Bamboo--Edibility, Priability, Liability

A few weeks ago, as the local patches of bamboo were launching their spring offensive, consolidating their holdings of pricey Princeton real estate while expanding across fencelines into new territory, I encountered a Chinese man on the sidewalk, carrying a plastic bag of bamboo shoots. He looked like the real deal, as if he'd just stepped out of the labyrinth of a traditional Hutong neighborhood in China. Resident tourist that I am, I asked if I could take a photo, but he didn't speak English, and headed off towards the senior housing down the street.

His harvest had probably come not from McCaffery's but from a patch of rogue bamboo across the street,

whose adventurous sprouts periodically block drivers' views, get trimmed, and end up in a heap in the street.

With another neighbor's bamboo continuing to invade our yard, the edibility angle sounded worth pursuing.

As an experiment, I collected some and undertook a dissection of one on the back patio. Despite bamboo's reputation as a very tough customer (their toughness comes from a combination of silica and lignin), only a few outer leaves needed to be stripped off of the terminal shoot to reach the soft underbelly of this most imperialistic of backyard plants.

The next step would be to start eating, but there were questions. Are all species of bamboo edible? If only some, then is the local species one of them? Does it need to be cooked first? I was not looking forward to cracking a thick tome on grasses and analyzing microscopic features to figure out which of the 1450 species of bamboo I had just harvested. The botanist might become comatose before figuring out if the lemma is comose.

LIABILITY: Fortunately, an article in Mark Twain's old newspaper, the Hartford Courant, popped up in an internet search, telling of a law that passed the Connecticut House of Representatives last month by a vote of 130-3, requiring that "running bamboo" be

"set back at least 100 feet from abutting property. It also requires people who sell or install running bamboo to educate customers on the plant’s growing habits and recommended containment methods. A fee of $100 is prescribed for violators of either requirement.

The bill makes people who plant running bamboo liable for any damage the bamboo causes to neighboring properties, including the cost of removing any bamboo that spreads to neighboring properties. 

The measure passed the state Senate unanimously last week."

What is running bamboo, one might ask. Turns out there are two main growth forms of bamboo, running and clumping. Clumping forms are better behaved. I found conflicting information about whether there are clumping species that grow well enough and high enough to provide the sort of screening people look for from bamboo. Here's one of many links.

PRIABILITY: The Courant article mentioned Phyllostachys aureosulcata — yellow groove bamboo--which it called "the poster child for aggressive bamboo in Connecticut". Established stands of the species can travel 15 feet underground in a single year. When it reaches a house foundation, it can send shoots up underneath the siding, prying the siding off the house as it pushes upward.

It wasn't hard to find a local example of this. Fortunately, these are slender shoots, but could still do some damage.

Yellow groove bamboo, fortunately, is easy to identify. Nicknamed "crookstem bamboo", it often has crooks in the stem. The bamboo growing in my neighborhood has crooks in the stem,

as well as the characteristic yellow groove above the branches.

EDIBILITY: The silver lining in this yellow grooved poster boy for aggressiveness was found in this description of the species: "Cultivated mainly as an ornamental, this species is also among the best for edible shoot production, being free of acrid flavor even when raw."

So, thanks to a chance encounter with a Chinese neighbor, the world has become a more interesting, more edible place. There's still a question as to whether the tips of stems that have already grown several feet high can still be eaten. Though the Chinese man's harvest looked to be from stems already well above ground, this video suggests they have to be harvested just as they are emerging. The color of the flesh should be brown rather than the green said to make older shoots bitter.

Given human nature and the ease of buying bamboo shoots at the store, there's no way that harvesting will solve the problem of bamboo aggression in suburbia. There are other, less edible invasives pouring across fencelines--Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, ground ivy. Fortunately, none of these threaten to pry siding off of houses or push up through asphalt driveways. Bamboo's destructive capacities make it a pioneer in exploring the liability gardeners may bear for plants that escape from their yards. Regulation is often characterized as an intrusion by government into people's lives, but more often it offers a means of protecting us from intrusion. With all sorts of pollution--biological, chemical, sonic--"freedom to" impinges on a "freedom from". That's something to meditate on while nibbling on some tasty bamboo shoots.

