Trotsky's Chickens

During a recent visit to Coyoacan, a historic neighborhood in southern Mexico City that once served as Cortez's home base, we passed by the long lines at Freda Kahlo's house and walked a few extra blocks to check out the walled-in house and courtyard of another historic figure, Leon Trotsky. The Russian revolutionary spent the last three years of his life in exile in Mexico, where he was granted asylum at the behest of Diego Rivera.

Turns out he raised chickens and rabbits, which he spent the first hour or so of every day caring for. The physical work and interaction with the animals "provided rest to his spirit and distracted him", but it also may have helped stimulate his thinking: "Sometimes he interrupted his labour to dictate a thought, an idea that had arrived to his mind while he was doing this work."

That connection between hand and mind, manual work and intellect, is one of the rewards of not outsourcing all manual work, and exploring which aspects of lifestyle are worth adopting from past eras when machines were less ubiquitous.

Raising chickens and rabbits may also have helped him survive increasing seclusion, given that the danger of attack by an agent of Stalin made any venturing outside the walls of his compound risky. His falling out with Stalin led to his exile, and the assassination of nearly all of his family members, including finally himself when a Stalin agent penetrated Trotsky's inner circle in 1940.

Trotsky was also in to cacti, which he had dug up from surrounding hillsides that surely have long since been engulfed by urban growth.

Afterwards, we waited out the lines at Freda Kahlo's house, and found therein, tinged with rant, her expression of connection with people who use their hands to make a living.

Backyard Ducks

Life is pretty good for the backyard ducks these days. The miniponds are swelled by recent rains, and the ducks' owners have given them some quality frolic time out of the coop they share with the chickens.

Much as the chickens' showed us how much a backyard could be loved, with their infinite interest in the ground and the bugs and seeds it might hold, so the ducks have shown us what it means to really love water. Using their heads to toss water on their backs, diving, dipping or suddenly launching into a session of joyous thrashing, they revivify all those old expressions about ducks and water. It's easy to believe that they are fish at heart, who maintain wings and feet as backup options.

They don't so much drink water as maintain a current of water through their bodies. This makes them a bit messy in their cohabitation with chickens, which are by comparison much more land-based and clean.

Whereas chickens peck with precision, ducks gobble, especially the big, wobbly Pekin duck on the left, which sends food flying with its gourmandering.

The runner duck, by contrast, is a more graceful and delicate creature, holding its head high and steady like a ballet dancer as it walks. We had had good success with taking it for a walk in Herrontown Woods two months ago, so decided to try it again.

In the interim, however, the duck (Molly) had developed a mind of her own. Rather than following along with us, she immediately set off for the nearest creek.

 Fortunately, we found an abandoned dog leash on the trail, which helped keep the duck heading our way. Up at the Veblen farmstead, we walked by snowdrops planted either by Elizabeth Veblen or as part of a Garden Club of Princeton project some 40 years ago.

Hurricane Sandy has made lots of miniponds in the forest, where wild and somewhat tame life can stop and take a sip.

And so this unexpected life with ducks continues,

in ponds small and smaller

while bigger, bolder birds of a similar feather take up similarly unlikely residence in the broader Princeton landscape.

Monarchs Had Tough Year in 2012

Here's a disturbing headline for you: "Monarch Migration Plunges to Lowest Level in Decades". The New York Times article reports that the overwintering grounds for monarch butterflies in Mexico has dwindled to 2.94 acres. A number of factors are at play here. Increasingly erratic weather due to changing climate, the switch to herbicide-resistant crops in the midwest, which allows eradication of weeds that used to serve as food and habitat, and past logging of the high altitude forests in Mexico.

The warm weather last year sped the Monarchs' travel northward, which correlates with my memory of seeing them in Princeton last summer much earlier than usual. Their multi-generational travel northward in spring/summer is timed with the milkweed, so any change in schedule can affect whether the habitat is ready for their arrival.

In preparation for an upcoming trip, I was surprised to learn that the biosphere reserve where the Monarchs overwinter is  just a couple hours west of Mexico City. There are several locations where one can hike up to see them, though El Rosario is the easiest to access. Given the multiple locations, it's strange to hear that the total acreage occupied by the overwintering butterflies is less than three acres.

Though the butterflies cling to the tree branches at night, in February they become active during the day, flying down the mountain slope to a water source, then back up in the evening to roost overnight. Tourists typically stay over night in the small mountain town of Angangueo, then head to the overwintering sites in the morning. Having remained sexually immature during their long fall migration to Mexico, and through much of the winter, the Monarchs finally mate just prior to heading north in late March.

As farm country becomes increasingly an ecological desert, due to reduction in fallow areas and increased spraying of weeds, urban areas become all the more important for sustaining species like the Monarch. Looks like starting new plants of the local swamp milkweed will be part of my "managing water in the landscape" course at the Princeton Adult School this spring.

