Big Changes Come to a Hidden Valley

 There's a hidden valley in Princeton that everyone drives by but no one sees. Just over this ridge is Washington Rd, with athletic fields beyond. Down to the left is Faculty Road and Carnegie Lake.

Despite being sandwiched between a busy road and Jadwin Gym, the valley's rich soil sustains old oaks, tupelo, beech and ash that reach improbable heights.

This year, big changes have come to this long-hidden valley. Approached from Faculty Road, stacks of boulders and heavy equipment suggest some sort of road construction.

 A pile of stumps looks less than auspicious.

Further up the valley, more boulders, bales of hay, and orange fencing.

Giant trees, some a yard thick, have been cut down. How could this be anything but bad news? But wait, this post is getting depressing, so let's start from the top of the valley and work our way down.

The valley, which is to say the remnant of valley that was never developed as campus, begins at the new bridge over Washington Road. In the distance is the new chemistry building and the football stadium.

Looking downhill from the bridge, a lovely little stream meanders peacefully down the valley.

Starting farther up towards Nassau Street, the stream runs underground through campus, then emerges (or "daylights") from a big pipe just below the bridge.

The water immediately encounters what looks like an olympic luge track, attractively armored with stones.

 Further down, the narrow channel flows through a broad floodplain.

All of this--the pleasing meanders, the floodplain for stormwater to spread out into, the series of riffles and little waterfalls over stones--is manmade.

Why would anyone want to remake a stream? After a hundred or two years of flash floods caused by all the impervious surface on campus, the stream channel had eroded the ground around it, and was threatening to undercut Washington Road (beyond the green fence on the right) if nothing was done.

Here's a portion of the old streambed, broad and ill-defined. More photos of the old streambed can be found in a post one year ago when members of the Princeton Environmental Commission were given a tour of the proposed project.

A group from Rutgers developed the plans. In this photo, you can see the hoses used for pumping water around the section of stream being worked on. The "V" of stones at the left is called a "cross-vein". Water flowing over the rocks converges to scour out a pool just below them. Pools, riffles, and a narrow stream bed to focus flow are all characteristics of a healthy stream.

The stacks of boulders, then, are materials used to direct water in such a way that the streambank will survive the flash flooding coming from the hardened landscape of campus.

Lots of digging is required to form an adequate floodplain to accommodate the massive infusions of water during storms. The disturbed areas will be restocked with native plants, and though they had to take down some large trees, many were spared.

So that gets us back to the downed trees. This section of white ash is 36 inches in diameter. I counted roughly 200 annual rings, which are caused by the alternation of light-colored fast spring growth followed by a darker band of slower growth later in the season. The tree, and others in the valley, standing or cut, could well date back to the Revolutionary War. Visitors to Mount Vernon may remember the giant white ash trees in the circular drive approaching the house.

 About 160 years back, this ash began to grow very slowly, as can be seen from the very narrow rings on the left. Perhaps it was shaded heavily by another tree, which apparently fell 120 years ago when the rings began to spread out again.

It is unsettling that such old trees have been cut down, and all the more remarkable that few even know about it in a town that loves and protects its trees. But there are extenuating circumstances, tradeoffs made, factors that mitigate, at least partially, the loss. Erosion from campus has been undermining some of the majestic trees, and this project is meant to reduce that erosion.

Time will tell if the trees that were saved will survive all the disturbance around them. Tree roots are very sensitive. And the carefully designed channel is not necessarily immune from the powerful erosive forces of repeated floods.

One useful pursuit at this point would be to study the rings of the fallen trees to see what they might tell us of Princeton's past.

I had recommended a pre-construction rescue of rare native plants like horsebalm, but the idea probably got lost in the mix. Not everyone has learned to make a distinction between rare wildflowers that have survived for centuries in a valley, and whatever natives one can buy in pots at a nursery.

I had also encouraged them to remove the Norway Maples (mottled green/yellow in this photo and next) that have invaded the valley, since the invasive maples are competing with the old growth natives, and their dense shade will threaten the newly planted natives over time.

Overall, though, there's reason to believe this stream restoration--rare in New Jersey--will validate its good intentions. The project leader spoke excitedly last year during the tour about how he hopes students will find the valley an attractive place to visit, rather than merely serving as a traditional shortcut for athletes heading to practice.

This long-sheltered space, with so many stories to tell of past centuries, is beginning a new chapter worth reading.

Squirrels Take Lead On Sustainability

Squirrels are such showoffs. They're already putting us to shame by harvesting all their food locally, living in zero carbon footprint homes, wearing homemade clothing and making their young walk to school.

