The Clueless Gardeners - A Garden Blog

Our agriculture is a mess

2011-10-05T06:14:00.000-07:00

" A sponsor of Alabama's tough new immigration law told desperate tomato farmers Monday that he won't change the law, even though they told him that their crops are rotting in the field and they are at risk of losing their farms." Yikes.

I should have mentioned. . .

2011-08-24T20:28:00.000-07:00

A reporter at a local news source got word of Unicorn 1's discovery and pollination, and gave me a call right before I took off on vacation. Heh. . . my first time being interviewed, and I happened to be about to set foot in the shower. I was answering questions while wearing a towel, and trying and failing not to laugh as my naked son climbed in and out of suitcases.

Here's the article.

In other news, I stopped by the American chestnut orchard at Idylbrook, and most of the trees have been marked with blue ribbon. Those, I suppose, are the losers in the breeding competition. I need to get out there and photograph them before they are cut down.

Success!

2011-07-15T14:08:00.000-07:00

Lookee!

Unicorn One has been pollinated! See the paper bags? There are 11 of them that I could see.

The nuts under these bags will be collected when ripe, and used to grow the next generation of Restoration Chestnuts. There are somewhere between 11 and 44 pollinated female blossoms in there, each blossom could make up to three nuts. So that's as many as 132 future trees here!

These nuts are developing higher on the tree. I don't know if these nuts are viable for growing new trees.

This is the American chestnut tree growing next to the Upper Charles Trail in Milford, MA. It turns out the Friends of the Trail group had already spotted the tree, but I guess they didn't know to pass the info along to the American Chestnut Foundation.

I feel like I have done something deeply good for humanity and the environment. :) Someday the wilderness will be full of these trees again, and I have now played a small part.

My Husband is Not a Tool

2011-07-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

This is my husband Chris, standing in the community garden that he built. The garden was a team effort, but his involvement was pivotal. And now there it is, and there he is. Awesome, both of them.

He's hot, isn't he?

Now, let me explain the division of labor in our yard. Chris does the veggies. Lots of veggies. I do most everything else: the arid lawn, the swamp, the wooded paths, the flower beds, the oak tree that needed felling, the toddler play area, the meadows. Even the pile of rocks topped with cacti.

Everything in my domain is a mess right now. I have a three-month-old baby and an older child going through potty training. The lawn looks perilously similar to the meadows at the moment. A cottonwood tree is cracked and poised to fall onto the woodland paths. Every flowerbed needs weeding, every pot and transplant needs watering.

But the poison ivy is under control.

It so happens that the number one thing that brings people to this blog is information on poison ivy removal. I don't know why - perhaps it's just that time of year? A bumper crop of Toxicodendron radicans? - but I'm getting a lot of snotty anonymous comments on one of my older poison ivy removal posts. "Dump poison on it." "Hire a professional." "Hire a professional, like me! I pull poison ivy with my bare hands! And I eat it for breakfast!"

But nothing tops this:

"Have your husband do it."

Excuse me? My husband does not come to my rescue as I retreat in some prissy fashion from dangerous things. Poison ivy is my personal enemy, and I consider its control within our yard to be my obligation. My obligation. It is a vendetta that I carry out myself, with vicious, cautious, and thorough glee. My husband is my beloved equal, with his own worthy pursuits and his own lack of time. He is not some macho tool to be pulled from a drawer to solve problems at my whim with hairy chest and grunts.

Mister anonymous, your sexism is a contemptible relic. May garden gnomes rub urushiol in the tighty whities you have no doubt left lying on the bathroom floor. Go have a beer and watch a football game, instead of wasting my time editing up your messes.

In other words, fuck off.

More Unicorns

2011-06-28T19:29:00.000-07:00

After having stumbled across a blooming American chestnut quite by accident, I was inspired to go hunting for more. I knew that the Nature Trail and Cranberry Bog at Patriot Place was full of chestnut regrowth, so it seemed like a logical place to search. While there were lots of chestnuts, tall ones even, along the wooded trail, they appeared to be too busy trying to reach sunlight to produce flowers. So I tried the parking lot.

And I lucked out - not one, but two flowering American chestnuts!

As a joke, I have been telling my friends how I am hunting for unicorns. So, I am giving my chestnut finds unicorn designation numbers. Let me introduce you to Unicorn 2 and Unicorn 3. (You've already met Unicorn 1.)

Unicorn 2 is a scraggly shrub, no more than 15 feet tall. She has some dead twigs, with withered leaves on some. Other dead twigs are bare.

The catkins are scattered unevenly about the tree. Most, from what I could see, only had male flowers.

More catkins. Click to see the image enlarged. I'm not seeing any female flowers here.

This one has female flowers, though.

These three female flowers were the only ones I was able to see, even when I zoomed in on my photos.

This tree is a shrubbery of suckers. But it isn't blocked by undergrowth, the ground is reasonably flat around it, and it would be easy to get a ladder here.

The main trunk measured in at 4 inches in diameter, at approximately 4.5 feet from the ground. But as you can see, there is blight damage.

Here are those dead twigs I had mentioned.

Lastly, here is the tree with each visible catkin-bearing branch marked. There are 30 marks. But I'm guessing that most of those clusters don't have female flowers.

Onward! Here is Unicorn 3, to the left of a light post. This one is maybe 25 or 30 feet tall. At first glance, it didn't appear to have flowers at all.

Male flowers.

More male flowers.

More male flowers. And overall, the catkins on this one are a lot smaller and . . . less enthusiastic?

Are these catkins just a bit more immature than the previous trees? I don't know.

The trunk is large, but I couldn't get to it to take a measurement. Nor could I see the ground. It may slope downward in there. And this looks like blight damage.

The thicket is too dense to casually walk up to this tree. I guestimate a diameter of 17 inches.

Higher up the tree.

I would mark flower clusters on this tree, but I can't even see them when I zoom into the photo. Click the image to enlarge.

Chris joked that I'm having such luck finding these unicorns because I have a virgin maiden along. Har har har.

Lastly, here is a map of the area, thanks to Google.

A Blooming Chestnut!

2011-06-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

While I was out with a friend walking the Milford Section of the Upper Charles Trail, we stopped so that I could nurse Kaylee. While shooing away mosquitoes, I noticed that there was a lot of American chestnut regrowth in the area. And then I saw that the largest of them was covered in catkins.

Kathy Desjardin at the American Chestnut Society has confirmed from a photo I sent that this is an American Chestnut, and that it has female flowers, which means that if they can get permission in time, and if it has enough female flowers to be worth their while, they can pollinate this tree as a part of their breeding program.

The bike path starts from a parking lot off of Dilla Street, at Louisa Lake.

This is the gate leading to the path. (And a note for the folks at TACF, the path is large enough for a truck. Turning the truck around in there would be difficult, however, and the gate is locked.)

The tree is here, by a "pull off area", less than a mile down the path. The backpack on the path marks the location of the tree.

Here it is, by the end of the fence, with my son as scale reference.
The tree is ten or fifteen feet from the path, down an incline, and surrounded by raspberry brambles and other plants. (But there was no poison ivy that I could see, at least.)

I was wearing Kaylee at the time, so I couldn't safely get in there to make a measurement or assess the health of the trunk. But I could see this much from the path.

Here is a view showing a slightly lower segment of the trunk. I don't know if that vertical mark is a feature of chestnut bark, or evidence of blight.

Fiddling around with a piece of string and a ruler, I guestimate the diameter of the tree at 4.5 feet from where I think the ground is to be about 16 inches.

Kathy was curious if we could figure out from my photos how many nuts the tree is making. I couldn't see female flowers on all of the clusters of catkins. . .

. . .but this one has four.

Here is a close-up of the female flowers. Each one will become a nut.

This one has four as well.

Here is another shot of the tree.

This is the same photo, cropped in close. I have placed a purple dot at the location of every catkin cluster I could see in the photo. There are about fifty dots. So, my conservative estimate would be fifty nuts. More wishfully, two hundred. I don't know how many potential nuts would make this tree worth the TACF's time, since pollinating a tree requires a large truck and someone with a lot of patience.

This is the remains of another American chestnut tree nearby. This one also made it to a good 20 feet tall before it was killed by the blight. The live one is 25 or 30 feet. Hopefully it lasts a few productive seasons before dying.

I never thought I would see an American chestnut blooming in the wild, much less find one myself. I don't have adequate words to describe how I feel right now. I had to tell my friends that this is like seeing a unicorn.

Tomorrow I plan on going to the Cranberry Bog at Patriot Place, because there is another American chestnut there, too, that I spotted last month. It is of a similar size, and appears to be suffering from blight. I'll get some photos for TACF. Hopefully it is blooming, too.

OMG

2011-06-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

I found an American chestnut in flower. The tree appears to my untrained eye to have female flowers. Posting this for the TACF folks. . . more photos of the tree and location coming shortly. . .

Tall Peas and a Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

The Sugar Snap peas are so tall at this point that even with Gabe on my shoulders they're still peaking out over his head. They've produced a bounty of delicious peas, made all the more sweet by the memories of Gabe planting them with me. For those of you with toddlers you also know how hard it can be to get them to eat greens, and seeing Gabe demolish peas in the garden is a welcome sight indeed.

Nursery Web Spider

2011-06-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

When I went to clean out the salad garden that had spent the winter snug in the greenhouse there were several spiders per sq. ft. It really was amazing just how much bio-diversity that 4'x8' section of garden was sporting. The biggest spider of them all was this Nursery Web Spider that really startled me.

While it isn't huge by Tarantula standards, for New England this is a monster. It was very patient with me and even stayed still when I placed a dime behind it for scale. I should say that I adore spiders and the job they do. They are very welcome in the garden and this one was released into the pea plants to keep up the good work.

As seen from the windows. . .

2011-05-29T18:31:00.000-07:00

See it?

Watch out for the hawks, snakey.

You aren't as hidden as you seem to think you are.

When Chris dived for the camera yelling what I though was a four-letter word. . .

. . .he was actually yelling "oh, FOX!"

One less bunny, too.

Other wildlife observed recently:

Salamanders under the log segments everywhere, even in Gabe's Garden.

A great horned owl hooting late one night.

Chipmunks.

A plague of squirrels, dining on nuts in the giant mulch mess.

A red tailed hawk eating a rabbit on a sidewalk on Martha's Vineyard.

The kik calls of a male Cooper's hawk letting his lady friend know his whereabouts.

Bunnies. In the yard. In Chris's garden. Chris is not pleased.

A black and white house cat in the yard, sauntering.

Crows, at the compost pile, as usual.

A snapping turtle at the side of the road, carried to the safe shade of poison ivy by a kindly old man who didn't lose a finger. It gave Gabe nightmares.

Blue jays in the yard. One of them screeches like a hawk.

A doe, on a drizzly day, spotted a block from home while pushing the little boy on his tricycle and carrying the baby in the mei tai. I have never seen a deer leap before. Impressive.

A chukar partridge, the size of a small turkey, seen from the window of a local coffee shop, swiftly identified by a group of regulars armed with ipads and smart phones. What is a chukar partridge doing this far from Asia, anyway? This one looked like it was waiting for a cab.

Planting Ramps

2011-05-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

This is my new ramp patch. I know, I know, they're all flopped over and pathetic. But when I planted a dozen grocery store ramps last year, they did the same thing. The leaves tried to stand back up, but then quickly withered away when a drought rolled in. Then, half of them surprised me by putting up seed heads.

And then this season, half of them - perhaps the same plants that flowered last year - came back!

Look at what a cheapskate I am. Here, slumping ramps decorate the feet of a rescued rhododendron, which may or may not survive being ripped out of my neighbor's flowerbed.

I have planted perhaps eighty ramps so far this season. At $12 a pound, which is about 40 ramps, and a 50% success rate, I'm game. Especially since it keeps me from splurging at local nurseries, where I'm as likely to spend more on a single plant.

If I were planning ahead, I would order a few hundred ramp bulbs from the Ramp Farm, which is the only ramp farm in existence. But of course then I would have to wait until next year, when it's the time for shipping dormant bulbs. Or I would have to try seeds. Again.

Uh-uh. I require instant gratification. So I'll take my losses and support the local Whole Foods.

Tentacle Porn

2011-05-21T03:35:00.000-07:00

Tell me, what do you see in this juniper? Is it dead spots of foliage? Orange flowers, strangely out of place? Some sort of flamboyant pine cone?

. . .or squid?

Or perhaps small, wet muppets?

There isn't much in the natural world that gives me the creeps, but this one has been added to my list. Just imagine for a minute that your skin blistered up into two-inch spherical nodules. Then one day, you got in the shower, and the moist air triggered the vile things to exude orange tentacles of goo.

Yeah, now you get to share my nightmares.

And now that I have caused you to regret eating breakfast, let me reassure you that this bizarre fungus is a plague only to apple orchard owners, and to those who prefer their shrubbery not to appear infested with sea anemones. It's called Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae; or, for the rest of us, "cedar apple rust".

If I could get over the creepy nature of such an organism, I would be fascinated by its parasitic life cycle, which requires alternating between junipers - which it festoons with tentacles - and apple trees - which it doesn't.

You are most likely to see this in the spring, in wet weather, where apple trees and native junipers are in close proximity. In this case, my neighbor has a small orchard, inherited from the farmer who used to own this land, and some standard suburban shrubbery. This is likely why her apple trees have such poor yields. I'll have to let her know - right after I finish yaking up breakfast.

