Cleaning Yards AND the Street

What to do with the leaves? For years I've been encouraging people, with everything but bribes, to compost their leaves rather than dump them in the street. The Princeton Environmental Commission has long been advocating a "leave the leaves" approach. I'd like to think that people are listening, and telling their landscapers they don't want a mess on the street in front of their houses. But one can still get the feeling of Groundhog Day when walking down the street, with big pillowy piles of leaves rising in the same places year after year, forcing cars and bikes, and sometimes pedestrians, out into the middle of the road.

For some, loose leaf collection is a sign that their tax dollars are being spent on services. For me, it's a classic example of how a private problem is unnecessarily dumped into the public's domain. An example with more global consequence is what happens every time we drive, and every time the furnace kicks on. We as private citizens get the benefits, while the atmosphere and future people get the burden. I can't capture and reuse the CO2 slipping out of tailpipe and chimney, but I can easily compost leaves in a back corner. The pillowy massiveness of leaf piles is deceptive, easily tamed and compacted by the weight of rain and snow.

Recently while walking the dog, I happened to encounter three kindred spirits--formerly unknown neighbors who take pride in the look of the street in front of their homes. This woman on Stanley rakes up the leaves and adds them to a leafpile in a back corner. The leaf pile doesn't get oversized because the previous year's leaves have already returned to the soil.

By contrast, and much to her annoyance, a landscaper for a neighbor across and up the street dumps leaves, sticks, soil, whatever, next to her property, oblivious to regulations and scheduled pickups. It's essentially a compost pile in the street.

Another landscaper for a neighbor of her's, facing Hamilton Ave, decided one day to do a leaf drive across the road, blocking Hamilton when I happened to be driving by.

These folks have plenty of room in their yards for a leaf pile, but the landscapers instead direct the leaves into the street for the same reason so many other problematic things happen, because they can.

Here's another neighbor who extends his sense of aesthetics and responsibility to the curb. He was raking even though his doctor recommended against it. That shows how strong the urge can be.

And just up the street, another neighbor who rakes leaves out of the curb and puts them on a leaf pile in the back.

His pet peeve is all the leaves that blow into his yard from the big leaf piles nearby neighbors put out on the street.

Interestingly, two of these neighbors have foreign accents, suggesting they have brought with them an ethic of stewardship for public space that isn't as strong in the U.S.

Sometimes, leaf piles constrict the road in areas where visibility is limited, such as at Van Dyke and Grover.

And this is what bicyclists face, losing their bike lanes for much of the fall.

Using leaf bags, available free at Ace Hardware, can help.

Here's the classic problem in the downtown area, where leafpiles occupy parking spaces, and people are tempted to park on top of the leaves, with the risk that a hot catalytic converter could start a fire underneath the car.

It's estimated that leaf and brush collection costs the town somewhere between $500,000 and a million dollars per year. One way to shift towards more efficient, containerized collection and backyard composting would be to provide yardwaste carts to interested homeowners who live on busy streets, or where parking is important. These would augment the yardwaste bag collection, with more capacity and ease of use. The approach is spelled out at this link.  If given some incentive, homeowners who live where piling in the street is particularly inconvenient or perilous might gain the same ethic that my three neighbors have shown, and begin taking pride not only in their yards but their curbs as well.

In my own yard, I use several Wishing the Earth Wells, a homegrown invention that looks like a wishing well but composts leaves, with a critter-proof cylinder in the middle for food scraps. Add a leaf and make a wish. Some leaves remain on the ground in the flower beds, protecting the soil and providing cover for pollinating insects to overwinter. Nature works in cycles, and working with nature to maintain those cyclings of nutrients just happens to reduce my need for town services.

Once the urge to utilize rather than expel kicks in, all of this becomes second nature, a pleasure rather than a burden. It was heartening to meet kindred spirits in the neighborhood, people who are hardwired to value the public space in front of their homes, and not reject nature's gift of leaves.

