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.

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.

I Like Ice

This being an election year, I'm going to resurrect the "I Like Ike" campaign slogan from the Dwight Eisenhower 50's, with a slight twist to make it relevant to climate change.

One of the most expressive features of our backyard, in addition to the duck, the four chickens, and all the native wildflowers, is the collection of miniponds that capture runoff coming in from the neighbors up the hill. One pond in particular, eight feet wide, a foot deep, changes almost daily as temperatures range above and below freezing. Thaw serves as the eraser, and each freeze brings a new creation.

On Feb. 18th and 19th, the pond became a canvas for some particularly unusual patterns. Because the pond is unlined, water can slowly seep down through the semi-permeable clay underneath, creating stresses in the ice as it loses the support of the water beneath it. In one of these photos, one can see how on these particular days the ice actually had two layers, one a couple inches below the other, with ribs creating chambers between them.

The photos should expand for a better view if you click on them.

There were swirls and dots,

feathered edges and interactions between plants and ice,

bearded stars, and lines radiating out from a central point.

This breakaway shows the double deck ice, suspended over the slowly falling water level.

Some patterns were like suture lines in a stitched wound,

ice like sinews, or sinew-like ice,

more swirls and stars,

and a bending 'round the remains of sensitive fern.

From a distance, it looks far less impressive, and would have been missed altogether if I hadn't needed to make the daily morning jaunt to the coop to let the birds out.

Teaching an Old Chicken Old Tricks

After a few years, chickens and ducks stop laying eggs. Our peking duck laid one egg per day like clockwork for several years, but stopped suddenly this past fall, even though she still waddles about the yard as robustly as ever. Our one hen remaining from the first batch, bought about four years ago, also stopped laying around the same time.

There followed then a lull of about a month, when we finally gave in and bought a dozen eggs at the grocery. Strange feeling after several years of home grown. Then, just as days were narrowing down to winter solstice, the three chickens we bought this past May came online, began their tour of beneficence, or however you'd like to describe the remarkable generosity that is a hen's nature. Though all are araucanas, one lays brown eggs, while the others lay variations on green and blue.

Then one day in late December a tiny egg appeared, as if a quail had happened by for a brief visit. Sometimes that can mean a chicken has just started laying. I wanted to believe the older white hen had found new inspiration. Hard to say, but if one looks closely enough at the greenish eggs, one can see three different shades, with one grayer, one bluer, and one just possibly from an old hen made newer.

Araucanas are sometimes called "easter egg" chickens, because of the varied colors of their eggs, and sometimes when the eggs aren't showing up in the usual spot in or near the coop, we do a good imitation of an Easter egg hunt searching for their new nest. I hear that Araucanas are also particularly resilient in cold weather. That will be tested this weekend, when temperatures are predicted to dip nearly to 0.

When Snow Snazzed Up the Morning

Winter's second snow caught us by surprise. I had just put the shovels away, but they were hardly needed, as this snowstorm snazzed up the landscape without snarling traffic, beautifying the morning before fading away in the afternoon sun. The snow added definition to the landscape, revealing the outline of the ephemeral stream that flows from the neighbor's yard down into ours.

making clear the boundaries between aqueous and terrestrial.

Even in a freeze, the chickens can still find water where our tiny stream, a thin blue line on old maps of Princeton, trickles past the sedges.

The fillable, spillable ponds, fed by snowmelt from the roof, received a cheery rim of snow,

and an idea for leaf corral as scroll-shaped sculpture sprang from a shape unseen until the snow gave it a defining presence.

The snow made this fence into an optical illusion (doesn't it look like the photo isn't quite rectangular?),

and even turned unsplit wood into an artful assemblage. If all unfinished work received such ornament, what a beautiful world it would be.

The Big Bird That Got Away

This is one of those old fish crow stories, about hearing a fish crow in the backyard this morning, going "uh uh"..."uh uh", again and again, with that call that sounds like it's contradicting everything you happen to be thinking. "Uh uh. That's a lousy idea," it seems to be saying. "Uh uh. You don't want to do that." And so I go out on the back patio to see what all the "uh uhs" are about, and locate the fish crow, seemingly alone in the top of the silver maple tree, and while I'm looking up, out of the corner of my eye I see a great blue heron lifting itself up out of the shrubbery screening the chicken coop and fly off in its heavy, gangly way, swooping around an evergreen tree to drop back down to the ground a couple doors away. We have no fish, nor any pond this time of year to even offer hope of fish. Was it remembering ponds and goldfish past? Or was it hanging out with the chickens, who also were clustered under the shrubs? Maybe some kind of big bird affinity happening there. And why was the fish crow making that steady, repetitive call, as if monitoring the situation and letting fellow crows know what gives? I went over to my neighbor's. He has a pond with a pump-driven waterfall. The great blue heron was gone.