Ick

2011-05-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

Today I spent a half hour cleaning the woods of poison ivy. I picked up a deer tick for my trouble. I wish I knew which plants they tend to climb on. But I suppose if they are anything like the deer tick Gabe is looking at above, on our screen door, they'll climb whatever they find themselves at the foot of.

Really? The screen door? The inside of the screen door? You are one dumb bug.

I guess I've lost my energy for getting all squeamy when encountering ticks. The best I could muster was a tired sigh. I fetched a wood chip to carry the critter, and learned something new: playing with wood ticks is rather fun.

What amused me so was transferring the tick back and forth between the screen and wood chip. How easily the tick rolls from one surface to another! The way they grab on is somewhat like a monkey crossed with Velcro.

I'll be getting a poison ivy rash on my elbow in a few days, no doubt, since I let a vine smack me there. But I think it will be worth it. The infestation back there diminishes every year. Now if only I could say the same for the ticks.

Gardening for the Greater Good

2011-05-07T17:41:00.000-07:00

If I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth with regards to posting on the blog, it is with good reason. I've been planning the build day for Franklin's first community garden along with my fellow committee members. That build day was today, and with an amazing group of volunteers we managed to finished 44 - 4'x10' raised beds that are roughly 2' tall working from around 9am to 3pm with a nice hail storm as a break.

The build has plenty of rough spots, but based on the results I feel like I did a pretty good job as the build leader. Not something I think I could handle every weekend, but oh so worth it seeing the design made real. I would like to send an extra special thank you to my lovely wife Michelle for letting me dedicate the time necessary to get this done. No small feat with a 2 year old and newborn at home. Thank you Michelle, I love you!

I captured a time lapse so you can see the whole day in about ten minutes. So much fun, so tired:)

My lawn looks awful. . . .

2011-04-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

But at least it has dandelions. . . .

. . .

. . .and about a million teeny blossoms of Whitlow grass.

Pussytoes Surprise!

2011-04-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

Walking by my pussytoes, I had another moment of *squeee!*

They are blooming! And the flowers are much prettier than I expected. (I grew these for the foliage, not the blooms.)

Aside from the slow growing, these were already my favorite ground cover. Now they are even more so.

Pink! Maybe it's something about having a baby girl, but I've never been quite so enamored of the color pink.

These are Antennaria dioica, I think. I should have kept that dang seed package.

And what a nifty five-sided shape. I hope I get seeds!

Trillium

2011-04-25T12:47:00.000-07:00

My two eenie weenie trilliums are guarded by a teepee of sticks. A determined deer won't be stopped by such a pitiful measure, but my hope is that this will prevent casual browsing.

The flower turns out to be a lovely, deep maroon.

Unless I am mistaken, which is a possibility, this is Trillium Cuneatum, also known as toadshade. I should have kept better records. But for all I know the seller didn't even know exactly which type of trillium they were selling. At the time I bought these, I didn't know how smarmy plant dealers could be. Most likely these were taken from the wild.

My mother bought trilliums recently. At three or four bucks a piece, she thought they were expensive. I had to be the one to give her the bad news: hers were likely dug from the wild, too. It takes years to grow these from seed, and no grower could make a profit at four dollars a pop.

Her anti-deer measures have got mine beat, though. She uses netting to wall off large swaths of her yard. I may try the same, eventually.

Skunk Cabbage Adoration

2011-04-24T13:09:00.000-07:00

I go out every day now to watch my skunk cabbage grow. It's far and away the most lush thing on the landscape now.

As far as I know, all wetlands in this area are protected. Since there are strict rules preventing the development of land a certain distance from wetlands, it's not often that you get to walk right up to the edge of skunk cabbage swamp.

. . .at least, not without picking up ticks, and getting mud up to your knees.

I have a dry path leading out to a flat rock, where I can safely get a good close look at the plants.

Skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus, only stinks if you crush it.

The plants are done flowering for the year, and are now vigorously growing their leaves to catch the sun before the trees shade them out.

The leaves unfurl in elegant curves.

Like lotus blossoms, they emerge from the mud sparkling clean.

My photographer's assistant, hard at work.

Skunk Cabbage

2011-04-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite plants.

My hasty photos don't do it justice.

This was last week. It is already far greener out there.

This was a week ago.

Hurray! And Facepalm

2011-04-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

Monsanto had it coming. They monkeyed up their own breed of plants, allowed their crops to contaminate and ruin crops on organic farms, and then abused the court system to complete the destruction of said organic farms. Small farms, mind you. The sort of farms that struggle to stay in the black while trying to produce healthful food in an ecologically sensitive manner. That's like kicking a kitten.

As of this point, I am under the impression that Monsanto has given up such efforts in order to not look so much like they are kicking kittens, but whether or not that is the case, their actions have come back to haunt them. Just like a super hero (or a super villain; take your pick), Monsanto has created its own enemy.

It would be so comforting to take the side of the little guys here. It's a darn good thing that these small farms are able to group up and use the court system to block the mega-company from pulling any more legal shenanigans - and I hope they win! But the sheer idiocy of some of their comments keeps me from being more completely on their side. For example:

Dewane Morgan of plaintiff Midheaven Farms in Park Rapids, Minnesota, said, "For organic certification, farmers are required to have a buffer zone around their perimeter fields. Crops harvested from this buffer zone are not eligible for certification due to potential drift from herbicide and fungicide drift. Buffer zones are useless against pollen drift.

Keeping a field of a crop a certain distance from another crop that would contaminate it is the traditional way of keeping crops from being pollinated by the wrong strain of crop. It should fall to Monsanto to maintain the necessary buffer zones, but that's not what she is saying.

"David Murphy, founder and Executive Director of plaintiff Food Democracy Now! said, “None of Monsanto’s original promises regarding genetically modified seeds have come true after 15 years of wide adoption by commodity farmers. Rather than increased yields or less chemical usage, farmers are facing more crop diseases, an onslaught of herbicide-resistant superweeds, and increased costs from additional herbicide application."

Monsanto insists that their crop yields have increased, and organic farmers insist that they haven't. One of these entities is wrong. One of these entities, or perhaps both, is bending the truth to prop up their view of reality. And in at least one respect, it is the organic farmers doing the bending. What got left out of the above list? That poisons now used to bolster production of GM crops are far and away less harmful than the poisons that they replaced, such as organophosphates and atrazine. Or that a crop can be certified organic but be more harmful to the environment than its conventional counterpart. Or that Bt, the poison that certain GMO crops have been induced to create on their own, is acceptable for use on certified organic crops, as well as routinely dropped into otherwise protected backyard wetlands by local governments in their attempt to keep the mosquito populations down.

Here is a lovely post from the Scientist Gardener discussing a Big Ag discovery that greatly reduced fungicide use on rice crops. And would you believe it? Big Ag doesn't think that monocultures of crops are so great, either.

I get the feeling that too many on the organic side don't bother to do any research on what Big Ag is up to, outside of the nasty sphere of legal-system abuse. Big Ag has a lot of actual scientists on its side, and as a rule, scientists are smart and reasonably ethical people who know how to do their homework and who typically don't want to jeopardize their standing as scientists by being unscientific within their field of expertise.

Anyway, I'm getting quite ranty, so on to the next quote:

"Rose Marie Burroughs of plaintiff California Cloverleaf Farms said, “The devastation caused by GMO contamination is an ecological catastrophe to our world equal to the fall out of nuclear radiation. Nature, farming and health are all being affected by GMO contamination."

. . .

I would like to know if this statement was made before or after the current crisis in Japan. And I will now spare everyone the sounds of my gag reflex and move on. . .

Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst for plaintiff The Cornucopia Institute said, “Family-scale farmers desperately need the judiciary branch of our government to balance the power Monsanto is able to wield in the marketplace and in the courts. Monsanto, and the biotechnology industry, have made great investments in our executive and legislative branches through campaign contributions and powerful lobbyists in Washington. We need to court system to offset this power and protect individual farmers from corporate tyranny. Farmers have saved seeds since the beginning of agriculture by our species. It is outrageous that one corporate entity, through the trespass of what they refer to as their 'technology,' can intimidate and run roughshod over family farmers in this country. It should be the responsibility of Monsanto, and farmers licensing their technology, to ensure that genetically engineered DNA does not trespass onto neighboring farmland. It is outrageous, that through no fault of their own, farmers are being intimidated into not saving seed for fear that they will be doggedly pursued through the court system and potentially bankrupted.”

Now this makes sense, finally. Of all the stuff the organic farmers are throwing at the wall, this will be the one that sticks. Good luck with the lawsuit, guys!

Unexpected Joy!

2011-04-17T12:13:00.001-07:00

I had thought I would be too exhausted from baby #2 this spring to be excited by plants, but the plants have proved me wrong! I am so excited to see our common violets in bloom. These are some that I planted in the cactus bed. The cactus are still looking pitiful, and I believe the yucca are dead, but at least something is growing!

The spicebushes (Lindera species) in the woods are covered in delicate yellow blossoms.

But the real excitement is this: my ramps, Allium tricoccum, are growing! I bought these on a whim last year at Whole Foods. Out of the dozen I planted, eight have grown.

Well, six. One couldn't quite get its leaves up through the leaf litter, and the one on the left above appears to have been sampled by a deer. I can only imagine that the deer wanted some tums afterward.

Another unexpected delight: my two weenie little trilliums are growing! And this one has a bud!

And the other trillium is putting up two sets of leaves! I wasn't expecting it to do that. I wasn't expecting them to come back at all.

And my mayflower, Epigaea repens, is in bloom! I hope this is evidence that it is doing well, and not some last reproductive hurrah brought on in desperation.

I would love to be able to establish a big enough colony of this plant to be able to share it. Everyone in Massachusetts should have the Massachusetts state flower in their yard! Here's hoping.

Plow Legacy

2011-04-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

Remember back before the snowmageddon sealed us in for the winter? A helpful plow driver had tried ever so nicely to clear the snow right up to our driveway. He took some of the garden with him.

. . .including the giant rock, which was pushed right across the driveway and up onto the pile of snow on the other side of the driveway. You can see it peeking out of the snow, above.

Once winter made its dramatic exit, we could see how the plow pushed rocks and plants into the driveway. The damage was minimal.

But the big rock was in the wrong place!

Oh well. I rebuilt the mailbox bed without it. This was my singular act of gardening while pregnant.

Chris rolled the big rock out of the bed to spare my plants, but I haven't figured out a new home for it yet.

Forbidden Fruit!

2011-04-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Chris isn't going to like this. It's a pro-genetically-modified food blog! Looks like some good reading over there. I can already feel some of my previous opinions on the topic crumbling. . .

In that same vein, here is an article pointing out how very silly it is to use rain barrels. Sigh. . . it is so much easier to be uninformed and full of dogma.

Damminix Tick Tubes

2011-04-11T14:23:00.000-07:00

Ah, here are the results of a large-scale study showing the effectiveness of the tick tubs we use. Their results: a 90% reduction in ticks. Which reminds me, I think we are overdue for putting fresh tubes around the yard.

Just about time, too, for Gabe to have his hair shorn totally short, so that I can check him for scalp ticks every night. Little boys and gardeners are in the highest risk category for contracting Lyme's, and we live on the edge of deer-infested wild land.

Something Else I Forgot to Post. . .

2011-04-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

Our daughter Kaylee Nancy Clay was born last week! For more pictures, visit our family blog. Cheers!

American Chestnut Article

2011-04-07T07:22:00.000-07:00

Whoops! I meant to post this some months ago. This is my Garden Geek article on American chestnut trees which appeared in the December edition of the Franklin Country Gazette.

The American Chestnut

At Idylbrook Field in Medway, an unmarked path leads through a meadow of wildflowers into rows of cultivated trees. A layman could easily overlook the site as a run-of-the-mill orchard if not for the sign explaining that these are Castanea dentata - American Chestnut.

If the words “American chestnut” don’t give you goose bumps, let me tell you why it should. Schoolchildren revere pandas and elephants and tigers, and most Americans have a soft spot in their heart for our bald national bird. The American Chestnut has similarly been pushed to the brink of extinction.

Castanea dentata is arguably more important a species than any of the charismatic fauna that top the food chain. A scant hundred years without American chestnuts has caused us to forget that East-coast forests used to be chestnut forests. These were New England’s sequoia. American chestnuts could average five feet in diameter and a hundred feet in height, but historic photos demonstrate that they grew much larger than that. On that sign in Idylbrook, a black-and-white photo shows three lumberjacks seated inside of the gash they have made in one tree - a trunk which is easily fifteen feet in diameter.

The chestnut was immensely valued for its wood. The trees grew fast and straight, producing hard wood that was so highly resistant to rot that there are still original chestnut barns standing. In Appalachia, they were known as “cradle-to-grave” trees, because the wood was used for everything, from fences to buildings, to cradles and coffins.

Unlike oak, which only produce a reliable crop of acorns every two to four years, American chestnuts produced copious yearly quantities of nuts. Not only were these a staple in the diet of Native Americans, but bear, elk, deer, turkey, doves, squirrels, blue jays, mice, and passenger pigeons were just some of the native animals that depended on the American chestnut to get through the winter. And Castanea dentata was a food source to hundreds of species of insects, which in turn were food for birds.

