Peepers Pondering

The Guest List

2010-02-28T20:14:00.000-05:00

The character of a place is, to a great degree, revealed in the guests that visit, for long or short stays. I hope to keep a record of all the plants and animals that, like me, are guests of this 8 acres. Some, like the twin maples on the north property line, have been here over one hundred years. They are likely descendants of the sugar maples that once populated a dense forest blanketing many millions of acres for many thousands of years. Others, such as the red-tailed hawk that perched in the twin maples for a few minutes two weeks ago, stay only a short time.

Winter is perhaps the best time to start such a daunting project. Many species are still asleep under a blanket of snow, or vacationing in Florida, or Mexico, or even South America. I'll list only those I know, and my poor natural history skills will be revealed to all. Perhaps this will be incentive to finally learn my bird calls, or tracks in the snow, or scientific names. In future blog posts, I will add species with a corresponding number, at the end of the post, thusly:

Plants
1. Sugar Maple
2. Black Walnut
3. White Pine
4. Red Cedar
5. Box Elder
6. Mulberry
7. Autumn Olive
8. Yew
9. Poison Ivy
10. Wild Raspberry
11. Wild Grape

12. Foxtail
13. Smooth Brome
14. Quack Grass
15. Reed Canary Grass

16. Spotted Knapweed
17. Pokeweed
18. Queen Anne's Lace

19. Broadleaf Plantain

20. Chicory
21. Burdock
22. Tall Goldenrod
23. Bull Thistle
24. Sow Thistle
25. Common Milkweed
26. Clematis
27. Russian Sage
28. Iris
29. Pigweed

Animals
1. Rock Doves (i.e. common pigeons) - resident
2. English house sparrows - resident
3. Woodpecker
4. Red-tailed Hawk
5. Bats
6. White-tailed Deer - tracks
7. Dog - tracks
8. Cat - tracks
9. Fox Squirrels
10. Raccoon
11. Human
12. Snowshoe hare - tracks
13. Crows
14. Mouse
15. Box Elder Bugs
16. House Flies
17. Long-legged Spider
18. Asian Lady Bugs
19. Small black spider
20. Mosquito

Silo Bowling

2010-02-16T20:34:00.000-05:00

Kids say some strange things.

At dinner this evening I heard my eldest son mention something about a bowling alley in a "light house."

"Intersting idea," I responded. "Did they drop the ball straight down or did it bounce down the spiral stairs?"

The whole family looked at me like I was crazy. Not that that is unusual, and hardly worth mentioning, except to say that my son had learned in school today that the "White House" has its own bowling alley.

But I was not to be deterred. "We have a silo. We could drop a bowling ball from the top of the silo onto the pins." My younger son suggested we drop the pins on the ball, which is not a bad idea. Someone (probably me) mentioned a catapult. Soon pins and bowling balls were flying hither and yon across the farm. Someone (not me) mentioned toilet plungers, and how surprised passing drivers would be to find plungers stuck to their windows.

So you see, planning is progressing on the farm.

Closed

2010-02-05T21:24:00.004-05:00

The old man at title company smiled and said it had been many years since he had seen someone do that. I counted the signatures I scratched into the papers during the closing. Thirty nine times I put pen to paper. Kathy, my ever so understanding wife, just laughed. "He's a scientist," she explained.

After much congratulations and shaking hands, we all left the cozy office. Kathy and I left the city for our new home. A place. Perhaps in another post, I'll write the details, or catalog something (the 1 basement bat is now 3 basement bats). Today, I am content to know that there is place I own on paper, but barely know. In many ways I will not own this place until I know it and it knows me.

I committed today to pay a sum of money over the next 30 years, yes. But I have also committed to know a place, and to be known. That is the real investment: time, sweat, and stewardship.

My Brain Needs Brakes

2010-01-10T14:44:00.004-05:00

For several months, as Kathy and I pursued buying an old farmhouse, we kept telling each other that there may be something horribly wrong that we cannot see. Termites. Bad septic. Broken furnace. Something so wrong with the house as to torpedo the sale. We kept telling ourselves not to count our eggs, not to plan, not to get our hopes up until our offer was accepted and an inspector had checked the place thoroughly.

The inspection was last Friday. My heart sank as we entered the house. No heat, and water sprayed from the bathroom wall. No heat, burst plumbing. This was going to be bad... But that was the worst of it. The heat was turned on, the bathroom water turned off. One leak. Other than a few hundred dollars in plumbing repairs, we were seeing a remarkably updated and solid old farmhouse.

So now many months, years, of dreams came crashing in. My mind will not stop. What should we plant? Where? How will we dig up the garden? Do we need a tractor? A truck? How exactly do you use a barn? When should we get goats? No, we need fences before goats. What kind of fences? Where? Do we need barn cats? Dogs? Is eight acres enough? Too much? After months of supression, my mind is running 100 mph, with no brakes. Yeehaw!

