Extension News: November 2009 Archives

I love green. In nature, green usually signifies a time of growth and renewal. In times of rest and slumber we see browns and grays, and the white that comes with ice and snow. So far the latter hasn’t put in much of an appearance here in the Northeast.

I’ve begun noticing something I usually miss: the beauty of the late fall woods if you pay attention to all the evergreen mosses and ferns. I’ve rarely admired their brilliance and have overlooked their beauty. But this year on those brilliant sunny days that come in late fall as the sun travels lower across the sky, I’ve observed that the ferns and mosses seem to glow with an emerald effervescence.

Recently, I arose to find my little farmhouse surrounded by thick, white fog. As the sun began to rise, breaks in the fog allowed me to peek into the world outside, where greens so bright they hurt my eyes reflected back the richness and depth of the world of mosses. The mosses lie hidden most of the year by shrubs and ferns, themselves green, but now dormant and for the most part leafless.

Mosses come in so many shapes and sizes. Unnoticed by most, they can coat rocks, replace grass in shady lawns, climb trees, or help fallen logs decay and mellow into the earth.

Hidden among the mosses lies a whole ecosystem we can’t see and don’t understand. Microorganisms in those mossy beds go about performing their daily functions oblivious to us, much as the characters in one of my all-time favorite stories, Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. In that book only Horton the Elephant can see the tiny inhabitants of Whoville.

Similarly, water bears remain invisible to the naked eye unless viewed under a microscope. Minuscule one-celled invertebrates, they resemble white, translucent polar bears, albeit with eight legs, according to Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author of Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses (a book not at all as pedantic as its title makes it sound).

Kimmerer, a wonderful writer who makes the world of moss a fun, interesting and magical place, explains that these tiny creatures depend on moss in much the same way that pandas depend on bamboo; they are inextricably intertwined for survival. The water bear can insert its mouth into a moss cell and suck out its contents. It relies on drops of moisture in moss to convey it from leaf to leaf.

The tiny water bears, however, have an adaptive technique that pandas might envy. If conditions become too dry, too hot, or too cold, poof! Water bears can enter a state of anabiosis, or suspended animation. When conditions improve, they rejoin the living. Under the right conditions, mosses can do the same.

Moss can become a lawn replacement, sometimes by default, but also by intention. In Japan and other countries, whole gardens of different mosses are tended lovingly. Try walking barefoot in moss for summer pleasure. Imagine never having to spread lime or fertilizer again.

Evergreen applies not only to conifer trees, but also to some species of ferns and “fern allies.” The Christmas fern, so named because it remains green at Christmas when other ferns have turned brown or disappeared, remains vibrant in the drab landscape. In the “fern ally” category, the lycopods, often called ground pines, or club mosses, also remain green. These may look like miniature pine trees that grow singly, though they also grow in vine-like groundcover form.

Finally, I can’t forget the broadleaf evergreens - the rhododendrons and the mountain laurels. Although they stay green, they tend to telegraph their true feelings about cold by shriveling when temperatures go below freezing and would probably agree with Kermit the Frog that it ain’t easy being green this time of year.

Winter will eventually turn the landscapes around me white, but I’ve learned to notice and enjoy the greens of late fall as I walk and hike through the bare landscape.

Yes, the greens will always emerge from beneath the snow each spring, but being committed to living in the present has taught me to appreciate green as Mother Nature’s autumn gift.

By Helen Downing, Master Gardener

The early November morning was bright and cold. Frost coated the grasses and brown goldenrod crowns with white fur. I tended the campfire, feeding it small balsam branches from the latest blow-downs, placing them over the hardwood teepee fire blazing in the fieldstone circle. The fire crackled as it rippled over the balsam needles, cascading into a tall, orange flame.

Nearby, the log cabin’s chimney slowly chugged smoke. Inside, my husband was creating a lumberjack breakfast on the wood cookstove. I knew that black, cast iron pans sizzled with delectable treats. And the coffeepot would be sitting on a trivet, hot, and occasionally perking up a blurb of brown coffee into its glass dome. My husband would be stepping over our black dog, lying underfoot next to the black stove, soaking in the heat and waiting to help clean up spills or drips.

After a while I stopped feeding the fire. I warmed myself on one of the chainsaw log benches near the fire, watching the dancing, hot colors of the flames. I sipped hot coffee from my brownware mug, fishing out gray ashes with my fingertip, watching morning happen.

Down the slope, viewed through the bare branches of shrubs and trees, the lake gleamed. The water lay still and silent, broken only by an occasional flash of a fish surfacing, cracking the water into a spiral of circles. In the distance, at the point of the cove, three ducks swam and dove.

