The Huff and Puff of Hurricane Sandy

All of Hurricane Sandy's huff and puff blew some homes down. This prime-looking squirrel real estate, in one of the big white ash trees behind Nassau Hall,

got split in two as a big limb fell off, leaving only the front door.

Not sure if birds reuse nests from the previous year, but this one got stripped from its moorings.

For a post at my princetonprimer.org blog entitled Thousands of Trees Remain Standing after Hurricane Sandy, click here.

Ode To Willow Oak Leaves

Recently, walking through a pleasant blizzard of falling willow oak leaves on Franklin Avenue, I remembered an ode to willow oak leaves I had written in the fateful fall of 2000 while living in Durham, part of North Carolina's Research Triangle. It was this time of year, in a city whose streets were and still are lined with willow oaks, and the enormous specimen in our yard was laying down a fresh layer of soft, attractive mulch.

We had long since given up trying to grow lawn in deeply shaded piedmont clay, in favor of letting pine needles and willow oak leaves fall where they may. The pines down there are loblolly and shortleaf. Unlike the more northern white pine planted in Princeton, they are "self-pruning", meaning they drop their lower limbs to eventually become a vaulted canopy, creating an expansive, protected, cathedral-like space beneath, through which leaves and needles make their long, idiosyncratic descents to earth in the filtered light.

The piece below was published on the editorial page of the Raleigh News and Observer as one of their periodic pastoral pieces, almost certainly completely overlooked in the tumult following the Bush-Gore election that had taken place the day before.



The Work of an Autumn Breeze

The narrow leaves of willow oak spin earthwards, catching flashes of morning light. In walks along the treelined canyons of city streets, we are all victors in a ticker tape parade. The sun's rays, having lost their summer harshness, now angle into the sheltered air beneath trees, illuminating the languid descent of leaves from vaulted canopy.

Not all leaves are so elegant. Pine needles plunge earthward like clouds of arrows. The broader leaves of maples fall in rocking zig-zags. But willow oak leaves are so designed to celebrate their momentary freedom in one long graceful pirouette. They spend summer clustered overhead, anonymous in dense masses of green. Then, made expendible by autumn's chill, refined of all colors but gold, they become a million individualists in their first and last dance back to earth. In loose embrace with gravity they fall, each spinning in its own manner, at its own tempo, each captured by the sun's beaming light for all time and but for a moment.

The young girl next door tries to catch one, and quickly discovers how illusive they are--so tangible in their approach, yet like phantoms unwilling to have their only dance cut short. Having reached the ground, again anonymously massed, they mingle and merge and return by degrees to the soil from which they came.

At such times, it is hard to think of leaves as anything but a gift. In the competition between lawn and leaf for my heart, lawn has had to yield. I used to pick up the sticks, and rake the leaves, and mow threadworn grass. But now I channel my yard's sylvan tendencies rather than struggle against them. The leaves fall where they do for a reason: to soften the soil, to catch the rain, to help dogwoods through the droughts and give kids one more reason for delight. What pleasure to trace a leaf's whimsical flight, and find at bottom a sense of rightness and rest, rather than impending chore. The Triangle is a forest masquerading as metropolis, and we are the beneficiaries of its golden rain.

Durham, NC, Fall, 2000

Porous Pavement

As the cracks in our asphalt driveway slowly deepen and spread, the thought of having porous pavement such as this becomes more and more attractive. Given the heat-island effect of asphalt in summer, and the runoff it sends down the slope during heavy rains, it would be nice to have pavement that absorbs some of the rain and turns less sunlight into heat.

Each plug of soil in the concrete matrix looks like a different plant exhibit. It's basically a driveway you can mow. This one, on Linden Lane, was installed about five years ago, and looks to be aging well, apparently without need of the recurrent maintenance an asphalt driveway requires.

Evergreen Trees, Deciduous Needles

One of the first trees to shed leaves in the fall is the white pine. Though it's an evergreen, it has as distinct and coordinated a dropping of leaves as any deciduous tree.

As deciduous trees begin to turn color, pines get into the act by turning a mottled brown and green,

as the 2-year old needles turn brown and fall off, leaving the 1 year old needles to remain through the winter and another growing season.

Other evergreen species have the same cycle.

Here's a spruce tree on Hamilton Ave. shedding older needles as a means of reducing the amount of living tissue exposed to the stresses of winter.

Mega-spider Web Scares Geese Away

Alert! An extraordinarily large spider web was observed at Mountain Lakes recently, spread across the entire extent of the earthen dam below the lower lake. The spider was nowhere to be found, but is reported to have only half the normal number of appendages.

Follow-up inquiries revealed that the webbing is designed not to catch anything, but instead to spook the geese that might otherwise eat the newly planted grass on the dam. More research is needed, but initial observations suggest that the spiders are doing better at outsmarting the geese than most humans.

Beauty in the Beast

Morning sunlight, leaves still wet from yesterday's rain--what better time to capture the dazzling beauty of......What might this be, growing beneath a spruce tree on the well-coiffed grounds of Westminster Choir College?

One clue is in the leaves of three. Best appreciated at a distance, it's well away from where anyone might walk, so does no harm.

