Friday, June 10, 2011

Nature Walks This Weekend

June 11, 10am: Marquand Park Tree Walk -- This should be a very informative and enjoyable walk through Princeton borough's park/arboretum, led by devoted park supporters Roland and Pam Machold. Rain date, June 12. For details, click here.

Walking tour of D&R Canal slated for Sunday, June 12, 10am --
If you've never explored the scenic towpath that extends north from Princeton, here's an event that can serve as motivation. The guided walk begins downstream of Princeton in South Bound Brook, near the treatment plant that provides Princeton with its drinking water, and ends in East Millstone, where there's a nice cafe next to the canal (see previous post about canoeing the same stretch). A full description of the walk can be found here. There will be some carpooling available. It's also possible to bike down the towpath from Princeton, then walk partway back with the group. For further information and weather-related updates, call Mr. Barth at 201-401-3121 .

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Playin' Jazz For Free at the Labyrinth Bookstore This Friday

For those wondering what happened to the usually steady stream of posts on this blog, I have been collecting photos in my usual way--of odd ant behavior on a sidewalk, a NJ forest being restored by fire, a turtle freely ranging through a forest of legs at a habitat management meeting, a neighbor's persimmon orchard, a piedmont prairie--but for some reason have not managed to launch them into the ether. I will, but in the meantime want to let everyone know about other creations to be launched in a free performance tomorrow evening, Friday, from 6:30 to 8.

In addition to growing wildflowers, I grow jazz compositions, mostly at the baby grand piano in our living room. We'll be performing some of them tomorrow at the Labyrinth Bookstore on Nassau Street, which has a nice space in the basement for literary and musical performances. Ron Connor will be playing piano, with Jerry D'Anna on bass. I'll be playing saxophone and clarinet.


So, tell your friends and come on down. Labyrinth will provide coffee and tea. Otherwise, b.y.o.


More information about the group, and links to some compositions, can be found at www.sustainablejazz.com.

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Beavers

 The killing of two beavers at Pettoranello Pond two weeks ago brought into the spotlight two sharply contrasting views of the animals. Beavers are adorable, and impressive in their craftsmanship. One of my most serene memories is watching a beaver swim peacefully across a moonlit pond. Their approach to living--find an auspicious spot, transform it to your needs, and make a living there--has parallels with ours, and so can serve as a bridge of kinship between people and nature.
Their inclination to change their surroundings, as in the sticks and mud they were using to obstruct water flow under this bridge, also triggers a distinctly negative view of beavers as nuisance animals. People get a pond just the way they want it, plant some pretty trees, and then a beaver comes along, changes the water level and starts eating the trees. That's what was happening at Pettoranello Pond. Of course, if beavers are stigmatized for changing the environment, imagine what an animal community that could form and hold opinions would be thinking about us.

Beavers have been living in the canal and Lake Carnegie for a long time, and I had been wondering why they hadn't made it up Mountain Brook to Mountain Lakes and Pettoranello Gardens. Now that they have, I'd expect more will come. My hope would be that some way could be found to accommodate the beavers while keeping the pond level stable and any valuable trees protected. There are devices that allow water through dams without the beavers being aware. In my opinion, the beavers would do Pettoranello Gardens at least one favor by thinning out its thick stands of alder along the water's edge. If the beaver's additions to the dam obstructed storm flow, then a spillway for heavy runoff could be dug somewhere along the bank. The pond already has a bypass upstream of it for storm surges.

Monday, May 23, 2011

A Visit To Mercer Educational Gardens

I finally got out to the Mercer Educational Gardens for their annual plant sale. It's out past Terhune Orchards a ways, and features well-tended gardens and various useful demonstrations.
For instance, a variety of rainbarrels are on display. The giant white cistern, which looks like it holds a thousand gallons, is what you'd actually need several of if you were serious about capturing all the runoff from your roof.
I've been starting to see these lately--plastic rainbarrels made to look like pottery. These two are in tandem. The second one has an overflow pipe if they both fill up.
This appears to be a compost bin that actually converts the decompositional energy inside into classical decompositions which, if played backwards through the speaker on top, sound like music. Devotees of this obscure genre may be familiar with some of the more accomplished and experienced decomposers like Nevohteeb and Levar.

