Ludington State Park and More

 I needed to do some research for Vacation from Dead Mule Swamp. This involved taking a hike at the State Park. I know, it was a real sacrifice, but writing is my job. Fortunately, this is in the portion that's open while they do their major renovations. Cathy went with me.

This is on the Juniper Loop. These loops are ski trails south of the river.

The color was still nice on this bush, but I'm sad to tell you that this is the invasive Japanese Barberry.

This is the kind of landscape that is both in the opening and at least one later chapter of Vacation from Dead Mule Swamp. I needed to be sure that I hadn't set up part of a scene that would be incorrect enough that I'd get feedback about it later. Not many people walk these trails. It's very secluded and disorienting.

We hiked 3.5 miles, mostly in loose sand. That was plenty.

Then we went to Cathy's and, guess what? I did get to be in on the end of the "Ice Riders on the Chesapeake Bay!"

Even though this is a Charles Wysocki puzzle, it's a much more realistic style than many of his other paintings that have been made into puzzles.

I also did some editing, and wrote part of one of my articles for the Mason County Press.

Miles hiked in 2024: 530.5.

Ludington State Park, Evergreen, Juniper and Dune Loop trails. 3.5 miles

See New to Me

Sojourner Truth, and, and, and...

 This morning we went to Sojourner Truth State Park. It's quite a new park that was put on the site of a former brickyard and cement factory. There isn't a lot there yet, but we saw most of it. Sojourner Truth grew up in this county, Ulster County. Born in 1797, she was slave to a Dutch family. But she walked away with her infant son and sought refuge with an anti-slavery family. They bought her freedom for $20. She then sued her former owner for the freedom of her son and won! She was the first black woman to win a lawsuit against a white man in New York.

She became known as a speaker, abolitionist, and suffragette. She actually attempted to vote in 1872, although she was turned away.

There is supposedly a nice dock at river level, but we chose to take the hike to the other good destination at the park, an overlook of the Hudson River. The elevation of the surface of the Hudson here is only 16.4 feet above sea level, yet it's a 2-hour drive from here to New York City. No wonder the tides have an effect here. The elevation from this overlook was 160 feet.

There are several interpretive signs about the former industries. Clay at the base of the cliffs was used to make the bricks, and the cliffs were mined for limestone for the cement kilns. This small lake is a former quarry.

I also learned more about that really bad plant Trapa natans. I'm going to not use the common name "Water Chestnut" as that makes it sound like the Chinese vegetable (although the seeds of this are eaten in cultures where it is native). It's also called Water Caltrop. This is a mat of it on the Hudson River. Maybe we should be harvesting it and trying to eat it out of existence.

Here's a closer look. The mats are pretty dense. That has to be impacting the ecosystem.

There were also a lot of nice wildflowers at this park. I think they must have been mass planted to be so prolific and concentrated in a former industrial area. It's a mix of Bee Balm (Monarda), one of the wild sunflowers, and a coneflower. They do look great.

We also visited a preserve called Falling Waters (not the Frank Lloyd Wright one- that's in Pennsylvania). This has a nice loop trail and a little waterfall.

More grocery shopping, a little work time, and then this evening we were finally able to start the project that Marie would like to get done. We started staining her new deck. Hopefully we'll be able to finish while I'm still here. We got one coat on most of the railing.

Miles hiked so far in 2024: 354.6.

Overlook trail at Sojourner Truth State park, 1.7 miles. Falling Waters Preserve loop trail, 1.8 miles

See Saugerties Lighthouse

Summer of 1993 - Alien Plants

 The next couple of days are going to be about plants. They are not going to be a good representation of the plants that were on the site at Wetlands, Research, Inc. What they are is just whatever pictures I have that aren't too awful, or that I can "fix" to some extent.

First up is a species I was not familiar with at all before that summer. It was a beautiful thistle, but highly invasive, native to Europe, Central Asia and North Africa. Every stage of the plant is attractive, but it was pretty much taking over any disturbed soil. It is Nodding Thistle, Carduus nutans. I don't have a picture of the rosette, but it was large and spiked all over, looking quite nifty. Here is the bud developing.

It grew tall, and the flower head was large, a couple inches across. As it matured, the flower would turn to face downward, thus "nodding."

This picture doesn't have the flower in focus, but it does show how prickly the whole plant is. It's about as uncomfortable to touch as our Bull Thistle.

Next up is a plant that was growing on/in most of the ponds. This is White Water Crowfoot, a buttercup, Ranunculus aquatilis. It's native to the western US, but can really clog up ponds. And it prefers slow-moving water, so we made it very happy. When it blooms, the flowers are only about an inch across and stick up out of the water, but the roots and leaves make huge floating mats of vegetation.