Now they seem to be considering using bikes for transportation. There's an essay by a well-known author read long ago--I think of Late Night Thoughts On Listening To Mahler's Ninth, but the author's name, Lewis Thomas, doesn't sound right--that suggests squirrels are the likely successors to humans on earth. Perhaps they're checking out our hardware, assessing our strengths and weaknesses, biding their time.

Note, 2/18/12: I finally came across the essay: "The Fire Apes," by Loren Eisley, from 1949.

On 11.11.11, Some Princeton Trees

In honor of 11.11.11--a uniquely unique, highly vertical day--some Princeton trees of note, in no particular order:

The brilliant red maples at Princeton Shopping Center in a photo taken today, with Fothergilla shrubs adding orange in the foreground;

A clock tower looking very one-ish today next to the trees;

A photo my daughter took beneath a red oak in the backyard;

A descendant of the famous Mercer Oak at the Princeton Battlefield;

A 15/16th native chestnut planted at Princeton Battlefield in front of the Clark House;

A hican behind Clark House, showing the change in bark where a pecan/hickory hybrid was grafted to a hickory base.

Another red maple, planted by a couple in honor of their newborn son at Potts Park in the borough, positioned to shade the play equipment in future years;

And in memorium, a photo sent to me by Eric Tazelaar, of the old, old white oak near the driveway to Mountain Lakes House, before it was blown down this year during Hurricane Irene (see Oct. 28 post).

The Legacy of a Pin Oak

We had to take down a pin oak recently, and tried to make the best of it. Primarily, the tree had squashed a key drainage pipe running beneath it, causing runoff to flow into our neighbor's yard. No other routes for the drainage proved feasible.

Despite that reason, which was enough to get a removal permit from the borough, there was hesitation. The tree helps shade the driveway and house in the summer, and oaks provide food for an extraordinary diversity of insects, including the inchworms that fuel the migration of warblers north in the spring.

But the oak, too, was each year casting more shade on the neighbor's vegetable garden and our own. In our yard as in others, a steadfast love of trees is increasingly having to share space with an interest in the local food movement, and the allure of solar energy as prices continue to fall. All three compete for the allegiance of arbiters of sunshine, whether it be a homeowner or the local shade tree commission.

After many months of hemming and hawing, and recurrent floods in the driveway, we finally had it taken down. What, then, is the legacy of this fine tree, done in not by wind, or the bacterial leaf scorch that is taking so many red and pin oaks, but for having grown in the wrong place? Respect can be paid by making the most of its 40 years worth of bottled sunshine.

The carbon it captured from the air and injected underground via its roots will remain there for many years, slowly shifting from wood to humus, a small but measurable service to slowing climate change.

The straight trunk looked to hold some fine lumber, but arborists told us the wood is not as commercially useful as red oak.

We ended up with firewood, which is conveniently packaged sunshine to drive a wood stove's metabolism in much the same way a pecan is nicely packaged to feed our own. Chippers these days can gobble up very large branches, even trunks of smaller trees, so I had to lobby to save for firewood some of the branches that are now routinely chipped up.

They left the chips for mulch, the stored solar energy of which quickly became a snack for microorganisms ready to assist the wood's return to soil (see related post).

As the tree's legacy lives on, the sunny void is quickly getting populated by dreams of varying degrees of practicality--of fruit trees, blueberries, and an arbor for grapes and squash to shade the driveway. And a young red oak, better placed, looks poised to claim its share of the sky's riches.

Woodchip Piles and Other Massings

A pile of fresh woodchips doesn't look particularly dynamic, but this one took only two days to start steaming.

The steam, which rose from only one spot, gave the pile the look of a miniature volcano. Though steam may look like smoke, it's a sign of health, not danger--the steam being an ongoing exhalation and venting of heat as microorganisms consume the wood's energy, transforming it into heat, CO2 and water vapor.

After a week or two, on a 55 degree day, the temperature about a foot beneath the surface was 140 degrees. It felt burning to the touch, but I've never heard of a small pile like this catching fire. I searched the web for testimonials, without success. "Georgia Gardener" website offered some validation for my lack of worry. It considers the danger of small backyard woodchip piles catching fire to be an urban legend. Much larger piles that are unable to vent their heat may be a different matter.

Some people try to use this heat. There's an urban greenhouse in Milwaukee that heats its greenhouses in part with compost.

If a lot of good organic nutrients end up in the wrong place, like these leaves and garden clippings incongruously banished to asphalt, or kitchen scraps thrown in the trash, it may be because any massing of organic matter is considered suspect. Fears that leaf piles cause odors, or kitchen scraps composting in the backyard attract varmints, often thrive without any need of evidence.