It was a fungus, accidentally introduced with an Asian chestnut, that killed the American chestnut. In 1904 the epidemic was first spotted at the Bronx zoo. This blight would kill a tree by forming cankers on the trunk that blocked the flow of water between roots and leaves. The fungus spread from tree to tree at a rate of fifty miles a year. The lumber industry reacted with a panicked spasm of logging that likely contributed to the loss of the few trees which would have survived the epidemic.

Within forty years, up to four billion American chestnuts were dead. Both North America’s ecosystem and the logging industry were irrevocably altered. The one paltry good came out of the tragedy was the passing of the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912, which has slowed, but not stopped other plant pathogens from wrecking havoc on other vital American plants.

There are now so few Castanea dentata remaining, numbering in the hundreds, and they are so widely dispersed, that without human intervention they would surely be the last generation of American chestnut trees. But enter the American Chestnut Foundation. This organization has been working for decades to raise awareness, identify and protect surviving chestnut trees, and most importantly, breed a hybrid American chestnut that retains just enough Chinese ancestry to be resistant to the blight.

To this end, TACF has hand-pollinated many of the remaining trees, carefully tending the resulting generations in test plots up and down the East Coast. This brings us back to Idylbrook. Here, six hundred chestnut trees stand in the sun, looking innocently healthy and inconspicuous, as if they were just another common tree.

The eldest of Idylbrook’s chestnuts have matured, and have begun producing nuts. In an act that seems cruel at a glance, this year these trees were deliberately exposed to the blight. At some point in the future, the three or four of the healthiest trees out of a hundred will be chosen as breeding stock for the next generation. The rest will be removed from the gene-pool with a chainsaw.

Someday American chestnut will again be a major part of both the logging industry and the ecology, thanks to the long-term efforts of TACF. This tree is a vital part of America’s landscape, and at Idylbrook, history is in the making. I urge you to go for a visit before the next round of culling takes place, and then get involved. Become a member, donate, or volunteer: volunteers will be needed when the trees are cut down, and are needed on a continual basis for weeding, watering, and other maintenance work. More information can be found at acf.org, and at masschestnut.org, which is the local chapter of TACF.

Salamanders

2011-03-18T16:11:00.001-07:00

When the Fios guy came to install it there were a bunch of these salamanders trapped in the pit of the conduit box. I collected them from amongst the stones at the bottom of the pit and placed them near a nice pile of rotting logs. I may not have placed them in the best spot, but they would have died of starvation trapped in the pit if I didn't move them.

We'll see if anymore show up in the pit this spring, now that I know to check it I will.

St. Patty's Day! Time to Plant Peas!

2011-03-17T18:03:00.001-07:00

This morning was absolutely gorgeous. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and Gabe and I were planting peas in the garden. The weather is so nice at this point that the Mouse Trap needs to be opened during the day to keep from cooking the greens. I've already cooked them a little leading them to be a little bitter, but I hope the cold works that out of them.

Gabe and I were two peas in a pod this morning as we worked on making holes and plunking peas into them. This year I'm growing two tall varieties Tall Telephone and Sugar Snap as well as two bush varieties Lincoln and Oregon Sugar Pod II. Last year's inter planting with the crops that will replace the peas in the summer worked so well that I've planted a much larger space with hundreds of plants. I plan to have the winter squash take over their row come summer.

I will be the first to admit that Gabe slowed down the process immensely, and every single moment was a delight. Here he's helping me push down the dibble to make holes for the peas. Every time I repositioned it he'd grunt "PUSH!" and we'd make a new hole.

After we'd get the holes in I'd hand him a pea and tell him where it'd go. He'd eventually get them all on his own, but this process involved more teamwork and was more fun for me. I absolutely loved that Gabe exclaimed, "We do good teamwork!" about half way through the planting and again several times after that.

I never imagined that he'd have the dexterity he has at his age. He only missed a couple times in hundreds of pea drops.

He was so intent here and melted my heart by saying, "I'm a good good planter daddy." To which I said, "Yes you are, you're a good good planter."

More Dibble work in the raised bed, please ignore the muddy support structure that was bent by the crazy winter snows.

Gabe did a great job here of stretching out to get the peas in the raised bed, and listened very well about not stepping in it.

For the sugar snap peas I wanted to do some bamboo supports as well as using the metal so Gabe and I worked to push them into the raised bed together.

I was happy all day after this wonderful morning shared with Gabe and Mommy in the garden!

Gabe said, "I like this game daddy. I'm going to go get more sticks." after we finished.

So he did, and pushed them in all by himself...

A hug for mommy and his baby sister and we were ready for daycare and work. Now we just have to hold on for a couple months until the yummy peas arrive!

First Parsnip of Spring

2011-03-09T16:54:00.000-08:00

This root has been hanging out in the ground all winter long with its buddies. With the warm weather we've had I was able to pull it out today. The little side root tasted amazing, and the main root was quite good as well though a little tougher. We ate this one raw, and I look forward to eating more cooked as spring continues to roll on.

I can already taste the Asparagus...

The Recipes Have Moved!

2011-03-09T10:27:00.001-08:00

The recipes, cookbook planning posts, and food bank discussions were cluttering up our nice garden blog, so I have moved them to a new home. Please come visit! :D

Community Gardens, Pulled Pork

2011-03-02T07:37:00.000-08:00

Chris has been helping to get the Community Gardens in Franklin up and running, and the project made it to the news today.

I've been watching Gabe while he's off at the meetings, or staying late to put together snazzy 3D images to show people what's possible. Ironically, he dug up some 3D models of garden plants out of mothballs to populate the virtual beds - 3D models that I made probably eight years ago! So, in a remote sort of way, I'm helping, too. . .

Progress on the cookbook continues. I decided that I need to learn more about cooking meat, so that I can have a reasonably comprehensive meat section. I cooked ribs a couple of weeks ago, but they turned out a bit tough, so I'll have to refine that recipe. More recently, I made pulled pork. Huzzah! It was glorious. Pork shoulder is a wonderfully economical cut of meat. Brine it all day, cook it all night, and viola, delicious, perfect sammich makins.

I used this awesome recipe for the pulled pork, and shortly I'll be writing up my own revised version.

With these long-cooking meats, I am looking for recipes that not only freeze well, but can be done without a slow cooker. As it turns out, when searching for recipes for chunks of meat that require extended cooking times, it's actually tough to find non-slow-cooker recipes online, because everybody and their mother wants to share their fabulous shortcuts. Not that I have any beef with slow cookers, mind you, but the pantry cookbook is for those who can't afford one and likely don't already have one.

I have also so far avoided recipes that call for disposables, such as plastic bags and aluminum foil. This is to save my audience a bit of money, but also because my ulterior motive is to keep that single-use garbage out of the landfill.

However, I still see no good alternative to my addiction to semi-disposable plastic boxes. They're just so darn useful. And so long as you prevent them from falling out of the freezer (which causes them to shatter) they do last a while. Are there any good alternatives that aren't single-use or painfully expensive??

It also seems that my microwave is conspiring to teach me how to cook foods without its sleek convenience. The old geezer went kaput yesterday, just in time for me to learn how convenient the broiler is for reheating pulled pork.

Ice, Day 12

2011-02-21T12:21:00.000-08:00

We have since had some nice thaw days that revealed patches of grass here and there; and today we got a pretty little snowfall where you could see every six-armed snowflake. This one was just a decorative dusting, no more than three inches. But there is still over a foot of compacted snow most everywhere in the yard, rock-hard, and bordered by great icy heaps where the plows and shovels and blowers have pushed it out of the roads.

The above photo was taken on day 12 of the long freeze. I had been wondering and worrying about the deer. They must have huddled for weeks with hardly anything to eat, all but trapped. I counted eight of them in this herd.

That's a very solid two feet of snow they are standing on top of. I only saw one deer put a foot through, out in the woods.

Notice the little line through the snow? That's our neighbor's driveway.

To illustrate just how deep that snow is, here is the deer stepping down onto the driveway.

The Solar Pod Certainly Works

2011-02-20T10:24:00.001-08:00

This winter has been the harshest I've ever had in my decade plus in Massachusetts, and the amount of snow has been unreal. On February 4th I unburied the solar pod from another foot of snow and all but given up on anything surviving in it, as temperatures had dropped to -6 degrees F the previous week. My goal was simply to keep it clear of snow so I could use it again in the spring to jump start some plants. I certainly couldn't check the plants inside, as the pod was frozen shut. Even if I had been able to open it, there was the danger of snow falling in and preventing me from shutting it again. But the weather was nice again today and the snow has melted down, so I decided I would open it up a crack to see the pile of mush I was certain the greens had become.

I was greeted by a blast of steamy warm air and a tropical smell when I opened the solar pod just a couple inches. Once my glasses unfogged I could see that all the plants had made it through, with the kale doing particularly well. There was damage on a number of leaves, and some dead leaves in the mix, but they were in the minority. I picked a kale leaf to see how the taste had held up and it was heavenly.

At this point I can unequivocally call the solar pod a success. The fact that it protected the plants through a low of -6 degrees F and sustained single digit weather really impressed me. It wasn't cheap or easy to build, and certainly didn't deliver a bounty of produce. Still, the new year's harvest was succulent with unrivaled flavor, and I plan to go grab another round sometime this week.

Growing food through a harsh New England winter feels like an eccentric novelty, but it is something I look forward to doing long into the future. When the time comes I do believe I'll build another solar pod to replace this one when it fails. This spring looks to be extremely busy with a new baby on the way in April and a community garden to get off the ground. If it was a little more sane I might just build another this year for a larger harvest next winter.

Seeds Ordered

2011-02-20T09:09:00.001-08:00

I managed to do it a little later this year than I have in the past, but the seeds for this year's garden have been ordered! Along with the saved seeds from last year it is going to be a full house.

Soya Beans - Fledderjohn, Envy
Beans - Scarlet Runner Bean, Contender (Buff) Valentine Bush Bean
Beets - Bull's Blood Beet
Cucumbers - Parisian Pickling Cucumber, Marketmore 76 Cucumber
Salad Greens - Miner's Lettuce, Blue Curled Scotch, Early Purple Vienna, Big Boston Lettuce, Rocky Top Lettuce Mix, New Zealand Spinach
Melons - Prescott Fond Blanc Melon
Parsnip - Hollow Crown Parsnip
Peas - Oregon Sugar Pod II Snow Pea, Sugar Snap Snow Pea, Lincoln Garden Pea, Tall Telephone Garden Pea
Radishes - Chinese Red Meat
Summer Squash - Lebanese White Bush Marrow
Winter Squash - Shishigatani or Toonas Makino
Swish Chard - Five Color Silver Beet Chard
Watermelons - Sugar Baby Watermelon
Tomatoes - Black Cherry Tomato, Roma Tomato, Royal Chico, Yellow Pear, Lollipop Tomato, Ananas Noir Tomato, Kellogg's Breakfast, Sungold Select II, Pink Oxheart Tomato

Ice, Day 2

2011-02-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

So, this was the day after everything iced up. The sun came out and glowed through every tree. This is the view of Gabe's Garden in front of our house. There is a slide right in the middle, there. And note the mailbox.

Shiny trees! This is the trench leading to the front door.

This giant stalactite should have been a tip-off that we had an ice dam forming on the shaded rear roof. Not too long after this, we had water dribbling in a couple of windows.

Here is the view up our little street. Note the mailboxes.

I snapped photos on the way to work.

Ice on the power lines.

Cows. Note that they are staying very close to that barn. Two feet of rock-hard snow is tough to walk through even when you are a side of beef.

Typical street scene.

We tried to get someone in to remove our house's ice dams, but every company but one was booked up. They finally started returning my calls a few days later, after the leaking had stopped. Chris did a fantastic job improvising a way to melt a relief channel through the ice dam, and I rigged up plastic bags and buckets to minimize the damage. Finally, warmer weather brought rain and melting. You would think that the rain would have made things worse for a while, but thankfully no. And I suspect that the water damage is just cosmetic. Thank goodness we didn't shell out the $1800 that could have bought us emergency services from the one company that wasn't booked up!

Ice, Day 1

2011-02-13T17:58:00.000-08:00

This was, hopefully, the climax of winter. About two weeks ago, on top of our existing two feet of snow, it rained. The snow soaked up the rain like a sponge, and then the whole mess froze. News reports regularly included the number of collapsed roofs in Massachusetts. Chris and I stopped joking about wanting the deck to fall off the house, because it was getting to be a real possibility, and it might endanger the air conditioner underneath. He was a hero, and did all the work himself.

This is what the weather did to the trees.

It was gorgeous.

It was also terrifying. While Chris was excavating the deck, he heard a crack. He turned just in time to see this great limb snap off. Out in the woods somewhere, he heard another tree fall.

That day made me deeply grateful that we went through with cutting down the dying oak tree, because this is the sort of weather that could have sent it through our roof.

More pictures to come. . .

Snow and Cooking

2011-02-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Well, the amazing snow this year has formally introduced Chris and I to the idea that ice dams are nasty, and a well-insulated attic has more uses than just saving on money and fossil fuels. Like everyone else in New England, we put in a few dozen phone calls to ice dam removal services when water came dribbling in two of our windows. Thankfully, the only company available wanted to charge us an introductory price of $1800, so we reassessed the situation and found it to be Not All That Bad.

And lo, when rain came, and a night and day of snow-melting warmth, the water defied my expectations by ceasing its infiltration into the house.

I now look back at the heart-wrenching decision to remove the dangerous old oak tree and breathe a sigh of relief, because we could have easily been dealing with that through our roof. A little cosmetic water damage above the kitchen window? I can live with that.

