Disposing of the Fruits of My Labor

Dahlia, Autumn 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

As I sit on my enclosed porch, the weather is most definitely autumnal. I am in my warmest robe. The windows are closed. A feeder has drawn cardinals. The sun's arc is shorter and it doesn't rise as high in the sky. Days are most decidedly shorter.

And in the corner are four pots of vegetables continuing to grow.

Every year around this time I begin the slow task of closing the garden and getting the house ready for winter. I wait for as long as possible before bringing indoors the houseplants I've put on the porch for the summer because they are going to get more humidity outside than in, especially once I start using the furnace. This year I made it until the beginning of October when the projected overnight low one night would be 37 degrees F. My porch would've kept the plants a degree or two warmer but since many of them are tropicals they had to be brought in.

The pots of cannas and dahlias in front behind the deer netting are staying put for now. The dahlias are autumn flowers, just starting to bloom. The cannas' leaves still look fresh although what flowers they had are long since done. Once frost hits and the foliage goes brown I can cut it off and put the pots in the garage, while I pull up the dahlias and store the bulbs, wrapped in newspaper, in a box nearby.

Tomato plant, still bearing fruit (Margo D. Beller)

That leaves the vegetables. Most people, if they grow vegetables, seem to harvest what they can and leave the rest to rot. I've seen this in my town's community garden. I've walked there after a frost and found many tomatoes still on the vine until the plot holder makes it there to rip out the plants. (One of those holders allowed me access once and now I know what a frozen tomato looks and feels like.)

I, however, grow vegetables in pots. Usually I have anywhere from two to five pots of peppers and one of basil. The basil is used up first, long before the first frost. But if the peppers are covered with flowers (connoting the fruit to come), I bring them indoors for the winter.

Things are different this year.

Two autumns ago, I found a tomato seedling near my compost pile. I potted it and it grew into a tree that was difficult to keep upright. Just as it was about to put out fruit, it became infested with white flies that also affected the nearby peppers and my houseplants. Out went the tomato and the peppers, the former into the front yard where, despite the sun, it died in the cold, the latter into the one corner of the enclosed porch where the sun shines the longest. (Each houseplant was examined and cleaned outside before coming back in.)

Peppers  and base of tomato plant; note the pepper flowers
(Margo D. Beller)

This year, I had two of the four peppers I had kept inside for the winter (two died and the other two were continually moved to rid them of white flies) plus a basil, a third type of pepper and a cherry tomato plant that also grew to be like a tree. All were in a protective cage but the deer soon discovered they could reach up and eat the upper parts of the tomato. Thus I covered the tomato and the cage in netting. The plants continued to give me vegetables and, as usual, seemed to get a second life late in the summer.

So once the houseplants were brought into the house, I transported the four pots to the porch where I continue to pick tomatoes even as more grow. Of the peppers, one has been a disappointment (the one decent pepper it produced wasn't particularly good), one is nearly done but the last is covered with flowers and growing fruit.

Tomato flowers and small, unripe fruit (Margo D. Beller

What is different this year is my attitude - none of these pots are going to be taken into the house. I am done with battling white flies. I am done with moving heavy pots. In the autumn of my life, there are more important things I must consider, such as my declining physical strength.

Next year I plan on following Thoreau's dictum of "simplify, simplify" and have one pot of peppers and one of basil. I'll leave the majority of vegetable growing to the farm markets.

When the really cold weather comes, which it inevitably will, I will pick what tomatoes and peppers I can use and leave the plants on the porch and let nature take its course. Then the plants will be pulled out and composted to feed the worms.

Meals on the Wing

Dogwood, with reddening leaves and berries. (Margo D. Beller)

At this time of year, if I want locally grown fruit I can go to a farmstand and buy peaches, plums and apples. I could also go to a supermarket at all times of the year.  

Birds don't have that option. As they head south to their winter areas they need to find food where they can. That can mean stopping at a bird feeder or scouring trees and shrubs for insects, seeds or, my focus here, fruits.

I have plants I bought specifically to provide fruit for the birds, either during migration or into the winter. One such plant is a dogwood tree, which has lovely pink flowers in spring. Its leaves are among the first to go into fall coloring. It has provided many red fruits for the taking.