Carolyn Edelmann, who has a far-ranging nature blog, sent me this link to a 6 minute video about the Monarchs' migration and overwintering site.

Talk on Oswald Veblen and Institute Woods, March 21

Oswald Veblen is a heroic character from Princeton's past. You can read more about him at my website, VeblenHouse.org.

George Dyson, author of Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe, will give a talk entitled "Princeton's Christopher Robin - Oswald Veblen and the Six-Hundred-Acre Woods".

It was the third chapter of Dyson's book on Turing, wherein Veblen's life and contributions to early computer development are described, that showed how deep is the legacy Veblen left behind, and made all the more clear why the house the Veblens left in the public trust should be saved and turned into a nature center, as they had desired.

The talk will detail how Veblen's vision and initiative led to the Institute for Advanced Study acquiring some 600 acres of greenspace back in 1930s, setting the stage for later preservation efforts that led to saving the land from development. From a DR Greenway email: "Growing up in these woods, Dyson is in a unique position to recount its journey to preservation. Owned first by William Penn, then  finally to the Institute, Dyson declares, 'Veblen put the fractured pieces back together.'"

The talk is on Thursday, March 21, 2013, 7:00 - 8:30pm at the DR Greenway's Johnson Education Center. More info at http://drgreenway.org/public_programs.htm.

Maiden Grass (Miscanthus sinensis)

Back in October, Maiden Grass was in its glory. Native to Japan, it was popularized in the U.S. in large part by Washington, D.C.-based landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and Jim van Sweden. They promoted a new kind of landscaping dominated by ornamental grasses mixed with perennials like Joe-Pye-Weed and Sedum "Autumn Joy".

Like cabbage, which was bred to make kohlrabi, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, etc., Maiden Grass is the same species (Miscanthus sinensis) as the less frequently seen zebra grass and porcupine grass.

After publishing their book on this new approach to landscaping, Oehme and van Sweden went on a speaking tour. I remember their presentation at the University of Michigan, probably back in the 1980s. During question and answer, one member of the audience, after seeing photos of giant exotic grasses planted next to a native wet meadow, asked if there was any concern about the grasses becoming invasive. The authors claimed not.

Since then, I've kept my eye out for instances where these robust, beautiful grasses have turned invasive. In most cases they have not, but I remember a field outside of Providence, Rhode Island filled with them. And though they haven't spread in the NC piedmont, they have become highly invasive on and around Mitchell Mountain, which is a slightly higher altitude and may have different soil type.

There aren't any dramatic examples of invasion in the Princeton area that I know of, but on the road from Princeton to Lambertville I noticed a couple of them apparently self-seeded in a field. In this photo, you can see how the Maiden Grass (two specimens in the back) dwarf the native bluestems (same tawny color) closer to the road.

If Maiden Grass eventually does become invasive, the same robust qualities that make it attractive in the landscape will cause it to outcompete the native grasses, many of which are necessary food sources for insect species that typically don't consume exotics even if abundant.

For this reason, and a desire to focus on natives, I stopped planting Maiden Grass. Some native grasses that have been bred for form and beauty are many varieties of switch grass, and purple muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris). River oats is another ornamental native, though it can sometimes start seeding in aggressively in the flower bed. You may see the native prairie grasses Indian Grass, Big Bluestem and Little Bluestem growing in fields around Princeton. The first two are tall and attractive in masses, but tend to flop a bit if one tries to use them in an ornamental context. Little Bluestem is shorter, keeps its shape better, and has a delicate beauty to it.

Honey Locust Thorns and the Missing Megafauna

Why is this honey locust on Snowden Lane so bristly? The very nasty thorns once protected the tree from giant ground sloths and other megafauna common in America until about 13,000 years ago. Other trees with thorns that may once have served such a purpose are Osage-orange and hawthorn.

The extinction of some 40 megafauna species in the late Pleistocene may help explain why tree species like Kentucky coffeetree and Osage-orange are now rare. The animals that once ate and dispersed their fruit no longer exist.

An internet search led to a wonderful article on native trees adapted to giant mammals that no longer exist, likely due to overhunting by the first human immigrants to America. My pet theory is that the first American inhabitants, after driving many large prey species to extinction, learned to be better stewards of the land. Arrival of westerners precipitated a similar predatory overstepping and wave of extinctions, such as the passenger pigeon and the Carolina parakeet, followed by at least a partial shift towards better stewardship.

The article quotes Dan Janzen, now of U. of Pennsylvania, who gave riveting lectures about the symbiotic relationship between ants and acacia trees in Africa, during my college days at U. of Michigan.