Work on the cookbook has slowed a little because I have largely run out of recipes that I can recite from memory. Now I'm into new territory, cooking old dishes for the first time with a measuring cup, and trying entirely new things. This evening I cooked rice on the stove top for the first time in almost a decade, and I cooked cabbage, plain and simple, for perhaps only the second time in my life.

Some memorable out-takes: I tried a recipe for parsnip-peanut-butter French fries that was a total flop; somewhere in that combination is a tasty dish, but my version turned out so very unlike the promised results that I won't be tinkering with it. But the bonus is that I know now that parsnips are delicious. Forget the cooking, I'll take 'em raw.

And not for the cookbook but for me: I made pot stickers from scratch. The filling was tofu, minced cabbage, and some Chinese sauce from a jar. The wrappers came in a package; I filled 'em, closed 'em, and cooked 'em. I absolutely nailed the fry/steam technique that a Chinese friend told me about a few years back, causing none of the pot stickers to stick to the pan, and they were beyond delicious. And, of course, the picky toddler rejected them. I think the purple filling was just too scary. I'll have to try again with a meat filling, or something else less colorful.

For the time being, I am giving up on photographing the cookbook foods. I just have too much else to do if I want to complete this project.

Speaking of which, I need to go write down what I learned this evening. . .

This and That

2011-02-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

There's a nice post at the Garden Professors explaining how this amazing string of winter storms is evidence for, not against, the presence of global warming.

(We're looking at another storm tomorrow, and then yet another during the week. I've finally had my fill of snow. Waking up at night with the sudden fear that the roof will fall in is not nice. Neither do I like seeing water trickle in the kitchen window as it melts. But on the bright side, we have one icicle hanging from the second story which has almost connected with the snow bank beneath it. That's kinda cool.)

Here is a website that I liked for the first thirty seconds. Heirloom seeds, ooh shiny! But it's full of predictable, unscientific ranting about GMO seeds, crops, and foods. Enough already. The world is going to need both approaches to food production. Get over it.

To add insult to injury, I popped over to their recipe section and found it to be entirely unhelpful in my quest to compile a Food Bank cookbook. While what they offer looks delicious, it's aimed at well-off foodies who can afford shrimp, fancy spices, and stick blenders. If I were living on food stamps, I wouldn't give them a second glance.

I would love to try the Food Stamp Challenge, but it will have to wait until I am no longer pregnant. Some members of Congress took the challenge a few years back.

UPDATE: Chris has found a quick, temporary solution to our ice dam problem! This is the best use of panty hose I have ever seen!

A Big White Blur

2011-02-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome to our house!

This will be the winter we talk about for decades to come. It's been one storm after another all through January. Multiple storms dropped a foot of snow. Gabe's Garden is under the snow in this picture.

An early-morning view of Gabe's Garden from the front window. That dimple in the middle is his slide.

The trench leading to the front door is taller than Gabe.

The raspberry row. . . see? See the fence in there? No?

Several kindly neighbors have been by to assist with clearing the driveway. I love our neighbors! Chris is upstairs baking a giant quantity of blueberry muffins as I write this, as a thank-you.

Chris is pretty much recovered from the walking pneumonia now, hooray! And my placenta previa has cleared up - hooray! So we have both been able to do some shoveling. Some. Bless our neighbors!

You might think this was taken out in the wilderness somewhere, but it's a view of one of the snow heaps from the street. That was a few days ago. The heaps are much bigger now.

Yesterday, I had an early doctor's appointment. In one hour, two inches of snow piled up on the car. I slid into an intersection on the way home. We decided it was wise not to go in to work.

This was taken several days ago, as Chris fought his way to the garden to excavate his squashed little greenhouse. I have been venturing out there once a week to take out the compost. That's as much cross-country walking as I am willing to do right now.

And to think we thought this was deep snow!

Can you see the bench now? Neither can we.

Here was the mailbox a few days ago before the plow dug close to it. We are one of the lucky people to still have an upright mailbox. The continuous piling of snowbanks by the plows is rough on mailboxes.

They said on the radio that flat roofs are in danger of collapsing under the weight today, because it is raining, and the snow is soaking up the rain like a sponge. Chris, wisely, removed the 28 accumulated inched from the sun room roof yesterday, as another foot was beginning to fall. We're not as worried about the deck. . . or rather, we're both secretly hoping that the snow will squash it. Hopefully the rest of the roof will be able to withstand the load.

Mmm, I smell muffins!

Poor Bird!

2011-01-26T16:07:00.000-08:00

This poor Cooper's hawk was trapped in the Library of Congress all week. I'm amazed that she didn't starve. A hawk of this size needs the equivalent of a quail a day, and she got only two meals in a week's time.

I suppose that this is more evidence that the nation's predatory bird populations are on the rise.

The Evil Empire Strikes Back!

2011-01-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

There's a very good post up on Monsanto's blog right now, defending Monsanto employees against people who call them "evil", with links to other good posts.

I wasn't expecting Europe to lift its ban of GM foods, but it seems to have happened.

And from the radio this morning, news of a report on global hunger and food production, in which a surprisingly balanced stance is taken. The report is in support of using GM foods as one of a number of solutions, but also says that small farms have a lot to offer, and that GM crops and small farms do not mix. I still need to listen to the whole thing and do some more research. . .

Snowpocalypse, the Day After

2011-01-15T14:38:00.000-08:00

New England knows how to handle snow. Even though we got something nearing two feet, by the next day, the roads were mostly cleared.

Still, much caution is needed to drive in these conditions.

Plows and other diggers are still at work clearing side roads.

You need to know where you are going in this. Signs and lights are clotted with snow, and piles of snow block the visibility at turns.

Another very useful sign.

These photos were all taken from the car as we drove to work. This is the best picture I could get of the Charles River floodplain.

Trees are sagging and cracking under these loads of snow.

A pond.

You can tell the proper New Englanders from the rest by how well they clean off their cars. You either have to be new to the area or very stupid not to realize that driving with a mattress of snow on your car, especially on the highway, could kill someone. I'm pretty sure it is illegal.

Our workplace has a locked courtyard with a lovely garden. All the saplings are bent into arches. The understory of the woods everywhere looks like this, too, as does the dogwood in my yard that I'm too lazy to shake off. I'm curious to see how, or if, they recover.

Snowpocalypse 2011

2011-01-13T19:21:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, January 12, 2011. We all stayed home. Chris is still recovering from walking pneumonia, and I am still under doctor's orders to do no heavy work, so we asked a neighbor to clear our driveway. But for most of the day, were were well and truly snowed in.

More than a foot of snow accumulated on the railings.

The branches were so loaded with the sticky snow that you couldn't see into the woods.

Looks like some sort of hunched creature now, doesn't it?

Gabe's Garden, the view from the front door.

Chris' veggie garden.

Check out the fence. Chris had to go dig out the Mousetrap. It was squashed under the weight of the snow, but sprang right back up.

I took these pictures from the windows. I just don't have the energy to be slogging around through knee-deep snow right now.

It's good hibernating weather. Poor crow.

The plows built us some magnificent piles. Gabe would run to the window to watch them work.

I considered opening the door and dipping him into the snow, but he wouldn't have appreciated it. Instead, I brought a bowl of snow inside for him to eat.

My poor shrubs are getting squashed, but I don't have the energy to shake them free of snow. Oh well - they look so pretty like this anyhow.

Snow photos coming soon!

2011-01-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

We hunkered down at home yesterday to enjoy the nor-easter. Hopefully I'll have some photo-editing time tonight. I hope everyone else who got snow stayed warm and safe!

For Your Reading Enjoyment. . .

2011-01-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

I like reading about legal matters, when they are written in layman's terms that I can grok. Things that seem so simple on the surface turn out to be so complex underneath, and a proper look at legalities leaves out partisan fluff and goes straight to the heart of the matter with Vulcan clarity of logic. Here, for example, is a nice blurb at the Garden Professors about why educators need to be very careful when recommending home remedy pesticides, even when such remedies seem more safe than their commercial counterparts.

And in this corner, Monsanto acknowledges the benefit of no-till farming, as is demonstrated by a Purdue study. Whoda thunk it?

Last but not least, here is a nice little article on how invasive species trigger mass extinctions. And to think I ever wasted time arguing with people who consider invasive species to be a man-made problem. Of course, they said, when species migrate without the help of people, it's all natural and completely different from what's going on now! Morons.

(This does not absolve us from our role in mixing up the world's ecosystems, but, more importantly, gives us a more accurate and scientific perspective from which to evaluate the current mess.)

Hello snow plow. . .

2011-01-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

While my father was outside blissfully shoveling away at the pre-Christmas blizzard, I happened to look out just as the snowplow pulled up. Usually the plow does a cursory job on our unimportant dead-end street. In the past we've had to shovel as much as ten feet by thirty of road in order to regain access to our street and the mailbox.

On this day, however, I think the plowman was angling for a tip from my Dad. He carefully scooped away at the build-up blocking the end of our driveway.

That's Gabe, above, contemplating the pile of snow, rocks, and creeping thyme that doesn't usually live in the driveway.

We see the first hint of a truly exciting resculpting of the garden there, in the middle of the opposing bed, where a rock peeks out from the heaped snow. No rock should be there. And even at this stage, I'm pretty sure I know which rock got moved.

I'm glad that my father didn't think to tip the guy. Stay tuned. . .

The Pre-Christmas Snow

2011-01-07T07:41:00.000-08:00

Snow fell for my parents over vacation, right before Christmas. This is a view of the veggie garden as the light was fading on the first day.

View of Gabe's Garden from the front window. Nana helped Gabe to make the wreath as a surprise gift for us. So sweet!

Gabe's Garden as seen from the front door.

The veggie garden, the following day. This was before Chris opened up the box to harvest his delicious and absurdly out-of-season greens.

Here is Chris, my intrepid shoveler, demonstrating the depth of the snow piled on the bench. My father did most of the shoveling because Chris was sick through their entire visit. (And I am on on doctor's orders not to exert myself.) Poor Chris is still sick - the cold has morphed into walking pneumonia.

I just noticed that in the photo, you can see a ball of snow flying through the air from my father's shovel!

Mass die-offs versus Extinction

2011-01-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

"The irony is that mass die-offs — usually of animals with large populations — are getting the attention while a larger but slower mass extinction of thousands of species because of human activity is ignored."

From this article.

This article is following up on panic caused by reporting on a cluster of die-offs in Arkansas.

Fisher Cat

2011-01-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

I would like to tell you that this image is as cute as it looks.

This creature, I am fairly sure, is a fisher cat, Martes pennanti. My neighbors have reported occasional sightings of these reclusive predators in their yards, and I had seen prints through my own yard that seemed to be the right size, but this is the first time I have ever seen one. Sadly, sometimes the only way to get a good look at a wild animal is after it has died. And this, I am sorry to say, is a dead fisher cat. I spotted it a couple of miles from home as I was en route to the weekly grocery outing, and I returned for a closer look at mid-day, having traded the toddler for the camera.

The fisher cat was a casualty of a car, no doubt. There is a small amount of blood in the following images, so if you are sensitive to such things, you may want to skip this post.

From this angle, its weasel heritage is quite apparent. She - as I assume this one is female, by its smaller size - is about three feet long. Three feet may sound tiny, but when I got up close to her and saw no obvious indication that she was dead, I stood and looked a long while for any hint that she might spring back to life. This is not a wild animal that I would want to get close to while alive. I hear that they can be quite fearsome in life - and the build of this creature is magnificently ferocious.

Look at those teeth, and those giant paws! Note, too, that her nose is still moist, and the blood has neither clotted nor frozen. The poor thing hadn't been dead long. It pains me to think that she have been lying there, still alive but suffering, as I did my grocery shopping.

I looked long and hard for evidence of breathing, or any twitch in that eye. I wanted to be sure that she was beyond suffering.

The paws are massive compared to the fisher's body, giving it a formidable bear-like appearance - and they are tipped with a cat's nasty curved claws. Size-wise, the feet are unmistakably larger than a cat's, but smaller than that of a coyote. Now that I have seen them, I'll be able to more correctly identify the prints in my yard.

A hundred years ago fishers were hunted to near extinction in their southern ranges due to demand for their furs - particularly in New England. And I can see why. Her fur looked fantastically warm, and begged to be touched.

If nothing else, I learned a bit about these beautiful animals while researching this post. Fisher cats prefer old-growth forests, particularly when there are rotting logs about. I can't provide the former, but we do have an excess of logs left over from the oak tree. I'll have Chris put them out in the woods to make our landscape a more suitable habitat.

Rest in peace beautiful creature.

Quinoa

2011-01-05T09:38:00.001-08:00

I need to give quinoa another chance. The last time I tried cooking it, picking out the pebbles was a pain, and the cooking time was lengthy. But it's far more nutritious than I realized, and I'm jumping at every opportunity right now to get nutrition into my picky toddler, for whom I have devolved into hiding sweet potato in meatballs, hiding kale with ketchup, and flying spoonfulls of food over the dinner table like airplanes.

I wonder if I can cook quinoa in my rice cooker? Wikipedia says yes!

I need to get back on the ball with my writing.