Info about harvesting and preparing: http://agsyst.wsu.edu/bambroc.pdf

Informative post with frequent mention of yellow grooved bamboo: http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph39.htm

Info about nutritional content:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2011.00147.x/full

Bamboo Battle Update

Herein, the importance of timing, persistence, and collaboration for vanquishing the bamboo bully in the backyard:

There's been great progress in the battle against bamboo being waged by my next door neighbor and myself. Last year, I alerted the long-distance landlord to the fact that the bamboo had started actually prying the siding off the other side of his house by growing up between the siding and the foundation. He hired a crew to take action. They cut down all the bamboo, planted grass, declared victory, and haven't been seen since.

That was an important first step, but it won't do much good unless there's followup. As this picture shows, the battle is far from won. In the lower right, you can see the bamboo has sprouted once again along the foundation. And over on the left, hundreds of new shoots have shot some ten feet into the air.

Another angle shows that the bamboo roots, still intact, had plenty of stored energy to send up long shoots that are just about to deploy solar panels in the form of leaves. Now, while the stems are soft and the roots have invested energy without yet gaining any solar return, is the time to cut these stems down. Otherwise, the bamboo will fortify its root system and be well along the way to regaining its former mischievous glory. Unfortunately, the neighbor on that side of the rental is not joining in the fight.

The prognosis is much better on my side of the rental. For my part, yesterday I dug up every last bamboo shoot I could find, pulling out as much of the root as I could. You can see in the lower right the thick rhizomes that form a dense clone, requiring that the whole clone of bamboo be repeatedly cut down in order to starve the roots.

Most likely, a similar resurgence is happening right now at the Princeton Battlefield, where volunteers cut down all the old bamboo stalks earlier this spring. How much easier their battle will be next spring if they round up a battalion now, when the time is most ripe for followup, and wield loppers to foil the bamboo's quiet resurgence.

(This link should take you to past posts about dealing with bamboo. Otherwise, type "bamboo" into the search box at the top of this blog.)

Two other neighbors appear to have teamed up with a chemical assist, which I've never tried.

Doing Battle With Invasives at Princeton Battlefield

The Princeton Battlefield that people see while driving by on Mercer Street looks peaceful and under control, a broad expanse of closely mowed turf interrupted only by a few scattered trees. Nature is subdued, as on a sports field, the better to have a picnic, fly a kite, or show off the periodic reenactments of human conflict. This Saturday, April 11, for instance, a British regiment will show up as part of the ongoing programming organized by the Princeton Battlefield Society.

There are, however, real battles going on right now, hidden along the edges of the field. Some pit one plant against another, day after day, breaking only for winter, like the porcelainberry and other vines mobbing the dogwood trees planted back in the 70s to ornament the northern field. And behind the Clark House, a patch of bamboo is expanding its claim to the land. Its encroachment on the trail to the Friends Meeting House has caused the Battlefield Society volunteers to take up loppers and saws against it.

That annual skirmish was waged during March 28's cleanup day, with assistance from Sierra Club volunteers.

Some were cutting and sawing, others were hauling the 20 foot stalks over to a pile,

where some stalks were lined up, somewhat reminiscent of what must have been done with the casualties in a real battle.

This comparison of invasive plant control to a battle may be unsettling for some who prefer to associate nature with peacefulness. There are, to be sure, lots of examples of win-wins in nature--the mutualism of pollinators and flowers being the most common example. But even the peaceful appearance of the expansive lawn out front is achieved only through the covert violence of whirling blades in the mowing equipment.