That was a good photo that got away, and if the neighbor had any fish in his pond, a couple long-necked gulps may have left his pond as empty as the tree in this photo.

Roosters in Princeton

To all the voices that hold forth in Princeton, add some cockadoodledoos. I had heard that there were some roosters among us--a painter who grew up in South Africa told me a few years ago the sound made him feel at home--but had not heard any until this past month. One was east of Harrison Street a few blocks, which I took the liberty of photgraphing. The other is within crowing distance of town hall.

The legality of having poultry in Princeton comes up now and then. There are some ordinances left over from the borough/township days that were contradictory. The straightest answer I got when I looked into it was from the town's former animal control officer, who said they are legal, or at least tolerated, as long as the neighbors are happy. It was my impression that roosters were not permitted, but it may be that the happy neighbor rule determines whether any ordinance, written or improvised, is enforced.

Though a rooster would never tell you this, they aren't needed for egg production. We'd have to ask the owners if they intentionally bought roosters. Chickens are sold when just a couple weeks old, when sex identification can be tricky. Famed Princeton resident Joyce Carol Oats said, in response to a question I asked after she read from her memoir at the Princeton Public Library, that chickens in general and roosters in particular were an important part of her childhood.

We currently have one Pekin duck and four Aracana chickens. The chickens are quiet sorts, but the duck can speak out at various points during the day, calling for more food, or announcing to the world that it is now waddling across the lawn. Neighbors tell me they like the sounds, as a rural salve for the traffic noise on Harrison Street. The droppings disappear into the grass, and any scratching the chickens do leaves our flower gardens undisturbed.

As pets, they are low maintenance. Clean the coop now and then, make sure there's food and water in the backyard, open the coop in the morning, close it at night. We free-range them, meaning they have the run of the fenced-in backyard. We have lost a few to hawks over the years, usually in late fall and winter when wild prey are less available and the birds have less cover. It can be traumatic, but it brings us up against important issues of life and death, pet vs. livestock, quality of life vs. longevity, risks and rewards, and our relationship to the wild animal community that also calls Princeton home. Interestingly, it's the white birds that the hawks have left alone, as if hawks, too, associate whiteness with some otherworldly nature.

The chickens have shown no desire to fly away, and the duck is so heavy that she has even less chance of clearing a fence than the contraption the claymation chickens built in the movie Chicken Run. The chickens lay eggs most days, and the duck produces one egg per day like clockwork. An Italian neighbor, who barely speaks english, knocks on our door periodically, seeking a dozen duck eggs for her Chinese daughter in law. Perhaps the greatest pleasure, in a town where yards go unused and can tend towards sterile display, is seeing how much the birds appreciate and take full advantage of what the yard has to give.

Though a rooster might help protect the hens, our "guard duck" performs a similar role while producing copious amounts of eggs. In addition to her big, boisterous voice during the day, at dusk she assumes her post just inside the coop door, her beak a formidable weapon ready to unleash against any would-be intruders.

A previous post gives more details, and local sources of chicks. Rosedale Mills told me they were selling chickens beyond the optimal April/May season, though it helps if they are fully grown by the time winter comes. 

Volcanoes on Harrison Street

The landscape service for the house two doors down gave the street tree maple a little love. Tucked it in like you might tuck a child into bed. All nice and snug with some mulch around its trunk.

Looks so right, and yet everyone knows it's the wrong thing to do--everyone except the workers charged with taking care of people's yards. It just goes to show, once again, how much land is left in the hands of people who don't know anything about plants. Cut the grass, trim the hedge, spread the mulch--what more could there be to know? It's like dispensing with doctors and nurses, and turning the medical profession over to barbers.