2011-01-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

Dang it - I haven't written a fresh newspaper article in months. My blog posts have been minimalist filler, and forget about writing for other outlets. Pregnancy has sucked away my energy for late-night writing! Grump! Dinner rolls around, I cook, I eat, and then I get wrapped up with getting our two-year-old through his bedtime routine. Oh, and he has been getting transitioned to his new big-boy bed, so every night has been an adventure. It's getting to be a routine, but the routine still involves either Chris or myself climbing into bed with him and waiting until he is asleep. And when it's me, I fall asleep, too, and Chris has to remind me to move my sorry sleepy self over into the correct bed. Add to this that Chris has been walloped these past weeks with a cough that has left him a miserable exhausted sofa-lump, so Gabe's bedtime routine has been mostly fallen to me. So, there's my excuse for not writing. And the arrival of the new baby in April will be exponentially worse. Sigh.

Anyway, it gave me a smile to see that my "recent" post on Garden Rant came in as their number three post for comments generated in a guest rant. Let me take that as a reminder to myself to sit my sleepy butt at the computer a couple of nights a week, at least until April. Perhaps a Resolution is in order. . .

New Year's Eve Harvest

2010-12-31T14:19:00.000-08:00

We finally had our first blizzard of the year, and it dropped a nice pile of snow on us. I wish we had it earlier as the snow is a perfect insulator for the pod. I've been sick as a dog, but I did go out and shovel the snow off the pod. I don't have a support in the middle and it seemed to hold up just fine with about a half a foot of snow piled on top.

The plants really haven't grown since I last peeked in it a couple weeks ago, but I felt it was time to give them a try. So on New Year's Eve I harvested Kale, Salad Greens, and a little spinach. That's kind of awesome.

Despite the cold the greens have held up well overall. Some have cold damage on them, but the majority are perfect. The greens taste great, just like any cold weather greens only better.

The Kale has held up amazingly with no signs of any cold damage on it. The flavor is unlike anything I have ever tasted before. Sweet, but with a number of other complex flavors that made it hard to put any in the bowl as I wanted them to go straight into my mouth.

It is a little difficult to harvest out of the pod if you don't completely remove the top. Since Michelle can't lift anything at the moment I had to leave it in place and just reach in as best I could.

I was really shocked to come across this daddy long legs in the pod. I wasn't really expecting much bug life in the pod.

Further inspection revealed that there are munching bugs in the pod as well as this leaf had a hole chewed out of the middle of it. It still tasted amazing though;)

On another note I broke my thermometer so no more readings for now. I blame the delirium caused by the cold. Clearly that's why I put it on top of the car like a dolt and forgot about it.

An Awesome Mess!

2010-12-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

Now THIS is how to install a garden! These kids are flinging balls of mud and seed in what will become a rain garden in a playground in Spain.

Thanks to Arcady at Playscapes for this delightful find!

Are you an artist?

2010-12-23T12:35:00.001-08:00

The American Chestnut Foundation is looking for artists to sell American chestnut-themed art through their website! More information can be had here.

I used to be an artist. Now I admire art made by other people!

Since he likes owls so much, I commissioned a piece of art for Gabe from a friend and former coworker, Sean Murray. I asked him to do something with an owl as the central element, and also including a little boy, a little girl, and an American chestnut leaf and nut. Check out what he came up with!

I would love to see his work sold through the TACF. You can see his other paintings, and buy prints, here. The print quality is just amazing, and boy does he have a great sense of humor! Go look, and support an actual artist!

Woot, published again!

2010-12-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

My Garden Geek article on American chestnut trees is in this week's edition of the Franklin Country Gazette. I didn't mean to go so long between articles, but this one had me intimidated, because I needed to contact actual people for my research. So, I procrastinated.

I'll post the article here in a week or so. In the mean time, here is a historic photo of some astoundingly large chestnut trees. There is some information on the origins of this photo in the TACF's most recent publication, but I left the magazine sitting on my desk at work, dang it, so I can't tell you much about it. But yes, that is a man standing there in the crotch of the trees for scale reference.

The sausage turned out pretty well, it seems.

2010-12-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Here is Garden Rant's take on the Food Safety Modernization Act.

Bees and CCD - It's Complicated

2010-12-20T10:42:00.001-08:00

This article nicely outlines the possible complexities in what is ailing the honeybees.

Watching Monsanto, EU and GMOs

2010-12-20T10:31:00.000-08:00

I keep an eye on one of Monsanto's blogs as balance to the radically anti-Monsanto reading that I do. They have some interesting reading up today, though I haven't had time to follow the links they provided.

Well, cool!

2010-12-20T08:18:00.001-08:00

No new info really - I'm just tickled that a few messages left on a few blogs has resulted in lots of good dialogue between blogs. :) Now the discussion on pesticides and bees has gone back to Garden Rant.

More On Bees and Peat Moss

2010-12-17T08:00:00.001-08:00

The Garden Professors have now chimed in on the discussion about Colony Collapse Disorder - thanks Jeff! This is another very level-headed look at the situation from an actual scientist.

A tidbit:

"I am extremely unhappy with both Bayer and the EPA in this instance. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do. It’s as simple as that. Tests were supposed to be run to demonstrate that it is unlikely that clothianidin affects bees. This wasn’t done in a reasonable period of time. Period. As long as stuff like this occurs nobody is going to trust the EPA or the chemical manufacturers."

And much like the Scientist Gardener, Jeff thinks that the current popular position that a single pesticide, alone, is to blame is a case of jumping to conclusions.

Along with this, Garden Professor Linda Chalker-Scott has poked some mighty big holes in the recent Garden Rant post on the possible sustainability of Canadian peat moss. This line is a dandy: "Unquestioned acceptance of industry talking points lends nothing to the discussion." Ouch!

Thank you Linda. I love scientists. Let's have a hug-a-scientist day to properly show them our love.

In other news, Christmas is bearing down on us, and we have yet to have a snowfall of any real substance. The ground is rock-hard, and our "sun room" (which is on the shady side of the house, thanks to some strange decision made by a previous owner) gets into the teens most nights. We have yet to see if Chris will be harvesting lettuce from his solar pod for Christmas dinner, but if we do, it'll be a close thing.

Another Opinion on Pesticides and Bees

2010-12-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

Mat Kinase, a.k.a. the Scientist Gardener, kindly shared his dissenting opinion for me on the recent news about a possible connection between pesticides and bee deaths. Thanks Matt! I love reading both sides to an issue, when both sides are being rational and logical.

Here's an excerpt:

"Aside from the fact that this registration [of the pesticide in question] was completed in 2004 and (according to the same article) this whole bee business started in the mid-1990s, I'm skeptical that any new pesticide is causing all this. We were SO much more indiscriminate and profligate with our agricultural sprays and industrial dumping in past decades (and with much more dangerous chemicals) than we are now - it seems a funny time for a problem to pop up."

This and That

2010-12-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

The rest of the country has been snowed in, but all we got was a soggy mess. And a nice little flurry this morning. My parents have put in a request for snow when they come up to visit, and it'll be shocking if we don't get any.

It looks like insecticides may be involved in the decline of the honeybees after all. I am hoping for comments from some of the science-based blogs that I follow.

Another issue that I would like to hear more from the scientists on: the sustainability of Canadian peat moss. I find this Garden Rant post to be a flimsy defense of its use.

Solar Pod: Close Shave with Freezing

2010-12-09T07:41:00.001-08:00

Last night the temperature dropped to the low teens in the back yard last night and the Solar Pod was flirting with freezing. It bottomed out at 33.8 before the morning sun started to warm it back up. We're supposed to be even colder tonight, so we may get a chance to see what happens when the pod actually hits freezing.

In theory because there is no wind in the pod disturbing the plants they should be able to super cool to several degrees below freezing without dying, but we will see if that works in practice.

Nut Update

2010-12-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

Five of my indoor chinkapins have sprouted leaves! And all of these are in separate containers: three in milk jugs and two in soda bottles.

I was diagnosed with placenta previa and told by the doctor to take it easy - no exertion in the garden, and no lifting anything over 25 pounds (including my son). Well, feeling bloated around the middle makes me disinclined to do a dang thing outdoors anyway, so this level of gardening is absolutely perfect right now. Wait. . . peek. . . wait. . .

Solar Pod Gets a Remote Thermometer

2010-12-06T22:32:00.000-08:00

Well, truth be told I've had them for a while, but they're now setup in the shed and in the solar pod with the base unit in the garage so it is close enough to pickup the signals from outside units. We also have another thermometer for an ambient air temperature.

The shed is reading at 27 degrees.
The ambient air is currently 26 degrees.
The solar pod is currently 39.1 degrees.

The shed has no insulation and gave up the heat it gained during the day incredibly quickly, and while the solar pod is getting chilly it is still holding its heat well enough to make some nice and tasty cold weather greens!

The Solar Pod's First Winter

2010-12-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

Back in the beginning of October I finally got around to digging out a section of the garden for the base of the Solar Pod. It needed to be in the ground to keep the pod below the freeze line. Even with digging it down the whole base isn't below ground since my garden is on a hill. I plan to fill in the exposed side with wood chips just as soon as I have a little extra free time. So far the exposed side has held up ok, though the plants on that side have recently shown some very minor frost damage as we've had multiple nights in a row that have been well below freezing.

Here is the base of the solar pod before I installed it in the ground. The actual instructions call for foam insulation, multiple layers, and aluminum parts which I ignored. Earth is a pretty solid insulator, and I'm going to put that to the test this winter.

Here I am planting seeds in the Solar Pod which we have lovingly named the Mouse Trap. I planted Kale on the right, Lettuce on the left, and Spinach in the middle. From this angle you can see that it is buried into the garden, and has insulation along the top which helps create a good seal to keep the heat in.

The Mouse Trap is held open by a recycled notched 4x4. It is pretty darn stable, but still a little scary.

October 16th, and the lettuce green have started to sprout.

October 24th, and the lettuce greens are doing nicely. The spinach and kale have also sprouted. My friend Steve had two extra Boston lettuce seedlings which are in with the spinach.

November 13th, and the lettuce and kale are looking like healthy seedlings now. I've gone in and thinned them out at this point. For whatever reason all but two of the spinach seedlings have died off. I think mostly because the condensation seems to be lightest in the middle of the pod so they may have dried out a bit too much. This is the last day that I watered the pod. No more water until the spring to try and prevent the plant's cells from bursting during very cold weather.

December 2nd, and holy cow I can't believe all of the green inside of the pod. It makes me so happy when I open it up and the happy greens greet me. I have to be careful to only open the pod when it will get plenty of sun to heat back up again and when the ambient air temp is above freezing. My big goal is to have a Christmas dinner with fresh greens from the garden!

Addendum for Thom:

While I have been very happy with the results so far building the Solar Pod was a trial that I'm reluctant to go through again. To map out the end arcs I went through a very careful process of measuring the template included in the book and converting each measurement to full scale and then mapping it to the end boards. This was error prone, and didn't work out well.

If I had to do it again I think I would take the template to a Kinko's or something similar and see if they could blow the template up to full size so I could just tape it to the end boards and cut it out. In the end though a curve is just a cruel shape to try and get right with simple tools at home.
I also left out the central conduit they talked about. I tried using a conduit as they described and it just wasn't right. We'll see if I pay for that when we get a heavy snow, but I think the pod will hold up just fine without it.

My friend Steve and I have talked about drawing up plans for of our own design to build next spring based on our experience with this pod. The primary focus being on simplicity of design so we don't suffer through all of the frustration we did when we put this one together. If we do and we succeed we'll be sure to post the plans.

My final 2 cents would be that if you're looking to build one come up with a good plan for creating the end plates first and foremost. They are the hardest and most important part of the pod.

Chinkapin versus Chestnut

2010-11-28T12:11:00.000-08:00

A second chinkapin seedling has popped up today! I swear, they must make a "sproing" noise when they emerge, the way they magically go from nothing to three leaves.

Anyway, when I got my nuts planted (har de har, I do love talking about my nuts!) I reserved a few for a photo-op and taste test. So, here they are, featured with a penny for scale-reference, and some imported chestnuts.

As you can see, there is a good reason that chinkapin aren't a part of our modern diet: they are tiny. Though I suppose size restrictions don't keep anyone from eating rice, so there goes that argument. More likely is that nobody ever focused on finding a mechanical means of harvesting and shelling them, leaving them to languish in the forgotten realms of so many other amazing foods that never make an appearance at grocery stores.

Cute, aren't they? Yes, you say, but what do they taste like?

They taste fegging delicious! The meat is soft and smooth, like acorn, if you happen to have ever eaten acorn, har har. And sweet. I can't compare them to the chestnut flavor, alas, because my fancy expensive imported chestnuts turned out to be all dried up. That big yellow brainy thing is the chestnut nut-meat. They were sweet but too tough to bother with raw, and when I tried roasting them, they turned into toothbreakers. So, not a fair comparison.

Both chinkapin and chestnut have a shell that is more like leather than wood. Again, much like acorn. This makes chestnuts versatile, because they can be cut open with a knife. Perhaps that is what I needed to try with the chinkapin. As it turns out, they are too small for a nutcracker to open. Using the extreme wrong end of the cracker, I sent a few nuts zinging across the living room, and painstakingly squashed the remainder. You can see the slightly mangled nutmeats, above. A board and a rock would have been faster, and mangled them just as thoroughly.

After eating those, I cracked open a pecan. Three things struck me. "Wow, this shell sure is a noisy brittle pain." "This nutmeat is giant!" And "this tastes like sawdust." There actually was enough moist sweet flavor in those smaller-than-peanut chinkapins to put pecans to shame. And I love pecans.