Dissipating clouds released the rising sun and morning light glittered gold on the lake. Then the reflection of trees on the far shore became perfect in the still water, developing like an old Polaroid photograph: fuzzy, blotchy shapes changing to a clear vision of skeletal hardwoods and spiky evergreens.

The still air started to move, whooshing through the trees and puffing smoke at me from the campfire. Whichever side of the fire I retreated to, the wind shifted and sent the smoke my way.

As I walked away from the fire to breathe freely, I felt the chilled air envelop me and seep through the seams of my wool jacket. Tucking my arms in close to my body, I watched the bare branches of the gnarly maples swaying and the dark limbs of the white birches softly sweeping the sky. Dried leaves swirled down until they caught on the ground.

I began to hear a chattering noise like a flock of small birds, an odd sound on a cold November day in northern New England. I looked around, but didn’t see any birds. The tree branches were empty.

I started to shiver and moved back to the fire to thaw out, waltzing around away from the smoke, sipping my lukewarm coffee. I heard more chattering and looked to the lake. The only birds were the three ducks, now farther out in the lake. When the wind subsided, the chattering sound let up. As the wind picked up, the chattering became faster and louder.

Curious, I followed the sound down to the cove and looked around. The perfect reflection of trees on the far shore was now sliced and jumbled by the wavelets. Then I saw what was chattering.

The sun and waves were breaking up the thin layer of ice on the lake edge. The chattering came from the ice shards sliced off by the waves and washed over the top of the remaining solid ice edge. They hit and slid against each other as the waves washed them together and pulled them apart. I stood watching the November ice shatter and crumble, the ice edge reduced by each wave, and listened to its musical decline.

Then, hearing a call to breakfast, I climbed the hill through wet grass, dribbling the last of the cold coffee from my mug onto the ground. Behind me, the fading ice-chatter sounded like a flock of birds flying off to a warmer world.

By Arlene Laurenitis, Coverts Cooperator

Two months ago, if you were sitting on the patio overlooking my gardens, you would have had to peer in and around the canopy of apple trees to see the old piece of hand-painted barn board hanging from the wisteria-laden arbor. Barely legible, it read “Beaver Brook” with a darling silhouette of its namesake.

Beaver Brook rises in Chester and flows south 30.7 miles, passing through several small ponds and lakes. The brook forms the boundary between Londonderry and Windham, then flows through my backyard in Pelham. Eventually the brook crosses into Massachusetts and flows into the Merrimack River in Lowell.

Our property (and the house my husband grew up in) sits up quite high from the brook, but every now and then you can hear the mallards down below. If you are quiet enough and can ease your way down the steep, sandy embankment, you may get to see the turtles sunning themselves on fallen birches.

In September we were preparing to go off for a long weekend. As we looked around the yard to make sure we had taken care of everything before we left, we remembered the apples. For the first time in seven years, we had apples on our Cortland tree (though the McIntosh was looking sickly as it always does this time of year).

The Cortland, however, had never looked so good and showed no sign of disease, nor did the apples hanging from her branches. We ran off for the ladder, so we could pick them before “something happened to them.” Happy with our harvest, my husband and I packed our things and our three dogs, and set out to enjoy the Maine coast for three days.

After returning we performed our standard ritual of walking the gardens, checking in on the koi pond and the greenhouse. As we rounded the fence enclosing the vegetable garden, we were stopped in our tracks.

Oh no! Someone had come into the yard, cut the fruit-laden lower branches off one of the dwarf trees, and hauled them off. Horrified, I thought, “Who would do such a thing?”

I looked around frantically to see if anything else had been damaged. As my husband stood there trying to rationalize why someone would do this, I let out a scream. “Over here! Over here!”

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Our Cortland, although still standing, had its thick trunk whittled to a slender waist. Strewn about the lawn, chips of what used to be the tree’s trunk gave a clue. This was no human vandal, but a Castor canadensis and its large sharp teeth! Beavers (Castor canadensis) are the largest rodents in North America. They live in rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, or other wetland areas. They feed on a variety of vegetation, but the outer bark and cambium layers of fast-growing tree species such as alder, willow, aspen, and birch make up their principal diet. During the summer they eat herbaceous aquatic plants such as sedges and cattails.

They increase their tree-cutting during the fall to build up their food supply for the winter months, anchoring branches on the river bottom or bank near their lodges. Although there are many suggested ways to protect trees from beaver damage, not all have proven successful.

