MINOR HAPPENINGS AT GROUND LEVEL

in the green...

the pond is full for June. Easy to tell once the bridge, visible only by the worn away handrail, becomes a floating bridge.  No idea how much longer it will last, what with being nearly underwater every spring, and now summer too.  It's usually fed by seepage alone, but this time it was rain, and a small stream is draining much of the unmowed meadow.  

the field is unmowed for two reasons, first, it's too wet to mow, and secondly, birds are nesting in the grass, specifically bobolinks, and possibly meadowlarks. The farmer who mows the field isn't going to mow until late July or the start of August.  Barring another wet summer, of course.  Both bobolinks and meadowlarks nest on the ground in open fields.  I've seen and heard the bobolinks, but not the meadowlarks. Both are endangered.  I learned only recently that both are not native to New England, but to the prairies of the Midwest.  With most of that land turned to agriculture, they have moved east where they better odds of survival.  But how good are those odds, really?

taking whacks at buckthorn has resulted in the bare patch next to the shed. Buckthorn–– if you care to know––can be found just about everywhere along forest edges, and all too often within the forest.  It's a particularly widespread invasive in Addison County and the Champlain Valley in general.  Here's Fish and WIldllife's view of its impact:

Common buckthorn berries contain a natural laxative that aids its spread but prevents the birds and mammals that feed on the fruit from absorbing necessary sugars. It is also a host for crown rust fungus and Asian soybean aphid, agricultural pests affecting oat and soybean crops respectively. Buckthorn leaves have a high nitrogen concentration, which can increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil and affect what other species can grow in the area. 

Nobody like likes buckthorn.  It's iseen as an invasive just about everywhere, not just New England.  It's origin is European and Asia.  Like so many other plants and animals, it was an escapee from private gardens, commercial plantings, attempts at "wildlife enhancement" programs or other human manipulations.

Son-in-law Chris has been warring with invasive buckthorn that lines our woods just about everywhere. He's taken down buckthorn in the woods and has recently been working on the woods on the side of my driveway and part of the lawn.  He's taken down tree-sized buckthorns.  He knows he's not going to get rid of it for good because in order to do that you have to remove the roots, a near impossible task that means digging out the equivalent of a half acre of roots, some of which have probably long been entwined with other trees and shrubs.  Since the tree/shrub has been happy to be growing where it is, it will likely continue to thrive.  Why not?  It is content to live in sun or shade, it fruits later and flowers longer than most natives, is pretty much disease free, and insects and animals don't care to eat it. Just the thing for my garden, someone must have once thought.

now you can see the stream, as it carves its way through the woods. Without the buckthorn hedge there's a fresh view into the woods.  The bear that visited last week and overturned a trash barrel darted through the buckthorn at this spot and vanished into the woods below. If he'd been here this week instead, I'd have seen him better.  The stream used to make lazy curves, but the past few years have seen downpours more frequently replacing gentle rains. and the curves are evolving, forming steep banks that will eventually weaken the bases of some the trees lining the edge.  It already looks different than it did ten years ago.  

most of the buckthorn has ended up here in my burn pile.  But there are at least two more giant piles of the stuff. After last year's piled turned to ash, I put grass seed where the pile had been.That was overly optimistic. There will always be a burn pile.  Always.

suddenly last summer this (above) stopped being my kitchen garden.  There were (are) two raised beds, one behind the other, completely hidden under the foliage.  The 4 X 4 wood frames began to give way at the corners last year.  Now I can barely see them.  The meadow is getting ready to reclaim the whole thing, frames and all.  In another year or so I expect the grasses are going to eat it all up.

the new garden is better located, near the kitchen, where it should have been from the start. Planted there this year the tomato plants are already about four feet high, which may not be obvious from the photo, bent over as they are from rain.  Why so much greenery?  The height seems a little excessive since they probably won't have more tomatoes than usual; it's not as if there are dozens of flowers.  But, really, who knows what the ultimate fate of any kitchen garden will be.  One year I had only two cucumber plants and they pushed out 36 cucumbers. Last year I also had only two plants, figuring that was enough to get at least maybe 10 cucumbers. But I got nothing.  Well, not literally nothing. I ended up with a sorry bunch of white zucchini-like things that had no flavor and never turned green, and were basically inedible.  What kind of mutated plant were they, anyway?

speaking of bold greenery, these huge blue hostas, maybe four feet across this season, have decided they are going to outgrow the giant 'Sum and Substance' golden hosta––seen now as only a tiny yellow triangle–– trying to survive behind these two. The blues are also producing about a dozen baby blue hostas that I find poking up everywhere.  No yellow hosta babies. What's going on?  All three giants used to share the location in a friendly, non-aggressive manner. Each had its place.  Now the blues are into world domination. What prompted this? 

overgrowth seems to be happening everywhere.  The maple is coming into its own, but the apple tree is too, and it looks like they are running into each other.  I am not the one who planted either of them, but at the time the distance between them must have looked vast.  But this seems innocent.  Neither tree is trying to dominate the other.  Maybe they're both just probing their boundaries.  

Another view of the burn pile.

  

What's that poking out of the weigela shrub?  Everything wants to have a place in the sun, no matter what else has to be jostled or squeezed between.  But this attempt looks a bit silly.

A mosquito at the window.  Another gift from the wet.

who knows what all these plants and trees will look like in, say, ten years from now.  Or what they would have looked like if a human hadn't been messing around cutting, trimming, planting.  Would there be new invasives?  Maybe a new form of something that was innocently planted but had unrecognized strengths?  What is an invasive exactly?  It can't simply be something that is not native, for that wouldn't allow for the bobolink. Or a plant that has become "naturalized," which sounds like an excuse for nurturing an alien life form.  If invasive means only plants or animals that have "bad" traits, making life harder for other plants or animals, that can lead to some strange quandries, like the issue of barred owls vis a vis spotted owls in California:  barred owls are the more adaptable, thereby threatening spotted owls which have been threatened for some time. Which one should we favor, and by what means?  How long ago must a plant or animal have arrived to no longer be an intruder,or an invasive?  Are starlings, first introduced in 1890, still considered intruders? Invasive?  Maybe these are all our decisions to make, as we are, after all, the master manipulators of nature, bar none.  Or maybe all these decisions of what survives and what doesn't will be made for us.