In my yard and beyond there is a smorgasbord of food Nature has set out for migrating birds that will sustain them on their journey. In my previous post I showed some of the plants that provide nectar and seeds for the birds in return for pollination or spreading the seeds. However, here I focus on plants that provide fruit the bird (or squirrel) eats, digests and expels, another way of perpetuating the species.

Here are a few of the many fruiting plants I've seen in my travels (I took these photos):

There are over 150 different types of viburnums that flower in spring and fruit in fall. I see them in the woods and along stream beds. This one, an arrowwood viburnum, I planted in my yard. For the first three years I kept it surrounded by fencing but it made it hard for MH to mow around it and on windy days the fencing would be blown on the plant. Worse, no bird went for the berries. This year I didn't put up fencing, which made MH happy as well as the deer, which snacked on the leaves they could reach as fast as they could grow. (I never see viburnum browsed in the wild.) Luckily, the plant grew tall and the deer could not reach the flowers or these berries at the top, which I hope will feed the birds.

Many of the plants in my backyard were either put in by previous owners of my house (such as the apple tree) or sprang up in areas and left alone. I've see privet in many a yard. Its flowers have a sickly sweet orange smell (its other name is mock orange) but the hedge grows tall and thick and is very good for privacy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered several privet plants along my backyard border fence (widely separated, unfortunately). These are privet fruits that will go blue-black when ripe.

Wild grape vine (like poison ivy or Virginia creeper, which also provide birds with fruit) will take over if allowed to spread. This one, not in my yard, has foliage that looks like fig leaves but there are others whose foliage looks like a spade. The berries ripen from green to blue and are very popular with sparrows, from what I've seen in my travels.

Multiflora rose is considered an invasive species and I am continually pulling up plants that take root in areas where I don't want them. However, there are many areas where I leave them alone because the white roses, unlike modern hybrids, smell wonderful and the robins, catbirds and occasional mockingbird enjoy the rosehips. Left alone the thorny plants can grow to be very tall and will then grab onto the nearest plant to continue its ascent. This photograph, from a recent hike, was taken from below the rosehips.

Unlike the cultivated strawberries you can buy in the grocery store, wild strawberries are smaller and not as sweet. They are also available for me to pick in autumn as well as spring. I am finding wild strawberries all over the yard (we don't spray pesticides or weed killer) but, unlike the equally spreading ground ivy, I leave the plants alone because I enjoy the fruit as much as the birds. 

A Walk Among the Autumn Weeds

It is nearly autumn. Leaves on the maples and the dogwoods are turning and the days are getting shorter. Now that I have more time on my hands I find that unless I can get out and take a walk I don't feel comfortable in my skin.

A lovely autumn plant with an ugly name - snakeroot.
It is poisonous so deer leave it alone.
(Margo D. Beller)

The other day I went to one of my usual bird-spotting places but there were very few birds to be had aside from the ubiquitous jays and catbirds. The tree swallows that had been zipping around the sky over the open field had been replaced by a variety of dragonflies, also hunting for food. No calling warblers, wrens or even a red-winged blackbird. All gone south.

The field itself was now filled with wildflowers - bright yellow goldenrod, pink joe-pye weed, milkweed and a variety of seeding plants and others that had already boomed and busted.

It is an unfortunate fact that now I can no longer make myself rise before dawn and rush out after the birds, especially at this time of year when there is no birdsong, no bright-colored feathers, no prospect of something possibly hanging around for a while. Now, the birds just want to go south whenever the weather allows them. I have seen more hummingbirds visiting the jewelweed along rivers than my feeder.

That doesn't mean nothing is flying at midday. There are many types of butterflies including sulphurs, cabbage whites, tiger and dark swallowtails and the mighty monarchs, all heading south. If a leaf isn't falling, the fluttering will more likely be a butterfly.

This time, however, the wildflowers and weeds have my attention. Let us take a walk along this path, Reader, and see what there is to see. (All pictures by me.)

My fall garden is mainly shades of pink - rose of Sharon, sedums, coneflowers and liriope - but I was given some goldenrod and that has brought a welcome shade of yellow. In the wild, there are large stands of goldenrod. Some forms bloom early, some much later in the summer. 

Unfortunately, ragweed is another fact of autumn life. You will see it everywhere, including in parks.