Let me say, that I wasn't quite at the beginner stage of plant mania, but it had only been a couple of years earlier that I was challenged to be more professional and learn scientific names. (Maybe I'll tell you about that trip some day.) And, I certainly hadn't been introduced to the idea of major efforts to remove invasives. But I was beginning to be aware of their problems.

Here's a real baddie. You probably know this one, especially if you do trail work. This is one of the primary invasive species on everyone's hit list. It's Multi-flora Rose, Rosa multiflora. It's native to the Far East and was brought here as a garden plant. It forms large dense shrubs that crowd out everything else. Not to mention the thorns.

You might be surprised to learn that teasel is also alien and invasive. You can't tell from this picture, but I remember that it's Cutleaf Teasel, Dipsacus laciniatus. I've featured this plant on the blog a few times because it also grows around here. Anyway, the flower heads are pretty and the seed pods are nice in dried arrangements. Those spiky seed heads have also been used historically to do things such as card wool. But it can form monocultures and crowd out other plants.

While we are on the topic, let me just say that cattail, Typhus sp., is native, but it can also form monocultures and crowd out pretty much everything except muskrats and red-wing blackbirds. There is considerable discussion about how much of it should be allowed to grow and fill in ponds and wetlands. There isn't one right answer. If your wetland is for water treatment, it really doesn't matter. But if you want to create a diverse environment for visual enjoyment and wildlife habitat, you may need to do something to keep the cattails in check.

When I went back to U of M that fall and began working on the constructed wetland project at Matthaei, one of my duties was to try to promote native plants and remove invasives. I got real familiar with the myriad invasives and up-close-and-personal muddy all the time digging and pulling. It was a never-ending job. However, none of that was on my job description here.

In other news: I wrote my Get Off the Couch column and edited.

See Inside Duties

Fighting Invasives all Day

 
It was a truly gorgeous day here, and I decided I wanted to spend it working around outside.

One of my goals was to get my fire ring reclaimed from the autumn olive bushes- see link below. There's a shadow from the tree trunk, but you can see my little grill sitting there in the middle. I got enough cut down that if I now spend some more time with a rake and shovel to clear away the leaves and redig the pit, it should be good to go.



I didn't take a before picture, but it looked just like this, which is the next row back. It is SO much work to remove these nasty things.



And I pulled a bunch more garlic mustard. Both the autumn olive and the garlic mustard are allelopathic. That means they give off chemicals that retard the growth of anything else. You can see how there is very little underneath the shrubs in the picture above.

There is less consensus on how strong this effect is with the garlic mustard, but take a look at this space where I pulled it up. Almost nothing is growing there. A few small violet clumps were hiding.



This little guy is not alien, but he's not allowed to grow on my property. One cute little poison ivy that I must have missed before. It's gone now.



I also cut some tatarian honeysuckle. So much horrible crap wants to grow here.

Had three ticks- all still crawling and easily dispatched.

Got a lot accomplished, but there is SO much more to be done. I never have enough mental stamina to keep up with this place.

There is no other news.

See Fire Grilled Burgers

Garlic Mustard- Part 2

 
Here's more about the obnoxious garlic mustard, Alliaria petiolata. This is what it looks like in flower. Each flower has four small white petals, with the flowers clustered at the top of the stem.



The leaves vary as the plant grows. It's a biennial, so there is a rosette of leaves that comes up in the fall. These are almost round.



But as the stem grows, the second year, the leaves become more heart shaped.


And the leaves closest to the flowers are triangular and pointed. The stems are smooth at the top and softly hairy at the base. If you aren't sure of the ID, just break or crush a couple of leaves and you'll get the definite scent of garlic. The seed pods are also distinctive, and I'll show you those when the start to mature.



As it turned out, I didn't pull any more of it today because we got a LOT of rain last night and it was pretty muddy. However, I did pick a bunch of leaves and make Garlic Mustard Pesto. It's good. It would be better if I liked olive oil better. However, this is what I did with it, and this was pretty darn yummy. I made a grilled cheese and pesto sandwich for lunch. Too bad it would be rather impossible to eat enough to keep it under control.



In other news: Well, um... I stayed up half the night finishing the jigsaw puzzle. It's called "The Fan Club." It was surprisingly difficult, but I couldn't stop. Four missing pieces just to add to the challenge. So I wasn't awake early.



Then I made the pesto, did a tiny bit of other yard work, and then uncovered the trailer. Contemplating how to deal with the leaking window, or wondering if it was an unusual event because of the monsoon I drove through on the way home. Anyway, everything has to come out of the inside. I knew that last summer. Remember, except for the internal bracing, everything else was just tacked together. Still, it was depressing to start taking it all apart again. Did some cleaning inside.