Part of getting back in sync with the natural world involves allowing decomposition a place in the yard, working with its quiet powers, and thereby mending the circle that is nature's endless cycling of nutrients.

Contrasts in Leaf Fall

The juxtaposition of Norway Maple and Kentucky Coffee Tree makes for a stark contrast in relative timing of autumn leaf fall. The native coffee tree (Gymnocladus dioicus) strategy for life is to play dead for half the year. Thus its latin name, which means unclad. It drops its leaves early in the fall, and is the last tree to leaf out in the spring.

To the left of the coffee trees in the photo is a Norway Maple that has yet to react to fall weather. Like many woody plants introduced from other continents, it tends to leaf out early in the spring and drop late in the fall.

The Ginkgo tree, believed at one time to be only a fossil, then found alive and well in remote valleys of China, is now a common street tree with a dramatic approach to losing its leaves,

sometimes dropping them all in one day.

Sustainable Jazz Ensemble Demonstrates Note Upcycling

This month, during two Princeton performances of its original jazz and latin compositions, the Sustainable Jazz Ensemble will demonstrate the art of musical note recycling. Tonight, Thursday, Nov. 3, we'll be at the Labyrinth Bookstore, down in the book-lined basement.


Friday, Nov. 18 at 8pm we'll perform a concert at the Arts Council of Princeton, with their beautiful grand piano.

The group specializes in the so-called "upcycling" of notes, which involves fashioning fresh, new melodies out of well-worn C's, B flats, G sharps, what have you. Our sophisticated jazz technology allows us to even utilize an occasional C flat or B sharp--notes that might otherwise sadly end up in a landfill. As is well known, most note recycling these days is done by iPods and other mechanical devices. To see a Sustainable Jazz Ensemble performance is to witness an updated form of ancient note recycling techniques, performed by real people operating real note-regenerating instruments.

In a culture where so much goes to waste, it can be satisfying to hear notes getting recycled in melodious ways at sometimes dizzying speeds, right before your very ears. Audience members are encouraged to bring spare musical notes for reuse during the performance. All scale tones, numbers 1-7, are accepted.

www.sustainablejazz.com

To hear music selections: www.myspace.com/sustainablejazz

A Banner Year for Hickory Nuts, Hicans, Butternuts and Beechnuts

It's easier to dream of what bounty the forest once offered in a year when hickories and hicans are littering the ground with delicious nuts conveniently packaged for longterm storage. These in the photo are hickory nuts, which may trigger memories for some of Euell Gibbons pitching Grapenuts cereal.

In this photo, hicans from a hybrid pecan/hickory tree rub shells with butternuts (Juglans cinerea), also called white walnut. The butternut, particularly one that is pure native and not a hybrid, is fairly rare and made rarer by butternut canker. The canker disease, like so many diseases and insects that threaten our native trees, was likely introduced from another continent.

Some good news on that front is that local expert on nut-bearing trees, Bill Sachs, harvested 80 native butternuts from a local tree this fall, and has planted most of them in a small nursery for spring germination. He has already grown some from previous crops and planted them in various parks and preserves in Princeton, in an effort to help the species rebound in our area.

A good harvest of nuts deserves a good nut cracker--one that exerts pressure on either end so the meats inside don't get smashed in the process.

Given that this blog courageously endeavors not to turn its back on reality, and nature being what it is, there are some other--not particularly appetizing--species that take an interest in the nut crop. This, to me, seems like part of the adventure of real food, as opposed to the factory-like conformity favored on grocery shelves. Open-mindedness, though, is easier if the insects leave a goodly portion of the nuts untouched.

After collecting nuts from the ground, it's best to leave them in a metal bowl for a week or so to allow time for any pecan weevils to emerge. Nuts that don't have the characteristic exit hole should be fine to eat.

Another nut being scattered in Princeton's woodlands is the beech nut. Though it's reportedly edible, word of mouth has not been encouraging, and these in the photo turned out to be empty.

Save!, With Naturally Scary Halloween Decor

"Holy habitat!", Batman. What's a giant spider doing climbing our chimney? Influenced by E.B. White and Charlotte's Web, I decided to approach the spider as friend, not foe, and asked if it would kindly pose over our front door for Halloween.

It proved to be an obliging spider, and will save us trying to find the fake spider stowed somewhere in the basement.

If the truth be known, these photos were generated a month ago when my standard approach to the house was suddenly complicated by some seriously strong fibers some twenty feet out. Suburban navigation is not usually impeded in this way. The fibers extended from a tree limb down fifteen feet to the ground, and held a spider calmly consuming its most recent catch, which appeared to be a yellow-jacket.