We could say live and let live, and give the bamboo and porcelainberry free reign, thereby providing ourselves with a convenient excuse to do nothing while claiming a superior tolerance towards all other living things. But all gardeners play a game of winners and losers, pulling out one plant so another might thrive. And the plants themselves are not particularly peaceful towards each other. The bamboo with its stifling shade, aggressive roots, and expansionist agenda is the epitome of intolerance, of "not playing well with others".

Right next to the bamboo is another example of how laissez faire policies can lead to domination by one highly aggressive plant species. Porcelainberry has turned a small stand of trees into a giant topiary. The vines in the foreground were severed near the ground--an easy way to at least temporarily liberate the tree and cheat the vine of all the solar energy it might otherwise have collected while using the tree trunk as a prop.

If they're not cut, the vines overtop the tree and grab all the sun. The tree weakens, a strong wind or ice storm comes along, the weakened tree falls. The result looks like the tree was actually tackled by the vine, which in some ways it was.

When I was a kid, we staged battles occasionally. I remember having a tiny cap gun. Sometimes it was cowboys and Indians, sometimes a spontaneous reenactment of the Civil War on the wooded slope near a friend's house. I grew into a peace-loving adult, and yet some aspects of that strategic thinking utilized in war have parallels in open space management. Since an army's fearsome tanks are useless without gasoline to power them, then one way to win the war is to deprive them of fuel by bombing the aggressor's refineries. If they start rebuilding the refinery, don't bomb again immediately but instead wait until they are almost done rebuilding, then destroy it again just before it can produce any gasoline.

That is exactly what the Allies did in WWII, and a very similar approach can be used against bamboo. Cut it all down--completely, every last stem--so the clone is entirely cut off from its solar energy source. Then wait for it to send up new stems. Those stems will rise 5 or 10 feet before sending out any leaves that can start collecting solar energy. Just as the bamboo shoots start sending out leaves, cut it all down again. The roots have spent all that energy sending up new stems, yet will have nothing to show for it. Since the roots are also continuously spending energy just to stay alive, then the fewer leaves there are to feed that demand, the sooner the roots' reserves will be depleted. Stick with this war of attrition, and the giant will be slain.

And what will the Battlefield Society do on volunteer days if several strategic interventions in a single season weaken the bamboo so that it is no longer growing into the trail, or into the remains of the old barn? I'm sure there's a long list somewhere.

One of the perks of doing invasive species work is that it takes one where one might not otherwise go. I've visited the battlefield many times, but only the fight against bamboo led me to where there are ruins of an old barn.

There was a brief timeout to contemplate the possible origin of holes in one of the foundation stones.

Invasive species removal is one of the few ways we can experience outdoor work, and in some small way reenact the physical exertion once necessary to make this farm a vital enterprise.


Some notes: Bamboo is a grass, like corn or sugar cane or sorghum, or the Arundo donax from which reeds for instruments are made, or the massive stands of Phragmitis that invade many wetlands. Before Rachel Carson wrote about DDT, she wrote about Spartina, the remarkable grass that dominates salt marshes. There's a bamboo native to North America--Arundinarea gigantea--which once formed expansive canebrakes in the southeast. Escaped slaves would hide in them. The native species mostly survives today in names like "Reed Creek" while the exotic bamboos dot the urban landscape. When I lived in North Carolina, I saw the native species only a few times in scraggly remnants. 

If you think about it, you've probably never seen bamboo flower. A grove of bamboo will live for many decades without flowering, then flower and produce seed en masse, just before dying. The vast amount of seed suddenly produced by the native cane must have overwhelmed the capacity of wildlife to consume it, though some sources suggest that two lost bird species--the carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon--were able to make the most of these rare bursts of abundance. I saw a flowering and sudden dieback of exotic bamboo in Durham, NC once, when a patch covering a whole city block flowered and died. There are a lot of homeowners in Princeton who wish their bamboo would do the same.

Native Bamboos Once Common in the Southeastern U.S.

