Chickens Star at Littlebrook Science Day

Our four chickens emerged from the box yesterday morning with the realization that they weren't in the backyard anymore. This was new territory, the courtyard of Littlebrook Elementary, and they were about to bring the joys of their charismatic chickenhood to a steady stream of 5-12 year olds as part of Science Day. Each year, Littlebrook has parents and others in the community come on Science Day to share their scientific knowledge with the students in 20 minute bursts at stations located all over the school.

On a day graced by gorgeous weather, the kids came to the courtyard to hear the story of how my daughter, a Littlebrook grad years back, had come home one day from middle school wanting to get chickens. Her parents were not exactly thrilled with the idea. My one experience with caring for birds had been an ill-fated attempt, as a kid, to save an injured robin. I had concluded that birds were mysterious creatures whose needs I could never understand nor provide for other than through restoring habitat. My daughter persisted, however, and we finally made a springtime trip out to Rosedale Mills to buy two-week old Araucana chicks.

After graduating from bathtub to backyard and quickly growing to adulthood, they started laying eggs in the fall. Over the ensuing four years, the chickens have proven to be wonderful, healthy, resourceful, even soulful "pets-with-benefits", requiring little more than food, water, and a homemade coop to provide shelter at night. This year, they and the resident duck have been discovered by neighborhood kids, who peer at them through the fence from little Potts Park on Tee-Ar Street just behind our house. The trip to Littlebrook was their first road gig.

After the kids had spent some time following the chickens around the courtyard, we regathered at the table to look at the unusual colors of the Araucana's "Easter Eggs", and see how one can roughly tell the age of an egg. If it drops to the bottom of a pan of water and lays flat, it's fresh. If it stand upright, with one end lighter than the other, then it's been around for awhile. Liquid slowly escapes through the shell over time, to be replaced by air that makes the egg more buoyant. The older eggs are good for hard-boiling, since the air inside makes them easier to peel.

Occasional breaks offered some time to botanize in the well-kept courtyard, which is used for art classes and growing food and native plants. One special native is the native strawberry bush (Euonymus americana), which is so loved by deer it can only grow large and full like this in protected yards in town.

Like the nonnative winged Euonymus, which the deer don't much like and so out-competes the natives in our preserves, the native has barely noticeable flowers. The "strawberries" come later, in the form of bright red, ornamental seeds that give the native shrub the name "hearts a' bustin'". At some point, when nature's checks and balances are restored and our forests come back into more ecological balance, the native Euonymus will thrive once again in our woodlands. Until then, backyards and school courtyards make a fine refuge.

There was considerable uncertainty as to how we'd get the chickens back into the box at the end of the day. When the last class departed, some chicken chasing ensued. One proved very hard to catch, as it would dart away and flap its wings at the very instant we tried to wrap our hands around it. Students watched from their classrooms, highly amused as three of us chased the chicken around the courtyard, clearly outmatched by this speedy descendant of dinosaurs. Good thing that I had planted this patch of raspberries years back as a Littlebrook parent volunteer. We managed to corral the chicken in the raspberry patch, where the foliage was dense enough that the chicken could not see my hands descending from above.

Have to say how good it felt to be back at Littlebrook, where principal Annie Kosek has cultivated over the years a wonderful staff and spirit of learning. Martha Friend, whose depth of caring extends beyond the school and into the community, teaches science, and Jenny Ludmer and all the other Science Day organizers had everything running smoothly. Thanks to Jenny's son, who has chickens at home, for providing critical assistance with the end of the day roundup.

Those Tiny Household Ants

An exterminator stopped by a friend's house while I was there, and identified the tiny ants that occasionally show up in the kitchen and elsewhere as "odorous house ants". He had a couple syringes with gel, applied some in an out of the way place along the ants' pathway, and quickly departed.

Two years ago, the ants were so numerous in our house that we thought they'd soon take over the whole world. Last year, there were few, requiring little or no action.

A couple previous posts describe the options. After trying borax-based products, we settled on a gel endearingly called Combat Source Kill Max, available at the local hardware store. Only tiny amounts are needed, placed along the path of the ants. They seem to gobble it all up, leaving no residual. Haven't needed to use it this year as yet. Maybe the ants have grown content with the great outdoors.