Fascinating!

Surprise!

2010-11-27T13:08:00.000-08:00

Germination! Here is my first confirmed Allegheny chinkapin tree.

Ironically, this little guy is growing in the container that I let Gabe set up. I had given him the small nuts, and the molding ones, to keep him busy while I got the rest potted. There may be a dozen in here. But by the way the exposed roots looked, and the sorry quality of the nuts, I had been sure they were dead! I guess they like the shallow and cluttered conditions. Perhaps it reminds them of the way they would collect naturally on the forest floor.

My next challenge: did I give these plants enough room to grow between now and December? I only left a few inches of each container unfilled with dirt.

Better that I have to deal with overcrowded greens than no greens at all, I suppose!

Waiting for my Nuts to Grow

2010-11-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

There isn't much to report right now. Twenty-some containers, each containing two nuts, are out in the garden. I won't know until the Spring if they survive.

Another twenty-odd containers, each with two nuts, hides indoors behind the sofa.

In theory these should sprout any day now, if I haven't killed them. But the jury is still out. They sat in a baggie in the fridge, partially germinated, for a couple of weeks, with nothing but a damp paper towel to sustain them. Then I got them into the container, but didn't get them adequately watered for most of a week, thanks to wrangling a toddler at the same time.

Supposedly chinkapin don't do well in soggy conditions, so I'm crossing my fingers.

So far, the weed seeds are germinating nicely in the indoor containers. I guess that's a good sign. I'll need to use the bacon tongs to pull those out, but in the mean time, at least something is growing.

More ominously, in the one container where I gave Gabe some of my extra nuts and let him play, I can see a couple of the partially-germinated nuts peeking out of the soil, and they appear to be rotting. But in another container where my hasty watering dislodged soil, I can see what looks like new roots. So, fifty-fifty chance?

Mow, mow, mow your lawn. . .

2010-11-15T07:45:00.000-08:00

Here is an article that clears up some of the confusion regarding the pollution created by gas-powered lawn mowers. (Thanks Garden Rant for the link.)

I love my reel mower!

First Snow

2010-11-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

This pretty little snowfall came down about a week ago.

Just Disgusted

2010-11-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

On the stupid news front, Seed Savers Exchange was founded, it appears, by yet another over-zealous hippie of the sort whose work causes me to fall in love and whose politics eventually break my heart. He was chucked out of the organization a few years back, and recently made a speech in which he accused Seed Savers of playing into the hands of Monsanto-type companies by giving seeds to the Svalvard Global Seed Vault. You have got to be kidding me. Read about the soap opera over at Garden Rant, and then read Squash's humorous comments, in which she doesn't actually use a cucumber euphemism.

Call me a radical moderate, but it seems to me that the best path for agriculture would be for the hippie save-the-earth crowd to play nice with big agribusiness, especially now that the Justice Department has said that genes can't be patented! The Scientist Gardener is a great blog to read if you are interested in middle-of-the-road options. His recent post on rice demonstrates how even the most perfected strains of crop varieties need to be continually bred in order to stay productive. Seed Savers-type organizations should be helping with this, not taking their toys and hiding them away where they do most of the world no good.

Chased Away

2010-11-02T06:26:00.000-07:00

What sort of raptor is this? A broad-winged hawk, perhaps? The body was rather red, the tail and wings barred with black and white. He was hopping about in the bare trees in the back yard.

There has been massive bird activity in the yard this week. I would assume that the same birds have just become more visible with the leaves off the trees, except that for the first time all year, we have had a rash of bird strikes on the windows. ("Poor bird," says Gabe. I keep thinking of a story I heard of a turkey ending up in someone's living room, along with a lot of bloodied, broken glass.)

The songbirds were absolutely mobbing this poor hawk! Note the innocent-looking robin there in the photo. I have never seen so many species working together to drive off a predator. Chris only managed three quick photos before their efforts at driving off the raptor succeeded.

Chinkapin Propagation

2010-10-31T19:51:00.000-07:00

After decades of breeding work, the American Chestnut Foundation is now making Castanea dentata nuts available that are likely to be resistant to the blight! There is hope! This news makes me glad in a profound way. But gads, the price tag is $350 per pair. No, I didn't displace a decimal point in that number.

But it's a good thing, I suppose, because I don't yet have enough experience to be growing such a critically endangered species. Those nuts are for arboretums and the Whitehouse and people who really really know what they are doing. The price should drop eventually as production goes up, and in the mean time, there are similar species that I could practice on, such as Chinkapin, Castanea pumila, pictured above. So, I ordered some.

And oh. Crap. I should have read up on these guys a little more. Sometimes, when conditions are right, they start germinating right on the tree. Unlike other seeds I have started over the winter, I don't have a few months to leisurely get them into containers. These little guys arrived already trying to grow.

So I posted a flier up at work explaining my need for containers, and entitled it "Help! My Nuts are Germinating!" My coworkers can't resist a good gag, so by the following day, my desk was covered in milk jugs and soda bottles.

(This prompted a discussion in which a male friend asked after my nuts, and I asked after his jugs, and we both walked off laughing our asses off. I love my workplace!)

The soda bottles, I cut like this.

And the milk jugs, like this.

This gives me maximum pot space in each jug type. With the milk jugs, it also allows me to hold the lid open easily with one hand, making filling easier.

In the Spring, I plan to cut the tops of the containers off, and continue to let the seedlings grow in the container they germinated in. Unlike the standard approach to winter sowing, I will not immediately be transplanting the seedlings. Each container gets only two nuts. One in each pot will be sacrificed next year.

This is me, using my fingers as a dibble.

And here is the final army of containers, ready to be sealed up with tape. The containers function as mini greenhouses. They will be left outdoors all winter, and with any luck, I will have more trees next year than I know what to do with.

I still have a lot more nuts, however. Hopefully my coworkers will continue to bring me plastic gifts.

Reptile Show on Halloween!

2010-10-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Wooooot! I just learned that Marla Issac will be giving a reptile show on Halloween! If you live in my area, I can't say enough amazing things about this woman. Go see her show. Take your kids and cameras! We'll see you there.

How to Stop Junk Mail

2010-10-21T18:50:00.000-07:00

There is a fantastic organization dedicated to removing unwanted junk mail from the world and from your mailbox: CatalogChoice.org. The next time you sort your mail, save a pile of the stuff you would rather not get any more of, go to this site, and fill out some information. The basic service is free, and includes tracking the replies of the companies you have contacted through them.

You can use Catalog Choice to opt out of mailings from non-profit organizations, too, and one of the reasons that you can specify for opting out is "I want to help the environment". I find it ironic that I have to use this environmental organizations who have proceeded to spend the entirety of my donation on asking me for more donations.

Catalog Choice even keeps score of how many trees and other resources you have conserved by using their service. As I well know from the games industry, watching one's numbers go up can be addictive.

Thank goodness for Catalog Choice, because my previous attempt to halt junk-mail was a total failure. The post office couldn't figure out my post cards, and most of them were sent back to me. Grrr.

I'll be upgrading to the paid version of Catalog Choice soon, I think.

An Owl for Gabe

2010-10-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

Late nights, and early, early mornings, we have been hearing a most magical sound. It's exactly what the owls in movies sound like: hoo hooo hoo hoo! We haven't seen the owl, but Massachusetts Audubon has a lovely report-an-owl-sighting page that includes recordings of owl calls. As it turns out, most owls don't make that distinctive "hoot". What we have been hearing is a great horned owl!

Being an elusive night visitor, we have no photos of our wild owl. Instead, here are some images of Merlin, a rescued great horned owl who was presented at a raptor show last year. (Click here to see photos of the whole raptor show.)

The funny side effect of hearing an owl is Gabe's reaction. I keep encouraging him to listen for the owl. So, one night, he turns toward the dark window and announces: "I eat the owl". He proceeded to stand there with his mouth open, as if an owl would fly in!

The owl has been a reoccurring theme for him ever since. Sometimes we joke about eating owls; at other times he announces randomly that he is afraid of the owl! But now he almost always follows up with "the owl is nice," because we want to teach him that our local animals are nothing to be afraid of.

But I suppose when you are two, an animal that eats mice might just seem big enough to eat you, too.

I'll have to show him this photo from the raptor show:

Thanks Merlin, you were a good sport!

Last Flowers of the Season

2010-10-16T15:36:00.000-07:00

This was my last big hurrah of flower gardening for the year. I had let this bet turn into quite the mess, and I really like having a nice tidy garden up where the neighbors see most of the yard, so towards the end of September when I found myself stuck at home with a slightly sick child, I raided a local nursery for instant gratification plants.

I went with ye olde Autumn Joy sedums, New England aster (or something similar), some black-eyed Susans, and something in the mint family with purple flower that the bees were rioting over. Hyssop, maybe?

The bees and wasps were seriously nuts about that flower. They were actively fighting each other over it, which I have never seen before. But I didn't really pay attention until one of the bees came zipping over to the wagon and stung Gabe, unprovoked. I didn't get a look at what type of bee it was, but it left the stinger behind, so it was likely a honeybee. Such strange behavior!

Gabe was such a trooper. He yelled "Ow!" a few times and then looked at his arm with an expression of "WTF?" The nice woman running the shop, bless her, didn't have any ice, so she gave him a popsicle instead. It didn't last long as an ice-pack before Gabe just HAD to eat it, but boy did it make him happy!

That was his first bee sting. Hooray, no sign of allergy! And not even a tear shed!

The nice lady also enthusiastically waded into the bees to retrieve the plant for me, because, being as nuts as I am, I wanted the flower that attracts so many pollinators at this late time of year. And the bed by the mailbox is a good place for bees, since it doesn't get a lot of foot traffic.

I had to back off a few times when getting them into the ground, because of the bees. They must have felt Winter coming on.

Here is Gabe, upset with me for walking around without my shoes.

A row of two plants alternated is really not my style, but I was craving something extra-orderly after the mess I let this bed become. But at least I wasn't tempted to buy annuals. Please shoot me if I ever waste a penny on a chrysanthemum. Here's hoping that the road salt doesn't do all of these in over the winter. If half of what I planted comes back next year, I'll consider it a success. This is a very tough spot to grow things.

It's mid-October now. How did that happen? The flowers are mostly done for the year, and the few bees I've seen about have been very, very sluggish. It has been cold and wet. Some of the trees are looking bare. My ridiculous saffron crocuses are popping up, and one of them has even bloomed. That little flower is playing games with my sense of time! I plugged some daffodils into the front beds, and that's about it for me and gardening this season. Now I get to hibernate.

Garbage Disposal = Wasted Water

2010-10-15T07:28:00.001-07:00

By far the simplest way I have found to conserve water in my home is to avoid using the garbage disposal. Here is a device that takes perfectly potable water and transforms it instantly into waste water. Plus it adds more gunk to wastewater systems that is already, in many areas, so overloaded that they overflow into rivers when it rains. Plus the disposal burns fossil fuels in the process. Plus it wastes perfectly good composting materials.

(This is my last minute oh-shoot-I-forgot-that-today-is-blog-action-day post.)

Thanks to wikimedia commons for the image.

Scarlet Runner Beans

2010-10-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

I decided to grow some scarlet runner beans this year in marginal locations around the garden where they wouldn't have the best conditions, but would have plenty of room to grow. Based on this year they have definitely earned a place in a garden next year. When they are young they are amazingly tender and flavorful. Probably among the best green beans I've ever eaten. As they get larger they lose their texture and flavor, but you are rewarded with large beautiful beans. We still have to try the beans I've collected in a meal, but even if they aren't good there the tender beans alone are worth the space and effort.

Migration

2010-10-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Autumn feels like a relief this year. As usual, I am more inclined to watch the season change around me than I am to document it. The trees are a bit muted this year anyway, due, I suspect, to the mercilessly dry summer.

There go the Canadian geese. Even from this distance, a hundred of them all at once make a lot of noise.

I know almost nothing about the migration of birds of prey. Three red-tailed hawks circled past just after I photographed the geese. I guess they are traveling together, but it surprises me to see them in numbers greater than two.

Perhaps they will be dropping back down to two, judging by the squawking and dive-bombing going on.

American Chestnut at Franklin Matters

2010-10-09T20:18:00.000-07:00

I put up a post on American chestnut trees for Franklin Matters.

I've been getting in touch with TACF members to learn more about the Idylbrook breeding site. The biggest surprise? Most of the trees are going to be cut down next year. But this is a good thing! The trees have started to reach maturity. They have been exposed to the blight, and by next year, the breeders will be able to tell which ones are worth breeding. The rest are to be eliminated from the gene pool.

Even though it is an entirely logical step, the thought of these beautiful, healthy-looking American chestnuts being deliberately killed makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

They will be needing volunteers at some point, but nothing has been scheduled yet.

Child's Play-Garden Failure

2010-10-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

Having built one myself, and having watched it be played on and in unexpected ways, and having first-hand seen how it fails, I sympathize when a play-garden for children doesn't work out as intended. But this failure takes the cake. Obviously a lot of money went into it, but neither the designer, the builder, the homeowner, nor the American Society for Landscape Architects recognized the danger of a steep grass hill next to the exposed pointy corners of granite steps.

Additionally, this garden is located in San Francisco, where the scarce water supply will have to be used to irrigate all of that grass. And some poor schmuck will risk a nasty fall every time he mows the hill.