Groundcovers/Fencecovers/Towncovers

Some groundcovers are content to cover the ground, slowly expanding year to year. Looking up Hamilton Drive near Harrison, here's some Lamb's Ears (grey), and some sort of Sedums further up.

Other groundcovers, like english ivy, are more ambitious,

becoming treecovers,

fencecovers, sidewalkcovers, wallcovers, and probably even roofcovers over time. Only the existence of moving objects--the abrasion of passing people and cars--keeps it from expanding to become a towncover.

As with other vine species, english ivy blooms only on the climbing portion of the vine.

Flowers Come Lately

 Competing with the autumn leaves, New England aster;

turtlehead (occasionally encountered growing wild along streambanks; here used in a frontyard raingarden);

the native witch hazel, blooming now at Mountain Lakes and in other preserves, most commonly on slopes next to streams or lakes;

and, say what?, iris? Maybe fall is the new spring.

Teasel

One plant encountered during a recent visit to Princeton Day School (see post about their extraordinary school garden project at PrincetonPrimer.org), is teasel (Dipsacus sp.).

It has a bristly grace.

Not native to America, it shows moderate invasive capability. I tend to group it with other moderately invasive species moving east from the midwest, like Queen Anne's Lace, interesting and attractive in some ways, but also with the potential to displace native species over time.

Pampas Grass

Pampas Grass is in its full glory right about now. These specimens, along Cherry Valley Road, surely help differentiate their owner's driveway, on dark, stormy nights, from all the others along the road. Given the human transformations of habitats, it's common for plants to be rare in their native range, and pampas grass is no exception. It's easier to find in suburban landscapes of the U.S., or escaping into wildlands of southern California, than in its native habitat--the pampas of Argentina. This I discovered by driving through the great expanse of grassland west and south of Buenos Aires years back. Only after two days of driving through lands frequently modified with ditches and agriculture did we arrive in a valley where the pampas grass grew--with plants considerably smaller than the towering specimens we see here.

Retention Basin Beauty

Most visitors to Farmview Fields, across the Great Road from Coventry Farm, go there for soccer or baseball. I was there last week to check out the retention basin. It's tucked behind the soccer field, in the far back of this photo, essentially a big scooped out area designed to hold stormwater runoff from the parking lot and slowly release it into the stream, in this case Pretty Brook. They're common in housing and office developments around town, and are usually mowed to look like sunken lawns.

Most don't draw attention, but this one actually has a sign, and is mowed only once a year, if that. To the right of the mowed pathway you can see big bluestem grass leaning this way and that, fine fodder for the woodland bison that once lived hereabouts.

When I was naturalist for Friends of Princeton Open Space, and visiting the park to watch my daughter's soccer games, I decided that the mowed retention basin was an eyesore and a waste of gas. Its short grass wasn't doing a very good job of filtering nutrients and pollutants out of the runoff, and the turf was of little use for wildlife.

Eric Schrading of Partners for Fish and Wildlife came to the rescue, offering to replace the turf with native "warm season" grasses (Indian grass and big bluestem are tallgrass prairie species that do most of their growing during the hot summer months). The effort was federally funded, at no cost to Princeton Township.

Despite the requisite drought (there's always a drought after someone plants a native prairie), many of the grasses grew and prospered, and I added some local genotype wildflowers like Hibiscus moscheutos and late-flowering boneset. Goldenrods came in on their own.

Here's the before shot, in 2006.

Here's the basin last week. The late-flowering boneset (white) has spread, and in the distance is a nice patch of woolgrass (reddish brown) that came in on its own. This is the best shot I have thus far to show the potential for turning drab basins into beautiful habitat.

Last week, the monarch butterflies were clearly in agreement with the change, feasting on nectar in preparation for their long flight south to Mexico.


Note: A post from 2006, prior to this transformation, can be found here. (http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/2006/12/wetland-arks-in-princeton.html)

Bidens in Bloom

One of the roadside yellows this time of year, other than goldenrod, is tickseed sunflower (Bidens), so-named because the seeds are dark and--prepare for unflattering comparison-- the size of wood ticks. It's a native annual, though I notice it's considered invasive in Canada by the USDA site. This is an example of an attractive wildflower that in a garden can start to become too much of a good thing, overgrowing everything else in late summer. It's tempting to oblige its exuberance for the big show of color, but with some species of Bidens the "big show" never materializes.

One common Bidens hereabouts, typically called Beggar-Ticks, turn out to be devoid of the colorful ray flowers.

Rain Barrel + Workshop for $20

(Previously posted at princetonprimer.org. Might still be time to register.)
Princeton Township will be hosting a workshop by Rutgers on rainbarrels. Looks like it's open to all Princeton residents--township and borough. $20 registration fee gets you a 50 gallon rainbarrel, which they'll show you how to assemble. Go to this link and scroll down to the info on the workshop to be held Sept. 29, 9-11am in Princeton.
http://www.water.rutgers.edu/Stormwater_Management/rainbarrels.html#home

Some things to keep in mind about rainbarrels: A roof can shed a couple thousand gallons of water in a 1 inch rainstorm, so capturing 50 gallons is a symbolic gesture. Even less will be captured if the rainbarrel still contains water from the previous storm. One approach is to hook the rainbarrel up to a soaker hose so the barrel will consistently empty out inbetween rains, but then you don't have any water available for watering the garden during dry periods. Provision for overflow is important, lest the excess water simply spills out next to the foundation. After experimenting with rainbarrels long ago (with barrels donated by a local CocaCola plant), I ended up foregoing rainbarrels altogether and instead directed water out into areas of the yard where it can soak in and create an underground reservoir to sustain plants through droughts.