Another Naturalist Shops for an Old Farm

2010-01-02T21:06:00.005-05:00

Many years ago I purchased a book about a celebrated nature writer, Edwin Way Teale, and his experience in purchasing and then living on an old farm. I enjoyed the book, but more than the book, and enjoyed the fantasy, the dream of owning a few acres of land and an old farmhouse. I knew it was unlikely to happen. I am a bureaucrat by day, and thus lack the luxury of living wherever I choose. I am destined to live near a city, where acres are expensive and farms rare. Public servants are paid a fraction of their counterparts in the private sector. Furthermore, most houses are "new." By "new" I mean built since WWII.

Although I have been in the process of actually purchasing an old farm for several months, it is only in the last few days that the reality is beginning to sink in. Built about 1880 (positively modern by New England standards, but old for Michigan) with 8 acres and a 20 minute commute, it is all I could ask for. There is one more hurdle (inspection) and then closing in a few short weeks. How did this happen?

Let me start at the beginning... the Christian creation story. Setting aside the distraction of the evolution controversy, humans are imitators of an Artist obsessed with creating, especially creating life. This cultivating and creating is something my wife and I enjoy and have turned much of our city lot into gardens and (very) small plots of native prairie. But we want honeybees, and fruit trees, asparagus beds, and tomatoes, and goats, chickens, and turkeys.

Will it happen? Tune in next week...

Making Gouda

2009-10-17T09:35:00.021-04:00

I have made five goudas, and have yet to taste one of them. On gouda four I took pictures, and these are the steps as best I can remember them. If you want to do it right, I highly recommend following the steps (like I do) in Ricki Carroll’s excellent book Home Cheese Making, and purchasing her ingredients at New England Cheesemaking Supply.

First things first. Cheese is made from milk. So you need 2 gallons, more or less. That’s 32 cups, but who’s counting. I used goat’s milk. It’s local and the price is right. Free actually, because a friend has goats and is willing to give us the extra. We share our cheese.

I am reasonably sure that the milk should be heated slowly, but I am a busy man. So I turn our electric stove right up to med-high. That’ll bring cold milk up to 90 degrees F in about 10 minutes. You’ll want an accurate thermometer. Cheesemaking is all about temperature.

Then add a mesophyllic starter. Good bacteria. Stir it in good(ah) and then let it set for 10 minutes.

Add rennet. I use liquid rennet. Read the label carefully. This recipe calls for ½ tsp, but the directions on the bottle say double-strength. And they mean it. So use only ¼ tsp of the double strength stuff, dissolved in ¼ cup non-chlorinated water. Chlorine kills bacteria, which would be a bit counter-productive, now, wouldn’t it? Stir gently, up and down, for 1 minute. Then rest for 1 hour.

After you and the milk have had a nice rest, the curd should give a “clean cut.” In other words, it is not entirely liquid anymore. You cut it and it stays cut, which does not happen with milk. Cut the curd into ½ inch cubes. Let rest for 10 minutes. Start some regular water heating.

Pour off as much whey as you can without pouring curds down the sink. (Whey is the yellowish water that is not curd.) Whey is milk sugar (lactose) and minerals. Curd is fat and protein. Mmmm. Save the whey for making ricotta, or making Kool-Aid (just add flavoring), or making bread, or feeding to your pigs, or fertilizing your (outdoor) plants. Make whey good whey puns any whey you can.

Now add the hot (almost boiling, about 175 degree F) water to the curd/whey mix, slowly, and only enough (a couple cups at most) to bring the temperature of the curds to 92 degrees. Rest another 10 minutes.

Drain off more whey, half of it if you can. Slowly add more hot water to bring the temperature to 112 degrees F. And stir for 30 minutes, gently, to keep the curds from matting together. Let the curds rest for 30 minutes, while you…

Make a brine solution by pouring 2 pounds of salt into 1 gallon of water and heating it nearly to boiling. Allow to cool to room temperature and then refrigerate for tomorrow.

Pour off the rest of the whey. Scoop the curds gently into a butter muslin or cheesecloth lined mold. Press at 20 pounds for 10 minutes, 40 pounds for 20 minutes, and 50 pounds for 12 hours, turning and re-dressing the cheese after each weight change.

Drop cheese into brine solution and soak, refrigerated, for 12 hours, turning occasionally.

Place in a cheese cave or dorm-size fridge set to 50 degrees F. Turn over daily. After several days to several weeks, when a good dry rind has formed, wax that cheese with cheese wax. Continue to turn daily, for at least 2 months, although a year or more is ideal.

Tomato tripods

2009-06-27T21:01:00.006-04:00

One post per year is either pathetic, or an interesting way to see a garden change. Let's go with interesting. Like last summer the house is on the market, and like last summer, there are not enough fully employed in the state to sustain a housing market.