Milkweed, by contrast, is something to encourage. Monarchs need milkweed to survive - the adults lay eggs in it and the caterpillars eat the foliage.

Japanese knotweed grows in thick stands and at this time of year it flowers, enabling it to spread its seeds. I have been in many parks where it was cut down, even burned, but it comes back and thrives. It is one of the worst invasive plants you'll ever see in this area.

This one was a surprise. If you look closely you'll see the thin, feathery, green branches of wild asparagus. If the park mower doesn't destroy it, it should provide edible stalks of asparagus in the spring.

Bermuda grass is right up there with crabgrass and ground ivy as one of the worst plants to invade my yard. Every summer I find a large stand growing under my rhododendron, where it is hard to reach it because of the deer netting. It comes out easily but it is a perennial so you can expect more next year.

By contrast, I wish I could grow more joe-pye in my yard instead of grass. But while I've never seen a field of wild joe-pye browsed by deer, some that I planted was nearly destroyed, forcing me to put it behind deer netting, where it hasn't been happy. Seeing stands of it in the wild makes me envious.

I can't know everything. I have no idea what this is but at this time of year it looks like it is full of spikes. Was this a lush plant with flowers that dried? I don't know. I'll have to come back here in the spring and see what comes up.

Another mystery. The leaves suggested columbine when I saw this in the spring. But there are blue berries. Columbine doesn't produce blue berries. I found this and nearby stands in the woods, and at some point I'll look at my references.

If ever there was a plant I wish was on my property it is jewelweed. It is found in wet areas, near streams. It can grow in large stands and attract bees, flies, beetles and hummingbirds, which pollenate the plant by taking pollen from the small yellow-orange trumpet flowers. Whenever I see jewelweed I look for hummingbirds.

There are other plants, of course, many on the decline but others that are producing food such as the fruiting vines of wild grape, poison ivy and Virginia creeper.

As I discovered, even while concentrating on the variety of textures and colors in the weeds and wildflowers, there is always the possibility of a bird surprising me.

For instance, as I was taking the picture of the joe-pye seen above, I saw a raptor flying high over the field. The binoculars revealed a broadwing hawk, easily identified by the broad white stripe in an otherwise dark tail. That bird reminds me why I must get out of the house, whatever the time of day.

The King of Hawks

This post is based on one that originally ran on Sept. 9, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

There was no birding before the binocular, there was simply ornithology.
-- Pete Dunne

When summer is ending, there is nothing like the prospect of finding an area with a clear view to the north and then waiting for the annual migration of south-bound raptors. It doesn't matter if I am on a mountain, in a park or in my front yard, looking up and seeing a small speck that could be a broad-winged hawk or a red-tailed hawk or a peregrine falcon is exciting. There are areas where hawk watches are held every year because these areas, if they are on mountain tops, provide the warm columns of air called thermals these bird need to soar and float southward, allowing them to conserve their strength. 

Southbound Cooper's Hawk, Hawk Mountain (RE Berg-Andersson)

For many years, the author and birdwatcher Pete Dunne has been coming to the hawk platform at New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. His visits, in early or mid-September, are timed to when the flight of broad-wings is at its highest and other raptors are increasingly on their way to their wintering grounds. Pete always draws a big crowd. Twice I have watched him in action on the platform, encouraging young birders, providing identification tips and, if you picked up a copy of one of his many books, signing an autograph.

Pete ran the NJ Audubon center in Cape May for a long time but after suffering a stroke in 2014, he stepped down to become the group's Birding Ambassador. Nowadays, however, he has given that up and when he is not in the field he is writing a book or a blog post somewhere.

So it seems fitting that I reprint this NJ Audubon post, my 300th on this blog, in September about a man who is an institution in the birding field as well as a humble guy for whom there is no stupid question and always much to learn:

At high noon, on a mid-September day that feels like mid-August, Pete Dunne sits in a chair on the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary hawk observation platform, calling out what he sees through his binoculars and providing a wealth of observation tips.

“That’s a Turkey Vulture. It holds its wings in a V. V for vulture.” 

“There’s a Broad-wing flying just above a Red-tail in that cloud. You can see the Broad-wing is a little smaller and its wings look like a candle flame.”