This sign explains how 41% of our "household trash" is compostable.

Maybe if more homeowners in Princeton read this sign,

(warning: pet peeve about to be taken for a walk)
they wouldn't keep dumping their high-nitrogen grass clippings on the street, where they create a mess and pollute the local waterways.

Thanks to the Mercer County Extension for encouraging people to do right by their gardens and their local streams, and showing them the way..

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Stalking the Rare Horsteria Westnut


What kind of tree could this be, so bright and fragrant a week or two ago,
with two kinds of flowers--some white, some lavender? Closer inspection showed it to be a horsteria westnut, that is, a horse chestnut being engulfed by wisteria vines.

If one's going to kill a tree--the likely outcome--this is one of the prettier ways to do it.

Lesser Celandine

Among invasive species, the most intimidating are not the giants like kudzu but instead the diminutive species that quietly multiply into millions, defying anyone to pull them all up. Lesser celandine, which has engulfed large areas at Pettoranello Gardens, cannot even be successfully pulled up, as each plant forms many bulblets underground that remain even if the plant itself is pulled. The species, which turns yellow this time of year as it goes into dormancy until next spring, continues to spread downstream into Mountain Lakes and beyond.

I've heard many testimonials from gardeners who love its yellow flower when it first shows up, then become distressed as it begins to take over the garden. Spraying with a low toxicity herbicide like 2% glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is the only way to get rid of it over time, unless one can cover it all up with a layer cake of cardboard and mulch when it first appears in the spring, robbing it of energy. Leave one plant, however, and the problem begins anew.

My Parents' Garden

One thing I did on May 8, the first Mothers' Day since my mother passed at the age of 94 earlier this year, is to pull garlic mustard at Mountain Lakes Preserve. The logic of this is rooted in my parents' backyard, in the '70s in Ann Arbor. They had just bought an old Tudor house, previously owned by a mathematician. That first spring, yellow primrose popped up along the garden paths, with swaths of pulmonaria, mayapples, solomons seal, bloodroot and trillium grading into a small woods. There was little difference between the cultivated and wild areas, the gardens being little more than a steering of nature's already fortuitous and ornamental energies, with a few gentle introductions like primrose and pulmonaria thrown in.

That order, which seemed timeless at first, began to slowly unravel year to year. A patriarch elm, its graceful arms spreading in a protective arc over the center of the garden, succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease. Myrtle, wisteria and bishop's weed (snow on the mountain) began their relentless expansions. Hours were spent in hand-to-root combat, as rock walls and less aggressive species came under ongoing threat of being engulfed by a monotonous, weedy tide. Garlic mustard slipped into the mix somehow, at first seeming ornamental enough to leave, then turning into brown skeletons later in the summer, flinging its seeds about before I thought to react.

The fight to save a valued balance was not against exotics, but instead against the aggressive plants, the preponderance of which happened to be exotic species introduced into the garden by chance or with the best of intentions. The wildflowers continued to bloom along the path edges, and one year a pawpaw sprouted mysteriously in one of the beds, eventually bearing tropical-tasting fruit. But the beauty and serendipity that make a garden a joy were under constant threat from a subset of plants with imperialistic tendencies.

That garden taught me more than could have been guessed about the forces that tilt the world towards imbalance, and the work required to counter them.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

FOPOS Annual Meeting and Walk

Friends of Princeton Open Space had its annual meeting May 1 at Mountain Lakes House. Here, president Wendy Mager is pointing out the window to where the newly restored upper dam is now operational. The upper lake, which had become filled with eight feet of sediment over the past 100 years, has regained its original depth.
Water flows in a glistening curtain over the full length of the new spillway.




Guest speaker Bob Martin, who is Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and lives in Princeton, told an attentive audience about state environmental policy. During QandA, he was asked about the state's continued desire to dismantle the DR Canal Commission, despite compelling arguments and strong public support for its continued existence.