Rogers Refuge--Woodcocks and Wood Ducks

Woodcocks are curious looking birds with long beak and stubby body. This time of year, they are doing their mating displays in open fields around Princeton. Here's a report from Winnie Spar, a birder who helps care for the Rogers Refuge--the marsh between the Institute Woods and the Stony Brook (map):  March 4: "Despite rather cool temperatures, I went over to the Refuge at dusk this evening and found one peenting and twittering woodcock in the lower marsh across from the main platform. This is the same date on which Fred and I first discovered displaying woodcocks in the marsh last year."

Here's a previous post about seeing woodcocks in Princeton, which links to an NPR segment on them.

Wood Ducks: At the showing of the Duckumentary, which begins with baby wood ducks jumping out of their nest, 70 feet up in a tree, and landing softly in the leaves, Charles Leck said wood ducks return in late March and the newborns begin jumping out of holes in trees at Rogers Refuge from about May 10-15. That would be something to see.

If you're unfamiliar with Rogers Refuge, it's a premier birdwatching site in the floodplain of the StonyBrook, accessible via West Drive, which intersects with Alexander just before you reach the canal. I researched and wrote an ecological assessment and stewardship plan for the refuge some years back. The marsh is kept wet in summer with the help of water pumped from the Stony Brook. The land is owned by the water company, town staff maintain the pump, and the Friends of Rogers Refuge keep an eye on the refuge and have installed viewing towers, a bird blind, and bird houses. A nice cooperative venture.

Other notes from Charles Leck's Q and A:

• Ducks mate for a year. Geese mate for life, and hang around for a day if their mate dies. 
• He's noticed a ten to fourteen day shift in duck migrations over the years, as the planet warms.
• Hurricane Sandy devastated coastal lakes like Lake Como in New Jersey. The lakes are important duck habitat. 
• Parting quote: "Never throw a planet away. You just don't know when you're going to need it."

Cold Cabbage

A crop of cold cabbage grows, or waits, in a stone-lined front yard garden. Which takes me back to 1977, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and a 2 minute video that stuck in memory, Cold Cows. It's a silent short, starring a cow, despairing of life in a cold pasture.

At the Environmental Humanities in a Changing World conference, yesterday and today at Princeton University, John Grim spoke of The Winter Dance, an American Indian ritual that uses music and dance to lift the malaise of late winter and "carry the people through".

That must be what I did a week ago to break a bad case of cabin fever, combining Brazilian music of Airto and Flora Purim with a dance style somewhere between Steve Martin and Steve Carell. Not sure it will become a widespread cultural tradition, but it works.

Sadly, cabbages and cows do not have this option for renewing the spirit.

Wild Pollinators

Some news and olds on wild pollinators:

The Economist has a short article entitled "Variety is the spice of life: Encouraging wild and diverse insects is the best way to pollinate crops". That's the conclusion of some Argentine researched published in Science. The varied shapes of native pollinators, which includes beetles, flies and butterflies in addition to bees, helps insure the pollen gets well distributed. Update: An additional study with similar result is mentioned in this Rutgers article.

The Xerces Society, which "protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat", has a list of guides for building nests for native pollinators (honeybees were introduced to America from Europe). I tend to think of native bees as perfectly capable of building their own nests, but this free download: "A first of its kind, step-by-step, full color guide for rearing and managing bumblebees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, and other honey bee alternatives.", may tell a different story.

Here's a 2011 post of mine--notes from a talk on native bees, hosted by DR Greenway, including the somewhat revelatory statistic that there are 400 species of native bees in New Jersey.

Typing "boneset" into the search box of this blog will yield many posts about the extraordinary diversity of pollinators that visit this native wildflower, which turns into a thriving insect metropolis in July and August.

Upcoming Climate and Environmental Humanities Events

A couple upcoming events in town related to nature, climate change and the humanities.

A conference called "The Environmental Humanities in a Changing World"  takes place this Friday and Saturday, 9-5, with a mix of speakers and topics, including resident notables Paul Muldoon and Princeton climate scientists Stephen Pacala and Rob Socolow. The conference, free and open to the public, is organized by Ken Hiltner (no relation, as far as we can tell), a visiting professor in the Princeton Environmental Institute. Click here for a schedule. The conference takes place on campus in Guyot 10--a room with challenging acoustics, so sit up close.

The Friends of the Princeton Public Library will host "A Conversation on Climate Change" with Stephen Pacala and Michael Lemonick on March 15, in a "supper club/salon" setting at the library. $50 gets you light fare and drinks beginning at 6:30pm, a conversation with two leading spokesmen on climate change, and the feeling of having supported your local library. More info and ticket purchase here.

Atrium Honeydew Sleuth

For years, the atrium plants at this office complex up Ewing Street have provided a verdant corridor on the way to my daughters' dental appointments.

