The signs are now too numerous to avoid that winter is on its way. I just picked the last Swiss Chard in the garden. The last five of the tomatoes I picked green in early October are almost fully ripe and will probably be used up within a couple of days. And virtually all of the leaves are down on the lawn except for those on the stubborn Sweetgums, and those on the Post Oak, the tatters of which won't fall until they're replaced by new leaves in the Spring.
Also, the price of olive oil has risen quite smartly to its late Fall, Winter and Spring level in the market. Having carefully observed the annual trends in that market for several years I invested heavily in olive oil futures during the late Summer and early Fall. As of now I have an unrealized 50% gross return on investment. My ROI is even higher on an annualized basis.
In other news: I've learned that bamboo, in addition to its many other uses, makes excellent kindling for the woodstove.
Showing posts with label leaves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label leaves. Show all posts
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Falling leaves
Since writing that blog post about the first falling of the sugar maple leaves a few days ago I've really been paying attention to how differently the trees behave as the cold weather comes on.
The sugar maple is all but bare now, but the leaves of the red maples aren't even close to reaching their full color; and the silver maples have barely reached full color, not that their feeble attempt at color is all that impressive. And then there are the sweetgums and the poplars, whose leaves haven't even shown any awareness that fall is here. Then, of course, you have the black walnuts, which lost their leaves a month or so ago; but nobody noticed because the darn things look half naked even when they're all leafed out.
For years after we bought the property I thought there might be something wrong with the black walnuts. They get their leaves last in the spring, they never really seem fully leafed out, and they lose their leaves first in the fall. It doesn't seem like a very efficient survival and growth strategy. And yet black walnuts seem to grow fast enough to hold their own very well in the pasture areas that I've let go wild since we got rid of the horses. Of course, I keep in mind that one year way back I scattered a bucket of walnuts around and thus gave them an assist. And then there is the fact that big nutrient rich seeds like walnuts surely give their seedlings an advantage. But still, the walnut trees must compete year in and year out in the wild growing areas with everything else, and they seem to do that just fine despite their seemingly inefficient leaf practices.
At the other extreme from the walnuts are the hybrid poplars. They're the first trees with full grown leaves in the spring; and the damn things hold their leaves in fall until well after I want them off the trees so I can grind them up with the mower. My tractor can't carry its John Deere belly mower and it's John Deere snow plow at the same time because some John Deere engineer who designed those attachments was an idiot; so every year there is a fine decision to make about when to get the dealer to send his guy over to take off the mower and put on the plow. Switch too soon and the drifts of unmown poplar leaves will irritate me a little bit every windy day for most of the winter. Switch too late and the lack of the plow will irritate me a whole lot all on one day if we get an early snow.
Rereading that last paragraph, I'm compelled to point out that most of the John Deere engineers who designed my tractor thirty or so years ago were manifestly not idiots. That tractor has been through a lot with me for the past twenty two years, and I mean a lot. I've never tested it's roll bar; but I've tested the strength of many other parts of the machine; and all of those parts are still on there. It has failed to start when needed only one time in more than twenty years and that was because some idiot let the water level in its battery recede below the top of the plates. Furthermore, it has only overheated twice in over twenty years of hard use despite the fact that it's air filter has only had the dust knocked out of it four or five times and the debris screen in front of the air intake has only been cleaned four or five times, two of which in each case were just after it overheated. All in all, John Deere's engineers should be proud of themselves, except for he one who designed the underbelly mower hitch so that it interferes with the plow attachment point. Everything else I can forgive; but that I can't forgive.
But back to the poplars. We had our first fire in the woodstove last evening, a fire made from some of the last wood from the big poplar that grew too big to be left to grow so near the house. Like it's twin, which is about forty feet from the house, that poplar grew about six feet per year for the first fifteen years of its life and it started providing serious shade when it was only five or six years old. It was almost three feet in diameter at twenty years old. Of course, besides shade it also provided no end of little sticky bud husks each spring - little sticky bud husks that were tracked all over the house. It also sent a big root under the bricks of the patio and a little root into the basement through the drain to get at the condensation water from the heat pump. But it was on balance a great tree, and it's been a great provider of heat from the woodstove since I had to have it cut down to put a stop to its unsociable behavior.
