Thursday, April 16, 2015

Mountain Lakes and Spring's Promise


Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and gardeners are the soothsayers of beauty. We see promise of future beauty where others may see black planting trays and brown soil. These trays, in the little greenhouse at Mountain Lakes House, are all set to grow native wildflowers for planting in restoration projects nearby.

There's summer beauty, too, sleeping in this raingarden that I designed and FOPOS (Friends of Princeton Open Space) later installed. Some of the raingarden's beauty is in the house's dry basement, which used to flood before we diverted runoff away from the foundation and into the garden. The house is flourishing as a beautiful location for weddings and other events, with the income going to fund open space work in town.


There's sleeping beauty in this field dotted with young trees, just across the driveway from the house.  Many of the trees are bur oaks that were grown in the municipal tree nursery over at Smoyer Park. Bur oaks are more commonly found in the midwest, where they were the keystone species in the extraordinarily rich and diverse oak savannas of pre-colonial America. That ecosystem, lost in a sea of exotic buckthorn and honeysuckle and then pieced back together by botanist Stephen Packard and others, now thrives once more in restored habitats in and around Chicago and other parts of the midwest. I don't know if Princeton will ever open up to the idea of prescribed burns, which play such an important role in maintaining native grasslands and savannas, but one vision of future beauty would be having the meadows of Tusculum grade into a post oak savanna.


There's an extraordinary new film called Inhabit, which documents the permaculture movement. The film was shown at the recent Princeton Environmental Film Festival. Permaculture is a kind of agriculture that emulates wild plant communities in order to grow food for people. A farm emulating the oak savanna might have chestnut trees, with an understory of hazelnuts, and cane fruits and some annual crops in the openings between the scattered trees.

Since hazelnuts are described in the film as having been a common understory species in the oak savanna, and the savannas depended on periodic low-intensity fires sweeping through, then how did the hazelnut survive the fires? This photo of one of the three hazelnut shrubs growing wild at Mountain Lakes shows the many stems generated at the base. The "cool" periodic fires would likely have singed the outer stems but left untouched the stems growing closer to the center of the clone. The oaks are protected by their thick bark.

There was an accidental fire in Mountain Lakes a couple years ago. The area burned makes an interesting study in the typically beneficial effects of periodic controlled burns--a management technique used elsewhere in NJ.

Not sure there's much beauty, present or future, in the riprap stones used to armor the outfall of the lower Mountain Lake, but the dams themselves are beautifully restored.


A botanist can even see beauty in a sewer line right of way, where the opening in the trees allows direct sunlight to reach the ground and foster growth of sedges and wildflowers not common elsewhere in the preserve.

A thick layer of woodchips was laid down on the right of way last year, just down from the lakes, in order to support the heavy equipment needed to install a footbridge.

Two bridges were funded by a grant from the Concordia Foundation, and will provide access to the southwestern corner of Mountain Lakes Preserve.

Note: A nature walk by FOPOS staff will follow this Sunday's 3pm annual meeting of FOPOS at Mountain Lakes House. 

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Shana Weber to Speak at FOPOS Annual Meeting


Friends of Princeton Open Space, the local nonprofit I used to work for, is having its annual meeting this weekend. The meeting itself is a succinct review of what FOPOS has been up to over the past year, and then there's a talk, refreshments, and a nature walk, all at beautiful Mountain Lakes. As the press release says,

"The meeting is free and open to the public, but reservations are requested by April 15th; RSVP to Friends of Princeton Open Space, 609-921-2772. 
Shana S. Weber, Director, Office of Sustainability at Princeton University, will be the featured speaker at the 2015 annual meeting of the Friends of Princeton Open Space at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 19th.  Her talk,“Sustainability Uncovered: The Gritty Underbelly of Meaningful Environmental Endeavors at Princeton University,” will focus on the unprecedented levels of sustainability and environmental stewardship integrated into the University’s current strategic planning and visioning process. 
The meeting will take place at Mountain Lakes House, 57 Mountain Avenue in Princeton.  Dr. Weber will speak after a brief business meeting at which new trustees will be elected.  Refreshments will be served.  A walk through Mountain Lakes and adjacent Tusculum led by FOPOS naturalist Adam Schellhammer will follow Dr. Weber’s talk."