Now, I actually feel a lot of sympathy for the guys who are charged with going out there and mowing grass all day. Grass is a hippy after all. It wants to grow its hair long and make love in the sunshine. Keeping all those proclivities in check is a major production. I put in my time, mowing yards as a kid, and then a brief stint as a groundskeeper at a golf course, perched on a tractor, pulling the gang mowers up and down the fairways. I love the smell of fresh-cut grass, and spent much of my youth playing one grass-tread sport or another, or just feeling the joy of running full tilt across a field of green. Summer evenings we'd have pickup games. When it got too dark to see the softball, we'd switch to soccer--the ball being bigger--and play some more, then find our ways home in the pitch black, by distant glimmers of light and instinct, as if navigating across constellations.

But all those memories are far removed from current realities, where so many lawns are neither used nor taken care of by the inhabitants of the house, and essentially serve as obligatory, sterile frames for the buildings they surround, their tidiness enforced by roving crews wielding pesticides, whirling steel, and raucous leaf blowers. So many barren hours spent tending to barren landscapes. At least it's an outdoor activity.

Suburbia tells us we must have yards, but what are they for exactly? It can get pretty existential. Native plants is one answer, for me at least. Give them a place to grow and show off their stuff. And chickens. Chickens know what to do with a yard, examining every little speck to see if it's food. They have no existential quandaries to grapple with.

So, really, I don't get too worked up over mulch volcanoes. It just seems way too easy. True, they are annoying, but they are only the pesky peak perched atop an implacable mountain of convention and indifference. Nature is often counter-intuitive. It takes awhile to get to know. Trees don't like to be hugged by mulch.

In this case, it was easy enough to pull the mulch back from the bark and be on my way. If only the underlying problem were as easy to fix.

Terhune Orchards' "Turning 40" Tour

As I hurried to catch the start of a 40th anniversary tour of Terhune Orchards, surprised that I was actually on time, I passed a major showoff in the chicken coop. The white peacock was trying to impress the chickens, who were clearly more interested in the food.

As with the chickens, it's the food that's always impressed me about Terhune Orchards. No big show, just consistently great when it comes to taste and quality. No fancy facade, just keepin' it real. Cider, donuts, apples that just keep coming, and some 35 other crops to make the short drive out of town worthwhile. There's also the integration of business and community spirit, of which the chickens may not have paid much notice.

On this farm, utility is mixed with charm. History sits comfortably mingled with the modern in a multi-generational assemblage of "stuff".

Speaking of connections with the past, it turns out that the Terhunes, from whom the Mounts bought the farm 40 years ago, shared some common ancestors with Gary Mount, who had grown up on a farm in West Windsor next to Route 1. The Mounts learned of this only many years after the purchase.

I made it to the big barn in time for introductory remarks by three generations of Mounts. Two daughters and their families have returned to continue the tradition.

Solar panels on the big red barn, constructed by Amish woodworkers using the traditional oak pins instead of nails, supply 40% of the energy required to run the barn's climate control machinery.

Apples are stored in two different chambers. One is kept cold and humid, and keeps the apples fresh for several months. The other is for longterm storage. There, behind lock and key, the process of ripening and decay is stymied by dropping the oxygen level from 20% down to 2%. The oxygen is pushed out by injecting additional nitrogen into the room. Each month in the winter and spring, the door is opened, oxygen is allowed in so that workers can breathe, and a month's worth of apples are moved to the other chamber.

Outside, honey bees were pollinating the cherry blossoms. During the two weeks just before harvest, plastic is drawn over the hoops to protect the cherries from rain (and supposedly from the birds as well). Otherwise, the cherries will absorb the moisture and crack.

Apple trees are now planted much closer together than in the tradition configuration seen in the parking lot. Their trunks are so weak that they need to be staked, lest they fall over with a heavy load of apples, but the harvest is double what it used to be.

Pick your own asparagus. Ruth Stout, in her book from the 1940s called "How To Have a Green Thumb Without An Aching Back", described how gardeners used to dig a two foot deep trench to plant their asparagus in, then backfilled slowly as the asparagus grew. All that work, Stout contended, was unnecessary. Simply plant the asparagus at ground level. I didn't ask Gary Mount what his planting method is, but they make farming look so easy, I'm sure they don't seek out unnecessary work.

Some years back, one of their employees took an interest in greenhouse gardening, and the Mounts went with it. There are now three greenhouses, with one separated from the other tow, devoted to organic methods. Cloth is pulled over the space in winter, to provide at least a little insulation for this fuel-intensive space.

