Making Hay and Distinguished Visitors

 

 For the last three days, a contract farmer took advantage of the facts that (1) most of our snow had melted and (2) spring rains hadn't yet made the soil too wet for equipment.  He and his crew came to our grasslands and cut and baled 150 acres of native grasses.  The grasses are of low quality, so they're not valuable for feeding livestock or for animal bedding.  Instead, the baled grass will be used to grow mushrooms in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, "Mushroom Capital of North America."  Sometime in the next few months, if you buy mushrooms and they've been grown in Kennett Square, you may (indirectly) be eating our grasses!

A wider view.  Watch out, visitors on foot; the farmer stops for no one!

On Tuesday, we had a visit from the natural land stewardship crew from the Mt. Cuba Center in Hockessin, Delaware (suburban northern Delaware just west of Wilmington).  Mt. Cuba was a DuPont estate that was turned into a horticultural showplace for displaying native Piedmont plants in designed landscapes.  Fifty acres of the 385-acre estate are formal gardens; our visitors are responsible for the other 335 acres of fields, woodlands, and wetlands.

Because the du Ponts are/were fabulously wealthy, I had assumed that Mt. Cuba was like heaven on earth - that Mrs. du Pont would dispatch armies of gardeners to rout every weed on her estate.  I was quickly disabused of that notion by our visitors, who assured me that they had the same same problems with invasive plants, superabundant deer, and stormwater flooding that I face in my preserve.    

My two stewardship staff members (left) pointing out a land management feature to our three guests from Mt. Cuba.

My staff and I are going to pay a reciprocal visit to Mt. Cuba - when the weather gets better in May.  It was really cold on Tuesday.

Courting the Press

Reporter Matt photographing picturesque rapids on my creek

As a non-profit organization, we need as much publicity as possible.  So, when a reporter called and told me that he wanted to do a feature on our organization for a news weekly, I jumped at the opportunity.  The reporter came to my office and we talked for about a half-hour, then we went for a walk through the preserve.  I've hardly been out on the grounds during the last two months.

Partial ice-out on the marsh

Historic stone-arch bridge (1817) under repair since November 19, 2014

My creek, upstream of the historic bridge

This strikingly shadowed American beech caught my attention

Reporter Matt capturing images for his news piece

My creek at its most dramatic

The reach of the creek locally known as "The Falls"

These images were taken during our walk on Wednesday afternoon, March 18.  On Friday, March 20, we got four inches of heavy, wet snow.

New York City, Part 2 - History and Solemnity

 

Yesterday's post featured the High Line Trail in Manhattan.  Though I posted about the High Line first, we actually visited the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on Saturday, and then the National 9/11 Memorial and High Line on Sunday.

Saturday was a "washout."  It rained all day long.  It wasn't pouring, but it was definitely raining.  We took the ferry from Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan to Liberty Island and toured the Statue of Liberty and its museum.  Kali and I had visited the statue decades ago, but our friend Trijntje from the Netherlands had never been there.  We were able to get up to the base of the statue at the top of its stone pedestal, but we couldn't climb to the crown because the "crown tours" were sold out through April.  The fact that we couldn't climb to the windows in the crown was fine because the weather was so foggy that we couldn't have seen anything anyway.  The image heading this post is from the museum, which displays is a full-size replica of the statue's face.   I took the image from the opposite side of the building and only captured a part of the face; I liked the effect.

Considering that it was rainy and foggy, this image isn't half bad

The stone pedestal supporting the Statue of Liberty is a work of art in itself.  Though the pedestal was completed in the 1870's, it has a very "art deco" gestalt that appeals to me immensely.

From the statue, we cruised to Ellis Island and spent about three hours in the restored immigrant processing facility.  It was fascinating.  Kali's grandfather and father passed through Ellis Island when they immigrated from Italy; we have a copy of the ship's manifest with their names.  My ancestors may have passed through Ellis Island, too; I don't have any information about my family's origins
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On Sunday morning, we took the subway to the National 9/11 Memorial.  I couldn't predict how I would react when we approached the site.  But as the dramatic and sombre memorial pools came into view, I choked up and began to tear.  It was very moving and sobering.

Our friend Trijntje (left) and Kali at the South Tower Pool

The pools (located in the footprints of the two towers) are beautiful and appropriate remembrances of the victims' their names are inscribed along the edges.

The South Tower Pool at the 9/11 Memorial

We went inside the 9/11 Memorial Museum and spent two hours there.  The building is large, spacious, and airy - except for the gallery where most to the story behind the attacks is presented.  There, the space is tight, dark, claustrophobic, and unpleasantly crowded.  I don't think the effect was intentional; instead, I think the designers did a poor job anticipating how popular the space would become.  I heard many people sniffing and sobbing as we toured the exhibit; it was very moving.