The photo is of one of the raingardens we planted around beautiful Mountain Lakes House, just starting a new season of growth.


Monday, April 13, 2015

Working With Nature at the High School Ecolab Wetland


It wasn't easy to convince Tim to trim back the willow trees at the Princeton High School ecolab this past week. That's the detention basin that was only growing turf grass until the school gave permission for Tim's students and we community volunteers turn it into a very healthy native wetland. Maintenance isn't the right word for what we've done in the years since then, because though we "maintain" it, we also try to make it better and more diverse each year, while working to keep any one species from taking over. It's a kind of wild gardening.

Tim sees the willows as shade for the ponds (to keep them cool and discourage algae) and cover for the birds. I agreed, but also made the case that the rapidly expanding willows were making life harder for the 30 other native plant species meant to coexist there.

So we worked for a couple hours, trimming back the willows and doing general cleanup so that this detention basin can continue to thrive. Tim's turning the cut stems into a "corduroy" footpath.


Like any garden, this wild-looking wetland needs periodic rebalancing. The willows and the cattails--the two species most people associate with wet areas--are also the most aggressive and would over time displace the many shrubs, sedges and wildflowers that add to the diversity and beauty of the wetland.


The setting, with its elevated walkway and upscale fencing all around, is perfect for appreciating the tall wildflowers from above, as flying pollinators might. Even when the basin is performing its stormwater function, and fills completely with runoff during heavy storms, the plants bounce back after the water has drained out the next day.

Because the school sump pump that has serendipitously kept the wetland wet year-round was out of commission for awhile over the winter, there may need to be some restocking of crayfish and other aquatic species that have otherwise thrived from the beginning.

But that's all part of the ongoing balancing act, the periodic, strategic human interventions that are minor compared to the weekly mowing a lawn would have required. Our role is to make sure all the basic pieces of the puzzle--the sump pump, the plant and aquatic diversity--are present and in balance. Nature does the rest.

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Dogwood Rescue at Princeton Battlefield


In the foreground is a thick stem of wild grape vine, angling from left to right. Just behind it is a dogwood tree laden with vines. Beyond are the pillars and lawn of the Princeton Battlefield. There's symbolism in the wild grape's angle, like those circular symbols with a line angling across that mean "No!". Some fifteen dogwoods lining the edge of the Battlefield are being suffocated by the vines.

And there's symbolism in the dogwoods, which were donated to the Battlefield by the Dogwood Garden Club of Princeton, and planted in 1976 as part of the nation's bicentennial. The trees will be turning 40 next year, that is if they don't all get buried alive by the rampant growth of vines.




Sounds like a job for Mr. Sustainable, who stopped by this past week, ready to rescue the beleaguered trees with loppers and saw. The rough customers were, from left to right, wild grape, poison ivy (that little, hairy section that looks like a caterpillar), multiflora rose, porcelainberry, and asiatic bittersweet. Also present but somehow left out of the photograph were english ivy and Japanese honeysuckle. Together they could be called the Serious Seven.

Mr. Sustainable found evidence of previous visitors who might have come to save the trees only to be pulled down by barley and another vine, hops, before they could counter this poison ivy's hairy embrace of the dogwood trunk.

You can see the cobbly bark of the dogwood underneath this web of vines crawling upon it.

Some of the trees were really beaten up, not only by vines but also by the fallen limbs of towering white pines planted just behind them.

Underneath that mass of vines was a trunk warped by the weight and deprived of sunlight.


Here's a healthier specimen, planted closer to the street. In the distance is the Mercer Oak 2, whose symbolism eclipses all others on the property. It was a good day for Mr. Sustainable--a couple hours spent liberating fifteen dogwoods from viney oppression. A more thorough job, for someone else, would take much longer and involve limbing up the pine trees and doing much more to discourage the vines from a resurgence. Until then, the dogwoods will occupy a world, as in The Incredibles, that refuses to stay saved for long. But at least the the trees have a chance to rebound, and still grace the battlefield with spring flowers when they turn forty.

Friday, April 10, 2015

Doing Battle With Invasives at Princeton Battlefield


The Princeton Battlefield that people see while driving by on Mercer Street looks peaceful and under control, a broad expanse of closely mowed turf interrupted only by a few scattered trees. Nature is subdued, as on a sports field, the better to have a picnic, fly a kite, or show off the periodic reenactments of human conflict. This Saturday, April 11, for instance, a British regiment will show up as part of the ongoing programming organized by the Princeton Battlefield Society.


