More Bear Sightings in Princeton

Princeton has no resident black bears, but they do occasionally wander through in the summer. There were some sightings beginning Aug. 11 near the old Butler tract, then August 13 in the Herrontown Woods area of northeastern Princeton, then other sightings through August 18 down along the Stony Brook.

The wisdom of a comic description I've posted in the past detailing how Princetonians should behave when encountering a black bear is confirmed in a recent article by the Town Topics. 

Black bears, particularly young males, are motivated to seek out new territory in the summer. One online source describes how young bears stay with their mothers for about 18 months, then are shooed away when the mother receives the persistent interest of an adult male, commencing another cycle of reproduction. 

Each bear must establish a home range. Female bears often share their ranges with their female offspring, but the young males must find new territory. That search sometimes includes Princeton. To get a sense of what the young male bears are looking for, Princeton is roughly 18 square miles, which is on the small side for a male bear's home range. Though we have a lot of open space, the habitat isn't enough to sustain a bear. Thus the brief visits in summer.

There is considerable solitude in the 20 plus years of a bear's life. The females have the recurring company of their offspring for 18 months at a stretch, but adult males spend their time alone except for a periodic few days' courtship with a female.

The Evolution of the Front Lawn in Ann Arbor, MI

Back when I was writing and performing climate theater, it was a very useful exercise to view things like the earth or the economy as characters. Upon reflecting on what sort of character a front lawn might be, I realized that the expanse of mowed grass is much like a trophy wife for the House. Expected to be well manicured, passive and forever young, the front lawn serves no other purpose than to present a flattering view of the House to the public. In return for its submissiveness, the front lawn is allowed, and in fact expected, to remain perpetually idle. Any shift away from bland formality, such as a wildflower meadow or, heaven forbid, a vegetable garden, would be unbecoming and steal attention away from the House. It seemed to me the front lawn could benefit from a good turf therapist who could help her sort through how she ended up in such a one-way relationship, and from that developed a monologue called Turf Therapy. 

It's easy to knock suburban culture's striving for a sterile deep green conformity, and the chemical dependency and noxious lawn equipment that keeps it propped up. But most homeowners find themselves completely unprepared to own land, and the myriad kinds of plants that grow upon it. No surprise, then, that people try to turn the outdoors into as simple a landscape as possible, essentially an extension of the indoors. A lawn is the equivalent of a wall-to-wall carpet. 

In our era, the expansion of the suburban lawn has coincided with a shrinkage in knowledge of plants. Each generation sprouts more distant from ancestors who farmed or foraged. And how many schools teach children to identify even the most common trees? 

It's a brave homeowner, then, who dares take a shovel to the front lawn, bucking conformity to plant something more colorful, beneficial, and interesting. Usually, the change is wrought incrementally, expanding flowerbeds a little at a time. 

While most plantings tend to hug the edges and stick close to the house, in this yard a Salvia is boldly asserting itself right out in the middle of the yard.

Just down this street, which happens to be called Easy Street, someone dug a raingarden that catches water piped to it from the roof. They used the dirt dug out of the hole to build a berm on the downhill side, expanding the hole's capacity. The wildflowers feed the pollinators while the signs feed passersby with ideas, like Public Power, in which a town takes ownership of its electricity and moves rapidly towards 100% renewable energy.

A neighbor further down has converted even more of the yard to raingarden, and added a sign from the local watershed association: "Rain Garden: Improving wildlife habitat and water quality in the Huron River one garden at a time." This is a nice sentiment that all too often remains on the fringe, but in this neighborhood it has caught on.

Next door is a vegetable garden in the front yard. It's starting to look like the trophy wife has decided to pursue a life of her own. Any House with an ego is going to be really upset.

This homeowner, a friend of mine named Jeannine, has nurtured a burr oak savanna habitat in her front yard, with an understory of trilliums, plus black cohosh in its full mid-summer bloom. The House? Well, it's back there somewhere, having to accept that yards like to express themselves and have meaningful lives, too. 