The new One World Trade Center will open in May

Outside the museum, we gazed up at the new One World Trade Center building, the tallest building in Manhattan at 1776 feet (with its antenna).  Personally, I wouldn't want to work in the building; surely, it's a target.

National 9/11 Memorial Museum (right) and the "bones" of a new transportation hub under construction (left)

It was amazing to me how the site of this tragedy has been transformed in only 14 years.  From the 9/11 Memorial, we went to the High Line, as I described in my last post.

We had a good weekend New York.  it was great to see our friend (whom we had last seen 12 years ago), and the city is always exciting.

Weekend in New York, Part 1: The High Line Trail

 

Last weekend (March 13-15), Kali and I met a friend from the Netherlands who we had not seen for 12 years in New York City.  Our friend, whose name is Trijntje, had been in New York for a week attending a conference; she extended her stay so that we could get together and catch up.  We had a great weekend.

One of my motivations to visit New York was to walk the High Line, a highly landscaped park built on an abandoned freight train trestle running along Manhattan's West Side from about 14th Street north to 34th Street.  Though the park is formally landscaped, the design harkens back to the scruffy, weedy ecosystem that had developed naturally on the trestle after it was abandoned.

Though the day was cloudy, windy, and very cold, the trail was crowded.  Kali at first said we would "sample" the trail by walking a few blocks, but even though she was chilled, we walked the entire two-mile trail and she became more and more impressed the further we walked.  So did I.

I took my pocket point-and-shoot camera with me to New York so that I didn't have to carry my large camera around the city, but the images the small camera produces are not nearly as good as those from my full-sized camera.  Please excuse the quality of some of the images.

The High Line near its southern terminus

Looking northward on the High Line

An unusually shaped building near the trail

The unusually shaped building, closer up

The Empire State Building visible from the High Line

A spring-blooming witch-hazel

The image above is a non-native spring-flowering variety of witch-hazel with unusual orange flowers.  Our native witch-hazel blooms in very late fall/early winter, and has bright yellow flowers.

The residential building in the image above was built after the trail was created.  It has become famous for its architecture and its proximity to the High Line.  Residential structures are popping up all along the trail (which formerly was New York's meatpacking district) and they command very high rents/prices.  A modest new residential condominium across the trail from this structure had signs in the window advertising units for sale from $2 to $20 million.

A closer view of the building above

In my next post, I'll feature some of the other things we did in the city.

Snow Scenes - The World Flocced

The morning after

Our area of the northern Piedmont received eight inches (20 cm) of snow on Thursday, March 5.  This came on the heels of a rainy day; in fact, overnight the rain changed to sleet, then to snow, and the snow fell heavily all day long on Thursday.  The birds were desperate; I couldn't keep an area clear long enough for them to take advantage of the birdseed I scattered on the ground, but many found the trove that I secreted under a picnic table - relatively snow free.

After the snow stopped, the temperature overnight Thursday plunged.  It was 2 degrees F when I awoke on Friday morning.  But Friday dawned clear, sunny and blue, the temperature recovered to the mid-20s, and the melting began where the sun could reach dark surfaces.

Dogwood Meadow at the height of the snowfall

Snowy filigree on the magnolia tree next to the house

The deer fencing surrounding my garden

Temperatures this coming week are forecast to approach normal, which means 50 degrees F during the day and 31 degrees F at night.  If that happens, it will be a welcome relief from a winter that just doesn't want to let go.

Frigid Field Trip

I'm teaching two Landscape Restoration classes on Fridays this term, first for 10 graduate-level landscape architecture students, and then for 27 undergraduate landscape architecture and horticulture students.  I escorted the two classes on a field trip at my preserve last Friday (February 27).

The trails in the preserve were (and still are) very icy.  Three of the graduate students slipped; none of the undergrads did, perhaps because by the time the undergrads showed up the sun had warmed the snow and ice a bit.

It was in the mid-teens F when we started out in the morning, but it was sunny and not too windy.  I had considered postponing the trip, but then decided to proceed as planned.  If I had postponed, who knows what the weather would have been like on the next scheduled date.

The last two weeks of February were the two coldest weeks ever recorded in Philadelphia - not just for February, but for any two-week period since records have been kept (1841).  February 2015 was also the fifth coldest February on record.

My Stewardship Assistant, Chris, explaining how he manages our native prairie

Yours truly in the midst of our oldest reforestation project (25 years this year)

The undergrads examining a lesion caused by the chestnut blight fungus on one of our American chestnut trees