There are, however, real battles going on right now, hidden along the edges of the field. Some pit one plant against another, day after day, breaking only for winter, like the porcelainberry and other vines mobbing the dogwood trees planted back in the 70s to ornament the northern field. And behind the Clark House, a patch of bamboo is expanding its claim to the land. Its encroachment on the trail to the Friends Meeting House has caused the Battlefield Society volunteers to take up loppers and saws against it.

That annual skirmish was waged during March 28's cleanup day, with assistance from Sierra Club volunteers.


Some were cutting and sawing, others were hauling the 20 foot stalks over to a pile,


where some stalks were lined up, somewhat reminiscent of what must have been done with the casualties in a real battle.

This comparison of invasive plant control to a battle may be unsettling for some who prefer to associate nature with peacefulness. There are, to be sure, lots of examples of win-wins in nature--the mutualism of pollinators and flowers being the most common example. But even the peaceful appearance of the expansive lawn out front is achieved only through the covert violence of whirling blades in the mowing equipment.

We could say live and let live, and give the bamboo and porcelainberry free reign, thereby providing ourselves with a convenient excuse to do nothing while claiming a superior tolerance towards all other living things. But all gardeners play a game of winners and losers, pulling out one plant so another might thrive. And the plants themselves are not particularly peaceful towards each other. The bamboo with its stifling shade, aggressive roots, and expansionist agenda is the epitome of intolerance, of "not playing well with others".


Right next to the bamboo is another example of how laissez faire policies can lead to domination by one highly aggressive plant species. Porcelainberry has turned a small stand of trees into a giant topiary. The vines in the foreground were severed near the ground--an easy way to at least temporarily liberate the tree and cheat the vine of all the solar energy it might otherwise have collected while using the tree trunk as a prop.

If they're not cut, the vines overtop the tree and grab all the sun. The tree weakens, a strong wind or ice storm comes along, the weakened tree falls. The result looks like the tree was actually tackled by the vine, which in some ways it was.

When I was a kid, we staged battles occasionally. I remember having a tiny cap gun. Sometimes it was cowboys and Indians, sometimes a spontaneous reenactment of the Civil War on the wooded slope near a friend's house. I grew into a peace-loving adult, and yet some aspects of that strategic thinking utilized in war have parallels in open space management. Since an army's fearsome tanks are useless without gasoline to power them, then one way to win the war is to deprive them of fuel by bombing the aggressor's refineries. If they start rebuilding the refinery, don't bomb again immediately but instead wait until they are almost done rebuilding, then destroy it again just before it can produce any gasoline.

That is exactly what the Allies did in WWII, and a very similar approach can be used against bamboo. Cut it all down--completely, every last stem--so the clone is entirely cut off from its solar energy source. Then wait for it to send up new stems. Those stems will rise 5 or 10 feet before sending out any leaves that can start collecting solar energy. Just as the bamboo shoots start sending out leaves, cut it all down again. The roots have spent all that energy sending up new stems, yet will have nothing to show for it. Since the roots are also continuously spending energy just to stay alive, then the fewer leaves there are to feed that demand, the sooner the roots' reserves will be depleted. Stick with this war of attrition, and the giant will be slain.


And what will the Battlefield Society do on volunteer days if several strategic interventions in a single season weaken the bamboo so that it is no longer growing into the trail, or into the remains of the old barn? I'm sure there's a long list somewhere.

One of the perks of doing invasive species work is that it takes one where one might not otherwise go. I've visited the battlefield many times, but only the fight against bamboo led me to where there are ruins of an old barn.






There was a brief timeout to contemplate the possible origin of holes in one of the foundation stones.


Invasive species removal is one of the few ways we can experience outdoor work, and in some small way reenact the physical exertion once necessary to make this farm a vital enterprise.