In the past year we have added several hundred square feet of garden. The neighbors are allowing a silver maple (i.e., giant woody weed) to grow over our vegetable garden. So we dug a new bed, actually expanded an old bed along the garage. Here you can see the tripods that I set up today. Apparently I planted heirloom indeterminate tomatoes - in other words: tomato vines.

Heirloom tomatoes are a hot topic this year, and I enjoyed trading seeds all winter. Pictured here are Black Krim from seed that we saved from last year, black or white cherry tomatoes (the seeds got mixed, oops!), and a unique rare variety called "Sojourner's South American." The latter are big plants with huge blossoms. The pictures really do not do them justice. They have grown a foot at least this last week, already outgrowing the cheap store-bought tomato cages.

We have been enjoying salads this week. The looseleaf lettuce was the first to bolt, and romaine started bolting this week. They get bitter when they switch from making leaves to making stems, flowers, and eventually seeds. The red oak-leaf variety in the front yard is still might tasty, and prolific.

We have garlic scape hummus, kale, swiss chard, a few strawberries, and sugar snap peas. Not to mention more oregano, sage, and thyme than I know what to do with. Soon we'll probably dig some new potatoes and soft-neck garlic.

The native plants are once again in bloom, pulling in native pollinators and other good bugs. I'll save that for next time, maybe next year.

Invert-ed

2008-07-29T21:01:00.003-04:00

I recently read that most of the biodiversity of a given area is in its invertebrates, and yet we always do conservation for plants or cute animals. That's it. I'm converted. Or "Invert"-ed. Now to try to identify these things.

My native plant garden was planted primarily to make me learn to identify rare (or not so rare) native prairie and savanna plants. Then I decided I liked how it looks. Now it is all buggy. The main attractor is the gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis), so named for the color of the stem, in case you are wondering. Cup-plant and tall coneflower also bring them in. Here is a small sampling of the (mostly) native bees and flies and such.

If you, dear reader, know of any resources for identifying native bees - or better yet can identify any of these from the photo (!), please let me know. The full set of pictures is over at Flickr.

Peak Bloom in the Wildflower Garden

2008-07-27T14:06:00.010-04:00

Now is the beginning of peak bloom time in the garden. A few of the early flowers are still ingering on, such as the lance-leaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata). A few of the late bloomers, such as the gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis), are just starting. While I did a pretty good job this year moving tall plants to the back of beds and promoting some short plants forward, I was not ruthless pulling out sprouts of good plants in wrong places. So I have some tall 1st years screening out plants further back. Tall coreopsis and brown-eyed susan (Rudbckia triloba) are the most problematic. The tall coreopsis will be transplanted, the brown-eyed susans have thus far been biennial. Was it the drought conditions of the past few years? No sense in moving them if they may not comeback next year.That'd just give me an empty bed where they were moved from and an empty bed where they were moved to.

The front bed project continues. I am tired of my burn experiment and will now shift gears to either regular raking or (if I can find cheap mulch) smothering. I have burned the bed every 3-4 days for the last three weeks. I have exhausted by propane tank, and my back, but not the reserved of the grass seedlings. The roots are insulated from the fire by the soil, so really I am doing the same thing as very frequent, very low mowing - which may be bad for the grass in the long run, but not deadly over the span of my attention.

In the photo of the new bed, you can see hostas in full bloom. Yesterday while sitting on the front porch, a female ruby-throated hummingbird visited the tubular hosta blooms. While I have never been particularly enarmoured of hosta flowers, my opinion of them has changed from "shade filler plant" to "sometime hummingbird food."

Below is a taste of a few of the flowers, mostly native, now blooming. In order, top to bottom:

Borage (Borago officinalis, not native, but pretty and a good companion plant to veggies)

Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana), with purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and butterfly bush (Buddleia davidii) behind

Red milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), with bergemot (Monarda didyma) and spiderwort (Tradescantia virginiana)

Gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis), with gray-headed coneflower (Ratibida pinnata) and ox-eye sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides)

Cup-plant (Silphium perfoliatum, yellow), Culver's root (Veronicastrum virginicum, white), with gray-headed coneflower and purple coneflower in background

Purple coneflower and prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostachya), with fleabane (Erigeron sp.)

Spotted mint (Monarda punctata)

Rattlesnake master (white), with purple coneflower and black eyed susans in background

Insects go native

2008-07-17T21:21:00.004-04:00

I burned the lawn again three days ago, and then again this evening. That grass just keeps growing back! Soon tho it will be exhausted. Soon.

Maybe.

A monarch butterfly has been frequenting our garden as of late. So far this year we have been visited by the abundant Cabbage White, a sulfur, a European skipper, a Common checkered skipper, and an Eastern tailed blue. Tally: six species of butterflies. The less desirable Japanese beetles are back as well, and really seem to be attracted to the rouge evening primrose that popped up in the garden.