Afterwards, I led a walk around Mountain Lakes, pointing out various species, including this flowering bladdernut
and the woven bark of butternut (also called white walnut). Both of these species are rarely encountered in Princeton's forests, though there's an effort underway at Mountain Lakes to find and propagate native butternuts.

With the upper lake and dam restored, the lower Mountain Lake will be the focus of work this summer, as the dam gets rebuilt and enlarged, and the historic spillway is reconstructed from a jumble of rocks.
 In the meantime, the great blue heron is trying to go about business as usual.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Flying Seeds and Soaring "C"s

These are the days when seeds take wing, as a spring breeze sends the maples' winged achenes helicoptering across the sky. In the midst of this blizzard of genes searching for a new scene, I received a call from further down the piedmont, in North Carolina, where the 13 year cicadas are singing. My friend, sitting on his back porch, reported that they sound to him more musical than the calls of the annual cicadas. I could hear their drone in the background and checked the pitch on the piano. "C," I informed him, so he would know he's living through the time of the soaring "C"s.

Saturday, May 07, 2011

Tickling the Tiger's Belly

It was probably in my 20s when, in a dream, as I was riding in an open truck cab down a street in the neighborhood, a large wild feline--let's call it a tiger--ran up and leaped upon me. In the next moment, I and the cat had tumbled down out of the truck, the tiger had shrunk into a docile kitten lying on its back, and I was tickling its belly.

I thought of that dream this past Sunday as a volunteer and I plucked garlic mustard weeds out of a wooded slope near Mountain Lakes House. Volunteers have been pulling garlic mustard there for years now before the invasive plant has a chance to go to seed, and as the soil's reserve of weed seeds diminishes, our work has become progressively lighter. This year the pulling was easy, the soil soft from rains, the weeds scattered and few, which meant more attention could be paid to the peaceful spring morning, and the native diversity springing up all around--Pennsylvania sedge, solomon's seal, Jack-in-the-pulpit.

In a world often short on sense, with so much of nature thrown out of balance, I tend to look upon a rich gathering of native species as a refuge of sanity. What a pleasure to feel time echoing through that woods, our work made easy by those who had come before, surrounded by plant species that had achieved balanced association over millennia of co-evolution. This is a habitat restorationist's dream--a wild order relieved of past traumas, where the riches of a land's history speak to the future, and nature calls out for nothing more than a scratch on its belly.

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Spotted Salamander at Mountain Lakes

Most of us haven't seen a spotted salamander. They shun the light, spending their time under logs and leaf litter. Some people have a knack for finding them, like the Princeton Hydro biologist who found one at Mountain Lakes Preserve, just up from the Upper Settling Pond. The pond was built in the 1950s, probably to catch sediment coming downstream before it could get to the upper Mountain Lake.

The pond did its job so well that it became filled with sediment, except for one section whose shallow water allows spring peepers, and apparently a few salamanders, a place to lay their eggs each spring. Wikipedia describes a symbiotic relationship in which a green alga lives in each clear, bubble-shaped egg alongside the developing salamander. The alga produces oxygen for the salamander, and the salamander in turn provides carbon dioxide for the alga with each breath. It reminds me of a miniature Biosphere--the three acre greenhouse in Arizona where eight people lived for a time, sealed off from the outside world, in complete co-dependency with the greenhouse plants.

Since the pond is going to be dredged, and the combination of fish and deeper water will not suit the needs of amphibians, a search began recently for places to dig vernal pools. We found places for three, including a field that once had a swimming pool. If all goes well, the frogs will still sing every spring, and there will still be a chance for the lucky few among us to find a salamander under a log.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

FOPOS ANNUAL MEETING SUNDAY: A Talk and a Nature Walk

This Sunday afternoon, May 1 at 3pm, come to the annual meeting of Friends of Princeton Open Space for succinct reports on this past year's achievements, followed by a talk by Bob Martin, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. He will speak on “Green Acres: Preserving New Jersey’s Open Space for Future Generations.” More info on Commissioner Martin here.

