Winter's Gift

Storms came through with significant rains, and November thunder, and wind. It happened this way and was expected after such a long and pleasant autumn. Now, it is not rain, or sprinkles or mist, but flurries or squalls of snow. The ground is not yet frozen, nor could it be, but unstirred water is now ice.

The change is apparent in our behavior, the humans, the deer, the bluejays and crows. Bald eagles and red tail hawks circle together, coyotes climb fallen trees, chipmunks vanish.

The turkeys march daily, on their chirping and pecking tour. They are fond of our place where there is little to concern them, and after the rains the eating is good.

So many tasks left unfinished, and others that must go on despite the turn to below freezing temperatures. If I were to list the whirlwind of projects I've accomplished since May, it would be long and dull and yet one must consider that a life worth living is full of unsung activities that bolster the praiseworthy. Now that we have returned to frozen, I can look forward to the limits set by it, and push those limits at times; limits set more so by people unaccustomed to the relative warmth inherent in temperature than the temperatures themselves.

On days with high winter temperatures of thirty or more, I can fix on the plank repair for the bridge across the great wetland or cut dead wood for trail edging, and if the wood chips are not too frozen, spread them along the trails.

It is this trail work that Rex loved. Fitting, then, that on this day, the one year anniversary of his death, of his willingness to let go, as I sat in his rocker in the adjacent room, that I consider his work my work, that his work was accomplished and praiseworthy and that so much of what becomes praiseworthy goes unsung, including the gift, the conveyance of appreciation, from one human being to another, of value.

Tick Safari

As I headed to check out the Beach Farm today, I switched on WNYC for the last bit of the Leonard Lopate show. An episode on ticks inspired me to post, even though there's so much else to do on the day after returning from Minnesota (it's good to be home).

In June, during the beginning of harvest season, Betsy and I were ocean camping near Montauk. We took a day off from all the hard work and Betsy requested a hike. I shrank from the idea, blaming the only thing that can keep me from a hike in the woods. I well knew that the ticks on the southern prong of Long Island are as rampant as anywhere, although when I was a kid, we ran wild in the summer shrubbery of Hither Hills State Park and I only remember flicking one of the parasites off my clothing in all of those seasons. Now, an adult, over 40, and with Lyme (no 'S' people!) disease rolling off the tongues of so many people, I can hardly stand the idea of walking a Long Island woods. But, we went anyway.

We had no repellent, and if you are going to hike in field or forest, this is your third line of defense. Your second is the proper clothing, which most of us are unprepared for when we decide on an impromptu hike in summer (we're wearing shorts, of course). The first line of defense is constant, and I mean constant, checking. The ticks I remember from my childhood were slow moving, sometimes taking hours to reach the hairline at the back of your neck. Now, like the contemporary zombie, they appear to move much faster.

We walked down slope, checking myself at every incidence of brushing anything trail side. A little embarrassed, then, when an elderly woman racing downslope with shorty shorts and walking stick forced us to the side of the trail. Checked again. Oh hell, she's flying through here, maybe the six tick warning signs at the trailhead were merely bureaucratic overkill. Maybe. At about ten minutes into our downslope hike we approached a 'T' intersection with a wider, carriage road trail. However, I didn't like the sea of tall grasses we had to breach to enter the carriage road. I stopped, breathed, and quickly made my way through the grass gauntlet.

Immediately I made a visual inspection and there was a small, reddish brown dot moving rapidly up my leg. I looked at the other leg and spotted a larger tick, instinctively swiping, launching it who knows where. I went after the tiny tick that was high-tailing it up through my leg hairs, but I fumbled and it dropped into my boot. Untie laces. Unboot. Oh, no, how will I find that booger in there? But I must, right? I took the insole from my boot, carefully, and with nothing short of eagle eye found the pest. Can you find the tick below? Imagine (this is quite an enlargement of only part of my insole) trying to find that speedy larvae or nymph in your hair or worse (think warm regions). This is why so many people who get Lyme do not even realize they have been host to the tick.

A magnification of that larval or nymphal tick on my insole.

So, after thorough checking of both Betsy and I, what were we to do? Go back through the grass gauntlet not 10 minutes after we started our hike or go on? We went on. What we decided to do, in order to manage what feels unmanageable, was make our walk a tick safari. Yes, we counted ticks, in fact -who could spot the most. Once we began training our eye on their preferred habitat, it became so easy to find them (and so much easier than photographing them!) that we gave up the contest. They were everywhere, trailside. Studying them was fascinating, and necessary, since there was no way we were going off trail to find a mushroom or look at a flower. 