We got a tour of the bakery. It's surprisingly small, considering the output, not much larger than some expansive kitchens I've seen in private homes around town. The cider operation, too, is surprisingly compact. Apples that have slight blemishes or are too small for sale as apples are used to make cider. There's some thought put into blending different kinds. I asked why Terhune Orchard cider is so much richer in taste than other brands, and learned that most cider makers don't grow their own apples, but are supplied with small apples without much flavor. Stayman apples, not often used elsewhere, are also a particularly rich component of Terhune cider.

That accordion-like structure in the background, reminiscent of an Argentine bandoneon, is the cider press. I didn't ask whether the press plays tangoes while squeezing. The cider's then flash pasteurized, stored in big stainless steel containers designed for dairy operations, then jugged. The pulp is spread on fields using a manure spreader.

That was the tour. Gary headed out on a tractor to plant some corn. I headed back to town with donuts and asparagus, to catch some of Communiversity. Happy anniversary, Terhune Orchards! May there be 40 more.

A Duck Gets a Taste of Spring

Our Pekin duck has been finding more reason to venture out of the coop this week. There's mud to probe with its beak, and the luxury of a bath in one of our backyard ponds swelled by snowmelt from neighbors' yards. She had no problem breaking through the thin layer of ice left by last night's freeze.

Earlier in the month, finding water in its liquid state was more of a challenge, as she took sips from the fillable-spillable minipond catching water from the roof.

She keeps a sharp eye out for hawks, turning her head to get a better look at the sky. Usually, that turn of the head means something's flying over, be it a vulture, crow, hawk, or a jet headed into Newark Airport.

Meanwhile, the duck's companion, a chicken of similar feather, was laying another robin's-egg-blue egg. We often get two a day now, as warmer temperatures and longer days have broken the winter drought.

Ducks and chickens made multiple appearances in movies this weekend at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, particularly in the excellent documentary on permaculture, "Inhabit". The ducks were said to be excellent at keeping the slug population down on an outdoor shitake mushroom farm, and the chickens happily batted cleanup in one of the crop rotations, eating any seeds that eluded harvest.

Mark Johnson--Princeton's Animal Control Officer No More

Mark Johnson, who served as Princeton's animal control officer for more than twenty years, was recently offered a separation agreement by the municipality. Animal control services have been outsourced to Montgomery. The reason for the separation, according to articles at PlanetPrinceton.com, has nothing to do with his field work but instead with record keeping and his handling of rabies vaccines supplied by the state.

Other decisions about his employment remain shrouded in mystery, as far as I know. He was shifted from the health department to the police department a couple years ago for no clear reason, and within the last year or so I read that he was no longer allowed to make house calls to assist homeowners with animal control issues.

His house calls were a great service. My interactions with Mark were always positive. He helped us get raccoons out of the historic Veblen House attic, and his policy on keeping chickens in the backyard was a pragmatic one, allowing chickens (no roosters) as long as bordering neighbors approve. He was my go-to person for information on coyotes and other wildlife in Princeton. He also had to endure criticism coming from those who oppose Princeton's deer policy--a policy that, given that we long ago eliminated the natural predators necessary to control deer population, has greatly benefitted Princeton's forests, dramatically reduced car accidents, and insured a better balance between deer numbers and available habitat. His was not an easy job.

Hawks and Chickens

In New York City's Garment District, a giant hawk-like creature stands proud and somewhat menacing, as traffic swirls all around. "Crafted from maple saplings", it is one of five "Avian Avatars meant to indicate transformation, encouraging the public to heed to the stories about current human impact on the changing natural world."

This particular one represents a falcon named The Taste Maker, described as "an idealist, a philosopher and an opinionated vocalist with a social vision." Sounds like the falcon should have a blog.

Out here in the suburban wilds of central New Jersey, nature is less filtered through myth. This Coopers hawk too stands proud, while indicating a transformation much more localized than climate change. Any ideals it might hold can't compete with the exigencies of hunger in a less than generous winter landscape. As for social vision, it goes along with the driving vision of nature, which in all its beauty and generosity is built on passing energy from one trophic level to the next. One creature dies so that another may live.

The hawk's most recent visit marked the end of an era, in a way. The backyard ponds still freeze and thaw, wax and wane. The native wildflowers planted along our reconstructed miniature tributary of Harry's Brook will rebound in spring. But one of our two chickens was less lucky.