Tall specimens of fishtail palm and fig tree (Ficus benjamina) remind me of the time I volunteered at a botanical garden to research biological controls to deal with their plant conservatory's pest problem. The large conservatory was a paradise under siege, packed with orchids, towering palms, and other lush tropical plants of every description draped over the fountains and reaching for the sky.

A closer look, however, revealed that a war was going on. The greenhouse sheltered not only plants through the Michigan winter, but also legions of spider mites, aphids, scale, white flies and mealybugs that had grown immune to an arsenal of pesticides. Each week, a mild mannered horticulturist would don a moon suit and fog the whole conservatory with a cocktail of chemicals. And each week, the insect pests shrugged it off and went back to sucking the plants' juices.

This being in the pre-internet era, it took weeks of phone calls and correspondence to gather information about parasitic wasps and ravenous ladybugs and lacewings that could take the place of toxic sprays. Meanwhile, the conservatory staff were using me as a sounding board for all their complaints about each other, convincing me that humans can be miserable even in a northern winter's version of tropical paradise.

With that experience as a baseline, I've been impressed with how the atrium at the office complex has remained consistently verdant over the years, where given the medical setting they probably use little beyond Safers Soap to control pests.

This last visit, though, I noticed the characteristic blotching on an umbrella plant.

A sticky substance was dripping down from the bougainvillea above, which while looking healthy enough was also playing host to a colony of aphids. Since the plant juice the aphids are sucking is low in proteins, the aphids have to consume a lot of sap to get enough protein, all the while excreting the excess fluid as a sticky substance called honeydew.

 Here's a fuzzy shot of the aphids on the backside of the leaf, including a winged adult that will fly off and look for a new plant to colonize.

I asked the dentist's receptionist about who takes care of the plants. She gave the service a rave review, saying they'd never had a problem with pests. I broke her bubble reluctantly. There's some pleasure in remaining oblivious to these sorts of things, but at the same time it's more interesting to know that something dynamic is going on in what otherwise looks like a static planting. Otherwise, one has to settle for the magazines in the waiting room for diversion.

Hopefully, word will get to the plantcare people, some soapy water will be used to kill the aphids by dissolving their waxy coats, and the next chapter of that plant-filled atrium's story, to be read on the next visit, will be "problem caught early, problem solved."

For Lack of a Name

Language takes aspects of reality and attaches words to them. One unexpected perk of studying a second language is the discovery that each language divides the world up differently. A word in one language may have no corresponding word in another. Similarly, the sounds used in one language  may be missing from another. It's said that we begin as infants able to utter the whole universe of sounds, but gradually narrow ourselves down to only the sounds needed for the language being spoken all around us. My daughter was able to roll her "r"'s early on, but lost the ability because English doesn't require it. My French teacher struggled to say the word "squirrel", while I could listen to her say two vowel sounds that in French are distinct, but to my ear were indistinguishable.

Now, if my ear loses the ability to hear sounds that exist in another language but not in mine, might the mind lose the ability to see aspects of reality for which one's language offers no word? And what happens if an activity and occupation vital to a society's longterm capacity to prosper has no corresponding word in the language?

That's the dilemma I happen upon repeatedly while tending gardens and managing landscapes. There is no good word to describe what I am aiming to do, which is to make a naturalistic garden more beautiful and diverse each year. Nor is there a good name for this occupation. "Maintenance" suggests something static. "Management" is slightly more dynamic, but can suggest just keeping things from falling apart. "Tending" and "caretaker" at least imply some t.l.c., but don't imply anything beyond keeping things going. "Sustain", "enhance", and "enrich" could be useful if they didn't sound so grand. They tend to crop up in grant applications and mission statements more often than in everyday activity. In any case, they have no accompanying noun for the person performing the action. "Parenting" suggests protecting and nurturing, which is close to the concept, but though a landscaping project may be someone's "baby", it's hard to call someone a parent in that context.

This lack of a name for people who not only maintain things but gradually improve upon them is more than a curiosity. It has consequences for what gets done and what sort of world we end up with. In the horticultural world, most of the money, grants, expertise and landscaping awards are directed towards installation. Many times I've seen beautiful gardens installed on public grounds, but no money or expertise dedicated to their upkeep. If the plantings get any attention at all, it's by maintenance staff who don't know which plant to pull and which one to leave. After several years of decline, the planting is mowed down and returns to lawn. Though maintenance determines the fate of gardens, it is devalued because it is viewed as a static activity, rather than a dynamic one that requires a vision for incremental improvement.

The more satisfying, lasting and cost-effective approach is to start small and improve the planting each year--to invest less in installation than a steady enhancement. Gardens, as well as nearly all aspects of life--a house, a nation, relationships, a government--could benefit from this process that has no adequate, widely agreed-upon name.

To prosper, a garden requires a mix of skill, work, vision and dedication. If there were a word for the person who delivers this highly desirable mix, more people might more fully inhabit that role, and their work would be more fully appreciated.