We found Black-Legged Ticks and Lonestar Ticks. They climb a stem or long blade of grass and wait. If you spot one, it may have only its forelegs extended, and if you tap the stem, the vibrations will inspire the tick to spread all its legs. They don't jump, as some like to say, but simply cling mechanically with tiny barbs on their legs to your clothing or hair. Once they're on, they hustle to find a meal -this is their one chance! And it is completely a matter of chance. For the hundreds of ticks we spotted, how many will have a deer, raccoon, possum, cat, dog, or person brush their blade of grass?

Enough, apparently, and we're largely to blame (when are we not?). The deer population has exploded and deer are an important host (therefore the common moniker -deer tick). So much land was cleared in forestry and farming (take a look at this painting of Weir Farm, CT, painted near the turn of the 20th century) that deer had little to no habitat after European colonization until relatively recently. Afterward, with the rise of suburbs and exurbs, we groomed a lot of wild land and farm land into perfect deer habitat. I would have never considered seeing deer where I spent most of my childhood, on Long Island, 60 miles out of New York City.  A few years ago, on a train ride to Port Jefferson station, I spotted a deer in the woods. The north shore suburbs, all the way to Great Neck, may see deer in their gardens soon enough. Meanwhile, our attitudes about wildlife have gotten pretty soft. We fear hitting deer with our cars (the automobile is their only natural predator on LI), but shrink from other management options.

Enter into the debate a sore spot for gardeners (isn't getting Lyme Disease the sorest spot for gardeners? Or is it deer eating the Hosta?).  No, no, it's invasive garden plants. Apparently one such plant, Japanese Barberry, Berberis thunbergii, not only is an invasive species decimating the understory of our deciduous forests (along with the hungry deer), barberry is also a meal that deer cannot eat, a perfect tick breeding habitat, and an excellent home for the juvenile tick's host -the White-Footed Mouse. Read the short story here, but definitely read this full-on article.

Betsy and I stayed on carriage roads for the rest of our hike, a hike all the less adventuresome for it. Instead of returning up the trail from which we came down, we worked our way back to the road and suffered high speed traffic over tick searches. When we got back to camp, we searched each other and self-searched. So is the life with ticks. I haven't been checking myself at the farm, and I've never seen a tick on farm, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. I suppose, in part, that constant cultivation and mowing keeps the tick populations down, and the deer fence doesn't hurt, yet I should get in the habit of treating the farm as I treat the woods.

It appears to me that better trail grooming practices, although more time consuming, would help reduce tick bites. Trails can't always be the width of carriage roads, but they can have brush trimmed from the edges, grass cut at trailside by maintainers. Any trail creates openings in the canopy, allowing sunlight in, which creates opportunity for grasses and other sun loving plants to grow and lean into the trail. When I was trained for trail grooming by the NYNJ Trail Conference, we carried pruners, maybe shovels, but we didn't carry shears or scythes.

Click on the image to better see what the trail community is saying about ticks on their hikes.

The Art Of Patience

Paintings may take years.

Much work, but little progress.

But then, this is there, complete, essentially realized.

The muddy spot, long dry, demanded a plank bridge.

I started it, someone else finished it. Patient, then impatient. I am detail oriented, straight lines should be straight, take the time to get them that way -even on dumb, back trail planks. Not everyone thinks this way, most think in terms of getting it done. Then, shamefully, I become aware -volunteering is not about me. I got paintings, gardens, even blogs for that.

On The Work Trail

We went to learn how to move thousand pound quarry stone.

But I am one of those guys, distracted by the greenery all around the trail, who can't put away his camera. Here the garlic mustard, which was profuse and even beautiful at times over that first week of May.

Stone moving a little bit much for this volunteer, she decided to clear the woods of all the garlic mustard.

Poison ivy was everywhere. Its typical red-tinged shiny young leaves in threes.

But then also this specimen, with deeply cut, dull green leaves having confused more than one volunteer.

The trail section as we left it in April.

This in May. The NYNJ Trail Conference trail builders do fine stone work.

There was much new growth near the staircase, including the leafing out of a group of lovely young tulip trees.

And the oaks nearby, likely a red or black oak (pointy leaf serrations).

Celandine -major.

Chelidonium majus, a poppy from Europe that likes roadsides and wastes, much like our road embankment staircase.

My guess is Rubus phoenicolasius, or Wineberry. I remember these from the Muttontown Preserve. Also growing alongside the embankment staircase. Pretty dull in April, now it's full of interesting plants.

This seems to be a trail where animals go to die. Must have something to do with the highway.