This post isn't about the tall bamboo you often see growing around town. That would be golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea), native to southeast China, cultivated in Japan for centuries, and first introduced to the United States in the 1880s. In our neighborhood, I sometimes see people of asian descent harvesting its young shoots in the spring. (If you're looking for a clever way to get rid of it, or want to eat it, or both, scroll through my various previous posts that actually ARE about the nonnative golden bamboo.) 

Nor is this post about the bamboo you are confronted with when you pull out of the Spring Street parking garage behind the Princeton Public Library. That one's probably the nonnative arrow bamboo (Pseudosasa japonica), which lacks the towering, thick stems. Instead, it grows into a dense mop of evergreen foliage, seldom rising much beyond ten feet high. It's rarely seen in Princeton, but was a common feature in neighborhoods where I used to live, further south in the piedmont, in Durham, NC. We'd find it thriving in shade, and in that Princeton back alley it does an excellent job of screening the homes beyond it from the sight of cars pulling out of the parking garage day and night. 

This post IS about what that patch of arrow bamboo reminded me of: native bamboos. Yes, there are native bamboos that once dominated vast stretches of the southeastern U.S., but which are now largely lost from the landscape.

The photo shows a patch of native bamboo, cane so-called (Arundinaria sp.), that I planted 20 years ago in a nature preserve we created in Durham, NC. Called "17 Acre Wood," the neighborhood preserve straddles Ellerbe Creek--good floodplain habitat for native cane. A scientist with the Natural Resource Conservation Service, Roger Hansard, had given me the plant. (He was also the one who showed me the last remnant of another little known, long-lost feature of the eastern U.S.--extensive native grasslands. There once was a great native meadow just south of Princeton, called Maidenhead Meadows.) 

Prior to western settlement, early European explorers in what is now North Carolina documented not the unbroken forest of lore, but a mosaic of grasslands, forest, and canebrakes. The canebrakes were dominated by native bamboos. 

There are three species of native bamboo. A Name That Plant article gives a quick overview of native (Arundinaria sp.) and nonnative bamboos in the U.S.. 

Differences in distribution and vegetative characteristics help to distinguish among Arundinaria species and from non-native species. Typically river cane is more widely distributed in the southeastern US, switch cane in coastal plains and lower elevations, and hill cane in higher elevations (Appalachian Mountain region).

The Tennessee Conservationist has an excellent writeup on the river cane that until the 1700s formed "the dominant ecosystem in the Cumberland River valley." Dense stands of river cane, growing from 5-40 feet tall, served as important resources for American Indians, excellent forage for bison and later cattle, and hiding places for escaped slaves. They postulate that some of these massive canebrakes were the result of cane reclaiming corn fields abandoned by "prehistoric Mississippian peoples" many centuries prior, as major droughts led to the breakup of an early civilization. In turn, the canebrakes proved easier than forests for newly arrived western settlers to turn into farm fields.

If you've never seen bamboo blooming, it's because it can grow for decades without blooming at all. Then a year finally comes when the whole patch will bloom at once, then die. I've seen a whole city block suddenly die in this way. 

The cluster of roots and leaves of native bamboo that I planted alongside Ellerbe Creek some 20 years ago in Durham has grown into a patch 30 wide. Maybe someone will come along and use it as a source for replanting the Cane Creeks of the world, named for what was once abundant and now is seldom seen.

That's what I was reminded of a few weeks ago, pulling out of the Spring Street parking garage next to the public library.

Engaging Bamboo at Princeton Battlefield, Part 2

The Princeton Battlefield Society has an issue with the bamboo that was planted long ago near Clark House. It's expanded to the point that it's starting to block pathways. Responding with a workday in the spring, the volunteers had a big above-ground impact, reducing the forest of bamboo to long piles of thick stems. I made the case that, despite that great accomplishment, it was not time to declare victory. A month later, the bamboo would quietly send up a new forest of shoots from energy reserves in its massive root system, and restore its strength over the long summer.