If we look at the world and see a gap where a positive trajectory should be, ask which came first, the gap in the world or the gap in the language.

(Title of this post was changed. Originally whimsically called "Who put the rant in nurturant?", a takeoff on Dizzy Gillespie's "Who put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?")

Witch Hazel

Along with snowdrops and winter aconite in local yards, asian varieties of witch hazel are blooming. This one's on the Shapiro walkway on the university campus. A planting along the Guyot Street bike trail between Jefferson and Moore, with a more southern exposure, is already past.

The native witch hazel blooms in October.

Winds and Trees in Princeton

Today at noon, the author of "Wind Wizard", a book about how wind navigates the natural and built landscape, will give a talk at the Princeton Public Library. I'm hoping to gain some insight on whether the curved, airfoil shape of Jadwin Gym's roof, combined with the direction and speed of Hurricane Sandy's winds, could have led to the devastation of old but very healthy trees in the hidden valley between the gym and Washington Road.

Specifically, this spot in the roof is directly "upwind" of a long progression of trees that fell.

You can see the root balls and also the big gap in the canopy that wasn't there before.

This tree, with its upended root ball spreading 30 feet across and 15 feet high, appears to have been of the vintage of others with documented ages approaching 200 years. These sorts of linear blowdowns have happened elsewhere without any buildings nearby, but it's interesting to speculate on the impacts downwind if a building shaped like an airplane wing catches hurricane winds just right.

By coincidence, a sustainability display at the university's Frist Center describes the importance of urban microclimates created by buildings, whose impact can be highly localized,

or community-wide. Perhaps there's something to be learned from the valley just a few hundred feet downstream of the display.

Shetland Pony Near Herrontown Woods

Approaching the Veblen House neighborhood on Herrontown Road near Snowden, I saw a man and boy in the distance, walking down the road with what looked like an improbably large dog. As we approached, the dog turned out to be a Shetland pony walking calmly beside the man. (This photo is a public domain domain photo from Wikipedia.)

Always interested in any farmlike activity out that way, I parked and ran back down the road to say hello and find out more. The man said hi and then turned away, less than friendly.

With uncanny timing, a big pickup truck came to a stop in front of us, at the corner of Snowden and Herrontown, and a man got out. I recognized him as Princeton's animal control officer, who had helped me get some raccoons to move out of the Veblen House attic some years back. He asked the man with the pony whether he had a permit. "This is not a horse," replied the man. "I wasn't born yesterday," responded the animal control officer, "That's a horse."

It turned out the man had a permit, and the necessary three acre parcel to keep the pony on.

I had hoped for a more positive, informative encounter with the pony's owner, perhaps a photo-op with the beautiful beast (more attractive in coloration and thick mane than the above stock photo) and a story of how they came to have a pony, and whether they put it to some use. The story on the internet is that Shetlands are very intelligent and as strong as their broad bodies and thick legs suggest. Given their abundant hair and small stature, it's not surprising that they developed on islands off of Scotland, and were used for work, including in the tight quarters of coal mines to pull wagons.

Another miniaturized island creature is the key deer, which still has enough habitat to survive on the Florida Keys. The female grows barely beyond two feet at the shoulders.

As global habitat shrinks, perhaps all creatures should shrink as well, including humans, to fit into tighter and tighter spaces. Farms could be shrunk with dwarf fruit trees, pygmy goats, bantam chickens and Shetland ponies pulling miniature wagons of miniature produce, but humans will have to be content with shrinking their footprints.

Chickens, Fish and Swimming Pools in the Not So Wild West

(First posted at my PrincetonPrimer.org site) 

Abandoned swimming pools, like this one that has stood empty in a Princeton backyard for years, are a sad sight. What to do with them? Surprisingly, these symbols of high-maintenance leisure are at the forefront of a grow-your-own movement out west. The following is a post on islands of sustainability in the super-heated urban world of Arizona. The last few paragraphs describe a clever adaptation of swimming pools.

My nephew in Arizona always has interesting news about homesteading out west. Raised in a house with a wood stove in Vermont, his career took him away from the warm fire and into the frying pan of Phoenix, where he and his wife are raising three kids, along with chickens and rabbits--all on what sounds like a small residential lot. The chickens and rabbits play the role they once played on a farm, offering a way to sustain a family and do right by the planet.

He says he likes to run nutrients through as many steps as possible before they exit his property. For instance, chicken feed and kitchen scraps become chicken manure, which fertilizes the garden, which feeds the rabbits. At each step along the way, some sort of food heads for the kitchen, be it eggs, garden vegetables, or rabbit meat. The ladies, as he calls the hens, provide sufficient eggs for breakfast omelets and a weekly dose of egg salad. A periodic batch of male chickens, raised from chicks, end up in the freezer. The coop can be partitioned into two, to keep the males and hens separate. Otherwise, the nine hens have the whole coop to themselves.