Afterwards, refreshments will be served, followed by a nature walk by yours truly to view spring blooms and a freshly restored dam and lake at Mountain Lakes Preserve. RSVPs are always appreciated at 609-921-2772. The meeting will take place at Mountain Lakes House, located down the long driveway at 57 Mountain Ave., Princeton. 

OTHER WEEKEND EVENTS
For 10am Sunday garlic mustard pull, see previous post.

For jazz lovers, my Sustainable Jazz Trio will be performing at Communiversity this Saturday, April 30, at 3:15 at the intersection of Chambers and Nassau St. We'll perform organically composed original jazz utilizing only local ingredients.

Also, check out DR Greenway's native plant sale this Friday and Saturday.

Garlic Mustard Pull This Sunday, May 1, 10am

Come pull for the local ecosystems this Sunday at 10am at Mountain Lakes, where we'll have the annual garlic mustard pull. Garlic mustard is an edible but highly invasive weed in yards and natural areas that blooms this time of year. Because it displaces native plants and alters soil chemistry, we've been pulling it out each year around Mountain Lakes House before it can go to seed, and each year there is less. Workgloves and long pants are a good idea. Recent rains should make for easy pulling. Mountain Lakes House is at the end of the long driveway at 57 Mountain Ave in Princeton.
 Here's a closeup of the leaf, in case you want to search for it in your own garden. The garlic smell of the leaves is distinctive. The other leaves sneaking a peek around the edges of this photo are wood sorrel and plantain.
Garlic mustard can really take over, as has happened under the pines at Turning Basin Park, in this photo from some years back.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Planting the Extension With Something Other Than Grass

This spring I couldn't take it anymore. The sparse, beaten down patch of grass and weeds along the extension, that is. With hostas coming up in the backyard, as they have year after year, in places where I'd rather have something more interesting and dynamic, I decided to finally dig them out and test their florid toughness on the street extension. In the process, I'd be relieved of mowing a piece of lawn that grew more dandelions than grass.

I spaced the hostas every couple feet, and dug soil away from the edges of the curb and sidewalk. The edging accomplishes two things. It removes all the grass and weeds that might have grown up along the edge of the mulch, and also serves as a wall to keep the mulch from spilling out onto the street or sidewalk.

Edging, along with the dirt displaced by the hostas, also provided several wheelbarrows worth of dirt that I could use elsewhere. It's always good to be thinking about where you need some extra dirt. A garden is like a miniature town, with a certain amount of excavating going on here, filling going on over there. Throw in a miniature farm (vegetable garden), a nature preserve (wildflower bed), a landfill (compost heap) for kitchen scraps, and a yard can have its own economy.

These loads of dirt were headed for the intersection of my yard with the neighbor's driveway. The water runs off his driveway and would head straight for my house if I didn't make a berm that directs the water instead into a garden bed far from my foundation.

 While digging out the edges along the sidewalk, I noticed just how impervious is the soil in the extension, which explains why the grass was so ratty. You can see the thick red clay underlying sparse grass. Suddenly, the project took on a whole new civic and environmental dimension. All over town, the thin strips of grass between sidewalk and street likely have similarly poor, porosity-challenged soil that absorbs very little of the runoff from the sidewalk. Close-mown grass has very shallow roots that do little to improve the soils porosity. Changing to deep-rooted vegetation, such as these sacrificial hostas, combined with mulching to discourage weeds and provide cool, shady habitat for earthworms and other soil life, will over time change a bit of impervious ground into an absorber of rainwater, reducing by some small increment the flooding downstream.
Here's the completed planting, with hostas hopefully positioned so that they won't grow out over the sidewalk. Ideally, a good rain would have followed to wash the dirt off the sidewalk, but a bit of sweeping finished the job. If all goes well and the plants don't get too big, the area will need little or no attention for the rest of the year.

Update: One helpful step, not taken in this project, is to lay several thicknesses of newspaper or a single layer of overlapping cardboard down over the grass and weeds. This is primarily to prevent dandelions, curly dock and plantain from pushing up through the mulch. Unseen under a covering of woodchips or other mulch, the paper or cardboard decompose slowly, remaining intact long enough to exhaust the weeds of energy reserves.

