Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Hearty Impression
What might the message be from this tree with an old wound that it is growing around in the shape of a heart?
I don’t know, but I’d like to think it is something heartwarming.
When we were cleaning out the landscaping around the back side of the house over the weekend, I discovered that a tie holding a maple sapling to a support stake was too tight and had begun constricting the tree’s growth. What a sorry sight to stumble upon; an occasion where my efforts to help a tree had ended up hurting it.
Trees seem to grow slowly, in general, but at the same time, there is a dramatic amount of activity happening in relatively short time spans. I think the trunk of that sapling has doubled in size since it was tied. I would have liked to see a time-lapse of that progress.
Just a week ago we were digging out from beneath a huge snow storm, and yesterday, on my drive home from work, I could already see the tops of tree clusters developing a green tinge from sprouting new buds. It warms my heart to know the leaves will soon be making an appearance.
Ever wonder how many leaves grow on the branches of mature trees? There are a lot of variables, but an oft-repeated average seen in the results of a Google search is around 200,000. That number makes my heart flutter like the quaking leaves of our poplar trees.
At the extension class we took last month to learn tricks of identifying trees, (did I already write about this?) we found out the thing that makes some leaves oscillate in the wind is the square shape of the leaf stem. It isn’t round, it has four flat sides.
Fun facts for people who love trees. Hopefully, that includes everyone. How could anyone with a heart, not love a tree?
.
.
Natural Wonders
When I first saw this image that Cyndie captured, I struggled to imagine what could have made these intriguing tracks in the snow.
The alternating diagonal slices in the snow had me thinking of a large bird of prey dragging its talons as it “ran” across the surface while taking off.
Seemed like there should also be evidence of flapping wings, too. There wasn’t.
Closer review led to a much less dramatic, but still rather surprising cause.
The snow that had stuck to the wires of our fence was blowing off in long chunks and creating the lines on the surface below.
Cool!
I wouldn’t have been able to create that artwork if I tried.
Thank you, Mother Nature.
Oh, but nature wasn’t done creating. In an evening walk, Cyndie took one more picture of the fence wires.
Once again, the shadow of the wires was having a visible influence on the melting of the snow beneath the bright April sunshine.
Many thanks to Cyndie for her keen eye and crafty image captures!
.
.
Sparkling Transition
Nature is putting on a nice show for our morning walks lately. The nightly re-freeze of flowing melt-water greets us in the morning with all sorts of brilliant formations that I like capturing for full-frame close up image abstracts.
Here are four from this weekend:
.
.
Nature Wins
This round goes to Mother Nature.
I’ve heard tell that our warmer climate allows the atmosphere to hold more moisture. With a pattern of increasing frequency, our anecdotal evidence of the years we have lived here is that downpours are increasingly bringing multi-inch totals that overwhelm the old drainage paths.
Overnight Wednesday we received over 2 inches, bringing the 24-hour total to more than 5.5 inches.
When I combine our experience and the recorded data of measurable climbing global temperatures, I get the impression we are seeing the beginning of downpour trend that will, at best, keep happening at this level, or worse, continue to grow more extreme.
This presents a daunting challenge for devising a plan to improve our drainage paths to a point they will be able to handle ever-increasing volumes of massive flow in a manner that avoids major washouts, if that is even possible.
Our attempt to stem the tide of topsoil flowing from the neighbor’s cornfield came up short of successful after not very many storms. I don’t know if there is a more industrial version of a silt fence or we just need to pull out and re-install the one we have, above the new ground level.
Ideally, we would like to enlist the assistance of the neighbor-farmer to get him to not plow the portions of that field where the runoff flows and instead, create a grassed-waterway.
Recent efforts to contact him have thus far failed. I have a sense that his not having already maintained a protective waterway reveals a certain lack of interest in having one, so I’m imagining I may need to be prepared to offer a convincing sales pitch.
I suppose I could pull out the corn plants that washed down from his field and are now growing on our property, and bring them over to his house to see if he wants them back.
If it wasn’t so much work, I’d love to also bring him a load of the mud that poured out of his field and now covers the grass of our walking trail.
Since the rain will likely keep dumping on us, maybe his field will just empty out and that problem will go away. I can switch my attention to marketing the sale of a large amount of sifted soil that magically became ours when it crossed the property line.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Natural Medicine
During my drive to work earlier this week, I heard this inspiring story on public radio about an increasing trend for Forest Bathing, a practice that started in Japan back in the early 1990s.