Interestingly, some of her bur oaks are getting tall enough to start interfering with the solar panels on their garage. She has started managing her front yard forest, removing larger trees while keeping smaller ones not tall enough to shade the panels. It's a way of having your trees and panels, too. Each tree removed leaves a legacy of roots--a network of carbon consumed from the air and injected into the ground.

Even in more upscale neighborhoods, where homeowners can afford to hire landscapers, many yards are cared for by crews that carefully weed the wildflower meadows, displacing the noisy custodial crews that "mow, blow, and go." What a pleasure to bicycle through a lovely neighborhood with colorful, botanically interesting yards and a delicious quiet. Machines to suppress vegetation are replaced by skilled intervention to steer vegetation. All week in Ann Arbor, the neighborhoods were remarkably quiet. I looked online for information about bans on leaf blowers, and could only find a ban on 2-cycle lawn equipment in the city's downtown, passed in 2019.

The shift from lawn to meadow in many yards was surely inspired in part by the work of Jeannine Palms, who with her preschool kids, neighbors and town staff have carved native wet meadows into what had been a vast expanse of turfgrass in nearby Buhr Park. 

Their meadows have many of the same wildflowers we have in Princeton, with some differences. The photo shows gray-headed coneflower, which is close in appearance to our cutleaf coneflower. And they have additional kinds of Silphium (rosinweed, prairie dock, compass plant), and a grass called smooth cordgrass. 

More recently, Jeannine has led a volunteer effort to shift even more of the park away from turfgrass, in this case to create a food forest packed with grapes, apples, pears, elderberry, pawpaw, currants, raspberries, strawberries, fennel, and a "three sisters" planting of corn, beans and squash. 

Here's an effort to grow sweet potatoes, not only for the tubers but also for the leaves, which are delicious. Fabric is spread on the ground to suppress weeds, and fencing suspended above to deter the deer. 

The story of this heroic transformation is told in a sign posted next to the first wet meadows. In the process, they have brought diverse, edible life back to the land and the neighborhood. 

What's Bloomin' in the Barden -- Early July

An effort to document everything flowering in the Botanical Art Garden at Herrontown Woods on one day in June (the 26th):

Black-eyed Susan in the Veblen Circle surrounding the gazebo.

Beebalm

Fringed loosestrife is a shy native wildflower, pointed downwards, but is not shy about spreading.

This is looking like white avens, a native that's also looking pretty shy. We tend to think of it as a weed, because it isn't very ornamental and makes burrs that stick to clothing.

The tiny flowers of tall meadowrue make clouds of white in the Barden, sometimes rising to ten feet. I've found it growing wild in Princeton in only a couple places, but it grows well in a garden.

A few sundrops are hanging on, with their x-shaped stigma. This is an easy flower to grow, spreading a little but not too much.

Narrow-leaved mountain mint is a native wildflower that appeared spontaneously in the Barden. It's a fairly common wildflower of meadows in the Princeton area.

Daisy fleabane was blooming weeks ago and is still at it. There are two species.

The untoothed leaves suggest it is Erigeron strigosus. 

Common milkweed has spread rapidly at the Barden. I just met some Herrontown neighbors who grow milkweed, and their kids have already found two Monarch caterpillars that they adopted and grew into butterflies.

If black cohosh is blooming in the Barden, that means it will soon be blooming in the woods up on the ridge as well. 

Some nonnatives are St. Johnswort,

moth mullein,

 (moth mullein's distinctive buds)

wooly mullein, which can spread by seed quite a bit but we allow a few to grow for their dramatic shape and the velvety feel of the leaves,

and white clover.

A few native shrubs are blooming: oak-leaved hydrangia,

silky dogwood,

and elderberry.

We're being very encouraging of sedges at the Barden, planting them in swales where they get plenty of moisture. They reach a peak of lush, grassy beauty in late spring, and each species has a different shape to the clusters of seeds. There are many species of sedge. I'm going to say this is Carex lurida, the sallow sedge. 