Spring Cleaning in the Raingarden

 One of the easiest and most rewarding spring tasks is preparing a raingarden for a new season of growth. This raingarden was installed by Curtis Helm and me at Princeton borough's Senior Resource Center on Harrison Street. Water from the roofs is channeled into the garden, where it accumulates to several inches in the hollowed out area and then slowly seeps into the ground. Mosquitoes are not an issue because the water does not stand long enough for them to breed. A list of the plants, all adapted to wet soils, can be found in another post.

All that was needed was a pair of pruning shears, gloves, and a plastic grocery bag that was conveniently found amongst all the paper and plastic trash caught by the raingarden over the winter.  

 Though the spring cleaning of a raingarden is easy and rewarding, I nonetheless postponed it until the last minute. One more week and the new growth would have become tangled in last year's dead stalks.

First step was to cut the brown stems of joepyeweed, green bulrush and other native perennials.
 It's important to check the downspouts that conduct water to the garden,
one of which had lost its underlying stones and needed a little tightening of the joints.
Pulling the occasional weed like false strawberry (Duchesnia indica, also called Indian strawberry, because it is native to India),
and gill-over-the-ground ( Glechoma hederacea, also called creeping charlie, or ground ivy) is a piece of cake if the soil is still soft after recent rains. 
Garlic mustard is a common weed that will spread by seed if not pulled out before it flowers. I've heard it makes good pesto, but have never tried it out.
 All that was left was to pick up the trash and toss the stalks back in the woods. No need to burden the borough crews with yardwaste that can easily decompose unnoticed back near a fenceline.

Less than an hour and it was done. Now to figure out how to make a raingarden grow cake.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Clouds Going Opposite Directions

The habit is to jump in the car, especially on a rainy evening, but the rain was letting up, we had just acquired a giant umbrella, the dog needed a walk, and my daughter only had to go five short blocks to get to the middle school choir concert.

A bonus along the way was noticing that the clouds were moving in opposite directions, with low clouds, like dark gray wisps of steam, hurrying west, and higher clouds creeping east. Several websites say the phenomenon is a predictor of bad weather soon to arrive, possibly hail. The weather prediction is for rain and thunder.

Friday, April 08, 2011

NJDEP's Commissioner To Speak May 1, Nature Walk To Follow

Here's publicity for an annual event on May 1 at Mountain Lakes Preserve. A very brief meeting will be followed by a talk, refreshments, and a nature walk. All are welcome. RSVPs much appreciated:

Bob Martin, Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, will be the featured speaker at the Friends of Princeton Open Space 2011 Annual Meeting, Sunday, May 1 at 3:00 at Mountain Lakes House.  He will speak on “Green Acres: Preserving New Jersey’s Open Space for Future Generations.

Mountain Lakes House is located at 57 Mountain Ave., Princeton.  Refreshments will be served.  Following the meeting, Steve Hiltner, Natural Resources Manager for Friends of Princeton Open Space, will lead a walk in Mountain Lakes Preserve and adjacent Tusculum.
Anyone wishing to attend is urged to RSVP by April 27 -- phone 609-921-2772. 

Named to head the NJDEP by Governor Christie in January 2010, Bob Martin is an accomplished business and industry leader with recognized expertise in energy and utilities.  He previously served for more than 25 years with Accenture LLP, the world’s largest business and technology consulting firm, retiring as a partner in 2008.  He and his family have lived in Hopewell Township for more than 15 years. 

In a recent announcement marking the 50th anniversary of New Jersey’s Green Acres program, Commissioner Martin noted that in 1961, “The idea of using public money to purchase open space and setting it aside for public conservation and recreation in perpetuity was groundbreaking.”   Since then, together with public and nonprofit partners, the Green Acres Program has directly protected 650,000 acres of open space and provided hundreds of outdoor recreational facilities in communities around the state.  And voters in the nation’s most densely populated state have authorized $3.1 billion in Green Acres funding, approving all 13 bond referendums put before them.