The ASLA gave this garden a big award, despite their very own code of ethics, which states that "The profession of landscape architecture, so named in 1867, was built on the foundation of several principles: dedication to the public health, safety and welfare, and recognition and protection of the land and its resources." This is a perfect example of artists losing sight of everything except aesthetics. Being a product of art school myself, all I can do is sigh. How very typical.

To the asshat who dumped eight gallons of diesel fuel into our ground water. . .

2010-10-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

Your solution to accidentally filling your car with diesel was to empty the tank into a storm drain? But, ah, you weren't born with enough brains to commit a crime out of the eyes of the public. You even told a resident that you would put *him* in the storm drain if he didn't mind his own business. Have they tracked you down yet, asshole? I hope it takes them a few weeks, to give your ulcer time to grow. They know which company your rented car came from. It's only a matter of time. You're going down, jerk.

Rabbits Dance Farm

2010-10-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

I have a habit of compulsively seeking out garden information now. And somehow, this impromptu research is starting to fill my head with useful information. The extent of my garden geekery was made clear this evening at Garden Club, when a farmer gave a presentation on growing garlic, and I already knew most of what she had to say. I felt bad at one point for contradicting her when she suggested growing garlic from bulbs purchased at the grocery store, since I have read that chemicals are sometimes used to inhibit sprouting, but hopefully this led to more people buying her garlic at the end of the presentation. I brought a pound home myself, by way of apology, and because I want to support my local farmers, and because at the rate we are eating up last year's garlic crop, we need a refill to plant with.

The farmer is Kristin of Rabbits Dance Farm, and, alas, she is giving up on farming! She ever-so-nobly ran a CSA for a few years, and even trained some farmers-to-be, but ultimately decided that teaching yoga and running a veggie garden consulting service was where her heart lies. And, as she put it, farming is ten times harder and earns ten times less than just about any other job. I shake my fist in frustration for small farmers everywhere, and wish her the best in her new business endeavors.

I seem to be all out of photos again. Time to take more!

Acorn Bread

2010-10-04T18:14:00.000-07:00

So, I had two cups of shelled acorns. I neglected to get a photograph of them, in part because acorn oxidizes a bit once it is out of the shell, so those beautiful ivory nut meats didn't look so photogenic. Perhaps I should have put them into a bowl of water as I shelled. Oh well.

I needed two cups in order to make acorn bread according to this recipe. So, following the recipe, I boiled the acorns in several changes of water. This is to remove the tannins which cause the bitter flavor. Sure enough, the nuts turned the water a murky brown. By the fifth boil, amazingly enough, those ivory nuts were still turning the water brown, but the nuts themselves were quite tasteless.

These are the soft, boiled acorns, and some of the brown water they produced in the first boiling. That brown water is reputed to have a healing effect on poison ivy rashes. It can be used to dye cloth, if another chemical is used to make the color permanent; and it can be used to wash clothes, if you don't mind them becoming a little brown in the process.

I must at this point mention that I am pregnant, and as such, my senses of taste and smell are both a bit wonky. The odor of boiling acorn didn't sit well with me. It smelled, to me, like a rotted, wet chunk of old stump, mushrooms and all, had been put in a pot and boiled. It wasn't a fecal smell, or a rotting flesh smell, but neither was it an appetizing food smell. But I can't trust my sense of smell right now, so I stuck with it.

Chris said it smelled better than the time I boiled a dessicated pigeon head, which isn't the most glowing of recommendations. He has a keen nose, so it just may be that this process is a little smelly.

I stuck the nuts in the refrigerator, poured out the stinky water, and called it a night.

I had mentioned in the previous post that the best nut meats came from germinating acorns. The drawback of these, however, was that the inner shell had a tendency to cling to the nut. This inner shell floated loose during the boilings. I had intended to pick it out, but I forgot, and into the fridge it went. Then, oops again, I chopped it up along with the nuts. Drat.

Oh well. These are the chopped nuts. I didn't have a good means of grinding them, but a knife worked reasonably well.

I'm sorry to say, but the resulting stuff looked a lot like wet catfood. But thankfully, unlike catfood, it had no smell, and not much taste, either. The tastelessness concerned me until I realized that most staple foods are unremarkable on their own.

Hoping for the best, I loaded up all of the ingredients and gave them a good stir. It made a nice, sticky dough. And as it baked, it smelled good! What a relief.

The moment of truth: it smelled delicious, and looked beautiful. We were starting to run late for our Sunday dinner gathering. I rolled the loaf out of the pan, and disaster! The top of the bread came off, exposing the middle, which was still gooey. I rolled the top of the loaf back into the pan and popped the pan back in the oven. But not before breaking off a corner for us to taste.

Yum! Just the right amount of crust on the top; moist and soft underneath. No overwhelming flavors at all; just a mild nuttiness and a subtle sweetness from the maple syrup. All three of us liked it.

But ugh; the last fifteen minutes in the oven overcooked the loaf. The final product was tougher, heavier, and more dry. Either it caused the large nutmeats to harden, or the inner husks toughened up, because every few bites there was something unpleasantly crunchy in the bread. And once again I could smell a shadow of that boiled stump aroma.

Of the dozen people who tasted it, I was the worst critic. Some of them may have been just being polite, but more than one person went back for seconds.

I am sure that the flaws in this batch of bread are due to my cooking, and not to the fact that I was cooking with an ingredient that most people in our culture think of as squirrel food. I believe that with experimentation and refinement, there is quite the culinary treat to be had with acorns. Too bad I didn't get it right on my first try, because it will be a while before I have both the desire and the ingredients to do it again.

Gathering and Smashing

2010-10-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Chris got busy constructing a device to hold firewood (made from recycled lumber), and loading it up. While he did all of that manly lifting, I did some traditional women's work. . .

. . .shelling acorns! Yes, that's right, for eating. Humans around the world have eaten acorns as a staple for far longer than they have eaten today's cultivated grains. I had never tried acorns before, but I hated to see our tree's last crop wasted.

Behind me is the rest of the tree, all chipped up for mulch.

How to shell acorns: find round rock. Hit acorn.

This is what a bad acorn looks like. Silly me, I stored my first batch of acorns indoors in a sealed tupperware for a few days. This cause many of them to get yucky like this. Acorns need to be dried in the sun immediately, or perhaps soaked in water, or refrigerated.

Now this acorn looks yummy! Being a white oak, these acorns should be sweeter than red oaks, but I still found them to have an unpleasant raw flavor. The texture is lovely, though - soft like a chestnut, but less grainy.

I had to put down my rock and forage for more acorns to get the two cups of nutmeats that my acorn bread called for. Alas, the wildlife had cleaned up most of the nuts, and those remaining had been out in the rain, and were busily germinating. I was frustrated until it occurred to me to crack open a germinating acorn. Voila! Perfect nut meat. And of course: a living nut wouldn't be rotting, would it?

Two hours got me two measly cups of nutmeats, which felt even more pathetic in comparison to Chris' filled wood wrack. But oh, look at how much wood he has left to go! And I can't help him with the lifting, since I am pregnant. Sorry Chris!

Next: acorn bread!

Ground Cherry at Franklin Matters

2010-10-03T11:20:00.001-07:00

This week's Native Plant post is up at Franklin Matters. This week: Ground cherries! I need to rummage around the weeds by the shed and see if mine are ripe now.

The Felling of a Grand Old Dame

2010-09-30T19:11:00.000-07:00

Chris took this series of photos of our majestic white oak as it was cut down. This is the "before" image. I estimate the tree to be fifty feet high. A swing hangs from one mighty branch.

This maple was also to get a little trimming. A similarly-sized maple on the other side of the oak is being cut down as well.

The crane has arrived.

The crane, reaching over the house. The oak is the largest mass of green there behind the house.

This fellow directed the proceedings from my mowed meadow.

The first limb is removed. . .

. . .and hoisted. . .

. . .to the front yard, where it is revealed to be as large as an entire tree.

The limb is denuded of smaller branches, which are fed to the chipper.

The bald log is hoisted back over the house to the mowed meadow, where it is cut into firewood.

A quick count of tree rings show the tree to be seventy or eighty years old. But those samples were taken from twenty feet up. I would guess the age of the tree to be around a hundred. I try not to think of that as I look at these pictures.

I had been under the impression that oaks only produce acorns every four years, so I was surprised to see these all over the yard. As it turns out, oaks tend to produce a good crop every two to five years - two, in this case. Add to that that an oak doesn't even begin to produce acorns until it is at least twenty years old, and the tree's last desperate dispersal of nuts is even more poignient.

The squirrels have been busy planting them. I have collected a box of acorns to try cooking with, though I can't say I found the raw flavor to be appealing.

I had wondered how we would eventually get the ragged old swing down. Chris regrets not snapping a photo as the branch came in for a landing: one of the arborists hopped on the swing for a ride.

A professional tree-climber at work.

The top of the tree is hoisted.

And here is the trunk, topped with the arborist. They lopped it off just below the remaining fork, and left twenty feet of trunk standing, as we had requested, for the woodpeckers. The rest, they left for us as logs and mulch.

It pains me to kill a tree, but it had to be done, and these guys did a fantastic job of it. They also came in a whopping $500 lower than their $1500 estimate. So if you live anywhere near Foxboro, Massachusetts, and you need an arborist, call Tree Tech. May we never have to call on them again.

Winter Project

2010-09-29T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here's what I'll be working on over the winter. Germination is expected around April.

Chris is still hogging the photo-editing computer. . .

2010-09-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

. . .and this weekend was exceptionally busy (I got to meet Diana from Garden on the Edge!) so here are some photos of the amazing herb garden at Old Sturbridge Village that I have been saving for a rainy day.

And speaking of rain, it actually has been raining! Today was a gorgeous, wet, cool Autumn day. The first of the trees have tipped into glorious colors.

I think we had three rainfalls all summer, total. I am so done with droughty summer.

But anyway, the herb garden. It's not in the village, but the exit from the park dumps you right there. The village itself is worth many posts of its own. After an afternoon chasing a toddler through reenactments of 19th-century life, I was about ready to drop from exhaustion, but this garden inspired me to snap just a few pictures as we stumbled our way through in pursuit of restrooms.

This was like walking through a perfect magazine garden! I wonder how many gardeners work to keep it weed-free every day?

The smell of the garden was amazing - and I don't usually notice smalls.

When we go back I will have to spend more time looking at the individual plants. In passing, I noticed many types of basil, some sort of gnarly-stemmed rosemary, and stinging nettles. (And having never touched it before, I was tempted to ignore the warning sign for the experience.)

I also noticed an apple tree, hops, and this: horsetail fern, a.k.a. scouring rush. This is a particularly good inclusion given that this is a historic park, and historically, this stuff was used for scrubbing pots. The silicone in it is gritty enough to deter toothed animals from eating it, but makes an excellent abrasive.

I have heard garden professionals recoil in horror at the idea of planting this in a garden. It must take some significant weeding to keep in check. Nonetheless, I wish the wild ones under my poison sumac would spread a little more.

My two very tired adventurers wave from what Gabe calls a "gizzy boat".

glares at husband

2010-09-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

I would prefer to be showing pictures now of the crane hoisting tree limbs over our house, but Chris's computer is the designated photo-editing machine, and right now he is neck deep in the newest iteration of Civilization. If left to his own devices, I think he would emerge from the basement in about a week for a shower.

But I can only pretend to be snobbish about his gamer ways, because I, too, am a gamer; Civ just doesn't happen to be my cup of tea. He thought I was nuts when a couple of months ago I dug out a game that I had originally played back on the Commodore 64.

So, anyway. . .

Look, a bunch of native flowers jammed into a vase! Please laugh; I think this must be the second flower arrangement I've ever made. And no, I don't want to admit to having "arranged flowers"; I have a reputation as a geek to maintain!

I only did it because the sweet everlasting was going to be mowed down in the tree-removal prep, okay? Please don't tell my mother.

The day after.

2010-09-21T18:18:00.000-07:00

I'm lacking a suitable picture at the moment to reflect my melancholy mood; our house is no longer in danger of being crushed by the Tree of Damocles. A beautiful, irreplaceable plant has been reduced to various mundane components. So here is a little fellow who turned up in Chris's veggie garden. I airlifted him to a neighbor who has a more robust stand of milkweed, and quite the passion for monarch butterflies.

So, the tree. . . We wanted to have the arborists chop branches to various lengths for garden use, but that would have required lifting large tree segments over the house repeatedly and in many smaller pieces. Nor did they cut lengths of wood into four-foot segments which I had planned to use for cultivating shitake mushrooms. Time was running short, and Chris felt it prudent at that point to let them proceed with their usual methods. I see that as a blessing in disguise, because as much as I would like to recycle the wood in that manner, it would require drilling hundreds of holes, pounding in hundreds of dowels, covering all of that with hot wax, and dragging heavy chunks of tree about the yard. No, I really don't need a project of that magnitude right now.

So, we are left with wood to be aged and chopped for the fireplaces, and mulch, which contains poison ivy and so must be handled with caution. And we are left with one other thing: a twenty-foot trunk still standing. It will put out new growth, no doubt, and it will continue to rot; and the woodpeckers will find it to be fine dining for years to come until it finally falls over and damages nothing in the process.

A smaller maple tree was removed as well for similar safety reasons, and now, standing there without its top, it looks so much larger than it had before. The oak trunk looks gigantic.