While I was thanking it for its good work in reducing the population of stinging insects, it apparently decided I would be too cumbersome to wrap up, and so headed back up to the tree limb, there likely to reconsider its web placement.

When I returned half an hour later, one of the two main vertical strands of the web had disappeared. The Wikipedia page on spider webs states that spiders often consume their own webs--a sort of recycling that is problematic for humans with store-bought Halloween webs.

For E.B. White fans, there's a good interview about the book "The Story of Charlotte's Web: E. B. White's Eccentric Life in Nature and the Birth of an American Classic" on NPR's Science Friday from August. It details White's careful research of spider behavior. Most amazing for me, watching the Charlotte's Web movie with my daughter years ago, was the "ballooning" scene, in which the young spiders make silk strands that become their sails to ride the wind to new locations.

In Death, a Long Life

A big white oak, veteran of many storms, finally met a windstorm it couldn't match.

All its sprawling limbs came crashing down, leaving the trunk as a monument to its long and acornful life. The monument even bears its name on a label attached fifteen years ago as part of an eagle scout project.

One limb decided to patronize a heavyduty picnic table--those old tables that loom like lost battleships in the overgrown woods at Community Park North, strong enough to last for centuries but so uninviting and misplaced they never get used.

The tree was hollow, and last year rather gruesomely sported a raccoon that had sadly gotten stuck trying to exit through a hole 15 feet up.

Now, in its long life after death, it will begin the slow return to soil, sheltering and feeding life of all sorts in the process.

Edible Landscaping--Serviceberry

Serendipity can really add to the flavor of food. How else to explain the delicious taste of serviceberries encountered several summers ago out along Route 1 in front of the FedEx store, formerly Kinko's. The tree--more like a shrub, or a shree or a trub or maybe a trush, given its size--is still there. Hopefully it doesn't get sprayed when bearing.

I mention it in case anyone is planting in fall, or wants to daydream through the winter of new native fruits to try out next year. It must be a cultivar, because the unbred serviceberries I planted in my yard years back have not borne anything to rival its berries' size and taste. Maybe FedEx could be talked into boxing up theirs and sending it along.

Serviceberry (genus Amelanchier) is also called shadbush, because it is said to bloom in early spring when the shad migrate up New Jersey's rivers to spawn. A cluster of mature serviceberries, of tastiness unknown, can also be found near the play equipment behind Community Park school.

Talk Tonight, 7pm, About New Mid-Atlantic Native Seed Bank

Here's a chance to hear about an exciting and timely new collaboration between the NY City parks dept. and DR Greenway, to develop native seed production locally and elsewhere along the mid-Atlantic. Plant species exhibit genetic variation across their ranges, and there is an effort to preserve the distinct traits of local populations. One approach is to have multiple nurseries along the eastern seaboard, each of which grows natives drawn from local wild stock. Ed Toth of NY City Parks will be the speaker. More info here, and below:

"DR Greenway's St. Michaels Farm Preserve is host to a new pilot project in native seed production that could change the future of conservation. The 13 species of native seeds being grown at the site, with support from the Natural Resources Conservation Service, will be used to restore landfills in New York City and will contribute to a Mid-Atlantic Native Seed Bank. New York City Parks is our partner in this project, led by naturalist Ed Toth, Ph.D.

Seed is a critical natural resource that has been largely unrecognized, unprotected, and undermanaged. Locally adapted seed sources are widely acknowledged as critical for habitat restoration because they do not pose a genetic risk to surrounding native plant populations. However, our seed resources are in danger of being lost from misuse of non-local source seeds.Learn how to begin to wisely manage resources through seed banking and seed networks to prevent the extinction of these critical natural resources."

Ring-Necked Snake

Why did the Ring-necked snake cross the road?

Answer #1: Because the habitat is always greener on the other side.
Answer #2: So it could learn its name from a biologist passing by.

Thanks to Tim Anderson, environmental science teacher at Princeton High School, for the photo and email below. There's long been talk of putting "Turtle Crossing" signs along the driveway up to Mountain Lakes House. Here's another denizen of the woods whose wanderings sometimes intersect with asphalt.

"Biking up the road to the house at Mt. Lakes, ran into a couple trying to help a juvenile snake cross the road...It was so small we couldn't pick it up with fingers...but got it off the road while a car waited to pass.  It matches this northern subspecies picture of ring-necked snake juvenile. It was about this size too." --Tim

Nature Walk This Saturday, 10am-noon, Herrontown Woods

For all those who happen to be fancy free and wanting to get out tomorrow, I'll be leading a nature walk through the color-coded forest at Herrontown Woods in the morning. Meet at 10am at the preserve's parking lot, which is at the end of the deadend road opposite the Snowden Lane entrance to Smoyer Park. Included in the walk will be a visit to the grounds of the Veblen Farmstead, and a discussion of recent progress towards preserving and restoring the long-boarded up buildings there.