Looking for signs of entry, we walked the fence around our two acres, while my husband reminisced of his childhood here on the brook. He’d seen everything from great blue herons to great floods, but never a beaver.

Finally we headed towards the potting shed, which sits at the very edge of the steep embankment leading down to the brook. An old wrought iron bed rail, until now, had made do as a gate, to hold back an unwary visitor or a curious dog from the steep drop. But it didn’t keep the beavers out; the disturbed leaf litter leading down to the brook was the telltale sign they had been very busy hauling branches under the rail.

So today I was sitting on my patio. The Beaver Brook sign, still barely legible, but now clearly visible, swayed in the autumn breeze. The sunlight danced off the four-foot-high metal skirts that now adorn the remaining fruit trees. When I closed my eyes I could still see the shadow cast by the Cortland tree.

We decided not to cut down the Cortland completely, but to leave about four feet of trunk as witness to the story to be told. I will nurse the McIntosh back to good health, and I think one day I’ll give that old sign a new coat of paint. And maybe a stone Castor canadensis will find a home here.

By Cheryl Cravino, Master Gardener

Photo credit: Cheryl Cravino

I'd seen the lot before they built my new home and liked what I saw. But when I moved in during the spring of 2005, most of the trees I’d seen had been hauled away by the men who cleared the lot.

They'd attacked the soil around the house with bulldozers and backhoes and mixed it thoroughly with the rocks that lurk just below the surface in New Hampshire. What they'd left was mostly stumps and a burn pile.

As May approached and the house was finished, things started turning green. Most of the green was furnished by the trees remaining in the perimeter. Most of them seemed healthy except for a few minor scrapes where the backhoe operator had bumped them.

As in any stand of second-growth trees, many were devoid of limbs for the first 30 feet or so. One strange phenomenon I found kind of scary was how much they moved in the wind, bending easily because of the unnatural perimeter created by clear-cutting the lot. The birches, poplars, and scrub oaks would sway, knocking dead branches from the pines. After every storm, I'd have to go out and clean up the debris.

Many of the small pines and hemlocks died at the top and I had them removed for aesthetic reasons. A number of paper birches grew brittle and snapped off at the base or bent their heads to the ground in grotesque ways.

So, the paper birches have given way to green ash and some other underbrush as yet unidentified. I've replaced some of the unidentified underbrush with my annual plantings. Since I’m in charge, I get to make the life-or-death decisions.

Since arriving, I've used grass as a temporary filler. The grass grows sparse and spotty. It yields to dandelions and other broad-leafed plants instead of aggressively filling in all the space. Expensive grass varieties requiring exotic fertilizers seem to falter, while crabgrass and other clumps of coarse un-named grasses flourish. After years of grass warfare, I've given up trying to have even a small piece of perfect lawn.

The first spring and summer seasons I put in some trees and shrubs around the perimeter: Norway spruce, dogwoods, crabapples, mountain ash and bayberry bushes from the state forest nursery. They survived and are now well established, all pleasing to the eye and critter-friendly.

I've continued that practice with several other species each spring, adding rugosa rose, Scotch pine and shadbush to the edges. Once the edges were established I began creating non-grass islands of dogwoods and crabapples, surrounded by groundcover plants such as pachysandra, vinca and sedum.

Two of the remaining large trees have become my favorites. One is a stately red oak that stands near my driveway and greets me as I turn in and head for the garage. In the winter it stands starkly against the sky with some of its leaves waving forlornly. When spring arrives, it jumps into action. Blooms and leaves burst from its vast array of limbs that extend some 50 feet in the air and spread some 20 feet each side of the trunk.

The other is a large ash in the back corner of my property. It was already dying when I moved in and has continued the process. The top was lost to a wind storm. The remaining 40 feet began the decay process that eventually happens to older, damaged trees if left in place long enough.

First the bark loosens and insects find their way under it. Then the woodpeckers arrive, hammering away at the bark and the layer below to get at the insects. Their pecking has progressed from the top of the trunk to the base of the tree. A pile of chips has accumulated at the base of the tree, while much of the bark has completely disappeared. In some places the wounds on the trunk are several inches deep.

Though I've I enjoyed watching the process, I'm concerned the tree has become a hazard. It will have to come down. Maybe I will have my son-in-law take his chain saw, cut it into bite-size pieces and serve it up to the woodpeckers a piece at a time.

Meanwhile, the crabapples, dogwoods and elderberries are becoming major stars in my yard. Not only are they pretty, the birds simply love the fruit they produce. The tasty elderberries aren’t just for the birds. I get the best of the crop for jelly and the birds get the rest.

By Bill Dawson, Community Tree Steward