Some notes: Bamboo is a grass, like corn or sugar cane or sorghum, or the Arundo donax from which reeds for instruments are made, or the massive stands of Phragmitis that invade many wetlands. Before Rachel Carson wrote about DDT, she wrote about Spartina, the remarkable grass that dominates salt marshes. There's a bamboo native to North America--Arundinarea gigantea--which once formed expansive canebrakes in the southeast. Escaped slaves would hide in them. The native species mostly survives today in names like "Reed Creek" while the exotic bamboos dot the urban landscape. When I lived in North Carolina, I saw the native species only a few times in scraggly remnants. 

If you think about it, you've probably never seen bamboo flower. A grove of bamboo will live for many decades without flowering, then flower and produce seed en masse, just before dying. The vast amount of seed suddenly produced by the native cane must have overwhelmed the capacity of wildlife to consume it, though some sources suggest that two lost bird species--the carolina parakeet and the passenger pigeon--were able to make the most of these rare bursts of abundance. I saw a flowering and sudden dieback of exotic bamboo in Durham, NC once, when a patch covering a whole city block flowered and died. There are a lot of homeowners in Princeton who wish their bamboo would do the same.


Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Weekend Event: Raingarden Tutorial, Nature Walk and Veblen History/Mystery at Updike Farm Sat. 1-4pm


This Saturday, April 4, the Friends of Herrontown Woods heads across town to the southwest corner of Princeton to team up with the Historical Society of Princeton. We'll be presenting three different indoor/outdoor programs at the HSP home base: Updike Farmstead at 354 Quaker Road.




At 1pm, come learn the logic of siting a raingarden in your yard. How, for instance, could this air conditioning unit help a nearby raingarden survive droughts?


At 2pm, I'll report on the latest research on the Veblen House's history, and what we've discovered and rediscovered while restoring Herrontown Woods over the past few years.


And during a 3pm nature walk around the Updike Farmstead, you can check out progress on renovating the big barn, which HSP hopes to use for hosting events.

Here's the press release:

The themes of history and nature are featured in the special events offered at the Historical Society of Princeton’s April 4th Community Day at Updike Farmstead. Steve Hiltner, local naturalist, musician, writer and editor of the blog, Princeton Nature Notes, will lead three different programs to educate and inspire visitors.

At 1:00 PM -- Siting a Raingarden in Your Yard -- Raingardens are a popular, creek-friendly and attractive way to create habitat while filtering runoff from your house. Join a tour around the Updike farmhouse as Steve Hiltner discusses factors to consider when deciding where best to put a raingarden in your yard. Downspouts, sump pumps, air conditioners -- all will be discussed as potential sources of water to sustain a wildflower garden through droughts.

At 2:00 PM -- Preserving Oswald Veblen's Historic House and Legacy -- Oswald Veblen was a famous mathematician and visionary who was instrumental in bringing Einstein and the Institute for Advanced Study to Princeton. A "woodchopping professor,” he loved the woods, and founded Princeton's open space movement in 1957 by donating 100 acres for Herrontown Woods, Princeton's first nature preserve. He and his wife also donated their home and farmstead for a public purpose. A new nonprofit, the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW), is seeking to acquire and restore this unique, historic house, and realize Veblen's vision. FOHW's president and co-founder, Steve Hiltner, will talk about the passion, sweat-equity and serendipity that has made the restoration of Veblen's Herrontown Woods such a rewarding experience.

At 3:00 PM -- Tree and Wildflower Walk --Learn about plants on this informal walk around the Updike Farmstead grounds to learn about the stately trees and plants growing along the fence lines of the property, including the giant red mulberry tree that bears delicious berries in June.

All programs are included with $4 museum admission. Updike Farmstead is located at 354 Quaker Road, Princeton. For questions, contact Eve Mandel, Director of Programs and Visitor Services, at (609) 921-6748 x102 or eve@princetonhistory.org.


ABOUT THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PRINCETON – Founded in 1938, The Historical Society of Princeton (HSP) is a museum and research center dedicated to interpreting the history of Princeton, New Jersey. Home to a vast collection of artifacts, manuscripts and photographs, HSP offers a wide array of exhibitions, lectures and public programs each year to schools, adults and families at its two locations, Bainbridge House and the Updike Farmstead. Visit us at www.princetonhistory.org.