See Garlic Mustard- Part 1

Garlic Mustard- Part 1

 
Lots of people have been posting pictures on Facebook of Garlic Mustard, Alliaria petiolata, which is a relative of all the wild mustards. It's native to Europe and Asia and has been used as a spice, salad herb, medicinal plant and to make sauces throughout history. But it's a really, really bad plant in this country. It will spread like wildfire and take over any plot of ground where it gets a foothold, crowding out everything else.

Well, I'm sorry to tell you that I've been ignoring a patch of it on my property. Now, I have to pay attention.



It's particularly difficult to eradicate. The insects and fungi that control it in native countries are not found in the U.S. If you break the plants they just grow a new flowering stalk. If you pull them up and leave them to die, they will continue to mature from the nutrients stored in the root and go to seed right where you left them. They really need to be pulled up and burned or put in a landfill. If you compost them... they will just grow back. Not enough heat is generated in a compost pile to kill the seeds.

Yesterday, I pulled one garbage bag full. As you can see, I barely made a dent. Since it rained all day today, it should be safe to burn some stuff tomorrow.







I'll do another post about this plant, and show a closeup of the leaves and flowers. It's easy to identify because of the strong scent of garlic if you break the leaves.

In other news: I set up an online store so that people have yet another option to buy my books for those who don't use PayPal or don't want to send me a check. Then I played on the next puzzle. It's hard! I was ready for a hard one.

See Yet Another Lovely Invasive

5 Mile Walk - New Route

 
Today I drove a couple of miles just so I could walk a different road loop from my usual ones. I always like to see new things. Of course I've driven these roads before, but things look different on foot. That said, there wasn't much to recommend this route. Flat, run-down houses and trailers. But I managed to bring home a few interesting pictures.

The first is Phragmites (say frag-MY-tees). This is a wetland grass. You've probably seen it towering in the ditches. The problem is, this is almost certainly the non-native one, and it pushes out native plants and even wildlife because nothing eats it, and it shades sunlight from reaching the water.



The seedheads sure are pretty in the sunlight.



The native one doesn't form such dense patches, and there are other subtle differences. Maybe I'll stumble on some of the native one to show the differences.

I thought this was interesting. It's a retaining wall to prevent a creek from washing out a farm lane. Apparently made by stacking bags of concrete mix. The paper eventually degraded, leaving bag-shaped rocks.



There was no way to get something in this picture for scale. But this is a very large deer skull. Of course, it's spring so the roadsides and ditches are littered with deer parts in various stages of decomp. Trust me, this is big.



The best find could have apeared on any road walk with various wet spots. A great blue heron gave me the evil eye and then took off.



But the sky was blue and the sun shone. Nippy in the wind, but it was a good walk. (But I doubt I'll bother with that loop again.)

In other news: I finished reading the second book I'm reviewing for my newspaper column, did some housecleaning (I know, don't faint!) and laundry. Started formatting The Hitchhiker for ebooks.

	See Work and Wildlife Again See Solution to the Bony Mystery
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Autumn Olive Wars - 2017 Edition

 
Friday afternoon, and this afternoon, I worked hard at completing one of my pre-winter goals. Not that it's one that brings me any great sense of accomplishment. It's like washing dirty dishes... they just come back.

My weapons of singular episode destruction:
1. a shovel- one of my two favorites. I bought this for myself in Ann Arbor when I started getting serious about plants. It's just the right size for me.
2. an axe- given to my on my 10th birthday by my dad, along with a number of other real tools. It's small, which is perfect, because it's also just the right size for me. I wish I could say I'd taken better care of it, but I don't have a grinding wheel to re-do the edge. Since I abused it today, that's just as well.



The project:
Remove all the autumn olive sprouts in the yard down by the road that have gotten too large to mow over. This is my own fault for not keeping that space mowed well this year, but there it is. You can see the dark green shrubbery among the other weeds that pass for a lawn when cut. Of course, you are seeing just one small space here.



I'm sorry (not) to bore you with seven loads of the crappy plant, but I want you to appreciate how much work this was. They have tap roots that get hefty quickly. But if you can cut that off below the surface, you can pull the whole clump out.















Now, if the weather dries out before we get snow, I can run the mower once to chop the weeds down without damaging the machinery.

Accountability report:
In addition to this, I wrote 2.5 chapters in Dead Mule Swamp Druggist, 2906 words. I may be written out for the day, but will see how I feel after posting this.

	See Trees Down, Trees Up for some of last year's effort
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