Backlit Grasses

On the backside of the high school grow some backlit grasses--this year's placeholders for schoolyard garden dreams. The raised beds lovingly and optimistically installed in recent years at the town's middle school and elementary schools are living their dreams, prospering with their intended vegetables planted by students and cared for over the summer by volunteers.

Some glitch this past spring, however, left the high school gardens unplanted and untended, allowing the weeds to throw a party in the rich soil. Better to say that the garden is now a weed study lab, providing insights into the succession from intention to unintention. Old buildings and civilizations tend to follow a similar path. In the first photo, one of the many species of foxtail.

In the second photo, barnyard grass arches across in the foreground. There's a smartweed in there, too, just behind the barnyard grass, leaning to the right.

Weeds seem like free spirits, self-sufficient. But weeds need our neglect. They need the fresh ground laid bare and enriched by good intentions. "Knowing" us better than we know ourselves, they patiently wait for us to move on to other things, having set the stage for their glory.

Plant Sale This Weekend at D&R Greenway

D&R Greenway will have a native plant sale in Princeton this coming Friday and Saturday from 3-6pm. More information can be found here.

Inadvertent Black Walnut Husking

Every year around this time, a homeowner on Linden Lane dumps black walnuts at the curb, apparently for pickup by the Boro Yardwaste Patrol's giant claw. As cars drive by, many of the walnuts get processed, that is, run over and stripped of their yellow-green husks. My father used to do this--put walnuts in the driveway and drive over them until the husks were off. What was left were the walnuts, with meats safe within an iron-hard shell. We may have tried breaking some open with a hammer, then toiled to pick out what small portions of nut were inside. Most of them remained for years in a big tin can in the basement. I think of that toil and trouble every time I buy a bag of nuts, all perfectly cleaned.

Breaking apart some of the nuts collected on Linden with a hammer proved very easy, though the meats were only black papery remains--nothing edible. Clearly, more gathering and testing is needed.

Dragonflies Dazzle in Local Parks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Searching for Pettoranello Gardens

One of Princeton's secret, verdant enclaves is Pettoranello Gardens. If you not only know where it is but can also spell the name correctly, you are truly among a select few. It's a bit like the word "Wednesday", which refuses to spell itself the way people say it.

The Gardens can be found just down the paved trail from the Community Park North parking lot, off Mountain Avenue at 206.

Though the setting looks natural, it was reportedly once a dump. After a great deal of cleaning up, ground was pushed around to form a berm to buffer the Gardens from 206, and a pond was created, fed by a stream diverted from its original course.

The grounds are tended by volunteers with the Pettoranello Foundation--Pettoranello being Princeton's sister town in Italy, from whence many Princetonians originally came. They traditionally have workdays early on Sunday mornings, assisted by township staff.

The centerpiece of the Gardens is Pettoranello Pond, a manmade impoundment with a maximum depth around 8 feet.

An amphitheater looks out over Pettoranello Pond. This performance space used to host Shakespeare plays in the summer, but now is mostly used for periodic musical performances, and just today by the local Stone Soup Circus. I believe the Princeton Township recreation department oversees programming.

A dense planting of alders along banks breaks up the view of the water, but no doubt helps support the banks next to the paved trail.

Though the pond was dredged not long ago, it's upstream end is already filling with sediment from the feeder stream. I wish there were a way to periodically dig the sediment out, so as to postpone the next dredging, but in the meantime the shallows are great habitat for turtles. The pond is fed by two branches of Mountain Brook, one that comes tumbling down from the Princeton Ridge next to 206, the other beginning at the north end of the high school grounds, along Guillo Street.

Homage to a Swimming Pool

It was a summer like many others at the Community Park pool, with blue umbrellas and well-tended purple coneflowers gazing skyward at the entryway,

and blazing stars playing off the banners stretched across the main pool.

Sun and shadow played upon the walls of the dressing rooms,

whose patterned weatherings spoke so richly of the years.

Clock hands counted hours slowly,

and whistles 'round the watchful lifeguards' fingers twirled, as timeless summer days sped by.

By Labor Day, the last day for summer and for this pool, the flowers had faded,

to merge with deeper greens.

The sun cast no shadows, and it was time to take some last shots of what will soon be gone.

Forty years of passing days, arcing suns and summer squalls, etched in a wall.

Wondrous space where in is out and out comes in,  welcoming breeze and tips of trees,

sheltered but not enclosed,

seamlessly shifting from in to out.

Up the spiraling stairs, perched on stilts,

gentle authority spoke from humble highrise,

voice reaching round the rounded shrubs,

whose soft ramparts sheltered birds,

and others who might wish to fly.

There were town folk tan with splash gargantuan,

and a past Olympian

who cut

the water

clean.





It seemed, as final lengths were swum, the rippled light could dance forever 'cross the bottom of the pool,

but in the end, time ran out on the timeless. The well-aged words of closing came, to ask the scattered to be gathered, the gathered to disperse, reminding us that all goodbyes come by and by.

A place so welcoming of people and the elements will now to the elements return. For sun and shadow, birds and bathers, a new year will bring new habitat.

May this place play long upon our memories.

Surprises Along the Boardwalk

When the township, with the help of a grant from the J. Seward Johnson, Sr. Charitable Trust and considerable initiative by the Friends of Princeton Open Space, built the long boardwalk below Coventry Farm, it provided a convenient link from the Great Road and Farmview Fields Park over to Mountain Lakes Preserve. From a botanist's point of view, it seemed moreover a great place to show off native wetland plants. The boardwalk extends three feet high over a corridor typically kept wet by seepage from Coventry Farm. Unfortunately, early planting efforts fell victim to the smothering growth of an invasive plant called reed canary grass, here seen growing over the edges of the boardwalk like a green wave.

On a recent visit, however, a few self-planted native wildflowers were found holding there own in spaces left open by the reed canary grass. Here's some arrow-leaved tearthumb, so called because its stem is raspy if you run your fingers down it.

Moths grazed on a goldenrod.

Virginia creeper imitated topiary on a fencepost.

An elderberry bush showed promise of providing edible berries in years to come.

Clumps of ironweed were about to add purple blooms to the picturesque view.

A prairie grass called purple top gave the meadow a colorful sheen at the Great Road end of the boardwalk.

Most intriguing was a clump of boneset. Type "boneset" into the search window at the upper left of this webpage and you'll find many posts documenting the seemingly endless variety of insects and spiders that take up residence for the month of August in its miniature metropolis of white flowers.

This particular boneset did not disappoint. A close look at the center of this photo holds a surprise--for people as well as a hapless wasp that had been feeding on the nectar.

Waiting just under the flowers was a praying mantis, which had grabbed the wasp and was now enjoying its lunch. The accumulation of wasp legs on the leaf below suggests the praying mantis is particular about which pieces of the anatomy it consumes.

Heading back towards Mountain Lakes, the seeds of green bulrush,

and the prospect of a fine picnic for humans in a week or two.

Towpath Seeks Mule Team After Flood

Maybe the mules that once towed the boats along the canal could return to scrape all the mud off of the towpath. When I stopped by, three days after Hurricane Irene's deluge, a fine layer of goo had been deposited throughout the floodplain. Rivers have long deposited sediment in floodplains during floods,  enriching the soil. Hopefully, lighter rains will wash the mud off of the trail.

It was easy to see how deep the floodwaters had been--about knee-high along the towpath near Harrison Street.

Meanwhile, at Rogers Refuge, upstream from Alexander Road, floodwaters rose halfway up the kiosk.