I'd call this the morning star sedge, Carex grayi.

This is a fairly common sedge in Princeton in floodplains. I've long wanted to attach a name to it. Once I thought I'd found a name, then promptly forgot it. The mind is a terrible thing.

Rushes are not sedges, but this green bulrush is a sedge. 

That's 21 species found blooming or fruiting on June 26, 2022. For some, this diversity is off-putting, but for those who love plants, the diversity just makes it all the more interesting.

Bluebird of Happiness -- Evicted by a House Wren!

Boy, was I naive. Last year we worked with a local girlscout troop to install some birdhouses at Herrontown Woods, and it was such a delight this spring to see bluebirds taking an interest in one of them, just up from the Veblen House. I'd walk by, listening to their merry chatter, and remember that I had once again forgotten to bring along a camera with a good enough zoom to photograph their comings and goings. Surely there would be time to catch a charming shot of their auspicious presence. 

One day, however, a couple weeks ago, we were working on the Veblen House grounds, the bluebirds serenading in the background, when I noticed a different sound intruding. It seemed vaguely concerning, but I was so focused on my task that I didn't stop to take note of what was happening. 

By afternoon, however, I sensed something had clearly changed, and dropped what I was doing to go over and have a look. 

The bluebirds were nowhere to be seen, and in their place was one of the many house wrens that enliven the grounds with their loquacious chatter.

I had heard of wrens skewering other birds' eggs with their beaks, but hadn't thought much of it. This looked like an outright eviction. It was time to find out more. A website called sialis.org quickly popped up on the internet. Bluebirds are so loved they have their own website, named after their latin name, Sialia sialis.

Bluebird eviction by house wrens turns out to be common. I happened to run into a neighbor of Veblen House who said she, too, had had bluebirds evicted from her birdhouse. 

The silver lining has been the discovery of the sialis.org website, which is a long and true labor of love, by a woman named Bet who lives in Connecticut. It's an old school website, with most pages packed with a plethora of information and a minimum of photos. You'll learn about dummy nests (birdhouses that male house wrens pack with sticks but don't get around to using), and things like wren guards for reducing the displacement of bluebirds. A "trail" on this website is not a nature trail, but a series of bluebird houses that one monitors weekly. Birdhouses, it turns out, are not something to install randomly and then pat yourself on the back for being a nature lover. Proper installation is just the beginning of a very active management akin to growing a garden. Though native house wrens pose a threat, the nonnative house sparrow is even more destructive. 

The eviction of the bluebirds has left me newly ambivalent towards the house wren's perky chortle, but has raised my respect and appreciation for those who actively manage houses and habitat for birds.

Weeding Princeton's Fuel Tank Raingarden

When neighbor's complained about the appearance of the fuel tank on Witherspoon Street, the town responded by removing the fueling station's roof, adding a brick facade, and planting the raingarden that had been built to catch and filter runoff from the pavement. 

With the raingarden looking good in its first full year, the intended plants tidily mulched and flourishing, you'd think that it's time to sit back and enjoy nature's beneficence.

But as a gardener who has seen many a raingarden succumb to weeds, I could not help but notice the first signs that a silent, weedy insurrection was in the works. Here is a small patch of mugwort, planning a rhizomatous takeover.

Here's another little, harmless-looking cluster of mugwort next to a lovely St Johnswort shrub. And what's that grasslike plant in the background? That would be nutsedge, easy to pull but also with an underground network of roots that is hard to exhaust. If allowed to grow, it too will spread everywhere. 

The weeds look harmless when there are just a few, but a gardener can extrapolate in the imagination from a little to a lot. I couldn't help myself, and intervened. How many gardens are at such an early stage when thirty minutes of weeding can nip invasion in the bud? Here are horse nettle, mugwort and nutsedge. Feel for the triangular stem on the nutsedge. "Sedges have edges."

Here is white clover, which is benign in a lawn but muddles things in a flower bed.

On the left is a vetch, not crown vetch thankfully, but still worth pulling. 