Chris did a quick count of the rings of the oak and came in around seventy or eighty years. But that's a core sample taken from twenty feet off the ground. I would guess it's a hundred, poor thing.

Here is one unexpected glint of happiness in all of this: I e-mailed my father the day of the cutting, and found out that he has deep sentiments for trees. How did I not know this? Not only was he already aware of the plight of the American Chestnut and the efforts to restore it, but he holds it in the same regard that I do: that here is the important species to focus on, rather than some charismatic big-eyed mammal at the top of the food chain.

Here is Dad's eulogy for the tree:

"I know it had to be done, but I always hate to see an old tree taken out. I think I'm at heart a Druid. Plus, at some level I just can't help feeling that something that large and old could somehow be self-aware in some manner that's beyond our understanding."

Waiting. . .

2010-09-20T11:35:00.000-07:00

I'm at work now, waiting for some files to finish cooking, and dreading what I'm going to find when I get home. Chris is there now, managing the arborists as they euthanize our tree.

This is the mushroom that let us know the tree was rotting at the roots. Perhaps a mycologist could identify it, but I can't.

I seem to have forgotten to upload a few photos; grumf! I had a good one of a stack of these dusting the poison ivy with white spores.

This is the underside of the mushroom. These photos were taken in July, if I remember correctly, and they were taken when the mushroom had finished growing and was busily dusting the area with spores.

More views of the underside of the mushroom.

I'm going to miss our tree.

Getting Ready

2010-09-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

In preparation for the tree coming down, it made sense to mow part of the backyard meadow. We will need the space to store the massive quantity branches, wood, and mulch. The arborists could haul it off for us, but what's the point? We're always needing supplies for this project or that. We will be making some unusual requests of the cutting team when they do the deed.

I had already forgotten how noisy and stinky gas-powered mowers are. Grasshoppers fled the mower in droves. This isn't the ideal time of year to be mowing, since so many species are still living among the plants, but the tree needs to come down in a hurry.

Oops! What's that? Chris is chasing something.

More evidence that my overgrown lawn provides animal habitat!

Gabe had a serious look on his face, but he was fascinated by the snake. (And don't worry: we were sure to wash his hands afterwards, since reptiles can be carriers of salmonella.)

Busy weekend!

2010-09-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

That's not really me watering the grass, in the above photo; it's me, watering my son. It was a hot day and he really wanted to be wet. The end result was a two-year-old, soaked to the skin, beaming as he hauled the spewing hose around "watering" for Mommy.

Anyway, that was one of the photos I used for this week's native plant post at Franklin Matters.

Today we visited, for the first time, Old Sturbridge Village to check out agricultural practices from 200 years ago. I am so exhausted from the outing (and from an unusually hectic week at work) that I can't properly hop up and down while bubbling about what a truly awesome place that is. It's like a renaissance fair, but with dignity. We'll post pictures soon.

In other news, I'm officially a member of the American Chestnut Foundation now, and I'm so geeked out about the tree that I scrutinized the buildings at Old Sturbridge, because, surely, some of them must be made with chestnut wood.

Praying Mantis

2010-09-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

When Michelle woke me up the other morning and told me to go take pictures of a praying mantis on the little mulberry tree; leaving my warm bed for the brisk morning air was not high on my list of things to do. Begrudgingly I hauled my sorry carcass out of bed and I'm very happy I did. Since I had to look for myself it took me a minute to spot this big beauty hiding in the leaves, and without Michelle pointing me in the right direction I doubt I'd have spotted it.

The morning light was just about perfect, though a steady breeze made taking its picture incredibly difficult on the tree.

So I picked it up and it quickly went into attack stance.

Then it flew down to the dried out corn stalks I have on the driveway. Which I really need to bundle up.

Everything about these predators is designed to hide them from both prey and their own predators such as birds. Even on the dead corn stalks it blended in well, and its erratic walk made it look very plant like.

This is the last picture I took of it before I picked it up and placed it back on the mulberry tree. It was warming up in the sun and making short flights to get away from me. I wanted it back on the tree to give it a good chance against the crows I heard nearby. I love these bugs!

Alas. . .

2010-09-14T19:03:00.000-07:00

Some while ago an internet aquaintence tried to tell me that oak trees were like iron, and could never possibly just fall down. The silly fellow was basing his experience on oak trees out in the desert. Of course oak doesn't rot in the desert; it's dry out there. Dead trees stand up like fence posts for hundreds of years in those conditions, for all I know.

Is this discussion setting off your alarm bells yet? Photo of tree, talk of tree falling down? The good news is that the tree has not deposited itself in our kitchen. The wretched news is that it comes down with the aide of a crane next Monday. This white oak is the magnificent centerpiece of our back yard. It kills me to do this, but the roots are rotting, and it poses a danger to our house.

This was our warning. These mushroom first appeared two summers ago. Awesome, I thought, that might be chicken-of-the-woods! (Chicken-of-the-woods is a highly sought-after wild mushroom, from what I have read; easily identifiable and with a taste like, you know. . .)

Then I read a little more and learned that chicken-of-the-woods spells doom for trees. In all likleyhood, it signaled root rot.

I put my fingers in my ears and played hear-no-evil for a spell. The following summer, no mushrooms appeared. Maybe I imagined the whole thing. But this summer, they were back, as big as straw hats, stacked up like pancakes. It was time to call the arborist.

The tree doc wasn't able to positively identify the mushroom, but he confirmed my fear about rotting roots. He was also able to tell me why the roots were rotting: in the 80's, when the bulldozers flattened the lot to build the house, they dug too deeply around the base of the tree, damaging the roots. You can see in our yard where the ground was scooped from all around the oak, leaving it on an odd mound. The dirt and rocks were piled in heaps around the edge of the wetland.

Almost thirty years later the damage is finally doing the tree in. The crown is healthy, but a good gust of wind could topple the oak without notice. Not only is our kitchen directly in the line of fire, but if we were to leave it standing now - a known danger - and it were to fall on our house, our homeowner's insurance wouldn't cover the damage.

To be continued. . .

Franklin State Forest, Easement

2010-09-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

My heart melts when I see these giant power easements. The ugly, looming power lines guarantee that even in the heart of suburbia there is a strip of wild meadow. I grew up with one of these endless tracks of wilderness as my back yard.

This one is a part of the Franklin State Forest. The entrance is directly across from the YMCA. Motorcyclists share the path with cyclists and pedestrians.

The meadow is covered in goldenrod right now.

Absolutely covered.

So many kinds of goldenrod!

So much goldenrod!

Oh. Heh. That's not goldenrod. That's ragweed.

This, not goldenrod, is what makes people sneeze. Goldenrod pollen is evolved to be big and sticky, to be carried by insects. Ragweed pollen is evolved to float about in the air.

Ragweed isn't a native plant, by the way. Wouldn't it be nice if it had stayed in South America?

Is this barren strawberry, or am I just being optimistic?

This weed's common name is "Gabe". He doesn't cause allergies.

Oh nuts, I had found the name of this humble flower once before, but I've lost it. It's common something-or-other, a meadow native.

No idea what this is!

Some sort of aster.

Come back Gabe! Mommy is sorry for being so obsessed with plants!

Another article published: That Dreaded Weed!

2010-09-10T08:51:00.000-07:00

Hey hey, that was fast! My most recent article, this time on native wildflowers, appears in today's Franklin Country Gazette. Here is the previous article. . .

That Dreaded Weed, Poison Ivy

I sometimes wonder how often the previous owners of my house suffered from rashes. In the rear of our house is a lovely little tree that arches gracefully over and down to the lawn. That tree is poison sumac.

Chances are you will never need to know what poison sumac looks like, because poison sumac is a relatively rare plant that grows only in wetland. It’s cousin, poison ivy, however, is another story. If you have the strange feeling that there is more poison ivy now than there was in your youth, you aren’t imagining things. As we change the environment around us by expanding our suburban sprawl, many plants have gone extinct locally, finding the new setting to be unsuitable to their growing needs. But some plants find the new conditions to be ideal. We have created the perfect habitat for poison ivy at the edge of every parking lot, road, and suburban yard in New England.

The dangerous feature of poison sumac and poison ivy is an oil called urushiol. This oil gets onto the skin when the plant is touched. Urushiol can also be transferred from the plant to another surface, such as pet fur or gardening implements, and from there to skin. Or, far more dangerously, the oil can be released in the air through burning, and then inhaled.

Once exposed, urushiol oil soaks into the skin within minutes, and between 12 and 72 hours later, causes itchy blisters to form. The rash may appear to spread, but what actually happens is that the most exposed areas of skin develop the rash first. The rash may be miserable, but it isn’t contagious.

Many people assert that they are immune to poison ivy, but according to the American Academy of Dermatology, 85 percent of the population will develop an allergy to urushiol when adequately exposed. To put it another way, just because you didn’t get a rash the first few times you walked through poison ivy doesn’t mean that you are immune. Native Americans are often among the 15 percent of those who are resistant to urushiol, as centuries of selective pressure have given them an advantage against poison ivy and its kin.

Urushiol is also present in smaller quantities in mangoes, cashews, and pistachios, which are in the same family of plants. A small percentage of the urushiol-sensitive population may develop a rash from eating these foods. Ginkgo biloba is entirely unrelated to these plants, but it, too, contains traces of urushiol.

Given the pervasiveness of poison ivy, it behooves anyone with children or who spend time outdoors to learn how to recognize poison ivy. For this, a simple Google image search is an adequate starting point. As you look at the images, keep a few things in mind:

Poison ivy leaves look entirely innocuous. The single distinguishing feature is that the leaves come in sets of three. The shape, size, and glossiness of the leaves can vary tremendously.

Poison ivy vines grow along the ground beneath leaf-litter until they find a suitable tree to climb, so the plant can appear to be a low-growing bushy plant. Once it has found a suitable tree to climb, a poison ivy vine can eventually develop a woody, hairy-looking trunk.

While there are poisons that can be used to kill poison ivy, those same poisons can also harm the trees the poison ivy clings to, as well as poison the environment for the other plants and animals in the area. To remove poison ivy without poison, hand-pulling can be safe if precautions are taken. To do so, cover as much of your exposed skin with clothing as possible, and arm yourself with heavy dishwashing gloves. Avoid coming into any contact with the plant except with your gloved hands. Grasp the stems close to the ground, and slowly pull up as much of the creeping vines as you can, and either leave them to wither in the woods where nobody will walk, or double-bag them and put them out for the trash. Throw away the gloves, too, using caution not to touch them on the outside, and wash the clothing in hot water.

The leaves of poison ivy are at their most dangerous in the early Spring, when the coating of urushiol on the leaves is fresh and new, and the leaves themselves are still small and difficult to spot. Hot summer days are also dangerous times to be around poison ivy, because the oil can be carried right through clothing by sweat. The safest time to remove the plants is on cool days late in the growing season.

In the wild recesses of my backyard woods is a poison ivy vine as big around as my arm. We call her the “mother vine”. She and the poison sumac provide food for the birds and a glorious show of color in the Fall. Knowing their dangers makes it possible for me to garden around them and leave them in place as a part of the ecosystem. I will continue to do battle with the mother vine’s children, but she is a welcome resident of my wild yard.

The Clueless Gardeners - A Garden Blog

Our agriculture is a mess

I should have mentioned. . .

Success!

My Husband is Not a Tool

More Unicorns

A Blooming Chestnut!

OMG

Tall Peas and a Happy Father's Day

Nursery Web Spider

As seen from the windows. . .

Planting Ramps

Tentacle Porn

Ick

Gardening for the Greater Good

My lawn looks awful. . . .

Pussytoes Surprise!

Trillium

Skunk Cabbage Adoration

Skunk Cabbage

Hurray! And *Facepalm*

Unexpected Joy!

Plow Legacy

Forbidden Fruit!

Damminix Tick Tubes

Something Else I Forgot to Post. . .

American Chestnut Article

Salamanders

St. Patty's Day! Time to Plant Peas!

First Parsnip of Spring

The Recipes Have Moved!

Community Gardens, Pulled Pork

Ice, Day 12

The Solar Pod Certainly Works

Seeds Ordered

Ice, Day 2

Ice, Day 1

Snow and Cooking

This and That

A Big White Blur

Poor Bird!

The Evil Empire Strikes Back!

Snowpocalypse, the Day After

Snowpocalypse 2011

Snow photos coming soon!

For Your Reading Enjoyment. . .

Hello snow plow. . .

The Pre-Christmas Snow

Mass die-offs versus Extinction

Fisher Cat

Quinoa

I need to get back on the ball with my writing.

New Year's Eve Harvest

An Awesome Mess!

Are you an artist?

Woot, published again!

The sausage turned out pretty well, it seems.

Bees and CCD - It's Complicated

Watching Monsanto, EU and GMOs

Well, cool!

More On Bees and Peat Moss

Another Opinion on Pesticides and Bees

This and That

Solar Pod: Close Shave with Freezing

Nut Update

Solar Pod Gets a Remote Thermometer

The Solar Pod's First Winter

Chinkapin versus Chestnut

Surprise!

Waiting for my Nuts to Grow

Mow, mow, mow your lawn. . .

First Snow

Just Disgusted

Chased Away

Chinkapin Propagation

Reptile Show on Halloween!

How to Stop Junk Mail

An Owl for Gabe

Last Flowers of the Season

Garbage Disposal = Wasted Water

Hurray! And Facepalm

glares at husband