Monday, March 30, 2015

Upcoming Changes in Shade and Runoff at the Princeton Shopping Center Parking Lot

I was recently elected chair of the Princeton Shade Tree Commission. One of our first tasks this year is commenting on proposed changes to the Princeton Shopping Center's parking lot. Some existing trees will be removed and new ones planted as part of a reconfiguring of the parking and access lanes. Because we often aren't conscious of what trees we pass as we drive or bike around town, it's useful to document what's already there with photos. This post, then, is basically an inventory of what exists now, with a midway reflection on how we tend to be individually thoughtful but collectively thoughtless when it comes to the world we live in.


Along Harrison Street, there's a grove of pines and a long line of sycamores.

The southwest corner of the shopping center has three large, healthy locust trees and a few struggling weeping cherries.

One big honey locust stands near the old gas station, along with a dense hedge of winged euonymus--a non-native shrub that has invaded the local nature preserves.

Though the architectural drawings are hard to read, it looks like the tree slated for removal on the west side of McCaffery's is the struggling pine tree closest to the building.

This treeless zone along the west side will be redone.

Nearly all the existing "islands" in the parking lot are planted with red maples, a native bottomland species that is actually doing quite well here. Trees like red maples that are adapted to the low-oxygen conditions of wet ground often do well in parking lots and along streets, where the soils are low in oxygen due to compaction.

Though the whole parking lot needs a facelift and more shade, it's the backside that particularly needs a "revisioning". Trees growing under the powerline are getting hacked up. The one extending way out may look contorted, but at least it's providing some shade over the pavement.

One question is whether the islands could be redesigned to receive runoff from the pavement, thereby providing some water for the trees, and capture and filtration of at least a small portion of the massive stormwater runoff.

The shrubs lining the "lower east side" of the parking lot are full of trash.

In a way, this blight is a good sign, in that the plastic bags and other refuse are being prevented from heading down Harry's Brook into Carnegie Lake. If it were someone's job to clean up this mess periodically, this unintentional "filtration" of litter from the stormwater would help reduce plastics pollution of the watershed.

While I was taking these photos, drivers passing by were very polite and thoughtful, slowing down or stopping in case I was trying to cross the road. It's a good example of how people as individuals tend to be kind and generous, while we are at the same time collectively creating problems like all of this degradation of Harry's Brook via litter, pollution and flooding.


The parking lot is in one of the headwaters of Harry's Brook, and you can see that a lot of stormwater runoff (polluted with oil, heavy metals, salt, and whatever else is left behind by car culture) flows straight into the creek, completely unfiltered. The building roof and parking lot shed massive amounts of water during heavy rains, all of which charges down Harry's Brook, flooding residential neighborhoods before emptying into Carnegie Lake and continuing to the ocean. Princeton contributes to the pollution of the oceans like every other community. The shopping center was built before any stormwater controls were required.

The south side of the parking lot, bordering the back side of houses on Clearview, has a mix of trees growing along the fenceline.

And more islands with red maples provide a tiny bit of shade in the vast expanse of blacktop.

These islands will be removed and shifted to accommodate a change in traffic pattern, meaning that the existing trees will be toast. Figuring out what sorts of trees other than red maples can grow adequately in such a tough location has been a big question. Honey locusts are doing well elsewhere in the parking lot. Hackberries have been mentioned, and an Asian species, Zelkova.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

A Duck Gets a Taste of Spring


Our Pekin duck has been finding more reason to venture out of the coop this week. There's mud to probe with its beak, and the luxury of a bath in one of our backyard ponds swelled by snowmelt from neighbors' yards. She had no problem breaking through the thin layer of ice left by last night's freeze.

Earlier in the month, finding water in its liquid state was more of a challenge, as she took sips from the fillable-spillable minipond catching water from the roof.

She keeps a sharp eye out for hawks, turning her head to get a better look at the sky. Usually, that turn of the head means something's flying over, be it a vulture, crow, hawk, or a jet headed into Newark Airport.

Meanwhile, the duck's companion, a chicken of similar feather, was laying another robin's-egg-blue egg. We often get two a day now, as warmer temperatures and longer days have broken the winter drought.