It’s what we do almost every day at our place. Each time we walk Delilah along the perimeter trail through our woods we are breathing healthy phytoncides emitted by the plants and trees. This reduces stress levels and boosts our immune systems.
Wandering along the trail among the trees while listening to all the bird-calls and the sounds of rustling leaves is inspiring enough on its own, but add in some of nature’s medicinal forest air filling your lungs and you enjoy quite the bonus!
Forest bathing is a perfect complement for the workshops Cyndie leads with the horses and labyrinth. It has always been part of the experience here, but we never described it with as much clarity as the variety of published articles on the subject are now offering.
I believe that giving the experience some specific definition of what is happening serves to enhance the results. Thank you MPR!
In my mind, nature has always seemed the best when it comes to medicine.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Lake Art
On a partly sunny day, between rain showers that rolled over us at regular intervals, I wandered down to the dock to soak up some sun. I thought maybe I could collect enough rays to lightly toast the inside of my arm to dry out what is now a pretty fierce poison ivy rash.
I don’t think it did anything for the rash, but I pulled out my camera and played around with the speckled pattern of puffy white clouds reflected on the surface of the water.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
For landlubbers, I’ll garnish these with an image from the forest to bring us back to solid ground…
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
Domesticating Wild
A number of our close advisors have provided insights on what we could do to tame the many wild raspberry patches that thrive on our land. Last weekend we finally made a first pass through the bramble that exists across the driveway from the house.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
In the four previous years since we moved here, we have simply harvested berries from wherever they appear. Some years the bounty was greater than we could keep up with and other years it has seemed a bit off. The hot spots tended to travel from one zone to another in any given season.
Navigating the tangle of thorns to reach fruit in the center of the patches was often difficult and hazardous. Since we never planted any of these wild raspberry bushes to start with, it doesn’t feel like we are risking too much to take a crack at cutting them back in hopes of encouraging some more orderly growth.
There’s no reason to think new patches wouldn’t just sprout up again if we accidentally destroy a current one. That’s the way they got here in the first place, thanks to the birds and nature’s way of doing things.
It seems realistic to me to expect that the trimming we have done may interfere a bit with the potential volume of this summer’s berry crop. Long term though, we think we will be cultivating better conditions for the plants. The ultimate result we are hoping for is improved berry production and a more enjoyable process of picking them.
Raspberry jam, anyone?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Soft Ground
Nature didn’t live up to what the forecasters had predicted for us on Sunday. The temperature struggled to approach 50° (F) and the sky never really cleared enough to allow the sun to make much difference. Despite the less-than-inspiring conditions, Cyndie and I rallied our energies to pull out the wood chipper for another round of chewing up brush piles.
Since we are in the wonderful season when the top layer of soil is freezing and thawing daily, I had hoped to park the tractor on the driveway again, near the next largest pile of branches. Unfortunately, that meant the chute would be pointed directly into the wind and everything coming out would blow right back at the tractor.
Plan B had me moving a short distance off the pavement so we could point in a direction where the wind wouldn’t be a problem. Things progressed swimmingly until I apparently tossed in a limb that too closely resembled the petrified oak branches that foiled our efforts last time out.
I instantly realized I had completely forgotten to shop for more robust shear bolts after the previous go-round when the hardware replacement broke as fast as I installed it. Details, details.
I think I’ll remember to buy new bolts this time, especially if I do it on the way home from work today. No time like the present.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Boulders Rocking
While we were standing around the center of labyrinth Wednesday night, I glanced at the big boulders and immediately sensed something seemed different. One of them seems to be settling into an increased lean away from the other. It comes as no surprise, since the soil is so incredibly saturated around here. 
It has me wondering what it will be like this winter when the ground freezes. Will the excess water in the surface soil create more in the way of heaving? Could those boulders get pushed over on their sides?
Maybe when the tree finally gets established, we can get rid of the boulders altogether and let the maple take their place.
What do I mean by we ? By the time that happens, I probably won’t be around anymore and those decisions will likely be someone else’s to make.
For this moment, I am going to work on tending to the boulders to the best of my ability, while also finding a way to adjust my attitude so that I will accept the unexpected results that nature serves up.
I’m sure hoping that nature will serve up a healthy and vibrant transplanted tree. If that happens, I will find it much less concerning if/when the boulders shift into a new and different orientation from the one with which we started.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 