Update: 80 64 85 :< (
The sugar maple is all but bare now, but the leaves of the red maples aren't even close to reaching their full color; and the silver maples have barely reached full color, not that their feeble attempt at color is all that impressive. And then there are the sweetgums and the poplars, whose leaves haven't even shown any awareness that fall is here. Then, of course, you have the black walnuts, which lost their leaves a month or so ago; but nobody noticed because the darn things look half naked even when they're all leafed out.
For years after we bought the property I thought there might be something wrong with the black walnuts. They get their leaves last in the spring, they never really seem fully leafed out, and they lose their leaves first in the fall. It doesn't seem like a very efficient survival and growth strategy. And yet black walnuts seem to grow fast enough to hold their own very well in the pasture areas that I've let go wild since we got rid of the horses. Of course, I keep in mind that one year way back I scattered a bucket of walnuts around and thus gave them an assist. And then there is the fact that big nutrient rich seeds like walnuts surely give their seedlings an advantage. But still, the walnut trees must compete year in and year out in the wild growing areas with everything else, and they seem to do that just fine despite their seemingly inefficient leaf practices.
At the other extreme from the walnuts are the hybrid poplars. They're the first trees with full grown leaves in the spring; and the damn things hold their leaves in fall until well after I want them off the trees so I can grind them up with the mower. My tractor can't carry its John Deere belly mower and it's John Deere snow plow at the same time because some John Deere engineer who designed those attachments was an idiot; so every year there is a fine decision to make about when to get the dealer to send his guy over to take off the mower and put on the plow. Switch too soon and the drifts of unmown poplar leaves will irritate me a little bit every windy day for most of the winter. Switch too late and the lack of the plow will irritate me a whole lot all on one day if we get an early snow.
Rereading that last paragraph, I'm compelled to point out that most of the John Deere engineers who designed my tractor thirty or so years ago were manifestly not idiots. That tractor has been through a lot with me for the past twenty two years, and I mean a lot. I've never tested it's roll bar; but I've tested the strength of many other parts of the machine; and all of those parts are still on there. It has failed to start when needed only one time in more than twenty years and that was because some idiot let the water level in its battery recede below the top of the plates. Furthermore, it has only overheated twice in over twenty years of hard use despite the fact that it's air filter has only had the dust knocked out of it four or five times and the debris screen in front of the air intake has only been cleaned four or five times, two of which in each case were just after it overheated. All in all, John Deere's engineers should be proud of themselves, except for he one who designed the underbelly mower hitch so that it interferes with the plow attachment point. Everything else I can forgive; but that I can't forgive.
But back to the poplars. We had our first fire in the woodstove last evening, a fire made from some of the last wood from the big poplar that grew too big to be left to grow so near the house. Like it's twin, which is about forty feet from the house, that poplar grew about six feet per year for the first fifteen years of its life and it started providing serious shade when it was only five or six years old. It was almost three feet in diameter at twenty years old. Of course, besides shade it also provided no end of little sticky bud husks each spring - little sticky bud husks that were tracked all over the house. It also sent a big root under the bricks of the patio and a little root into the basement through the drain to get at the condensation water from the heat pump. But it was on balance a great tree, and it's been a great provider of heat from the woodstove since I had to have it cut down to put a stop to its unsociable behavior.
Update: 80 64 85 :< (
Monday, October 20, 2008
It's a magical morning
You get one of these magical mornings every couple of years. Last night we had the first heavy frost of fall, and this morning the air is perfectly still. Before dawn a lot of leaves were in perfect balance, ready to fall. And, as the sun rises and warms the leaves at the top of the trees they're falling, for no obvious reason, setting off chain reactions, cascades, of falling leaves from lower down.