It sounds like a lot of work, adding a layer of animal care and periodic feather plucking sessions on top of all the effort involved in raising three young kids and making a living. But they are essentially applying to everyday living the can-do spirit that in mainstream society only surfaces briefly during crises. People become heroic, community-minded and resourceful in the wake of (un)natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, then quickly return to a status quo in which any mention of sacrifice or inconvenience is dismissed with a groan. Meanwhile, the status quo is brewing ever larger and more frequent disasters in the future. By using our formidable capacity to adapt and prevail only during emergencies, we miss the opportunity to adjust our lifestyles in ways that would steer us clear of a dystopian (new word in my vocabulary) future. One positive thing about sacrifice is that one can get good at it, until it hardly seems sacrificial.

Phoenix, actually, is already living in a super-heated dystopian future. Summer temperatures average 100 degrees. Though temperatures may drop 60 degrees at night in the countryside, city dwellers are denied that relief. Because of the heat-island effect, where asphalt and buildings absorb the day's heat and slowly release it through the night, urban nights can remain in the 90s. Opposite of the north woods, cabin fever strikes towards the end of summer. Only in winter do people venture outside for extended periods. How the chickens can survive the heat is something I'll need to ask next time.

The importance of night-time temperatures will become increasingly noticeable in New Jersey as summer temperatures rise. Attic fans have been one low-energy way to keep a house cool, by blowing the day's accumulation of hot air out of the house and pulling the cool evening air in. As summers get warmer and areas of unshaded pavement expand, the cool evenings and the relief they bring will become increasingly rare. Natural cooling augmented with an attic fan will become less of an option, making people even more dependent on energy-guzzling air conditioners.

In Phoenix, swimming pools are common, while solar panels are rare--the opposite of what you'd expect in a desert. Such is our upside down world, where obvious problems are maintained while obvious solutions are shunned. Part of the reason why solar panels are rare may have to do with Phoenix not being a very comfortable place to live. More transience means less long-term investment in one's home, which means people are reluctant to sign a 20 year lease on solar panels, knowing they'll have to then find a buyer willing to assume the lease.

Some people, feeling a bit guilty about having a swimming pool fed by unsustainable water supplies, have begun converting them into highly productive habitats to grow food. A chicken coop is suspended over the pool. The droppings fall into the half-filled pool, stimulating growth of duckweed, algae and other plants, which in turn are fed on by tilapia. The water, which would otherwise get fouled with excess nutrients, is then pumped through a hydroponic garden where plants extract nutrients. Solar panels power the irrigation system. There's info about these systems on the web, including this post and video, produced with some support from Whole Foods Market.

Closer to home, a similar approach is used by Will Allen and his GrowingPower group in Milwaukee. Will has visited Princeton a couple times to give presentations.

My nephew hasn't converted his swimming pool yet. There's a difference between having a chicken coop in a corner, and converting one's whole backyard into a minifarm. Still, this pushing of the sustainability envelope suggests there's hope for abandoned swimming pools after all.

Hedge Notes, and the Incredible Shrinking Shrub

Here's an evergreen hedge that is not an evergreen hedge, but instead is a deciduous hedge with an evergreen vine growing over it.

Hard to say if the owner has noticed or would even care that the green leaves are those of Japanese honeysuckle that has grown up through and overtopped the privet bushes

lined up all neat in a row.

(Somewhere I have a series of photos over several years, tracking the slow collapse of a bush as honeysuckle vine overtopped it and starved it of sunlight. The mass of evergreen vines looked like a healthy shrub, but actually began shrinking as the real shrub's structure rotted away underneath, leaving in the end a blob of vines on the ground.)

Privet minus an overtopping of J. honeysuckle vines looks like this,

with clusters of small blackish blue berries.

Other evergreen vines using deciduous shrubs as a substrate are the exotic autumn clematis,

and climbing euonymus.

The seedpods identify this hedge interloper as Rose of Sharon, related to the native wetland wildflower Rose mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos). Though Rose of Sharon sprouts new plants all over a garden, I have not seen it invade nature preserves. It makes a good vertical large shrub for defining edges of properties where there's enough sunlight. This one here is able to bloom a bit, despite being part of a closely cropped hedge.

Boxwood shows up in hedges as well,

here adding a bit of color to a privet hedge.

Hard to think of a more narrow and effective screen than arborvitae which grows very dense with adequate sunlight.

Veblen House Presentation Sunday, Feb. 10

The 2013 Princeton Environmental Film Festival ends this weekend.