I also caught this dragonfly watching me from a cup plant leaf. Cup plant is just starting to flower today.

The cup plant is a draw for many insects. The base of the leaves surround the stem and form a "cup" which holds water for several days after each rain. This water draws in many colorful little flies, wasps, and native bees - which then attract larger predator insects like damselflies and dragonflies.

Bed of Fire

2008-07-10T21:38:00.003-04:00

Whoa. Three month break and then two posts in two days. I do not do any hobby but by fits and starts. After a 6 year hiatus I am contemplating setting up the hammer dulcimer too.

This evening I smell. Of smoke. Yes, I set fire to my yard. Well, not really. I have a propane torch, purchased by my in-laws, from amazon.com, as a Christmas present. And it is just to tool I need to kill sod and create a new flower bed. Why, you may ask, not use a shovel? The answer is in our leaning catalpa, a massive hollow, sweet-heart of a tree. (A heart of honey, wax, and bee cement called "propolis.") This aged tree is leaning over our house and I am loath to sever any (more) roots. Cutting sod under the tree is just not an option. I do not want to use herbicides because I have two thumbsuckers at home. And to be honest, I simply like using fire as a tool.

I only killed the leaves. Grass is tough. It'll resprout, and I'll burn it again. And it'll resprout, and I'll burn it again. This sounds really fun.

And for my mother and any other folks who might worry for my safety, I have been trained in this. I called in my fire permit and did this legally and with full permission of the fire department. I sprayed the part of the lawn I was not going to burn with water and left the hose running while I burned this very green, not-at-all flammable grass.

Lush

2008-07-09T20:54:00.005-04:00

After a few years of drier than average weather, the tide has turned. And when it rains, it pours. Here in Barry County, Michigan we have had two storms with over 4 inches of rain per storm. That is more than we get on average in a month. And the prairie plants are responding in a big way.

Weeds were far less a problem this year than in years past. These plants are now established and shading out the annual weeds. I keep on top of the grasses, a few maples, and the ever present catalpa seedlings.

Shown here are the black eyed susans, purple coneflowers, and few orange butterflyweed. The white is white prairie clover and a bit of daisy fleabane. I generally pull out most of the fleabane, which is weedy, but the bees and butterflies do like it.

A few weeks ago we saw flats of annuals on sale, and my lovely wife suggested we dig sod to make a new bed. I did not need to be asked twice. Over two evenings we cut about 300 square feet of sod and planted 5 flats of annuals. That may be just enough room for plants we desperately need to divide. We are well on our way to a grassless front lawn. And we were rewarded by a visit by goldfinches feeding on the coreopsis seedheads. I never thought of the goldfinch as an expert in camouflage, but they are tough to spot in a see of yellow flowers.

Bursting all over the place

2008-04-13T13:33:00.012-04:00

Some of the perennials are waking up and a few flowers are blooming. Garden season has begun again. I spent some time pulling grass from around the flowers today, in the cold. The temperature here did not venture far above 40F today, and snow was falling this morning when we left for church.

Try as I might, I have not been able to remove the violets from my plantings. I admit, I have not tried very hard.

Wild blue lupines are more fickle than I had thought. I planted many, from plugs, in fall 2006. Few survived the winter, and fewer still are sprouting now. However, I have seen lupines thirve through drought, fire, and being nibbled by deer. One thing it appears that they cannot abide is loamy, rich soil. They are only persisting in a sandy barren corner of the yard that barely supported grass when we bought the place.

This native relative of the yucca wins the contest for best name: rattlesnake master. I adopted this fellow at a native plant swap in Kalamazoo last year.

Lest you think we grow only pretty flowers, here is my May/June salad. I bought several packets of different greens in fall 2006 for $0.10 each. I did not get around to planting them in 2007, and so I dumped them all this year.

This is the parent to a plant that I am propogating from seed, I like to so much. Almost all the hawkweeds in Michigan are invasive exotics, a major weed of lawns and a minor (usually minor) weed of natural areas. However, there is one native: hairy hawkweed. The flowers are nondescript and yellow, but the foliage is a basal rosette of very fuzzy leaves.

Here you can get a little perspective on the small size of these young shoots. The small plants are one of our native Silphiums: cup plant. The taller plant is a daffodil that has not yet bloomed. In a few weeks, the cup-plant will tower over the daffodil, and by August the cup-plant will tower over me.

And lastly, I have a picture of another non-native, and one of my wife's favorite flowers: bleeding heart. (The flower of liberals?) And in the background you can see something else in the yard.

Signs of Spring

2008-04-04T20:32:00.003-04:00

Finally.

Signs of spring.