It's no wonder that people believe in faeries and leprechauns.
Meanwhile, in the real world, I brought the baobab tree and the other tender plants into the house over the weekend. I bit the bullet and pruned the baobab to about two feet tall. It's hard for me to bring myself to prune a tree. Part of me tends to strongly want to let them grow as they want to grow. The baobab is starting to get a bulbous trunk. I should prune it even further to make its top more round as it would be in the wild, but it's very hard to countenance doing that.
Last fall Alex and I cut a big branch from the silver maple just in front of the house to stop is from interfering with the sweetgum. After we were done I heard Alex explain some of my comments to Christina. "He personalizes trees," Alex said. I've been thinking about that off and on ever since and I've decided that it's correct. I do personalize trees, and correctly so. The silver maple was purposely trying to shade out the sweetgum. In whatever passes for its brain it was grabbing for and defending space, much as a person will defend his or her territory in this world.
You doubt? Back about twenty years ago Pop had us dig him a garden in the old barn foundation where the soil was as rich and perfect as any soil you will ever find. But as the garden grew it became apparent that many of the tomato plants were either dying or growing poorly for no obvious reason - no obvious reason, that is, until I happened to read somewhere that you should never mulch your garden with walnut or oak leaves. And then it was clear. Looking at Pop's garden with aware eyes it became obvious what was happening. The tomato plants were stunted along the lines of roots radiating from the big black walnut growing up on the berm above the barn foundation more than thirty feet from the garden.
That black walnut was ruthlessly engaging in chemical warfare to defend its access to the nutrients in the barn foundation. Not content to depend on its falling leaves to do the dirty work in the fall it was conducting a preemptive strike by emitting poison deadly to tomatoes and some other plants from its roots. Pop took that very personally when I explained it to him; and for a time he considered ordering a preemptive strike of his own, considered sending me out with the chain saw to deal with the evil tree. But reason prevailed, and instead we moved the garden the next year. Pop is long gone now; but I remember him every time I look at that tree, almost two feet in diameter now, still spreading its poison, still defending its little piece of the world.
Another place I read that it is not only individual trees that have their wiles and tricks. Oak trees go a step further than walnuts. They talk to one another, and they talk to one another over vast distances, passing on chemical messages. All over our property, and all over the eastern US for that matter, across hundreds of miles, the oak trees coordinate their heavy acorn bearing years to overwhelm the squirrels with so many acorns that it's impossible for the squirrels to collect and eat them all. On a personal level the oaks compete, and at the race and species level they compete, but on the genus level it's a case of oak trees coordinating their actions against the rest of the wide world.
On our property we have pin oaks and post oaks, and white and red and scarlet and black oaks. We also have swamp and bur and overcup and chinkapin oaks. We used to have a couple of English oaks, pretty good sized ones with trunks more than a foot in diameter; but they both died at about the same time a decade or so ago - introduced prissy Europeans that proved unable to stand the rigors of this New World - or perhaps the red, white and blue American oaks ganged up on them . All this is very unnatural, by the way. Mr. C, who bought the property in 1944, was a botany professor or something like that, so there are all manner trees planted here that would never coexist in such close proximity in the wild forest.
The tough, introduced from China, Dawn Redwoods caused me no end of puzzlement twenty five years ago because my then tree reference book didn't include introduced species. So I went along for a couple of years thinking they were either Sequoia Sempervirens, Coastal Redwoods, or Sequoiadendron Giganteum, Giant Sequoias, which shouldn't be able to grow around here at all and which certainly shouldn't shed their foliage in winter. At about that time I pointed out the biggest of the Sequoias down in the swamp below the pond to a new neighbor one day when we were out walking. I told him that in a thousand years when those trees would be three hundred feet tall his great-great grandchildren wouldn't recognize this neighborhood from today's pictures. Which caused him to look at me a little funny. Sometimes I don't sufficiently telegraph irony when I'm engaging in it.