As part of tomorrow's programming, at 11am Sunday, Feb. 10 at the Princeton Public Library, I'll give my presentation on the legacy of Princeton visionary Oswald Veblen and the 1920 prefab house, 1870 farm cottage, and 95 acres of Herrontown Woods nature preserve he and his wife, Elizabeth, left to Mercer County. More info at VeblenHouse.org.

Symphony of Soil - Film Preview

Symphony of Soil, is a documentary showing this Thursday, Feb. 7 at 7pm as part of the library's Princeton Environmental Film Festival. Here's a review I wrote after previewing the film a few months ago:

Great film. Long but well worth it. Maybe could be tied to a discussion of how homeowners can better handle their kitchen scraps and so-called yardwaste. (Judith Robinson will lead a panel of soil experts afterwards.)

At first, this film seems like mostly scenery and symphony, but soon begins digging deeper and deeper, so to speak, until it really gets down to the nitty gritty of what's going on with soils around the world, and how to shift the trajectory from degradation to regeneration. Somehow, it covers a huge amount of ground (these are not intentional puns) without seeming to jump around, dropping in on farms all over the world, with common refrains of a generation of farmers turning away from the dependence on chemicals and plow, and all the ways they are restoring the health and balance of the soil. Lots about nitrogen, soil bacteria/plant interactions--a highly digestible combination of science, experience, passion and beauty. 

The researchers at Rodale in Pennsylvania provide a beautiful demonstration of how soil health and mulch affect the quantity and quality of runoff, and how much water percolates down to recharge the aquifers--all very relevant to Princeton homeowners who tend to dump their yards' organic matter out on the asphalt for the town to haul away.

The chemical industry is not allowed to speak in its defense, but the depiction of pesticides' and chemical fertilizer's downside is not an angry vilification but more an explanation of why there's a better way. It's also refreshing to have nearly all of the many talking heads outdoors getting dirty, rather than sitting in their offices.

The camera work is excellent, and the editor included a couple spontaneous moments: one in which a shaggy dog lies down on the potato plant being discussed, and another with a child that made for an ending that goes straight to the heart. Actually, the ending is reminiscent of Truffaut's 400 Blows. I was taken back to books by Louis Bromfield (about restoring a farm in Ohio) and Ruth Stout (a pioneer in the use of mulch), written in the 40s but that became popular again in the 70s, questioning conventional wisdom and showing a better way.

As an aside, it's interesting to note, as one who has worked at restoring native plant communities, that some of the "good guys" on the farm, e.g. earthworms and high fertility, can actually work against biodiversity in the wild. Many species of earthworms are exotic and tend to eat through the organic matter in a forest too rapidly, depriving the forest soil of a protective litter layer over the soil and increasing the leaching of nutrients. Too much nitrogen, which reaches wild areas via air pollution, can shift the balance of species. Some of the most biodiverse habitats have very poor soil. There are some cases of serendipity where biodiverse habitats associated with poor soil types were inadvertently spared the plow, since farmers sought out richer soils elsewhere.

Wild Turkey in Potts Park

A few Princetonians know about the little pocket park just off busy Harrison Street, at the corner of Tee-Ar Place and Erdman Ave. Though not much more than an acre in size, and with little beyond turf and spruce trees for habitat, this morning at 7:15 it attracted a distinguished visitor. My daughters saw it first from the second story window, its dark brown body contrasting with the light dusting of snow. They were impressed by the wild turkey's size, but apparently it was not very impressed with the park's offerings. Having caught a glimpse of it, I ran to get a camera, then returned to find it already gone.

Evidence that it wasn't a phantom remained in the fresh untrodden snow. It entered the park through the main gate like the rest of us.

Here's a better sense of its footprint's (considerable) size.

Poultry Policy in Princeton

Start asking around if chickens are allowed in Princeton, and you're likely to get a different answer each time. I worked my way from friends to township and borough zoning officers, and finally to Princeton's animal control officer, who seemed to have the most definitive answer.

The quick answer is that they are allowed, but for anyone considering having them, it's worth knowing some of the background.

What little is written in the ordinances is not very encouraging. Even though the borough and township have consolidated into one Princeton, their respective ordinances still apply until a unified ordinance is worked out.

For those living in what was the borough, the most relevant ordinance reads: "Keeping domestic animals as pets; provided, that not more than five animals over six months old shall be kept on any lot, and that no animals except dogs or cats shall be housed or penned within fifty feet of any street line or lot line, except within the principal building." (Boro Code: Land Use, XI:Zoning, 17A--228 Uses permitted as of right, C--accessory uses, 3)

Staff I spoke to do not think of chickens as "domestic animals", and interpret the ordinance as not permitting, or at least not relevant to, chickens.