While walking through a remnant prairie is Branch County on Tuesday I was buffeted by cold winds and pelted with sleet. But the sound in a nearby wetland was unmistakable. Frogs. Amidst the western chorus frogs, Pseudacris triseriata, which sound like many fingers run along many combs, I heard my namesake - the spring peeper, Pseudacris crucifer (or "Pcrucifer" for short).

The second sign of spring came yesterday, Thursday, in the cackle and roar of a grass fire. This particular fire was set by me and several of my colleagues to stimulate native grasses that had been planted and to set back the non-native grasses and weeds.

In the garden the tulips and daffodils are up but not blooming. We have a few crocuses in bloom, but fewer than last year. They do not seem to find our garden amenable to naturalizing.

One new sign this spring: a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. Now all we need is a spring buyer.

Goats and Permaculture

2008-03-14T20:44:00.004-04:00

I suppose I really should split those two topics into two blog posts, especially given the reputation that goats have for eating all things garden related, but both are on mind, and so here they are today, on my blog.

First the goats. Why goats? Well, it starts with turkeys. Turkeys?! Stay with me here. For Christmas I purchased for my wife a book that I wanted to read, I mean, that I thought she would like to read. (OK, like you've never done that.) The book was (still is) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, who is one of my favorite living nonfiction writers. And this book was about a couple passions of mine: gardening, eating local, and heirloom varieties. I had always thought of heirloom varieties as plants, but Barbara and her family raised rare "heirloom" turkeys. Kathy and I (she really did like the book) discussed heirloom plants, and the topic ranged over to "if we had some land." If we did not live in the city, what livestock could we keep. Not cows (too big). Not pigs (too smelly). Maybe chickens (still smelly). Turkeys could be cool, when the kiddos can defend themselves. And then Kathy mentioned goats. Goats? Don't goats have horns and are mean? (OK, I admit it, my sum total knowledge of goats was from petting zoos and Saturday morning cartoons.) No, Kathy said, we could do dwarf goats and milk them, and make our own cheese. I decided to look them up on the internet and immediately came across a site with pictures of baby dwarf goats, and I was hooked. Since then I have bought two books, including The Year of the Goat, 40,000 miles and the quest for the perfect cheese by Margaret Hathaway, and our house will be going up for sale next week so we can buy a goat farm, I mean, shorten my commute and grow more vegetables - and goats.

Permaculture is a new word I only recently learned. My friend Eric, from Madison, WI, mentioned it off-hand the other day. He mentioned it in one of those ways like, "Can you believe so-n-so did not even know what permaculture is." Ha ha we both laughed. So I got some books from the library. Apparently it is a system of using ecological principles in designing gardens that combine flowers, native plants, and vegetables all in the same garden. Very good. Sounds like a good idea. But as I read on in Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway, I got increasingly annoyed. Toby seemed to have serious issues with the movement to plant large areas of lawn to native plants for wildlife. His critiques were many, but what annoyed me is that here we have two uber-progressive gardeners, one with native plants and vegetables, and one with only native plants, and the veggie guy just rips into the native plant guy. I mean, come on. Most Americans are still buying chemical fertilizer to make their lawn grass monoculture a more unnatural shade of green. We are allies, not enemies.

Maybe I am a little sensitive on the point since progressives in general seem determined to demonize those who are not pure feminist or pure civil rights. We should be celebrating the fact that half of the country can't decide between a black man and white woman. Similarly, we should celebrate native plants and sustainable vegetalbe gardening wherever they are found.

Budburst a Blast

2008-02-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

For a year or two now I have thought that someone should put together a website where people all over the country could record when certain plants start blooming. The website could then map all these records, and we could watch the wave of blooms move north. The information could help scientists document the effects of climate change on different plants in different places.

Now someone has done it! Check out Project Budburst - which starts accepting records on February 15 - not that I expect anything in my garden tro start blooming until April...

Help me get the word out. The more folks add their bloom times to the maps, the better we can watch the wave of blooms move north. I plan to include my kids; and there are resources for teachers to use the project in their classes.

Yard Redemption - Hope

2008-02-01T09:32:00.000-05:00

Can a yard, a city lot in small town America no less, be redeemed? Is it right to speak of saving, delivering, restoring land? I'd like to continue to explore those questions.

We cannot turn back the clock. What has been lost, at a landscape scale, can only be restored at a landscape scale. But what about the scale of a yard?

Inch for inch, a native wildflower garden can contain greater plant diversity than most intact prairies and savannas. My yard, for instance, has 80 different native plants on less than 500 square feet. Animal and fungal diversity are probably lower than an intact savanna, but are still far higher than my neighbors' deserts of mowed grass.

I suppose "success" depends on comparison. A restored yard does not reach the same ecological value as a native savanna, but is far superior to the typical American yard.

But is it "redemption?" I suppose that depends on what we mean by "redemption" and whether that applies to land or only people?

