioned to shade the play equipment in future years;

And in memorium, a photo sent to me by Eric Tazelaar, of the old, old white oak near the driveway to Mountain Lakes House, before it was blown down this year during Hurricane Irene (see Oct. 28 post).

More White Pines and Spruce Dying

The latest white pine fatality in the neighborhood is at the edge of my backyard and Potts Park. Across the street from my house is a dead spruce. The township arborist believes that the drought last summer, plus another drought this year in late June and July, may have stressed some of the local white pines and spruces beyond their limits.

Another arborist tells me that the herbicide Imprelis, mentioned in a previous post as a possible culprit, would only affect the more manicured areas where herbicides are more likely to be used. Spruce and white pine have been dying in many unmanicured areas, and he sees climate shift as a likely cause. White pines and spruce were introduced to Princeton from their more natural range to the north, suggesting they'd be the first to show stress from increasing heat and drought.

Though all urban trees eventually have to be removed, typically at a cost of $1000 or more, one can speculate that the weather extremes associated with climate change are making those costs come due earlier than they would otherwise.

This particular tree had a scar that surely didn't help.

Variations on an Icicle, in 3 Parts

It's not every day that stalactites grow in a town park. If any toddlers toddled in to the deep snow in Potts Park recently, they might have taken a liking to these mass-produced icicles underneath a picnic table.

My summer fountain, which runs whenever there's a rain, turned into a frozen waterfall as snow slowly melted from the roof.

The third variation is the standard version of an icicle, whose reflection is visible on the window in the upper right corner of the photo.

Kids and Chickens

There's a special transaction happening across this chain link fence that separates Potts Park from our backyard. The kids in the park have discovered our chickens. Maybe they heard the plaintive call of our duck, and came over to take a look. Though the park has some nice play equipment, a sandbox, ballcourt and a couple picnic tables, one parent told me the main attraction is now our four chickens.

I like to think that the chickens are teaching the kids to regard their surroundings with a keen eye, because a chicken is constantly scrutinizing the ground and plants around it, scratching the earth to see what's there. Are farms, gardens and chickens a gateway into the natural world? Follow an environmentalist's genealogy back a generation or two and you'll often find a farm.

Our chickens and duck have the run of the place all day, returning dutifully to the coop at dusk. I put some feed out, but mostly they forage for themselves, and so in a sense occupy a spot along the continuum between tame and wild. Such animals can serve as intermediaries, ambassadors, allowing a connection to that living world beyond neat yards and indoor pets, a bridge to the wild that the heart can traverse.

A Walk in Gulick Park

Thirty kids and adults, plus a dog or two, gathered on a beautiful spring afternoon this past Sunday for a walk through Gulick Park, a little known nature preserve in a part of Princeton out 27 that may once have been thought of as Kingston. The loop trail starts at the eastern deadend of Terhune Road, a road that changes name as it approaches Snowden Lane, then becomes a bike path before re-emerging as Terhune Road again over near Dodds Lane.

We found tadpoles in that there pond, which reportedly holds some water even in the drier depths of summer.

The paths through this lowland woods can be muddy after a rain, but had dried up nicely in preparation for our walk.

Some appeared skeptical as I, in my role as naturalist for the walk, demonstrated the craned-neck approach to identifying red maples, pointing towards their tiny red flowers high overhead. Other tree species spoke their names through their bark--the black "potato chip" bark of black cherry trees, the mottled, army fatigue bark of sycamores--or the downward slant of the many pin oaks' lower branches. The numerous eastern red cedars--the first trees to cast shade in the abandoned agricultural fields decades back--now hang on in the shade of the higher, deciduous trees that have since grown around them. A scattering of evergreen American hollies offered patches of green in a sea of winter's browns and grays.

Just to prove I wasn't pointing at phantoms, here's a closeup of the red maple flowers that give the high canopy of lowland woods a red tinge this time of year.

Ed Simon, who leads volunteer efforts to maintain the trails (no easy task given the tree-toppling storms of recent years), told stories of the park's past and present. Though he and others have removed most of the barbed wire from the woods, a few remnants still tell of a time when the Gulicks had a massive bull that would occasionally escape into the neighborhood.

The video camera on the right in the photo is being held by Kurt Tazelaar. He and Sally Curtis have been documenting many environmental events in town.

There was the requisite stream crossing to test our balance, beyond which we came upon the field of Christmas trees. It was interesting to hear that many of the spruce trees found in Princeton's parks, including those behind my house in Potts Park, got their start in this field. I pointed out the dried remains of purple-top grasses in the field, and the graceful broomsedge (actually a grass) that gives the field an attractive bronze hue.

Beyond this high fence is the land still owned by the Gulicks, whose family ownership extends back to Revolutionary War days. A part of their house facing Route 27 is said to extend back to the 1600s, when it served as an inn conveniently located halfway between Philadelphia and New York. Each 50 mile stretch was a days ride on horseback.

Near the fence was an impressive pile of firewood, which the Gulicks apparently sell as a means of satisfying the requirements of their farm easement.

Along the trails, where the sun gets in, are some fine stands of blackberry, with its ribbed stems, and wineberry, a non-native cane with fuzzy purplish stems that bear raspberry-like fruit. A number of hikers expressed interest in returning in summer for the harvest.

The walk was made possible through the organizational energies of Nicole Bergman. There's talk of an upcoming workday to clear some of the trails still blocked by fallen trees.

The Magnetic Quality of Herrontown Rocks

Do you ever feel some invisible force drawing you up the trails to the boulder fields along the Princeton Ridge, whether at Herrontown Wood or Witherspoon Woods? It just might be their inherent magnetism interacting with an iPhone, binoculars, or, if you've been to the shop, one or another artificial joints. I had no idea until a neighbor approached me at the annual Memorial Day picnic at Potts Park, introduced himself as Jon Johnson, and then proceeded to tell me all sorts of interesting things about a part of the woods I thought I knew pretty well.

If you take a strong magnet along (keep it away from any electronics like phones or cameras), you can test the gravel in various tributaries to see if there's magnetite in the rocks. It can vary from 2% up to 20%.

Some boulders will be magnetic, too, but only portions thereof.

A more elaborated post on this subject can be found at VeblenHouse.org.