Extension News: November 2007 Archives

In the beginning, leaving trees for the beavers had been an accidental stroke of luck: my husband cut down trees for firewood and left them by a nearby river. When he returned, he found that beavers had stripped off the branches and leaves. Sensing a good thing, he continued to do this from time to time for mutual benefit.

October 6 - 4:45 p.m.

Phwap! From our vantage point on the riverbank, the slap of the beaver’s tail is loud and startling, and then its owner disappears underwater. Before its dramatic exit, the beaver had swum forcefully back and forth several times, close enough so we could see orange-yellow teeth. Earlier, my husband had caught glimpses of two or three kits swimming about. We assumed the tail-slapping beaver was a female.

It has been several years since the last time beavers worked on this part of the river. It has taken at least a dozen years to replace the poplar (pronounced pop’l in northern Grafton County) and other young hardwoods they use as food and building materials.

October 7 - 7:30 p.m.

Returning the next evening we brought along a flashlight. Soon the plunk of a tail resonates across the water. The flashlight scares the beavers, and they don't come to work on shore. Unfortunately, there's no moon, and we can’t see the beavers without light. Quietly, we leave. We have now seen two large beavers, perhaps the parents of the kits observed during the day. We notice that the maple branches left on the bank have been nibbled and stripped of all bark.

October 8 - 4:30 p.m.

Next day, we return at dusk. It still amazes me to see these creatures working. They have stood a few young trees in the river bottom. I suppose they will nibble away at them as winter approaches. When they swim underwater near them, these saplings begin to sway and shake, telling us of the beavers’ whereabouts underwater. Now one beaver sits upright on a nearby sandbar, nibbling on a branch.

The beavers appear larger out of the water. In the stream, they look svelte and graceful; on land, barrel-shaped and lumbering. They are constantly going back and forth to their home, which is probably a tunnel in the bank. They dive under the dam where we can't see them, so this is just supposition on my part.

We've discovered that if we stand perfectly still they don't notice us. Eventually though, I move too quickly, and phwap! they’re gone.

October 11 - 4:30 p.m.

Walking softly, we stand on the riverbank in daylight looking for beaver activity. An ironwood tree is girdled, a strip of bare bark a sign the beavers had chewed on it as they stood on their hind feet. As we walk silently towards the bank, a head pops out of the water and swims towards the bank we stand upon. No flapping tail this time. The beaver approaches the bank and disappears under brush. Soon, he emerges and swims with a leafy branch back toward his pond.

Suddenly he dives, bringing the branch silently under the water with him. Ripples spread in what we have learned to read as a sign of underwater beavers. No sound, just ripples that circle out further and further on the still, green and black water. A flotilla of bright red and yellow maple leaves has gathered at the edge of the ponded-up area; more leaves flutter on trees nearby. The reflection of leaves and trees lie across the water like objects in a mirror; a stiff gust, and the reflected trunks and branches break apart like a jigsaw puzzle carelessly jarred.

Except for the sound of gently running water and a breeze moaning and sighing through the trees behind us, we hear no other sound, even with both beavers coming and going under the riverbank. We wonder if the branches brought back to the dammed-up area provide food for young kits; we wonder about the importance of young, striped maple saplings standing in the river bottom, with big yellow leaves fluttering like a sailboat’s pennants above water; we wonder why one beaver works to bring branches back and one sits nearby on a sandbar munching small, tender branches. 

As we watch, I move a bit to get a better look at the female as she chips away at her meal of branches and leaves. The next sound we hear is a solid phwap, and under she goes. The rain has started, darkness falls; we call it a day and head home. What a day!

By Helen Downing, Master Gardener

I never considered myself a New England Yankee per se. Rather, I thought of myself as a northern born child of New York City transplants. Growing up in Vermont and New Hampshire I was constantly reminded that to be considered a native, you needed to have several generations in the local graveyard.

“But I was born here,” I’d insist.

Which, of course, always brought the old adage, “Ayah, but if my cat had kittens in the oven, I wouldn’t call ‘em muffins.”

It really didn’t matter. I didn’t fit the bill anyway. I was much too gregarious never answering questions with a single syllable when I could give a long winded monologue. I gave extensive directions to out of staters and conversed with complete strangers in the supermarket.

I grew up as part of the disposable generation, throwing away used or slightly worn products and purchasing new ones (unlike my mother, who carefully folded and saved tinfoil as well as twist ties from bread wrappers.) “Prudent,” she called it. “Weird,” I thought.

And then one day, as I was mowing the lawn, it hit me: I’d become a real Yankee in my middle age. The epiphany occurred when I realized that instead of taking my usual walk or jog that day, I chose to get my exercise by mowing the lawn. How Yankee of me!

And there was more: I realized that somewhere in my forties, with tens of thousands of dollars in tuition bills looming, I’d become frugal. I found myself actually saving the rubber bands that held the broccoli stalks together and finding countless ways to recycle and cut back.

This was something I feared some folks in my affluent community would never tolerate. So I decided to call it something else. I told my friends and neighbors that I’d “gone green.”