From high atop my horse, or at least my horticultural soapbox, I offered a plan to outsmart a grass species long schooled in the art of survival. We'd wait until its new stems are ten feet tall, then seize the day, along with some loppers, and cut them all down. That's just what board members Kip and Marc did this past weekend, with an admirable sense of thoroughness. Now it's the bamboo's move. Having spent all that root energy for no return, it may abandon ambitions of tall stems for the time being and merely send up short, shrubby sprigs dense with leaves. If these, too, get cut down, then the bamboo's roots will be well along the way to being exhausted.

We found a few natives growing in the void left by removing the bamboo: spicebush, blackberry, black raspberry, jewelweed, and white snakeroot. Their presence is heartening, and though we discussed encouraging them it's too early to think about nurturing the peace. The bamboo is not yet quelled, and porcelainberry vines are creeping in from the sides, ready to outcompete the relatively tame natives.

We then headed across the backyard of the Clark House to check out another clone blocking another trail. We tasted a young bamboo shoot or two. Not bad, even raw. Maybe what we have here is a failure to utilize. If only Princeton had a ravishing hunger for locally grown bamboo shoots, the clones would be held nicely in check.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Mercer Street, the dogwood trees lining the field are growing new leaves that can actually get sunlight, now that they've been liberated from suffocating vines.

All of this speaks to the progress that can be made in local parks by a few people with some plant knowledge, some strategy, a few spare hours, and some loppers.

Mowing (and Eating) Bamboo

Bamboo, once it reaches a house's foundation, can actually grow up under the siding. That's what happened next door, as a big patch of bamboo that was providing privacy between homes kept expanding.

Realizing his house was threatened, the landlord had it all cut down last year, but there's been no followup to prevent the bamboo from regrowing from the roots. Having dealt with invasive plants for decades, professionally and around the house, I've learned the hard way that the first large scale removal is not the end of the problem, but only the first stage of an extended battle. Usually, the invasive wins. People are highly distracted, while a plant like bamboo is focused 24/7 on growing. While these new shoots are still soft, however, it would be relatively easy to mow them all down, every few weeks until the roots finally run out of energy.

How tender grows the bamboo? Ask the Chinese man who scavenges bamboo shoots in the neighborhood and takes them back to his house for some stir fry. People's appetites could potentially play a role in bringing an unruly plant like bamboo into balance with the environment, but it would take a cultural shift, and consistent harvesting year after year.

I sometimes speculate that cattail, a highly edible native that can aggressively take over a wetland to the exclusion of other natives, was kept in better balance long ago when it was part of people's diet.

Bamboo IV: The Last Vestiges

It sounds like the final dramatic episode in an epic battle, but these struggles against invasive plants usually end either in a draw or a whimper. Here, we're lucky to have a whimper. This bamboo bouquet (needs some aesthetic refinement) is about all that remains of the dreaded patch of bamboo that four years back was invading my yard from the north. Periodic cutting down, with permission from my neighbor, of course, was all it took to tame the beast. With no leaves to provide new energy, the clone has to draw down its root reserves in order to keep metabolism going.

It's important, though, to resist the urge to declare victory. A couple years of neglect would allow the bamboo to regain its strength.

You can find previous posts about bamboo, or about any subject I've written about on this blog, by putting the relevant word in the search window on the upper left.

Beware of Bamboo--An Update

"Beware of Bamboo"--wouldn't that make a good sign to post at the front gate? Most posts here lately have detailed the native abundance in my backyard. But just across the fence is a more typical Princeton scene. Bamboo, English ivy and Wineberry--all exotic invaders--thrive along a neglected fenceline, advancing imperiously into my yard when my back is turned.

Bamboo is thought to be nearly impossible to weed out, but no beast can remain beastly forever without a source of energy.