A Misty Walk Through Herrontown Woods

Last Saturday, towards the end of a rainy patch of weather, Herrontown Woods offered a special mix of solitude, surprise, promise and peace. An early surprise along the trail was a native azalea. What might this one solitary azalea, with a grand total of three clusters of flowers, tell of what these woods once held, and could there be others surviving in pockets yet unfound?

Near the parking lot, a vernal pool--one of many generous legacies a fallen tree leaves behind--was alive with the tadpoles of woodfrogs.

While the rainy week was not getting good reviews in town, Herrontown Woods was patiently taking it all in, filling its ground full of water, to be slowly exhaled through a rock-jumbled stream, no rock the same in the patterns of life upon it.

Witch hazels and christmas ferns grow just up-slope of the stream, with vistas lengthened by the habitat restoration work our Friends of Herrontown Woods volunteers have done.

Spicebush is growing more common, with leaves that give off a citrusy fragrance.

Now's a good time to see wild geraniums,

and the last of the rue anemone flowers.

Maybe if carrion flower (Smilax herbacea) had a more flattering name, I'd remember it more reliably.

Here are the wings and flowers on winged euonymus, a very numerous nonnative shrub we've been cutting down. In this regard, we play a role complementary to the deer, exerting browsing pressure on the nonnative species the deer won't eat.

In the case of winged euonymus and multiflora rose, the deer then follow up by nibbling the tender sprouts from the stumps we leave behind. With these two shrub species, at least, we can actually partner with the deer to bring the habitat back to greater balance and diversity.

The greatest delight came while crossing a large boulder field near the top of the trail. It's a miniature version of what can be found in the Sourlands, where a stream flows largely hidden, through and under the boulders, making music the way we make music by exhaling into an instrument.

In some places, there was an uncanny stereo effect, with the sound of water coming from multiple directions. Returning three days later, the music was gone, as if the woods' breath were spent until it can be recharged by another week of rain.

Moonseed's a cool little vine that seems only to grow among large boulders along the ridge, at Herrontown Woods and Witherspoon Woods.

A cherry millipede, giving off a maraschino scent when you pick it up, finds a home in the leaf litter.

One of the quiet, distinctive beauties of Herrontown Woods is the showy orchis, growing in only one spot and not found anywhere else along Princeton's ridge. Botanists Henry and Betty Horn tell the story of photographers making a pilgrimage each spring in years back. One thing our Friends of Herrontown Woods group is doing to hopefully allow this small population to grow stronger is removing the nonnative shrubs whose biological clocks, evolved elsewhere, cause them to green up too early in the spring, casting shade before the orchids have had a chance to absorb enough solar energy for the next year.

Far more numerous is Smilacina racemosa, what we used to call "False Solomon's Seal", because it's easily mistaken for Solomon's Seal. Note the terminal flower cluster, which makes Solomon's Plume a useful way to name it for something other than what it is not.

Solomon's Seal is called Polygonatum biflorum because it has a couple flowers at each leaf axil, rather than at the end. Even latin can make sense sometimes.

Other wildflowers peeping up through the leaves are wood anemone and trout lily, their flowers past,

mayapple

pink wood sorrel,

and jack-in-the-pulpit. Three of these grew near my childhood home, their hoods an object of early fascination.

Maple-leaf Viburnum seedlings and bloodroot rise above the natural mulch of leaves protecting the soil.

There's a heartening diversity of native shrubs in the understory. To the blackhaw Viburnums and spicebush common elsewhere are added the maple-leaf Viburnum,

and occasional blueberries (the Kramer inventory from the 1960s lists four species of Vaccinium).

Among the thousands of nonnative winged euonymus are a grand total of two native Euonymus americana, sometimes called strawberry bush or hearts-a-burstin, that somehow grew tall enough to elude the deer, who seem to prefer munching on this shrub above all others. They keep the rest of this shrub's population in a state of arrested development, several inches high. With some protection, those too could grow to maturity.

Either a new discovery or an old forgotten discovery was a dogwood that doesn't have the cobbled bark. Digging back into the memory banks, I checked the branching--alternate rather than the flowering dogwood's opposite branching. Alternate-leaved dogwood! And not one but two found during the walk. For someone wanting to see Princeton's preserves regain a past diversity, these warmed the heart.