Yard Redemption - Maybe Not

2008-01-21T21:42:00.000-05:00

Can a yard, a city lot in small town America no less, be redeemed? Is it right to speak of saving, delivering, restoring land? I'd like to continue to explore those questions.

Something special has been lost. That much is clear from the accounts of early Euro-American settlers of Michigan in the previous two posts. The landscape today is picturesque, pastoral. But it is tamed, simplified, and less varied.

Restoration efforts on public and private land are making strides to preserve remaining pieces of savanna on the scale of tens or even hundreds of acres. But the miles of unbroken functioning ecological communities have been altered; there is no turning back the clock, at least not by human hands. And in that sense what has been lost is truly lost. When we preserve a remaining bit of savanna, we preserve not just many dozens of kinds of grasses and wildflowers, insects, birds, and other critters. We likely are preserving hundreds, thousands, millions of fungi and bacteria that make up that system. Planting a few plants back into a yard will not bring back all the insects, bacteria, and fungi that interacted to make the savanna truly healthy.

Restoration always takes second fiddle to preservation.

Does this mean that a yard cannot be redeemed? No. The damage cannot be fully undone - but it can be healed, taken a significant way toward being undone.

In my next post: why I am hopeful.

Yard Redemption - Oak Savanna Lost

2008-01-12T08:34:00.000-05:00

Can a yard, a city lot in small town America no less, be redeemed? Is it right to speak of saving, delivering, restoring land? I'd like to continue to explore those questions.

This account of Hubbard is by no means unique, although it is perhaps the most elegant. My out-of-state readers probably envision rusting and shuttered factories as the current landscape of Michigan. There are shuttered factories (and working factories), but the landscape, especially the 90% of the landscape that is rural, is nice. Corn and soybean fields are intermixed with hay, pastures, and woodlots. Compared to Iowa or Illinois, field sizes are smaller more often bordered by wooded hedgerows. Residences are more frequent, and basic landscaping is common. Fewer wetlands have been drained in Michigan compared to other states. Michigan has both an East Coast and a West Coast and has more shoreline than any other state in the lower 48. More coastline than California. More coastline than Florida. Michigan is an undiscovered secret.

But it is not an "orchard" of majestic oaks scattered with small prairies and "gemmed" with wildflowers.

I want to continue to stress what has been lost, and continue with pioneer accounts from Kim Chapman's thesis.

"The annual fires burnt up the underwood, decayed trees, vegetation, and debris, in the oak openings, leaving them clear of obstructions. You could see through the trees in any direction, save where the irregularity of the surface intervened, for miles around you, and you could walk, ride on horse-back, or drive in a wagon wherever you pleased in these woods, as freely as you could in a neat and beautiful park." [Van Buren 1884, describing the oak openings settlers saw passing through the southern tiers of counties into Calhoun County]"

To-day for the first time, I saw the meadows on fire. They are of vast extent, running far into the woods like the firths of a lake; and as the wild grass, which they supply in the greatest profusion, furnished the new settler with all the hay he uses for his stock, they are burnt over thus annually to make it tender. These fires, traveling far over the country, seize upon the largest prairies, and consuming every tree in the woods, except the hardiest, cause the often-mentioned oak openings, so characteristic of Michigan scenery. [Hoffman 1835, recounting his impression of a December fire]"

Today we would call the oak openings, "oak savanna." Only 0.02% of the original oak savanna remains today. In other words, for every 4 square miles of savanna, an area the size of my yard (1/2 acres) remains. Enough has been lost to say that the landscape of savanna is lost. Enough remains that we can study it, replicate it, restore it and redeem our land, even our yard.

Yard Redemption - What was Lost

2008-01-09T20:31:00.000-05:00

Can a yard, a city lot in small town America no less, be redeemed? Is it right to speak of saving, delivering, restoring land? I'd like to explore those questions over the next few posts.

We could start with the sorry state of the modern American lawn, and my lawn in particular. This is perhaps as much a shortcoming of religion and lawn care. Instead, let's begin with what was lost. What was this land before it was commodified, parceled, monetized, plowed, graded, and covered with lawn grass?

Kim Alan Chapman quotes many early accounts of the prairies and savannas of southern Michigan in his Masters Thesis entitled "An Ecological Investigation of Native Grassland in Southern Lower Michigan" from Western Michigan University, 1984.

"The ordinary character of the "openings" is that of a majestic orchard of stately oaks, which is frequently varied by small prairies, grassy lawns, and clear lakes. These magnificent groves were, until within a few years, kept free from underbrush by the passage through them of annual fires, allowing successive growths of herbage to spring up luxuriantly, covering the surface with a profusion of wildflowers and verdure...

The variety so essential in a landscape, of woodland, glade and sheets of water, are here combined in a manner which seems the result of art, but which is not less truly inimitable. It is difficult to resist the impression that we are surveying an old abode of civilization and of tasteful husbandry. It resembles those exquisite pictures of park scenery, where the vision roams at will among the clumps of lofty oaks, and over glades, gemmed with flowers..." from Hubbard 1840.