I pulled pretty much every weed except the nutsedge, whose takeover will hopefully be forestalled by the designated caretaker, if any. Afterwards, the raingarden looked to most eyes exactly like it had a half hour prior. The reward of proactive action is in imagining all the future work that has just been avoided. There will be more work, surely, but much less. 

Maybe someone with designated responsibility would have done the weeding anyway. Nice to think but hard to count on. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the new fire station, another raingarden was planted at some point. Lots of good stuff growing, but much more intimidating in terms of weeds. It shows what happens when the weeds are allowed to gain a foothold.

The pink is crown vetch, an aggressive plant originally introduced to the U.S. to control roadside erosion. 

And then there's birdsfoot trefoil, originally introduced to the U.S. as nutritious forage for cattle.

And relentless bindweed growing up and over the native swamp milkweed. 

Subduing these three tough customers would take some major work, which makes it all the more amazing to be able to weed the other raingarden and feel like one has the upper hand. 

All of this leads to a point, or two, made before, that regulations require the planting of raingardens in the name of reduced flooding and increased water quality, yet maintenance operations are set up to handle only the simplest of landscapes--turf and trees. Raingardens are a complex community of plants, not a monoculture. They don't respond well to "mow, blow, and go." The person who cares for them needs to be more physician than custodian. They can be planted by people who don't really know the plants, but they need to be cared for by people who do, in a culture that devalues informed maintenance. 

Active Trees and Passive People

Each year about this time, I watch as low hanging tree branches extend over sidewalks. It's a bit of a game, to see how long it takes for anyone to do anything about it.

In fact, no one does anything about it. Instead, people just keep ducking down deeper and deeper as the branches grow. Finally, I get fed up, find some loppers, and go out and clear the route. There were three of these low spots on my block. A few minutes of intervention will save thousands of bendings over through the summer, and maybe keep a distracted bicyclist from getting whiplashed. 

The vast majority of people remain enduringly passive when navigating collectively owned spaces. Or maybe no one else owns a pair of loppers.

Black Bear Seen in Princeton

 This notice from the University:

Date:  Monday, June 20

Incident:  Black Bear Sighting

At approximately 2 pm. on Monday, June 20, a black bear sighting was reported on the Lake Campus (300 Washington Road).

Black bears by nature tend to be wary of people.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has tips on black bears available at https://nj.gov/dep/fgw/bears/index.html

A compendium of previous black bear sightings can be found by typing "bear" into the search box for this blog. They include an explanation of why black bears come wandering our way this time of year, which has to do with young males seeking new territory.

Many people wonder how to behave when a bear is encountered. Below are the fruits of my research, conducted ten years ago and adapted for a Princeton audience. These words are as relevant now as they were then. Please note that grizzly bears, which are not found around here, require a completely different response.

Black bears are near-sighted, so make noise to avoid surprising them. If the bear stands up on its hind legs, don’t worry. It’s just trying to see you better. Make sure the bear has an escape route. For instance, if it is following you out of the public library, hold the door open and give it plenty of room. If you encounter the bear in the woods, or on Nassau Street, you can back away slowly, but don't turn your back to the bear. In a calm, assertive voice, put the bear on notice that you are a Princetonian fully armed with opinions, and will not hesitate to express them.

Avoid eye contact. If it doesn't run away right off, bang the pot you happen to be carrying with you, or download a "kitchenware noise" app on your cellphone. Bears hate to cook, which explains their interest in garbage. Otherwise, clap your hands, raise your arms over your head, wave a jacket, all of which should make you look large and impressive.

On rare occasions, the bear will do a bluff charge, at speeds up to 35 mph. If a cafe is close by, this is a good time to duck in for a double latte. If that option is not available, then you'll need to dig deep. Fleeing will only make you appear weak. Perhaps the stirring words of a high school football coach will come to mind. In any case, stand your ground, wave your arms and shout. Pretend you're in front of town council, venting your outrage over moving the Dinky. The bear should veer away from you at the last moment, providing a bigger thrill than any 3D movie at the mall.