Stone Sculpture Earthworks by Susan Hoenig

Earlier in the fall, when the spicebush was still thick with green, artist Susan Hoenig invited me to join one of several walks she led through Graeber Woods in nearby Franklin Township.

There she has fashioned an Ecological Sculpture Project, making rock sculptures patterned after the leaves of the tree that towers over each sculpture.

Photos on the project's facebook page show how the sculptures are dynamic, changing with the seasons as snow falls, or leaves and fruit gather between the rocks.

The sculptures become a way of focusing attention in the landscape, a frame that lends additional meaning to its contents, as Susan plucked a wild grape leaf from among the rocks and pointed out the pattern a leaf miner had made through its tissues.

Graeber Woods lends itself well to the project, with tree species seeming to cluster--a grove of tulip poplars here, a gathering of black walnuts there. Beneath much of it is a lush growth of spicebush, with leaves that give off a citrony smell when crushed.

Susan Hoenig's website describes her many works, in lands near and far, and in various media. I think of her work as exploring the connections between inner and outer nature. She describes her process this way:

"In my paintings I explore the union between my inner self and the birds that I observe. I feel the fragility and plight of a bird’s life that is so vulnerable, so exquisitely beautiful. In nature I study theirprofile, the shape of the head, the bill and markings. I become one with the bird, then I paint their portrait."

For me, understanding nature involves an integration of science and art, for nature is the ultimate artist, with each day bringing new creations in infinite shape and mood, from microscopic to universal in scale. We are forever nature's apprentice, seeking to emulate, work with, understand, and to some degree restore, given how nature's endless generosity has been exploited and abused.

GRAEBER WOODS

Below is info on the Bunker Hill Natural Area and its Environmental Education Center. I was told that the education center has been dormant since the Franklin Township Public Schools had to make some funding cuts, but there's still contact info on the school website. There's also a frisbee golf course there, which appears functional, and a caretaker's residence.

The entrance to Graeber Woods is at 287 Bunker Hill Rd.

Frisbee golf!

Caretaker's residence.

Autumn Color in Herrontown Woods

Autumn color this year has come not as a resounding chorus but as solo voices scattered through the woods. Here are hickory leaves, golden against the sun,

a particularly rich burgundy in a mapleleaf Viburnum,

big plates of yellow-green in a basswood tree. Tilia americanas tend to be loners in the woods. On a walk, one may see hundreds of beech or oak, but only two or three basswoods.

A beech with leaves as bronze as its buds.

An elm, growing in a wet drainage, has what looks and functions like a buttress on a cathedral

Someone could do a study of the physics of rock walls in Herrontown Woods, to determine what stacking techniques endure longer than others.

Call this a puzzle rock, because it looks to be assembled like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

This rock wall extending through the woods looks more like a series of interesting specimens lined up, rather than a real wall.

Tree roots develop an intimacy with boulders, and sometimes take them along for the ride when the tree topples.

Looks like a small woodpecker, maybe a downy, got ambushed. (Thanks to Fairfax for help with ID.)

Trees tell a long story of life that only gets more interesting after they've died. People can be like that, too.

Humans tend to flatten the world, but in Herrontown Woods, diversity prospers on the native unevenness of ground. Lacking a probe, it was hard to tell if these mounds of moss, like islands in a sea of leaves, are perched on stumps or boulders.

A clustering of turkey tail mushrooms in the shape of New Jersey.

Leaf Stacking Tutorial

A seasonal repost from years back. Still fun to watch. Before there were leaf blowers, there were rakes, and before there were rakes, there was leaf stacking. In this video, stack-master Perry Sugg demonstrates the traditional method of leaf stacking passed down through the generations in his home town of Princeton, North Carolina. Stacked leaves can be carried by hand, without the need of implements, tarps, or containers of any kind. In 2008, Perry traveled north to Princeton, New Jersey, to bring hope and empowerment to a people worn down by the drone of leaf blowers. He is ably assisted by Sofia, Maya, Anna, and that spunky cairn-poo Leo.

For those in a hurry, skip to 1:10 in the video for the demonstration.