Porcelain Berry--New Jersey's Kudzu

Anyone for a little topiary? This shot was taken last week at Princeton Battlefield, where the battle for Princeton's open space is currently being won by the kudzu of the north--porcelainberry. A vine native to northeast Asia, porcelainberry is related to grapes, and grows over ground, shrubs and trees like a grapevine on steriods.

It has beautiful berries, which may have helped gain it transport originally to our continent, but its rapid advances along the DR Canal, at the Princeton Battlefield, and elsewhere in recent years does not bode well for any other species seeking to share in the sun.

Lest one think all is lost, the Oct. 11 Princeton Packet includes a picture of volunteers at the battlefield removing another invasive weed--bamboo. The recent workday was a collaboration of the NJ Div. of Parks and the Sierra Club.

66 Acres Along Princeton Ridge Preserved

The mood was celebratory at the ribbon cutting for two newly preserved tracts along Princeton Ridge. One tract, the 14 acre Ricciardi property, came very close to being developed several years ago. The adjoining 35 acre All Saints Church parcel connects the Ricciardi tract to Herrontown Woods, which in turn connects with Autumn Hill Reservation and additional undeveloped lands towards Kingston. With the 17 acres along Bunn Drive to be donated by developer Bob Hillier, an extraordinary corridor is now preserved, due to the persistence and generosity of many people and organizations.

Here's an attempt to list all the organizations involved in the effort: Friends of Princeton Open Space, DR Greenway, NJ Conservation Foundation, NJ Green Acres, Mercer County, Princeton Township, Save Princeton Ridge, Stonybrook-Millstone Watershed Association, and Kingston Greenways.

Afterwards, everyone got to say a few words at the reception at Mountain Lakes House, including U.S. Congressman Rush Holt.

In the middle of this remarkable corridor stand the boarded up house, cottage and barn of the Veblen homestead. See veblenhouse.blogspot.com for information on efforts to restore these county-owned buildings, to serve as a useful destination that could increase utilization and appreciation of the preserved open space by the public.

What to Do With Grass Clippings

This photo may not be worth a thousand words, but it started a nice conversation. It so happened that, during one of my ongoing documentations of the export of nutrients from Princeton's yards, the owner pulled in. I figured he'd think, "Oh, just another Princetonian photographing my beautiful grass clippings," but to my surprise he came over and expressed interest in knowing what was so interesting about two blobs of discarded green.

It seemed inauspicious to begin a conversation by saying there's a (unenforced) borough ordinance against putting grass clippings on the street, but a mutual interest in composting quickly emerged. I offered news that the county extension master gardeners recommend leaving grass clippings on the lawn, so that all the clippings' nitrogen returns to the soil rather than getting washed down the street into Carnegie Lake. The dreaded thatch buildup of yore, which once spurred homeowners to bag up grass clippings, apparently dissolved into a myth.

Grass clippings' high nitrogen content endows them with the power to do great good or considerable harm. Massing them in piles tilts them towards harm. They pack tightly, shutting out oxygen, thereby making perfect habitat for anaerobic bacteria to feast on the rich organic matter. Break open a pile of grass clippings that have been sitting for awhile, and you will learn the hard way that the anaerobic decomposition process produces vapors profoundly repellent to humans. Aerobic bacteria, by contrast, do not produce nasty odors. Therefore, the best thing to do with grass clippings, if one is determined not to leave them on the lawn, is to give them access to air by spreading them in a thin layer either on a compost pile or as a thin mulch under shrubs.

Particularly relevant this time of year, autumn leaves, chopped up as one's mowing the lawn, can also be left to settle down into the ground between the grass blades.

Television Composting

With contributions from friends, and periodic curbside rescue efforts in the neighborhood, 4 TVs, 2 computer monitors, 2 printers and a microwave were diverted from the landfill and made their way to the Oct. 1 Mercer County electronics recycling event.

There, all the rejected middle-aged TVs finally got to socialize again after their long careers of solitary confinement in living rooms, and soon set to commiserating about the boring programs they were forced to show, and the humiliation of being dumped after years of high fidelity for some slim young thing their owners met on the internet. Soon they would depart on their final journey to (we can hope) an environmentally benign deconstruction and recycling facility.

Though the delivery seemed a small victory, it also dramatizes how far short society falls in imitating nature's recycling program, which brilliantly deconstructs and reuses any and all of its creations wherever they land.