We started several years back with four chickens--the ardent brainstorm of our younger daughter who I think was inspired by a movie she saw at school. Once parental resistance was overcome, the birds turned out to be a delight. We got them locally at Rosedale Mills, where they sell chicks in the spring so the birds have enough time to grow up before winter. Finally, a pet that truly enjoys the (fenced in) backyard, inspecting every square inch for any morsel of food. Skittering insects, wiggly worms, stray seeds--all were eagerly gobbled up and transformed into eggs with dark orange yolks. The hens got the run of the place all day, before being closed in the coop for the night.

Their success prompted followup requests for ducks--pleas so persistent that we finally caved, despite the seeming impracticality. The one-day old ducklings arrived in a box at the post office, in November--not prime time for frolicking in the backyard. They were unbelievably cute, like windup rubber duckies that followed us everywhere--endearing traits that surely contributed to their survival, first in a spare bathtub and later in a box in the sunroom, until spring came.

The ducks, too, flourished in the backyard, adding a complementary appreciation of water features to the chickens' preference for the backyard's terra firma. They loved the ponds, and thereby made a mess of the ponds, in much the same way our love of, and appetite for, the earth and its resources has made a mess of things. But at least their droppings on the lawn, unlike those of geese, were liquid enough to disappear into the ground, sustaining a landscape that was still people-friendly.

There was some attrition along the way. The first loss was a chicken early on, the one night we left them out. They had looked so happy perched up on a brick chimney on the patio that we got lax. A neighbor claimed to have seen a fisher that night. Raccoons seem curiously absent, perhaps because we have a dog. The second loss was to a Coopers Hawk one afternoon, in the fall, after the protective backyard foliage had dropped off. That daylight attack above all brought home the tough choice between giving the birds a high quality free range life and keeping them safely cooped up. Our grief was mixed with an awareness of how extraordinary are these wild predators, living by their wits.

Then there was a long spell of stability, as it seemed that the large, white Pekin duck, with its exaggerated waddle, big voice and intimidatingly pokey beak, was making all predators think twice. Along with this "guard duck", we had a smaller, more graceful runner duck and two remaining chickens, and were rolling in eggs, so to speak. Each duck produced daily, while the Aracana chickens each produced two blue or pink eggs every three days or so. We worried the ducks were talking too much during the day, but neighbors would tell us they loved hearing them. Their backyard calls were a welcome relief from the frontyard din of traffic along Harrison Street.

Whatever powers our guard duck had were not enough to deter a red-tailed hawk that finally shattered the sense of backyard calm on the evening we returned from the Climate March in Manhattan. I had been gone for five days, perhaps reducing the human presence in the backyard long enough to embolden the hawk. This time it was the runner duck, more upright, with more grace and less waddle than other ducks. It was enough to bring one closer in understanding of what a rancher feels after a sheep is lost to wolves.

By this time, my daughter had grown to highschool age, with her interests largely flown elsewhere than the backyard chicken coop. I had become, as with the family dog, the default caretaker. When a Coopers hawk last month claimed for its meal her favorite chicken, a brown beauty called Buttons, she took things more philosophically.

Do these losses take an emotional toll? Should we have kept the birds penned in rather than expose them to the risks, freedom and richness of the yard? I really can't say if we'd do things differently. There have been some hard lessons about how nature works, but a lot of joy and delight.

Our last remaining chicken, Buffy, keeps Daisy the Pekin duck company. The duck suddenly stopped laying last fall, and for awhile we had no eggs at all until Buffy started laying her baby blue eggs again, undeterred by winter's cold or the memory of the 2004 Kerry/Edwards campaign she perched next to at night. All those plastic signs left along the road can find new purpose winterizing chicken coops. Democrat, Libertarian--it matters little in this second life. I like to think that the air chambers in the hollow signs help insulate the coop a bit. Signs with hollow slogans might be even more effective.

One creature dies so that another may live. I'm not ready for that personally, but I'm ready to sacrifice, personally and collectively, so that changes don't overwhelm the lives of generations to come. There can be joy in that, too, a feeling of connectedness with those who follow--joy that comes with less risk, not more. Maybe that's the message to all who walk in the shadow of the looming falcon in Manhattan.

Past posts about our backyard chickens include the Joyce Carol Oats connection.