If the bear actually attacks, which is extremely rare, it's time to drop all remaining pretense of civility. Fight back. Don't worry about the bear's lack of access to dental care. Without asking permission, bop it on the nose. Bears' noses are 100 times more sensitive than ours. Use this sensitivity to your advantage, all the while reveling in what a great story this will make to tell the grandkids.

Note: In case you surf the internet for more info, don't be confused by accounts of how to behave when encountering a grizzly bear out west, where the protocol is completely different and not nearly so gallant.

The Unbearable Whiteness of Being in June

Note: The memorable title "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" may not be as fresh in people's minds as it was in the 1980s when the novel and subsequent movie came out. There's nothing unbearable about white flowers, but there sure are a lot of them this time of year.

It was on a recent walk along the green trail at Autumn Hill Reservation that I suddenly noticed I was surrounded by white. 

Mostly, it was invasive species: the white of multiflora rose

and Linden Viburnum. The prompt for the walk was to check the trails. The Friends of Herrontown Woods takes care of the trails at the adjacent Autumn Hill, and this spring's intervention was a boardwalk spanning a section that for years had been chronically muddy. The town's open space manager, Cindy Taylor, got the town crew to help out by removing some fallen trees, and I was checking to see if anything else was needed.

Though the nonnative shrubs were the dominant flowers, a few natives could be found, also with white flowers. A cluster of partridgeberry hugged the ground. The "repens" in its latin name, Mitchella ripens, refers to its crawling habit.

The mapleleaved Viburnums usually don't grow beyond a few feet. Their latin name is Viburnum acerifolium. The latin name for maples is Acer, so acerifolium is the latin way of saying maple foliage, or mapleleaved. 

Almost missed among all the whiteness was a beautiful specimen of Styrax, probably American snowbell, S. americanus. It's on the left as one pulls into the Autumn Hill parking lot. My guess is that it was planted. I've walked by it dozens of times, but only when it flowered did I take note. That makes a grand total of two of this species seen thus far in Princeton.

Back home, there was the mock orange-a once commonly planted landscape shrub that survives in my neighbor's yard, peeking over the fenceline.

More whiteness comes from the native elderberry, whose berries make delicious pies if you can beat the catbirds,

and the abundant spires of Virginia sweetspire.

The mountain laurel

and the Deutzia in our yard are refusing to grow beyond one foot high for some reason.

White clover can be benign in a lawn but mischievous if it invades a flowerbed.

Update: Ten days after initially posting about white flowers, and feeling like the title of the post, though playful, sounds more judgemental than it would have ten years ago, I've noticed a few more. The Korean dogwood, for instance.

and catalpas, whose flowers reward a closer look.

Japanese honeysuckle, which yield a drop of sweet liquid if pulled apart in the right way.

Some sort of hydrangia vine on our patio.

The flowers of a native swamp azalea. They look to be keeping their flowers downcast, as if to avoid eye contact. Too many zoom meetings.

A small patch of daisies in a preserved pasture near Veblen House.

A white cloud of daisy fleabanes in the foreground, with an oak-leaved hydrangia in the background. 

This oak-leaved hydrangia, native though I've never seen it growing in the wild, started as one plant, but over time it produced stems that could be dug without disturbing the original plant. We now have a whole grove of them.

The oak-leaved hydrangia is one of three classic native shrubs that sustain white in the garden through June, as Virginia sweetspire (above) segues into oak-leaved hydrangia,

which segues into the bottlebrush-shaped spires of bottlebrush buckeye. 

Why so much white? My curiosity did not sustain me very far into an internet search. Perhaps white takes less energy for plants to produce than other colors. White reflects the most light, which could help insects find it. And then there's the research that shows that pollinators don't actually see the flowers as white, and are picking up on aspects of the flower beyond human perception. 

Below is beardtongue having a good year in the Veblen Circle of wildflowers at the Barden in Herrontown Woods. 

Related post: The Unbearable Whiteness of Being in May