This is another segment of the John Muir Trail. A previously boulder strewn incline, now being improved with quarried steps to minimize mountain biking on the trail (yet probably won't stop it).

The water bar we had practiced moving after it was placed and dug in. Water bars move water off the trail so that fast moving water doesn't erode the trail into a deep gully. And finally...

Part of that day's work was "de-berming" a paved hillside path to allow water to move off the path and into the woods. In the course of this work, volunteers scraped and shoveled many plants out of being. Trail builders do not have the resources to take great care with the trail-side plants while doing renovations. Much like any infrastructure work, the heavy lifting gets done without the light touch of plant protection or relocation. Saving plants is an entirely different frame of mind, and would require the knowledge of which plants are worth saving, how to dig them up, and how to place and care for them until they re-establish. It also requires trail work information before it begins. 

I noticed the may apples, a rather obvious species, and decided to spare some. I picked a few out, some missing leaves, and bagged them, poured Poland Spring into the bag, and left them with my things. Of course, it couldn't have been 2 minutes before I was ragged on for stealing park plants by one of the officials. But we're killing them anyway, I argued. The whole affair left us feeling awkward. Of course, we're both right, but...it seems to me that even if I had planted them deeper in the woods, without watering them (who knew if we would get much rain, it being the beginning of a dry week, now we are in a wet one), I suspected they had little chance of surviving. In fact, on our last outing volunteers planted a number of plants in a bad spot (under a maturing pine and in the path of moving quarry stone) and most were dead by the time I returned to the site. Anyhow, I must keep reminding myself not to be a gardener when I am helping with trails.

Many of the may apples were in flower. I transported my three stolen (or saved) may apples to my yard, planting them under the yew tree (my best approximation of woodsy shade) and watered them. Three weeks later I am almost surprised to say that they are still alive. If they like it there, they will spread, and then I will need to share them with Prospect Park. I'll call this take and give.

Remember this tree I posted about two weeks ago? Working on an ID. I still think its a weed tree.

It's now leafing out, much later than many of the other species, like tulip tree and oak, around it. I think I know what it is and I simply have been too busy to dig it out of the books. Update: I think it's a mulberry tree, maybe Morus alba.

Trail Blazing

On April 2nd I had my first round with trail rerouting in Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx, New York, North America, Earth. Trails require such micro to macro thinking (thank you Google).

The group was a handful of middle-aged men and women(40-55, and that includes me) and a group of extremely well-mannered and thoughtful teens. 

Many of the teens were out planting new shrubs and trees along the trails.

We hiked to the location (me with full wheelbarrow -oof), a descending trail on a highway overpass embankment. The embankment trail is rutting and washing out in heavy rains. 

Christina and Tom, of the Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, laid out the new route.

I tackled a water hole (my take -careless drainage from the adjacent golf course), letting it flow down to the right of the re-routed trail. 

This is the upper portion of the embankment trail. The stone crew will be here over the coming weeks to begin making a stone staircase. I got to make my first stone check dams. At first glance, it seemed there wasn't much to do, but then after 4 hours, it appeared we had done a lot.

The soil level raised, another stone check dam in place, and a drainage trench dug to channel water off to the right of the trail. Plants planted alongside the trail too.

I had to keep my gardener-self somewhat in check. Otherwise, I would have been asking why we are planting such large-growing, sun-loving shrubs under a mature pine. In many ways the group was simply planting only to redirect traffic, not to encourage growth of those plants. But I had to let it go, it's not a garden, it's a weedy woods on a highway embankment. Yet, I have vowed to myself that if I am going to participate, I may as well be the expert on natives and weeds in urban habitats so that I can help decide which plants pulled should be replanted or tossed. It seems to me that knowledge would be quite useful on metro trails projects.

After we finished up on the embankment, we headed up top where another group was removing an old rusty guard rail. Next meeting, on May 7th, we'll be working with the stone crew on the steps, and then clearing brush for a reroute on the upper portion of the trail. Not a big fan of the brush clearing in this bramble-filled roadside location. I'll bring a machete.

I spotted a dead bird of prey while we were working.

A ranger came by to take the carcass away for testing.

She identified it as a red-tail hawk.

Tree 101

Can anyone help identify this tree? I think it is a weed tree, but only guessing this because of its preponderance at the flanks of a highway overpass and the visual yuck factor. Its bark is yellow-green -no leaves just yet. The largest one I saw was about 15 feet tall.

Bark

Form

Three in one image.

If its a weed, the next time we are moving a trail, I can suggest that we don't need to replant them, as had been the case on our last outing. As it turns out, expertise in native and non-native plants its pretty useful on trail projects.