Can a yard be redeemed?

Fire in the Garden

2008-01-06T18:38:00.000-05:00

A savanna is a mutt of forest and prairie parentage. Acre for acre savannas have more species than their parents, the forests or the prairies, because they have such a mix of species living together. If one compares how much has been lost to how much is currently protected, savannas are the worlds most endangered ecosystem. More so than wetlands. More so than old growth forest. More so even than rainforests.

Like much of southern Michigan, my neighborhood was once a savanna, a savanna with scattered, majestic oak trees. With waves of little bluestem, arrowfeather, and scattered big bluestem. Under the trees there were carpets of blue lupine, black-eyed susan, and bergamot. One common theme of pioneer accounts: it looked like a flower garden, like Eden. Another common theme of pioneer accounts: the savannas burned. Mile upon mile upon mile burned, often annually. And when the fires stopped, the savanna disappeared. Without fire to rejuvenate the grasses and wildflowers, and to prune the small trees back tot he ground, savanna became forest, or crops, or pasture.

Many of the grasses, wildflowers, trees, and shrubs in my garden are savanna plants. They love fire, especially wild blue lupine. I have a propane torch and will burn individual plants, when the setting and weather make it safe to do so. (In the spring I also assist my employer with burning remnant savannas and prairies.)

Today I mimicked fire in the garden. The bed in question is only a few feet from the vinyl siding of my house. We are experiencing an unseasonable thaw (average temperature 32 F, 0 C, today's temperature 50 F, 10 C). I noticed that wet, slimy leaves were lying over the lupine and other savanna plants. Lupine is very sensitive to rot, and most savanna plant seeds will only germinate when exposed to open soil. So I mimicked the effects of a good fire and hand picked the leaves out of the garden. Like a fire, I exposed the soil to the air and (someday) sunlight.

I was just happy for a rare mid-winter chance to get my hands dirty.

Native Plant Profile: Bergamot

2008-01-03T20:52:00.001-05:00

Moptop, originally uploaded by pawpaw67.

I heard on my Wiggly Wigglers podcast that the crew did not know what bergamot is. It is a wildflower native to eastern North America in the genus Monarda.

In the fall of 2004 I purchased my first four native plants: rosinweed, cup plant, prairie smoke, and bergamot. The former three were purchased to aid my plant identification skills. My job often require me to identify rare plants before or long after they have bloomed, and I thought (rightly) that seeing them everyday would give me a familiarity with these state threatened plants. Bergamot was my first plant purchase with the goal to attract wildlife to the garden. Many gardeners are familiar with a close cousin of bergamot: bee balm. Bee balm, and to a lesser extent, bergamot, attract large numbers of bumblebees and the occasional hummingbird.I once spent a breathtaking quarter of an hour in a garden on the campus of the University of Maine, where a veritable hedge of bee balm was alive with male hummingbirds fighting over the profusion of red blossoms. It was a formative experience, and I have yearned for hummingbirds in my garden ever since.

Every plant has personality. Bergamot loves sun, and will form large colonies if given the chance. It blooms in mid summer, but should be planted behind a good fall plant, like an aster or goldenrod. Like bee balm, bergamot gets downy mildew – especially if you water the garden – most especially if you water in the evening. The white droopy leaves look pretty sad through fall, but the stem stays erect into the winter and adds interest with its seed heads, which also make excellent snowman facial features.

I have heard that bergamot is also used to make an aromatic tea and was a common medicine for Native Americans.

Bergemot is not rare in the wild, and it is often found in native prairies, savannas, or old fields and pastures.

(Note to European readers, the European “bee balm” and American “bee balm” are two totally different plants. American bee balm, Monarda didyma, you may know as “Oswego Tea.”)

P.S. The photo is not my own. Suffice to say I did not have a good pic in my files and they are not blooming right now.

Gardening as Spiritual Discipline

2008-01-01T15:39:00.000-05:00

For several hundred years Christians have argued about carts and horses. Catholics have argued that faith without action is not faith. Protestants have argued that works divorced from belief is barren. We argue which is the horse and which is the cart, and who has what before which. The fact is that faith and action are related, and separable only in theory. Every action arises from a belief; every belief comes from and leads to an action.

Protestants like myself are increasingly coming to understand the value of action, doing, and ritual. Many of the actions Christians have done for centuries are called "spiritual disciplines." Discipline is a word with a bit too much negative baggage, but as I find myself way out on a tangent, I'll return to the point of the posting.

I have not found gardening listed as a spiritual discipline, a faith activity, etc. in any of the many great books I have read on this subject. Not in Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline, nor in the more recent Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner.

