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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 50^th 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.

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.)

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.

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.

Princeton Bible Church Brings Their Green Project To Mountain Lakes

Many thanks to all the members of the Princeton Bible Church Green Project who came to Mountain Lakes yesterday to help with removal of invasive shrubs.

Andrew Thornton (right) helped show everyone which shrubs were exotic and needed to be cut.

Four hours of steady effort with loppers and pruning saws cleared a large swath of exotic understory beginning at the Mountain Lakes House parking lot

and continuing down the slope to the lakes.

 Our youngest helper, after carrying some sticks to the brushpiles volunteers made for habitat, took a great interest in all the clipping going on.

This spring, inspired by the ongoing restoration of the dams and lakes by Princeton Township, and all the updating inside and outside of Mountain Lakes House, we're focusing on restoring habitat on the slopes surrounding the lakes.


Exotic shrubs cut: honeysuckle shrub and vine, privet, Asian photinia, and the occasional Linden viburnum and barberry.


Native shrubs and small trees left to grow: Blackhaw viburnum, sassafras, flowering dogwood, silky dogwood, false indigo.

H2O's Backyard Residency

Today, before spring takes over, a reach back into winter to offer up a pictorial paean to the most creative molecule on earth, H2O, which here uses the minipond in the backyard to craft its endless permutations of beauty.

One day the pond looks like this, with a curious granular form of snow fallen on dark ice.

The next brings melting and reconfiguring into new hues and patterns.

The variety in the patterns owes in part to the underlying clay, which by absorbing the water very slowly causes the ice to drop gracefully in terraces.

Air gets trapped underneath, changing its shape minute

to minute.

In the paved world out the front door, snow, sleet and ice are a burden to be grappled with, but around back, where there's no pavement to be kept clean, no place that needs to be gone to, water in all its forms acts as artist in residence, conducting workshops on wizardry in the backyard pond.

Hazelnut and Alder in "Full" Bloom

Two members of the birch family are blooming very quietly around town. The native hazelnuts (Corylus americana), of which there are a grand total of three that I've found in Princeton, have male catkins

and a female flower that can be described as unassuming.

Pettoranello Pond sets off the catkins of alder nicely.

The female flowers on the alder (top of photo) are slightly more showy than those on the hazelnut.

Unrelated to the above but also showing some life are the blackhaw Viburnums at Mountain Lakes. Flower bud cracking open above, leaf bud still closed below.

Princeton's Frog Choir In Full Swing

Rogers Refuge, down along the StonyBrook in Princeton, is rockin' to the sounds of the frog choir this time of year. The low-tech microphone for this brief video doesn't do justice to the recording artists, which when heard live sound bright and cheerily raucous. Spring peepers are in the sonic foreground, with wood frogs as a gobblely undercurrent.

To browse among photos and recordings of various frog species, try this website. Though the road to Rogers Refuge was washed out by recent floods, it's been fixed up and can be negotiated if you don't mind bouncing through some potholes, which contribute to the outback charm of this hidden habitat.

Another place to hear spring peepers is at Mountain Lakes, just down the gravel road past Mountain Lakes House.