Ducks and chickens made multiple appearances in movies this weekend at the Princeton Environmental Film Festival, particularly in the excellent documentary on permaculture, "Inhabit". The ducks were said to be excellent at keeping the slug population down on an outdoor shitake mushroom farm, and the chickens happily batted cleanup in one of the crop rotations, eating any seeds that eluded harvest.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Getting Kids Together With Nature

One theme on this last weekend of the Princeton Environmental Film Festival is how to bring nature back into children's lives on a more consistent basis. To understand what an extraordinary challenge this is, consider the story a teacher at a local daycare told me yesterday after one of the movies. The kids in the daycare were having ongoing fun playing in a mud puddle on the playground. They took delight in an earthworm and other creatures they found there. Then an inspector came and declared the puddle was a violation and had to be filled in. We think of accreditation as a comforting thing, and yet it comes at a price, paid by the kids themselves.

The film we had just seen was "School's Out: Lessons from a Forest Kindergarten", about a Swiss "wald" kindergarten that is completely outdoors, rain or shine, winter or spring. The kids adapt to the weather, play in the woods, make stuff, learn to get along. While the American school system keeps kids indoors and cuts back on recess in order to launch young kids into academics, the Swiss wait until age seven to begin formally teaching reading, writing and math. By age ten, according to the movie, the Swiss kids have caught up. The closest thing in Princeton to this approach would be the Waldorf School. Other schools represented in the audience were the Princeton Learning Cooperative, which is based next to Herrontown Woods in Princeton, and a new school that is evolving out of programming at Hopewell's community center, called Hope and Wellness.

The movie provides a vivid contrast between American indoor education and the forest kindergarten approach that is offered as an option in areas of Europe. The film's trailer provides a good sense of it. By focusing on active outdoor play and learning, kids develop a core of skills that serve them well through the rest of their lives. Gross motor skills become much better developed, kids learn how to get along and problem-solve, and see nature as a source of wonder rather than something alien to fear. The expensive playgrounds we construct begin to look sterile and impoverished compared to a woods with its endless variety of leaf litter, trees to climb, and creeks to explore.

Other related events at the library this weekend are a child-oriented presentation on raingardens that includes a reading of Jared Rosebaum's The Puddle Garden (sounds like something that would get playground inspectors nervous), and two showings of Project Wild Thing, an excellent movie about a father who decides to become nature's marketing agent.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Mark Johnson--Princeton's Animal Control Officer No More

Mark Johnson, who served as Princeton's animal control officer for more than twenty years, was recently offered a separation agreement by the municipality. Animal control services have been outsourced to Montgomery. The reason for the separation, according to articles at PlanetPrinceton.com, has nothing to do with his field work but instead with record keeping and his handling of rabies vaccines supplied by the state.

Other decisions about his employment remain shrouded in mystery, as far as I know. He was shifted from the health department to the police department a couple years ago for no clear reason, and within the last year or so I read that he was no longer allowed to make house calls to assist homeowners with animal control issues.

His house calls were a great service. My interactions with Mark were always positive. He helped us get raccoons out of the historic Veblen House attic, and his policy on keeping chickens in the backyard was a pragmatic one, allowing chickens (no roosters) as long as bordering neighbors approve. He was my go-to person for information on coyotes and other wildlife in Princeton. He also had to endure criticism coming from those who oppose Princeton's deer policy--a policy that, given that we long ago eliminated the natural predators necessary to control deer population, has greatly benefitted Princeton's forests, dramatically reduced car accidents, and insured a better balance between deer numbers and available habitat. His was not an easy job.



Monday, March 23, 2015

Shade Trees and Street Safety

I don't profess any blind adoration of trees. Though they provide summertime shade, coolness and beauty while absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, they also tend to steal sunlight from some of my favorite wildflowers and vegetable garden. But I just added another benefit of trees to the long list the other day while crossing Franklin Street in late afternoon. The crosswalk I was on was clearly marked, yet the car approaching from the east wasn't stopping. I pointed at the crosswalk markings with a touch of righteousness, as if to say "Puh-LEEZE! Don't you know cars are supposed to stop for pedestrians?" The driver stopped, and then I realized that he had been slow to see me because he was driving straight into the late afternoon sun.