And then a mystery shrub, a Viburnum with reddish tint and red petioles. Also two found, but its name not to be found in any past inventories.

Note: This has been identified as Tea Viburnum.

Other sites seen: a musclewood secure in its height, feeding the deer with its stump sprouts.

We've done enough researching of his papers at the Library of Congress to know that Oswald Veblen, who with his wife Elizabeth donated land for Herrontown Woods in 1957, was not happy about the gas pipeline being built. As you can see, it's become a monocrop of mugwort.

One curious, bristly nonnative is the Japanese angelica, which looks very similar to the native Devil's Walking Stick. We've been "browsing" this one, too, since the deer do not.

Last stop was the Veblen House grounds, where the Friends of Herrontown Woods has planted native hazelnuts, pawpaws, and a few of these butternuts--a tree with edible nuts that we're helping local expert Bill Sachs to reestablish in Princeton's preserves.

More info about Herrontown Woods and the generous legacy left behind by the Veblens can be found at VeblenHouse.org, including a map. Join us on facebook at facebook.com/friendsofherrontownwoods.

Losing Control of the Lawn

Most everyone has at least a little lawn, pleasant to walk upon, setting off the shrubs, or simply a default means of dealing with that rectangle of nature a homeowner inherits with the house. Collectively, lawns are a show of cultural unity in the form of a vast expression of control and uniformity, with growth kept within strict limits, each grass blade the same height. Oftentimes, the uniformity is enforced by noisy, machine-laden coiffeurs, akin to paramilitary outfits that land and deploy, then hasten away when the mission of growth-control has been achieved.

Early in spring, where chemicals aren't used, there can be small rebellions here and there in the lawn, instigated by the "early risers", e.g. assertive wild garlic, or star-of-bethlehem, forming an effect I call "lawn blotch". When the grass starts to catch up, there's a peaceful week or two of quiet conformity, the green spotted with the pleasant yellow of dandelion blossoms. And then, lulled by spring into reverie, proud of our environmental high road of chemical free lawn care, we wake up to the white, seedy roar of the dandelion, going rogue, letting its freak-flag fly, rocking the sea of green with its passion for propagation.

The photo, taken a week ago, is of my neighbor's lawn, a rental, but mine was "hearing the roar" as well. There may be approaches to organic lawn care that minimize the dandelions, but for most of us who do nothing beyond periodic mowing, the dandelions hold reign for a couple weeks each spring. The sense of losing control, though, is temporary, and though it may add to the number of dandelion seeds parachuting in to other yards, it has no ramifications for natural areas. Maybe the deer eat them, but for whatever reason, dandelions pose no threat to our stream corridors or nature preserves that I've noticed.

This contrasts with an introduced species like lesser celandine, whose rapid spread not only triggers feelings of having lost control of one's yard, but also threatens transformation of nearby preserved lands.

Tree Seedlings Everywhere, But Not a Street Tree To Plant

There's irony to be savored, or puzzled at, while pulling out the hundreds of trees sprouting through the woodchip mulch in my yard. The tradition of Arbor Day, which slipped past this year on April 29, is to encourage people to plant trees. Free trees are distributed, often spruce seedlings--a species more likely to be found growing naturally in cooler latitudes. Planting a tree is often mentioned as a small, partly symbolic but meaningful way to counter global warming. While serving on the Shade Tree Commission, I did some math and figured out that the 50-100 street trees being planted in Princeton were not even coming close to replacing the 250 trees being lost each year. The 2-3" caliper trees deemed most likely to survive and prosper cost $250 each, eating up the budget.

Clearly, there's a perceived and sometimes real need to nurture trees, and there's pleasure in watching a tree, planted in the right spot, grow with deceptive speed towards towering heights. What, then, to make, in meaning and utility, of these hundreds of red oak seedlings rising from the earth each spring?

Or the elm seeds that carpet the patio,

filling the drain,

and making an improbably lightweight but effective dam that needs to be cleared for our low-budget drainage to work. Thousands, perhaps millions, of achenes will soon follow, spinning earthward from the maples--red, silver and sugar--adding another layer of trees-to-be, and trees-to-be-pulled.