During that walk I had also identified to him another very large tree, which has since died, as a Cottonwood and I had, to his point of view, persisted in that claim despite his assertion that Cottonwoods only live out west. It was a Cottonwood, and it was most assuredly here, and healthy and a couple of feet in diameter by that day, planted by Mr. C in the 1940's no doubt, although in this climate it never produced enough "cotton" to litter the ground with white fluff. I sometimes wonder if there is another cottonwood in Montgomery County. I've never seen another one.
But the Sequoias turned out not to be of either of the kinds I thought they were. My mental balance re that matter was only restored when I noticed a little thirty or so foot tall one on a fairly small front lawn down in Fort Washington on the way to work. When I stopped to inspect it more closely one day while the homeowner was mowing his lawn he explained that he had bought it at a nursery and planted it. Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood, that's what it was, and that's what ours are. The fellow clearly thought me half nuts, and doubted me when I told him that he had better be prepared for problems in the future because our biggest one was even then almost two feet in diameter at the base and about eighty feet tall. One day I have to go by there again and see how his is doing if he hasn't cut it down. Our biggest Metasequoia is now well over a hundred feet tall and its trunk is more than four feet in diameter. It's slowly shading out its near neighbor Metasequoia. Even among like kind trees will not just leben und leben lich, live and let live, if they are too much in one another's face, just like people.
Cicadas coordinate their actions also; but the talk we hear from them is just the mundane talk of "I'm here, where are you, you sexy thing?" - mating talk. Their more clever coordination is done deep down in their genes which dictate that there are three year and five year and seven year and eleven year and seventeen year cicadas. Cicadas smart enough, despite their tiny little brains, to reproduce on a prime number year schedule so as to overwhelm predators by their hatching numbers - to make it harder for predators to maintain their own numbers by preying on them in the rich picking years.
Darn right I personalize trees; but since Alex's comment to Christina I'm a bit more careful about making sure I only talk to them when nobody else is around.
It's no wonder that people believe in faeries and leprechauns.
Meanwhile, in the real world, I brought the baobab tree and the other tender plants into the house over the weekend. I bit the bullet and pruned the baobab to about two feet tall. It's hard for me to bring myself to prune a tree. Part of me tends to strongly want to let them grow as they want to grow. The baobab is starting to get a bulbous trunk. I should prune it even further to make its top more round as it would be in the wild, but it's very hard to countenance doing that.
Last fall Alex and I cut a big branch from the silver maple just in front of the house to stop is from interfering with the sweetgum. After we were done I heard Alex explain some of my comments to Christina. "He personalizes trees," Alex said. I've been thinking about that off and on ever since and I've decided that it's correct. I do personalize trees, and correctly so. The silver maple was purposely trying to shade out the sweetgum. In whatever passes for its brain it was grabbing for and defending space, much as a person will defend his or her territory in this world.
You doubt? Back about twenty years ago Pop had us dig him a garden in the old barn foundation where the soil was as rich and perfect as any soil you will ever find. But as the garden grew it became apparent that many of the tomato plants were either dying or growing poorly for no obvious reason - no obvious reason, that is, until I happened to read somewhere that you should never mulch your garden with walnut or oak leaves. And then it was clear. Looking at Pop's garden with aware eyes it became obvious what was happening. The tomato plants were stunted along the lines of roots radiating from the big black walnut growing up on the berm above the barn foundation more than thirty feet from the garden.
That black walnut was ruthlessly engaging in chemical warfare to defend its access to the nutrients in the barn foundation. Not content to depend on its falling leaves to do the dirty work in the fall it was conducting a preemptive strike by emitting poison deadly to tomatoes and some other plants from its roots. Pop took that very personally when I explained it to him; and for a time he considered ordering a preemptive strike of his own, considered sending me out with the chain saw to deal with the evil tree. But reason prevailed, and instead we moved the garden the next year. Pop is long gone now; but I remember him every time I look at that tree, almost two feet in diameter now, still spreading its poison, still defending its little piece of the world.