Late winter and early spring can be a dangerous time to drive, because the sun is regaining prominence yet the trees haven't leafed out to shield us from the sun as it drops towards the horizon. With the time change, the low angling rays are in full force during morning school traffic, when streets near the high school become crowded with drivers rushing to drop off students and get to work on time. Streets become a little safer when the trees leaf out.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Monarch Update -- March, 2015

There's a drama going on right now, some 2000 miles south and west of here, that will affect our summer to come. Though we're still caught in snow, the monarchs are struggling to begin their journey north from their overwintering sanctuary in the mountains west of Mexico City. I say "struggling" because they were doused by two days of heavy winds and rains just when they would normally head north en masse.

Journey North on learner.org provides weekly updates that described bustling activity in the first half of March as the Monarchs flew in crowded masses on the forested slopes, then mated prior to beginning migration. Though last summer's ideal conditions allowed the population to rebound somewhat from the previous year's record low, numbers overwintering were still only a fifth of what is considered average--the whole eastern migratory population covering a mere three acres. This map shows how the monarchs are concentrated in El Rosario, the main tourist location, with the rest scattered at various other locations nearby.

With the passenger pigeon the stuff of legend, it's remarkable to live in a time when a species still masses in such numbers that a March 5 update can still say 
"The monarchs would come out of the trees each time that cumulus clouds covered the sun. They reached almost unbelievably dense numbers, flying out over the llanos. The trees were nearly emptied at such times. Literally every cubic foot of air held at least one monarch."
A report of "Massive mating..." comes on March 12. But the next week's report is less sanguine. By March 16, the leading edge of the migration typically crosses over the Rio Grande into Texas, but this year the departure has been delayed. A March 19 update reported that cold weather is delaying departure, and "Terrible weather at the sancturies" was reported on March 16, as heavy rains and strong winds plagued the sanctuary for two days straight.

Five decades ago, we didn't even know where the Monarchs overwinter. Only when things start to go wrong does one have to start figuring out how something works, whether it's a car engine, one's body, or a wondrous annual migration. What once was dispensed free of charge by a generous nature now might not survive without human intervention.

Working in local habitats, I've seen what nature can do when a restored balance unleashes the native growth energy. The Monarchs are one more example of the tremendous capacity of nature to thrive, if only we give it a chance.


Sunday, March 15, 2015

Climate Change Cabaret Launched On a Journey To a Magical Planet (Earth)

Friday the 13th was one wild and crazy night at the Princeton Public Library as the Climate Change Cabaret launched, if not into space, at least into the space better known as the Community Room.
Seven actors, a Princeton High School acappella group, a jazz pianist, and three singers bearing an uncanny resemblance to Doris Day filled the full house with wonder, joy and laughter--perhaps not the sort of response you'd expect from material dealing with climate change, but there it was.  

The evening began with a piece called Complaint Training, in which The Three Grouseketeers offered to provide instruction in how to rant higher, rant lower, rant longerrrrrr. Carbon made an appearance as a seductive renaissance atom with a dark side. A guy struggled to extract himself from his relationship with a car with an addiction. Mr. Sustainable found a joyous and gallant way to make peace both with his spouse and future generations, after a long-running thermostat war.


A Plan to solve our earthly problems arrived just when all seemed lost, sustainably wrapped in a cardboard box.


And for the singalong, Doris Day appeared in triplicate to lead a stirring rendition of "Que SoLAR, SoLAR, the future is ours you see, if only we're carbon free."

The actors who breathed life into the scripts, in alphabetical order, were John Abrams, James Degnen, Kim Dorman, myself, Cheryl Jones, Basha Parmet, and Eric Schroeder.

Landis Hackett led Princeton High School's Around Eight acappella group in sustainable versions of Turn (Out) the Lights and Thrift Shop, along with something I wrote called 99 Too Many Cars On the Road. Sustainable Princeton provided two of the three Doris Daze (my plural of Day, though I hear they're going to call themselves the SoLAR Sisters)--Christine Symington, Diane Landis, and Jeanne Devoe.

The sponsor of the event, the upcoming Princeton Environmental Film Festival 2015, known to many of us as PEFF, debuted its film festival trailer. And the Princeton Environmental Institute came through with a handy poster showing the stabilization wedges that might steer us away from a very risky course. I'd also like to thank Steve Gaissert and the actors he was able to summon for a first reading of the material this past January. Their encouragement and comments provided much needed momentum.

Thanks to all, and to PEFF's Susan Conlon and Kim Dorman, for their assistance and faith in this project.

First and third photos by Karla Cook and Susan Conlon.