As described in a post in June, 2008, the hard part of the counter attack was done a couple years back, when my neighbor permitted me to cut the whole, dense, 20 foot high bamboo clone to the ground--on both sides of the fence. It then sent up a new batch of long stems, which I cut just as they were starting to leaf out. The whole idea was to prevent the Thing from collecting any new solar energy, forcing it to spend its reserves on new shoots that would get cut before they could send any energy down to the roots. Time, and the imperatives of metabolism, were on my side in this "drain the energy bank" approach to superweed combat.

Last year, I again cut the new shoots down to the ground just as the stems were starting to send out leaves.

This year, it sent up only a few strange stems, each crowded with unusually dense leaves. Grasping one stem, I felt like I was shaking hands with a woolly green bear out of Monsters Inc. And like in the movie, the monster has been acting mighty gentle of late.

Fifteen minutes of lopping and it was time to declare victory, though I don't dare turn my back for long.

Bamboo at Princeton Battlefield Gets its Summer Cut

This past Saturday, four of us gathered for a well-timed intervention at the Princeton Battlefield. The Friends of Princeton Battlefield had cut down a patch of bamboo in the spring, but the roots had quickly sent up a new crop of shoots--essentially foliar solar panels that would quickly begin resupplying the bamboo's powerful root system. By following up and cutting the new shoots, we deprived the roots of any return on their investment in new infrastructure. This is the third year we've done this, and each year the job gets easier. A massive stand of bamboo has been reduced to modest sprouts easily managed.

Thanks to volunteers Jill Warrington, Andrew Thornton, and the leader of the Friends of Princeton Battlefield, Kip Cherry. My participation was a bit of outreach from the Friends of Herrontown Woods, on the other side of town.

How To Kill Bamboo, Phase 3

One of the chief activities, perhaps the primary activity, of any avid plant lover and gardener is to kill plants--specifically those which are clearly determined to overwhelm the plants you love. Most people politely call it weeding.

One of the greatest weeds of all has been moving into my yard from the rental next door. The landlord tried to get rid of it, but gave up. Last year, I decided to take it on, sharpened my sword (loppers), donned my armor, picked my moment and charged. Phase 1 was to cut every last stem at its base. The bamboo played dead for a week, then sent multitudinous shoots rocketing up into the air. Rather than rush in with more loppering, I sat back and waited while the beast spent its energy on stems. Then, as the ten foot high stems began to send out leaves that could fuel the serpent's roots, I moved in with my loppers and again cut every last one down to the ground. The bamboo attempted no more grand growth before winter.

This spring, however, it has again sent an army of shoots into the air, and again I waited as it invested in infrastructure. Then, just as it began to unveil its solar panels to draw energy from the sun (see photo), I cut the shoots at the ground.

The strategy here, as with english ivy discussed in another post, is to starve the plant of energy. Plants metabolize constantly, which means they need energy to maintain their tissues. If deprived of leaves over a long enough period, a plant will eventually exhaust its energy reserves.

We'll see what the bamboo tries next.

Princeton Bamboo Battle Re-enactment Saturday

This Saturday afternoon, March 19, 1-4pm, the Princeton Battlefield Society will host its annual workday. Each year they do battle with the various invasive species on the property. In recent years, a big bamboo clone has expanded across a trail. Kudzu-like porcelainberry has been mobbing trees, large and small, bringing some of them down.

It's a worthy battle, and last year I made a suggestion about how to avoid having their hard work in the spring undone by the invasives' knack for rebounding through the summer. This past June, several of us returned to cut down the new bamboo shoots that had sprouted up since the spring workday. By timing our cutting so that the massive roots had invested heavily in new shoots without yet getting any return, we were able to deprive the root system of any replenishment. Tomorrow, they should see a much-weakened bamboo clone, and be able to divert some volunteers to some of the other infestations that are blocking trails elsewhere.

Other projects at the Princeton Battlefield that I've helped with are the native chestnuts planted by Bill Sachs, and an effort to save the dogwoods lining the north field from a host of aggressive vine species. Of course, it's not exactly a walk in the park to do battle with the vines, but the work is made rewarding by the thought of the people who took the time to plant them decades ago, the beauty they have to offer, and the berries the migratory birds won't find if the dogwoods have no sunlight to power their production.