I'm told that the township ordinance says that chickens can only be kept on lots of three or more acres. An internet search led to this item in the township ordinance: Sec. 10B-276 states: "Farm buildings such as chicken houses and stables and barns, and educational buildings such as classrooms and laboratories which are difficult to convert to dwellings may be so placed without zoning lots." (I think this means that you don't have to subdivide your lot to have a coop, which makes sense.) There may be some regulations about the type of coop one constructs. A structure that is affixed to the ground may come under some restrictions, whereas a mobile coop (coops with wheels, like a big wheelbarrow) does not.

Even though the ordinances appear to discourage having chickens, the informal, unified policy according to the animal control officer allows them. The informal policy, which I was told is okay to post, is this: Anyone can have chickens, in township or borough, without having to register, but if neighbors complain then some sort of action has to be taken, either to correct the problem or to remove the chickens. There is no particular number restriction. There was no mention of how close the coop could be to the property line.

For example, someone on Linden Lane, who has since left town, had chickens, but a rat problem developed. The animal control officer advised the owner on how to clean things up, and she was then able to continue to have chickens. Someone else had ducks, which the officer says are messy birds. They were making too much noise and were frequently flying over the fence into the neighbors' yards. The ducks had to be removed.

Everyone I spoke to in town government was fine with the public schools having chicken coops, as long as the relevant principals and the superintendent buy in to the idea and consistent care can be worked out. Princeton Day School has had chickens housed next to its expansive garden, and has found them to be a wonderful education tool. The kids love them, but only some high schoolers who have been trained are allowed to touch or care for them.

Though I had thought of lobbying for an ordinance that would make more official the policy on chickens, the experience of Hopewell Township gives pause. They anguished for three years to develop a chicken ordinance, suffering worldwide ridicule over the rule about visitations by roosters (roosters are not needed for egg production), and then only had two applications in the years since the ordinance has been in place. The Hopewell staff person I spoke to suggested that a better route is to go with a variance--people wanting to have chickens get the support of neighbors and then request a variance.

But what Princeton apparently has is even more flexible. My understanding is that there is no permit required. To avoid the trauma of losing the chickens, one checks with one's neighbors, maybe even gets support in writing, and then proceeds with a modest number of chickens, knowing that the town could make one give them up if they become a nuisance.

My experience is that chickens make wonderful, quiet "pets with benefits" with care requirements somewhere between a cat and a dog. So, if you're considering it, study up, consult with neighbors (bribery with eggs can help), and my sense is that if you run into any problems the animal control officer's first response will be to help try to work things out.

My Life as a Turkey

I neglected to post about the wonderful movie showing today at 1pm at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, entitled My Life as a Turkey. I had not wanted to mention this endearing depiction of wild turkey life during the holiday season, lest it complicate enjoyment of festive dinners, after which the post became deeply buried in the "Draft" folder. If you miss today's viewing, it can be watched online here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/my-life-as-a-turkey/full-episode/7378/.

The film traces Joe Hutto’s remarkable experiences during the year he raised wild turkey hatchlings to adulthood.

Here are some thoughts on the movie:

As in films shown last year at the film festival--The Whale, Dolphin Boy and Buck--the recurrent theme in this movie is qualities the turkeys have that point to gaps in our own awareness and feelings. We learn not only about the animals but something new about ourselves as well. What Joe discovers, as he raises the birds and takes them on walks to forage in the oak savannas of Florida, is that they are born with a complete knowledge of the forest--what to eat, which snakes to avoid and which will do no harm. The birds help him to see the forest differently. Suddenly, whether because the birds are more perceptive or because wildlife views Joe as less of a threat when he is with a flock of turkeys, he starts noticing many snakes in a woods where he had thought they were rare. (There is no negative connotation given to snakes in the movie. In fact, the birds tend to play games with them, staying just beyond their reach.) The turkeys find each change in the woods to be a matter for serious discussion, whether it be a newly fallen branch or a cut stump with its unnaturally flat top.

Joe realizes after many months with the turkeys that they live every day fully, unlike people, who can have a tendency to dwell in the past or invest in what might be in the future, and thus miss the present. The faith a turkey must have, that the world it inhabits will dependably provide for all of its needs, is one of its necessary limitations, but also a source of joy that for people is much more difficult to experience. The movie explores the boundaries of wildness and tameness, the depths to which people can connect with another species but also the barriers. Joe essentially learns to "talk turkey", which turns out to be a very complex language with many subtle inflections that carry distinct meanings.

I've heard that Hutto's book is even better than the film. From an online interview, here's part of his answer to a question about turkey intelligence:

What are the top 3 surprises in your studies?

Top three surprises? Getting the eggs of course was the biggest surprise but at the top of the list would be the overwhelming complexity of these creatures that I encountered. I was already somewhat of a casual authority on these birds– but I found so many interesting surprises. In particular, an extraordinary intelligence characterized by true problem solving reason, and a consciousness that was undeniable, at all times conspicuous, and for me, humbling.