Still, they're worth considering. In particular, they serve to make one aware of where water is flowing. It's appealing, also, to fill a watering can with rainwater captured from the sky. The Rutgers link may offer some convincing success stories, and the price is right.

A Taste of Taiwan in a Neighbor's Garden

Every now and then, walking the streets of Princeton, one encounters a yard devoted to growing food rather than grass. Many are in keeping with the Italian custom of treating a neighborhood like a matrix of minifarms, often with small fruit trees and handmade arbors growing behind a high fence.

An elegant nearby example with Taiwanese origins often gets worked into the evening walking-of-the-dog. Passing by last week, I introduced myself to the owner and got permission to take some photos. He told me about his lima beans, which he says are the most nutritious kind of bean to be had.

Also hanging down from the well-tended arbors, like Charlie Chaplin's vision of paradise in Modern Times, is something I didn't catch the name of, but may be Chinese melon.

On a small tree grow "Chinese dates", which turn out to be jujube--latin name Ziziphus zizyphus, in the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae). Usually, the family name Rhamnaceae strikes fear into my heart, having experienced the extraordinary ecological mischief caused by Rhamnus cathartica in the Midwest. Web posts carry warnings that jujube can send up suckers in nearby flower gardens, which may be why this benign-looking tree was growing between a driveway and a mowed lawn. It tastes reminiscent of an apple.

The arbor is made of electrician's piping, galvanized to prevent rust, with some portions connected with metal joints, others hand-tied. Stems of cherry tomatoes too are tethered to these pipes, their growth carefully directed until they can head horizontally, occupying a parallel universe with the beans and squash six feet above the lawn. This double decker yard makes maximum use of space.

Having once again this year let my squash and volunteer gourds run rampant over my visions of backyard order, with regular pilferings by squirrels and catbirds, it's a relief and inspiration to see what a little more planning, vertical training and steady effort could yield. All it takes is a modest bit of ground, sun and water, add equal parts tradition and devotion, and the result can be a dream serene of order and easy pickin's.

Goat Patrol Cleans Up Invasives

Speaking of kudzu and its local imitator (see previous post), I witnessed a novel approach to controlling invasives during a recent visit to Durham, NC. A friend has gone into the goat business, herding them into a small trailer for a ride to clients' backyards and parks beleaguered by an onslaught of invasive plants. Across the street from the baseball stadium made famous by the movie Bull Durham, the city's Central Park has a ravine filled with kudzu.

Installing the temporary fence is the hardest part for these modern day goat herders, and it's sometimes necessary to remove plants that could prove toxic to the goats, such as pokeweed.

The goats cleared this bank the previous day. They do their job well, but now the question is what to plant, and how to keep the kudzu from growing back.

Kudzu-Like Vine Surrounding Princeton Battlefield

This is a followup to a previous post about the Princeton Battlefield grounds. The vast mowed lawn gives the impression of order at the battlefield, but along the edges, there's a different story.

In a closeup, it's possible to see the reddening foliage of flowering dogwoods spaced along the woods' edge.

Likely planted many decades back to grace the battlefield's borders, those along the left side are now completely overgrown by vines.

Here, one dogwood branch (slight burgundy color on the right) is all that can be seen reaching out of a stifling blanket of exotic porcelain berry vine. (Porcelain berry is short for Ampelopsis brevipedunculata, a name as sprawling as its growth form.)

In addition to ornament, the dogwoods have traditionally provided abundant berries for migrating birds. Some internet research has yet to reveal whether the porcelain berries provide an adequately timed and nutritious substitute. Lipid (fat) content in the berries is important for sustaining the birds' energy, since lipids provide more energy than an equivalent weight of sugar. The shade of the vines will also limit dogwood blooms next spring (note the flower bud on the left).

All around the base of the dogwoods, a tangle of vines reach upwards--porcelain berry and oriental bittersweet, along with the native wild grape.

It's easy to liberate a tree from vines. Simply sever the stems of the vines and leave the top portion to die. No need to pull anything down.

Elsewhere at the battlefield, on the south side of Mercer Road, more advanced stands of porcelain berry demonstrate the plant's kudzu-like capacity to overwhelm trees and shrubs.

These three trees and the surrounding landscape behind Clark House have completely disappeared beneath a blanket of porcelain berry. The one native seen was jewelweed, somehow able to poke a few of its orange flowers up through the enveloping vines sprawling across the ground.

Princetonians may want to develop a taste for grand-scale topiary, because the battlefield and the local birds are serving as a seed distribution service for this highly invasive species.