"Viva la leaf stacker! Down with the leaf blower!"

An internet search for "leaf stacking" yielded this completely different form, a game played by two to build a leaf mountainette one leaf at a time. Poetic and vaguely Bergmanesque.

Cobalt Crust--Unexpected Color in the Woods

It's ridiculously easy to get information on the web now. Type "blue fungus" into a search engine and boom, similar-looking photos pop up with a name--Cobalt Crust, Terana caerulea--and a charming description. It says the fungus grows on the underside of fallen branches, which is why we don't see this brilliant blue during a walk in the woods. This stick must have gotten turned over during our workday yesterday next to the Herrontown Woods parking lot.  

Deer Hunting Info for Fall, 2017

If you've noticed more deer this year, it's partly due to this past winter's deer hunt not having gone so well. Princeton began hiring professionals to cull the deer herd back in 2000. Though subject to passionate protests at first, the program has proven to be the only way to restore some ecological balance, given that natural deer predators were long ago eliminated from our area. The benefits of the program are described in a 2011 piece I wrote for the Princeton Packet.

Deer greatly reduce homeowners' options for landscaping, but their biggest impact is on nature preserves, where they preferentially consume native plant species. Over time, invasive nonnative plants take over, creating a forest understory largely inedible for deer. Reducing deer numbers reduces the browsing pressure on native plants, allowing them to compete more effectively with the invasives, thereby creating better habitat for all the wildlife that depend on native plants, including deer. A 2012 post on the revival of spicebush in our forests is representative.

Town data maintained by the animal control officer shows the dramatic rise in deer numbers from 1970 to 2000, and how annual professional hunting dramatically reduced deer numbers and related traffic accidents. By keeping the deer herd smaller, the town has actually cut in half the overall number of deer killed each year by hunting and cars. Bow hunting alone is insufficient to control deer numbers, as the town discovered when it tried going without the services of the professional firm, White Buffalo, in 2011. The cost is around $60,000, which begins to sound like a good deal when one considers the reduced auto accidents, potential for reduced incidence of Lyme, and the reduced browsing pressure on nature preserves and homeowners' yards. The venison is delivered to food kitchens.

Annual bow hunting, as the flyer below explains, began October 7 and continues through Feb. 17, 2018. Bow hunting is done by volunteers who, I believe, are vetted and their efforts coordinated. No bow hunting is allowed on Sundays and between 9am and 3pm on Saturdays.

This past winter, professional hunters began culling in mid-February, but unusually warm weather greatly reduced their effectiveness, since the deer were not concentrating the way they do in colder weather. White Buffalo was only able to cull 63 deer--half the number culled the previous year, which in turn was half the number culled in 2015. The hunt was further hampered by the lack of an Animal Control Officer, who would normally assist in various ways.

Thanks to Princeton council member Heather Howard and assistant town manager Jeffrey Grosser for some of the information used here.

Changes Coming to Snowden Lane

Snowden Lane has long had a sleepy, rural look on the way out to Herrontown Woods and Smoyer Park. Due to a new development and another one in the wings, that's all changing.

Though it's unfortunate to lose the maples that lined the road, they are making way for a bikeway along one of the more dangerous stretches, as part of a development on 14 acres across from Smoyer Park.

The Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW) has been very active over several years to minimize the impact this seven house development will have on the landscape. In return for being allowed to build an extra house, and in response to feedback from the Princeton Environmental Commission, the Shade Tree Commission, and FOHW, the developer agreed to cluster the houses so that 7.5 acres of open space would be preserved. The 7.5 acres back onto Herrontown Woods. Fortunately the developer offered to donate the land to Princeton, and the Friends of Herrontown Woods then worked hard to convince the town to accept the gift.

A detention basin will be built in this spot, to catch and slow down runoff from the development. At FOHW's request, the developer has agreed to plant the basin in native meadow rather than turf grass, which should have all sorts of advantages, including less mowing for the homeowners association.