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Planting Native Seeds at Princeton High School

This spring, a new collaboration sprung up, as PHS horticulture teacher Paula Jakowlew offered Friends of Princeton Open Space some space in the high school's rooftop greenhouse to grow native wildflowers.


The greenhouse, built as part of the high school's expansion some years back, has been keeping tropical plants happy over the winter, along with one as yet uncaptured treefrog that hitchhiked in on one of the plants.
I brought in seed collected from remnant patches in the Princeton wild--species like cutleaf coneflower, bottlebrush grass, Helenium, rose mallow Hibiscus.
We cleaned the seed, then set about planting flats. Here, trail builder, weed warrior and all around community volunteer Andrew Thornton demonstrates how to plant with pizazz. 
The result was a benchful of promise. Thanks to Paula, her son Shiloh, and the school for this collaboration!

Watering cans stand at the ready, their mouths agape at all the progress we made. (photo by Anna H.)

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Some Upcoming Environmental Events

April 4 at 7pm Two Events
A showing of Bag It! at the Arts Council-- an entertaining and very informative documentary about the environmental consequences of the single use plastics that pervade our lives and often end up in open spaces, oceans, and animals' stomachs. Sustainable Princeton has begun an initiative to reduce plastic bag use in Princeton. A review I wrote of the film is here.
Pilot Food Waste Curbside Collection Program, Township building

      A public meeting to learn more about the township's pilot program. Though more common out west, this will be New Jersey's first curbside collection of food waste. For those who can't find room in their backyards for a compost bin, this program is a way to reduce trash going to the landfill.

Our Future, Our Challenge 2011: High School Student Eco-Conference, April 16, 2011
at Princeton Day School, featuring a great list of speakers, lunch and a fair that Friends of Princeton Open Space will participate in. This conference is being organized by Liz Cutler, who is doing great work to promote sustainability at Princeton Day School and in town.
Pre-registration required: www.pds.org/ecoconference

DR Greenway Native Plant Sale, April 29th and 30th
        The plants are all, or nearly all, grown from local genotypes. More info here.



Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Westerly Road Church Youth Group Helps Out at Mountain Lakes

Thanks to Robert Olszewski and all in the Westerly Road Church youth group who took on a gnarly patch of invasive shrubs at Mountain Lakes Preserve this past Saturday. At first uncertain about their prospects in the face of the dense, tangled growth of honeysuckles, privets and multiflora rose, they soon discovered strength in numbers, assisted by some pointers on lopper technique, as they cleared a large area and turned the cut shrubs into brush piles for habitat.

The activity was part of a fundraiser for Haiti that combines community work with fasting for 30 hours, the better to understand world hunger.

Behind them in the photo is quite a gnarly trunk of wild grape--a native that was left uncut. A few native shrubs--spicebush and blackhaw viburnum--were also discovered and left to grow.

Restoring Wedding Habitat at Mountain Lakes House


 In addition to providing offices for Friends of Princeton Open Space and a poetry organization,
Mountain Lakes House, at the end of the long driveway at 57 Mountain Ave in Princeton, is a popular spot for weddings, parties and retreats. Some of the income generated goes to keeping the township-owned house shipshape; the rest supports open space preservation.

This spring, along with all the restoration work on the dams, the house is getting a new, permanent awning for its patio. In the photo, volunteers Eric, Tony, and Clark are dismantling the old metal frame.

The Quiet Dazzle of Maple Flowers

Maples, being mostly wind-pollinated, are pretty subtle about blooming. They need not construct extravagant colors to attract the wind. This is a sugar maple's flowers.
Red maples are already finishing up, their flowers likely to be first noticed by passersby as a scattering of red on the sidewalk in a week or two.

Daffodils and Optimism

Nothing rains on a parade like snow on a daffodil. I remember a long drive through Ohio after an ice storm had bent every frontyard's cheery yellow faces to the ground, as if sending a frosty message to the world's annual allotment of optimism: "Better luck next year."
It's risky for a flower to show its face in March, but this year, the daffodils rebounded.