Another place I read that it is not only individual trees that have their wiles and tricks. Oak trees go a step further than walnuts. They talk to one another, and they talk to one another over vast distances, passing on chemical messages. All over our property, and all over the eastern US for that matter, across hundreds of miles, the oak trees coordinate their heavy acorn bearing years to overwhelm the squirrels with so many acorns that it's impossible for the squirrels to collect and eat them all. On a personal level the oaks compete, and at the race and species level they compete, but on the genus level it's a case of oak trees coordinating their actions against the rest of the wide world.
On our property we have pin oaks and post oaks, and white and red and scarlet and black oaks. We also have swamp and bur and overcup and chinkapin oaks. We used to have a couple of English oaks, pretty good sized ones with trunks more than a foot in diameter; but they both died at about the same time a decade or so ago - introduced prissy Europeans that proved unable to stand the rigors of this New World - or perhaps the red, white and blue American oaks ganged up on them . All this is very unnatural, by the way. Mr. C, who bought the property in 1944, was a botany professor or something like that, so there are all manner trees planted here that would never coexist in such close proximity in the wild forest.
The tough, introduced from China, Dawn Redwoods caused me no end of puzzlement twenty five years ago because my then tree reference book didn't include introduced species. So I went along for a couple of years thinking they were either Sequoia Sempervirens, Coastal Redwoods, or Sequoiadendron Giganteum, Giant Sequoias, which shouldn't be able to grow around here at all and which certainly shouldn't shed their foliage in winter. At about that time I pointed out the biggest of the Sequoias down in the swamp below the pond to a new neighbor one day when we were out walking. I told him that in a thousand years when those trees would be three hundred feet tall his great-great grandchildren wouldn't recognize this neighborhood from today's pictures. Which caused him to look at me a little funny. Sometimes I don't sufficiently telegraph irony when I'm engaging in it.
During that walk I had also identified to him another very large tree, which has since died, as a Cottonwood and I had, to his point of view, persisted in that claim despite his assertion that Cottonwoods only live out west. It was a Cottonwood, and it was most assuredly here, and healthy and a couple of feet in diameter by that day, planted by Mr. C in the 1940's no doubt, although in this climate it never produced enough "cotton" to litter the ground with white fluff. I sometimes wonder if there is another cottonwood in Montgomery County. I've never seen another one.
But the Sequoias turned out not to be of either of the kinds I thought they were. My mental balance re that matter was only restored when I noticed a little thirty or so foot tall one on a fairly small front lawn down in Fort Washington on the way to work. When I stopped to inspect it more closely one day while the homeowner was mowing his lawn he explained that he had bought it at a nursery and planted it. Metasequoia Glyptostroboides, Dawn Redwood, that's what it was, and that's what ours are. The fellow clearly thought me half nuts, and doubted me when I told him that he had better be prepared for problems in the future because our biggest one was even then almost two feet in diameter at the base and about eighty feet tall. One day I have to go by there again and see how his is doing if he hasn't cut it down. Our biggest Metasequoia is now well over a hundred feet tall and its trunk is more than four feet in diameter. It's slowly shading out its near neighbor Metasequoia. Even among like kind trees will not just leben und leben lich, live and let live, if they are too much in one another's face, just like people.
Cicadas coordinate their actions also; but the talk we hear from them is just the mundane talk of "I'm here, where are you, you sexy thing?" - mating talk. Their more clever coordination is done deep down in their genes which dictate that there are three year and five year and seven year and eleven year and seventeen year cicadas. Cicadas smart enough, despite their tiny little brains, to reproduce on a prime number year schedule so as to overwhelm predators by their hatching numbers - to make it harder for predators to maintain their own numbers by preying on them in the rich picking years.
Darn right I personalize trees; but since Alex's comment to Christina I'm a bit more careful about making sure I only talk to them when nobody else is around.
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