A public trail will be built from the development down to connect with the trail system in Herrontown Woods. Legal protection of the land does not necessarily mean the land is safe from threats. FOHW is also working with a neighboring homeowner to combat a 2 acre clone of wisteria vine that has been killing trees in the 7.5 acre woodland.

Meanwhile, just down the street, another housing development has long been in the works. FOHW contacted the developer to see if he'd be willing to cluster his houses as well, but it appears the developer is going to stick with a standard plan approved years back.

Riffing on Wetlands at Princeton High School

This is one of the merry crowds of environmental science students who came outside to hear me riff on wetlands while standing firmly planted in that wonderful mud. Princeton High School's ecolab wetland is blessed with an upscale metal fence around it to lean and learn on while gazing down at all the native plants, crayfish, and other life. While sounds of jazz drifted over from the performing arts wing, I described the ecolab's beginnings in 2006, and how being in a band had helped me learn the basics of bringing people together to make something beautiful, applicable to all community initiatives.

Inbetween classes, there was time to photograph the contrast of seedheads and leaves on a buttonbush,

and the abundant seed clusters of boneset and Joe-Pye-Weed.

Teacher Jim Smirk explained how the school's sump pump provides a consistent supply of water from the basement, kicking on every 15 minutes or so, even during droughts. Without that hydrologic stability, many of the wetland's species would die out, leaving only those plants that can withstand extremes of wet and dry.

The rich balance of native species requires periodic intervention to weed out the more aggressive types that would otherwise take over, particularly willow and cattail. There's a great crop of Hibiscus seeds (black salt-shaker-like capsules in the photo) because students pulled out cattail this spring that would otherwise have overshadowed the Hibiscus.

I explained that, without this sort of followup by people who know which plants to leave and which to pull, native plantings can become overrun by a few aggressive species, which can then lead to a decision to mow it all down and return the area to lawn. A native planting is dynamic and evolving, requiring an ongoing care relationship that goes far beyond the static "mow, blow, and go" custodial approach that gives us the tidy but monotonous urban landscape of trees and turf.

The ecolab wetland has worked out so well over the years that Mr. Smirk and his students want to collaborate with me and others to plant two additional detention basins at the school. All in all, a fun day of talking to the kids about a favorite topic.

What's Not To Like?

A native vine shows its pretty fall foliage on a snag next to the parking lot.

Radiant colors, a feast for the eye,

and berries for the birds!

What's not to like?




Hint: Leaves of three.

A Spider Seeks To Catch the Sun

One evening, when the sun was dipping low, an ambitious spider thought to itself, "What if my web could catch the sun, and I could live upon its energy for all my days?

It tried from top and tried from bottom, but the slippery sun slipped, slipped, down and away.

Another spider, across the windswept bridge, saw the moon and thought, "What if I could catch the moon in my web, and feast upon its dreams? What a beautiful life it would be."

It tried from top and tried from bottom, and thought for a moment to have captured a lifetime of wondrous moonlight. But the moon climbed higher, higher and away.

Even the moon's reflection stayed stuck upon the glassy water.

Then another spider, having to cast its net like an airborne fisherman, looking down as the lake looked back, said to all the others, "Let us leave the sun and moon to their risings and fallings, and catch instead the bugs, who catch their energy from the plants, who catch the sunlight from the sun, and we shall feast upon the sun's energy for all our days."

And so it came to be, that the spiders lived in their village stretched across the water, catching bugs and summer sunsets, and moonlit dreams, while cars sped by, seeing nothing.

Afterthought: I didn't think about it at the time, but photographing the sun, even when close to the horizon, may not be the best idea. Even if I was only looking at the sun's image in the iPhone, not the sun itself, that's some pretty intense light. Keeping my eyes flitting about, not resting the gaze, surely helped. Lots on the web about this, due to the recent eclipse. Apparently the sun isn't bad for the iPhone, especially at sunset, but I wonder about the intensity of the image on the screen, and articles especially warn against using selfie mode with the sun because of the reflection of radiation off the iPhone onto one's eyes. Fortunately, I kept the camera pointed at nature rather than self, and it seems like no damage was done.