It's notable that all of these motivations are driven by imagination: the people long gone, flowers yet to bloom and berries yet to be borne. It's an imagination honed by long experience and observation (helped by some digging to find the newspaper article that told of the bicentenial planting of dogwoods). The past and the future inform our sense of place. The present, with its dull winter mix of grays and browns, is deceiving. Taken at face value, the present offers little to inspire action. In that sense, a well-tempered imagination is as important for seeing reality as our eyes. It allows us to see the past and the future embedded in the present, and offers us reason to act.

Bamboo at the Battlefield--Year 2

Whatever purpose this bamboo patch at Princeton Battlefield was originally supposed to serve--screening?, poles?, bamboo shoots?--its expansionist tendencies have led to ongoing attempts to eliminate it. Last year marked a turning point in the battle to prevent the giant clone from blocking the old trail between Clark House and the Stony Brook Meeting House. Because of strategic interventions in both spring and early summer by the Battlefield friends, all that remained this spring of the mighty stand were low, grassy clumps of bamboo leaves huddled near the ground. However, as expected, the root system still had enough energy to launch a new generation of strong vertical shoots this year, aspiring to regain its lost ground and resume its expansion into the trail and the area where a barn once stood.

Protecting these historic features of the Battlefield means returning again this June to cut down the new stems before they can start collecting solar energy. Since expansionist plants can be so daunting to counter, it's satisfying to intervene when the stems are soft and easily cut with a pair of loppers.

Just across the path, the volunteers left a big pile of porcelainberry vines cleared from a patch of ground they wish to reclaim from the "kudzu of the north".

There's a native plant mixed in. Beneath the grape-like leaves of the porcelainberry is a sea of the lighter green leaves of jewelweed, whose tubular orange flowers attract hummingbirds.

What a Little Dew Can Do

Here's a bit of serendipity. Shadows play upon the grounds of Princeton Battlefield, charmed with dew on a Saturday morning.

Ever the resident tourist, a shadow selfie with Mercer Oak II. Had no luck getting the shadow to smile.

Sorry, but you can't look at any screen--TV or computer--without at least one obligatory car commercial popping up. The sound track runs something like, "If George Washington were alive today, ...", though he might eschew fossil fuel altogether and stick with a horse. Those founding fathers thought about long term consequence. What ever happened to that kind of thinking?

The original motivation for stopping during a drive by of the Battlefield was documentation, not aesthetics: to photograph the invasive porcelainberry overgrowing flowering dogwoods planted as part of the nation's bicentennial celebrations in 1976.

One of my recurrent cause celebres is to save the Dogwood Garden Club's dogwood legacy from the aggressive vine growth. From the green/yellow of the porcelainberry vines crawling over the red leaves of the dogwoods, you can see who won this year's skirmish. The Dogwood Garden Club doesn't know who I am, and for all I know they've forgotten that they ever planted these trees along the field's edge in the first place.

There was also an obligatory photo of the great disappearing bamboo patch. Two years ago, this was a thick clone of bamboo growing out over the path down to the Quaker Meeting House, but a series of well-timed cuttings with magic loppers over the past couple years have sapped vigor from the bamboo's giant root system. The decisive strategic intervention came this past June, when Kip Cherry and I cut down the regrowth from a cutting in the spring. It was some inconvenient toil, but deprived of any payback from that big investment in regrowth--two years in a row--the bamboo has nearly given up. A visit next spring should be light work, followed by a refreshing beverage on the Clark House porch.

Dew was also working some magic on the vista on Quaker Road near the towpath. Scattered pin oaks in a field of goldenrods.

Thanks goes to my daughter Anna for getting me out that way early on a Saturday, to drop her off for a busride to Philadelphia to do some canvassing. Otherwise, that encounter with morning dew would have never happened. Finally, a reason to be thankful for this election season.