Nevertheless, I find gardening listed as a spiritual activity in other Christian books: Genesis (unsigned, but probably written by Moses, of anti-slavery fame), Matthew (self-titled.) Indeed, Christianity is probably the most pro-gardening of all world religions. Paradise is a garden, humans (lively humus) were created to garden, and new life begins in a garden, where Jesus was mistaken for a gardener.

Today, like most winter days, I learn faith from my garden. It is dormant, dead, frozen and white. I know there is life there, but I cannot see it, not in this season. I hope. Despite the snow and the wintery evidence, I hope. I have faith that come spring the wildflowers will do what wildflowers were created to do: green, grow, bloom.

It is a good lesson in life in this materialistic, unjust, and too oft hurting world. There is hope. Spring and life will come.

The Obligatory Dec 31 Year in Review

2007-12-31T10:33:00.001-05:00

I have always been a slave to fashion and tradition, which is why I am obligated on New Year's Eve to do a one year retrospective.

Or not... instead, let's do a short history of my garden: a three year retrospective.

2004

My wife and I moved to our current residence in August 2004. The dried remains of one lily amid the grass in the front of the house was the sum total of the garden. The grass lawn was ubiquitous and full of diversity (i.e., weeds.)

My parents moved at the same time, and my Dad - "FloraGuy" - offered to let me divide perennials from his large garden. (They moved to a condominium with minimal space for perennials.) Thus my wife and I had to break sod from day 1., and started the bed along the deck with inherited plants.

We added several more species that fall from a native plant sale.

2005

Started several flats of native seeds indoors. Poor germination, and I learned about stratification (the hard way).

As soon as the snow was off, I was breaking sod for the 15' by 30' veggie patch. Kathy would have helped, but she was "with child" and did little gardening until fall.

In the fall I broke sod for the beds near the house. In the process I cut the telephone cord between the house and garage, knocking out telephone access for the entire house. Oops!

Also participated in a prairie plant rescue in November. A local conservationist had been collecting seeds and scattering them on his 20 acres. He passed away and the property was slated for residential development. Along with many others, we rescued many native plants, to be transplanted to local restorations. Each volunteer was able to keep a few root-balls as a reward.

2006

Started more flats of wildflowers indoors. Stratification helped, but many were over-watered and under-heated.

Expanded deck and garage beds. Augmented with compost, which apparently had much still viable tomato seed.

Took part in a native plant exchange hosted by the local chapter of Wild Ones.

Also dug sod in the front where I planted daffodils and purple coneflower seedlings which were threatening to take over other beds.

2007

Used a combination of fire (from a propane torch) and smother by mulch to prep a large bed in the front of the house. Planted with native shrubs to create a hedge.

Spent time this spring dividing or transplanted tall perennials to the back of the garden and the short perennials to the front.

Bought native ferns.

Created water gardens near the house foundation, which caused wet walls in the basement. Extended drainage of the rain gardens further from the foundation, moved wetland perennials, and now have a dry basement.

Perennials are often said to sleep the first year, creep the second, and leap the third. Enjoyed watching many of the perennials leap this year.

Started blogging.

Starting Seeds Already

2007-12-29T20:00:00.000-05:00

The new year has begun early!

With the help of my two assistants, I planted the first seeds for the 2008 garden. All three of us had thoroughly dirty hands. Like all things in my garden, this project was done on the cheap - I mean "frugally." All seeds were collected from the garden or from natural areas (with permission, of course.) The starting pots are the bottoms of 1 gallon milk jugs, cut off and perforated on the bottom. The terraria are birthday cake holders. (We make our own cakes from scratch. Once you have made your own frosting, there is no going back. Mmmmm. The cake containers were left over from my mother-in-law who rarely makes cakes from scratch.) The heater for the terraria are vents in the floor. I am trying germinating in mineral soil this year: a mix of sand and a rich clay-loam. Last year I had serious issues with rot or drought in the in Miracle Grow stuff.

I planted prairie smoke (pictured,) cup plant, red milkweed, American bittersweet, wafer ash, little bluestem, and golden alexanders. Everything but the prairie smoke will be put outside to "stratify." The seeds need about a month of being damp and freezing before they can be fooled into thinking it is spring and time to germinate and grow. Technically, little bluestem does not need the stratification, but is planted in the same pot as the golden alexanders.

Once the seedlings germinate, I plan to prick them out into individual cells. I know that January is a bit early to start plants indoors, but it is snowy outside and I have not had dirt under my fingernails in weeks. The kids enjoyed the projects (dirt everywhere!) tho Gerrit did insist on poking holes 1 inch deep. I had to explain that flower seeds are only planted at a depth of twice the seeds' size. Since these seeds are tiny, we just scrape the surface.

Stop by in a week or so for pictures of baby prairie smoke. More baby pictures in five to six weeks (after startification) for the other species. I really hope the wafer ash take. It is not a real "ash" tree, but rather Michigan's only native citrus.