Mowing my own lawn is a great way to stay fit, I tell them. Practices such as mulching my garden with grass clippings, using compost for fertilizer (I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that Prince Charles does the same thing), and recycling copper pipe scraps (left over from when we built our house) into plant supports are all good for the environment.

Frugal was lowbrow, but green? That was socially acceptable. With Hollywood stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney driving hybrid cars to help rescue the environment, I found myself suddenly on the cutting edge of shi shi.

I saved a bundle by firing my lawn care company and applied worm castings in a hose sprayer to keep my grass green without the use of chemicals. In fact, I’m now looking for ways to eliminate as much of my lawn as possible. It’s all the rage.

I know I’ll have to be careful so as not to go too far. While driving to work one day, I heard a piece on NH Public Radio about a woman who was taken to court for hanging her clothes outside to dry because her neighbors felt it devalued their homes. It appears that Americans will only go green until it affects their wallets, and then all bets are off and the environment be damned.

But I think my frugality is catching on. I spotted two large barrels in front of the house down the street, hooked up to the gutter drains to collect rainwater. Surprisingly, it didn’t look strange at all. Not for a moment did I think, “That cheapskate, why doesn’t he just pay for town water like the rest of us?” On the contrary, my first impulse was to find out how he made the devices and then try the same thing myself next summer. That way when the inevitable water ban goes into effect, we’ll have reserves to keep the garden alive.

And so it behooves us all to be “Green Yankees” finding ways to be ecologically kind and, yes, saving a few bucks as a benefit along the way. My mother always used to say “just because you have money doesn’t mean you have to spend it.” The old girl knew what she was talking about. After all, there’s also such as thing as New York Yankee.

By Susan Ferber, Master Gardener

Ever wake up in the middle of the night to the unmistakable scent of skunk wafting through your bedroom windows? Unfortunately, this was a fairly common occurrence for us last summer. We became convinced we had a skunk living under the floorboards of our attached shed.

Unless you live or grew up in an older home, the term "shed" may hold little meaning for you. Sheds came about because our ancestors needed a way to beat the weather. In a shed, you can work, wipe your feet off, and collect all kinds of “stuff.” Sheds can be free-standing outbuildings, but many are connected to a house. Ours is separated from the kitchen by a door, and because of this, what happens in the shed may not stay in the shed, to paraphrase a popular expression.

Once, several years ago at dusk, as I sat reading by a window, I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw a little brown bat unfurl itself from my curtain that hung not more than 10 inches away. The blood-curdling scream that came from my lungs was much larger than the bat’s ability to do me any harm.

We thought the bat probably had been in the shed before accidentally flying into the house when someone opened the shed to kitchen door. Once in, it needed a place to sleep, and the curtain afforded a dark, quiet spot. As twilight approached, s/he was ready to leave, and so did when my husband, who remained calm despite my display of pure adrenalin, did the only logical thing: he opened the kitchen/shed door to allow the bat to leave the same way it had come.

Our adventures with the skunk in the shed were a bit more alarming. One warm Saturday in August when our grandchildren were running about outdoors, my husband came into the house as I cleaned up the aftermath of breakfast.

“I’m going to need your help,” he said.

“What do you want?” I replied, not looking up as I filled the dishwasher, expecting the usual request for assistance with carpentry. I usually serve as the in-house gofer.

“Well, you might want to come look at this,” he whispered.

"O.K., but nothing gross,” I whispered back.

“You be the judge,” he hissed as I followed him out into our shed.

Slowly and carefully, he lifted the lid to our Rubbermaid trash can. As I peered over the edge, I looked into the saddest pair of black eyes I’ve ever seen. A young skunk had apparently fallen into the bottom of our empty trash barrel while exploring our shed area looking for edibles and couldn't climb out. Although the sight of white stripes on black usually signal a need to back off, the look in its eyes spoke to both of us. I felt it was a female who may have had a family somewhere she had to get back to.

What were we to do? The dilemma may not seem so obvious, but if we were to release her back to her natural home, we would have to move her and her current container carefully to not frighten her into her well-known and feared mode of defense. Need I say more?

After we had rounded up the kids and warned them, my husband cooked up a plan: he would tie a long string onto the handle of the barrel, gently carry the barrel out to the edge of the woods not more that 50 feet from our shed, and run like heck back to the designated safe area before pulling on the string. Everyone lined up to view this suspenseful event.

The honor of tugging on the string went to my first-grade granddaughter, Julia, who performed her task perfectly. The bucket now rested on its side, lid off. At first, nothing happened. No movement. No odor, either. Then we caught a glimpse of white stripes on black and the skunk quickly scampered into the cover of a woodland area.

We all cheered. I had my camera out, but due to the uncertainty of the main character's behavior, I took a great picture of the woods right over her head. The real picture was at the human end of the string anyway. The little ones were hopping up and down, so excited at such a sight. The older boys were torn between excitement and trying to appear more sophisticated than their younger siblings.

Would the skunk come out? Would it spray? Stay tuned after this announcement. Isn’t this the tease we hear too often as so-called news is promoted in a hysterical manner? None of that here. This was the CNN of Life: Live! Happening now! What do you do for an encore?

By Helen Downing, Master Gardener