Those Arbor Day tree giveaways are a tradition that likely dates back to early in the past century, as fields slowly shifted back to forest. Now, with reforestation long since accomplished, trees in this neighborhood, at least, hardly need our help. When it comes to reproduction, they don't fool around, which is to say, fooling around is what they're doing a whole lot of.

The issue is more a matter of how to get the right tree growing in the right place. There is no lack of gaps in the street canopy to fill, no lack of parking lots where cars bake in the summer sun for lack of shade. And no lack of trees, free for the transplanting. There's also no lack of logistical issues--getting permission to plant them, hemming and hawing about which species would be best, watering the first year and protection for a few years after that, and so forth. Meanwhile, the trees are showing us how its done, on their own. So simple, and yet so much conspires to keep our world just as it is, filled with persistent problems side by side with an abundance of solutions. If future generations can find sustenance in irony, they will surely prosper.

University Students Experience Mountain Lakes

Two weeks have flown since co-leading, with local writer and historian Clifford Zink, a tour of Mountain Lakes for a group of Princeton University students. All are taking a course taught by history professor Vera Candiani, who passionately believes that students need to break out of the academic bubble of campus and get acquainted with the world around them. Much of the university's emphasis in this regard has been to encourage students to study and experience distant continents. But Vera believes there is also a great deal to discover and perspective to be gained just a short walk or ride from campus.

On the premise that we leave our human legacy primarily through our "actions on matter", her students are learning to "'read' the material and landscape record that our species’ interaction with nature over time created."

"Actions on matter" at Mountain Lakes could include the double-walled ice houses built to store ice harvested from the lakes in the early decades of the 20th century. Or the pastures and plowed fields that had such a big impact on what plants grow there now, long after the fields grew up in trees.

While Clifford spoke about the dams and their restoration, I introduced the students to the aromas of spicebush and eastern red cedar, and explained how to crack the color codes of spring. A quick survey of red maples in the forest can be done by looking for the red hue they cast in spring, and woody species that evolved on other continents and climates can often be spotted as they green up earlier than most native shrubs and trees. This early greening can impact other species by preventing the spring ephemeral wildflowers beneath them from collecting enough solar energy to prepare for the following year. What looks like lush, healthy green, then, may actually be throwing a wrench in the ecological functioning of the landscape.

The students learned also to "read" the history of deer management in the growth pattern of a spicebush. I explained how the spicebush, now thriving in the preserve, had just 15 years ago been barely hanging on, as heavy deer browsing pressure prevented any new sprouts from growing up. Many spicebush shrubs held on through that era with only one stem high enough to escape the deer. When the town took action to fill the vital role of the absent wolves and other predators, by culling the deer, the spicebush were able to grow multiple stems up and beyond the reach of the deer. With these new "solar panels" in place, the shrubs quickly abandoned the old one--a once precious lifeline that was no longer needed. The photo shows one of those "heroic" old stems still standing in the middle of all the new ones.

A spigot sticking up in a floodplain meadow near Mountain Lake House hints at the prior existence of an olympic-sized pool, once used by the high school swim team for practices. Back when I worked for Friends of Princeton Open Space, we'd plant Hibiscus and other wildflowers in that field, finding shards of ornamental tile as we dug holes for the new plants.

Like pages torn out of what once was an epic poem, we saw a few scattered wildflowers--a trout lily near the path, or a Solomon's Seal hidden beneath a thick patch of winged euonymus. Call it a first step on a long return from the disruptions of the agricultural era a century ago. Though the students saw lots of areas where past plowing and pastures erased the native diversity, they also got to see the few spots that had somehow escaped those historic impacts, where otherwise rare species and lush native herbaceous growth has survived and prospered.

There was a pop quiz midway through to test the students' reading abilities. As Woody Guthrie says about a sign, "On the back side, it didn't say nothing."

Whenever I see the upper dam, I think of Clifford's insistence that the stone masons restore the dam's spillway to be as level as possible, so that water would spill evenly across its length.

It was a gorgeous day in a beautiful local preserve, with bright, inquisitive students who opened up to the peacefulness of the setting and all the stories it had to tell of past, present, and future, less than a mile from campus.

One idea Professor Candiani has, for expanding this connection of university students to the locale they call home for four years, is to make field trips like this a required part of the freshmen class's orientation, so that students can get to know each other and their new community at the same time.