“That’s a Sharp-shin passing over us. It looks like a flying mallet. A Cooper’s hawk looks like a flying crucifix.”

Pete Dunne (Margo D. Beller)

The crowd is a bit smaller than when I was last on the platform while Dunne was visiting five years ago, but it is no less avid. Up go the binoculars as sanctuary director Mike Anderson uses a clicker to count off the number of raptors seen while making sure everyone can see what Pete Dunne is seeing. Dunne visits this New Jersey Audubon sanctuary every September from his home near the Delaware Bay, close to Cape May at the state’s southern tip as the gull flies. He ran New Jersey Audubon’s Cape May Bird Observatory for many years before a stroke in 2014 prompted him to step down.
Since then he has been New Jersey Audubon’s Birding Ambassador. His mission is to inspire your interest in birds and conservation. He comes north to Scherman Hoffman in mid-September because it is in the “Broad-wing belt” when these buteos can be seen flying south for the winter in the greatest numbers. There are more of them seen now in northern New Jersey than in Cape May, he said. Also, it gives him an excuse for the Morristown-born Dunne to visit family.

But today the weather is not cooperating, even for Pete Dunne. While the rising warm air, or thermal, will keep a flying hawk aloft, the wind is out of the south. Southbound migrants prefer a strong wind out of the north to push them along so they can conserve energy.

Shortly after I arrived at noon, two hours into his visit, five Broad-wings were counted among the raptors seen including a couple of Red-tails, some Turkey Vultures, a few Black Vultures and a Sharp-shin, the smallest of the accipiters. We waited. The small number does not bother Dunne. He remarks that the previous year on the platform there were no Broad-wings seen although there were plenty of other raptors, including Bald Eagle and Osprey. When no hawks are flying, he points out migrating Monarch butterflies and the occasional non-migrating Blue Jay. The binoculars come down and people break into small groups, sharing birding stories and other interests, including choral singing and politics.

At this point Dunne stands and asks if everyone has a pair of binoculars, and points out the ones in a box for a free loan. “Everyone knows what a loan means, right?” he says, smiling. If you don’t know how to use them, he’ll show you. He discusses differences in price and features, which can be substantial. He asks how many of those on the platform are first-time visitors. There are a few. The crowd is generally older and long-time birders and most have been to Scherman Hoffman’s platform. The platform is big enough to hold all these people and more but Mike Anderson told me Pete Dunne’s annual visit is easily the largest crowd up there. He’d love to have a daily hawk count but the usual two evils – lack of time and money – prevent that.

(Margo D. Beller)

There are young people on the platform, too, searching for specks in the sky. Dunne encourages them because they are the future. He talks to them like a friendly uncle. After all, he was once a wunderkind birder, encouraged by his father. Dunne was so much into birding that he was devastated when the father of his primary birding companion – a girl – forbid her to travel with Dunne in the woods anymore when both achieved puberty. Dunne said he didn’t understand why he now had to bird alone.

He got over it and has birded alone or leading large groups for most of his 66 years. He is a hero of mine for being self-taught and not a trained ornithologist. He was one of the creators of the World Series of Birding, an annual competition where the idea is to find as many birds as possible, either throughout New Jersey or in a particular large or small area. The competition raises money for conservation. Dunne’s first team included Roger Tory Peterson. He knew David Sibley before Sibley became famous with his illustrated birding guides. Dunne has written a slew of books including “Tales of a Low-Rent Birder” in 1986 (which is how I first heard of him), “The Art of Bird Finding” in 2011 and books on raptor identification, including his newest, “Birds of Prey.”

We once crossed paths at Cape May’s Higbee Beach as he led a very large group to a larger tour bus as I was arriving just after 7 a.m.. You’d never know he’d had a stroke. He took a moment to point out to me a singing Carolina Wren. His enthusiasm is infectious, which is a good thing if you are on a mission to expose as many people as possible to the wonder of birds.

When I left the platform an hour later, he was still up there, still talking to the crowd and watching for Broadies. According to Mike Anderson, those who came after got to see about 20 Broad-wings, four Bald Eagles and an equal number of Ospreys, five American Kestrels, Northern Harriers, Cooper’s and  Sharp-shinned hawks. Oh, and a Mississippi Kite, not a sanctuary record but it must have been quite a sight.

You don’t need a Pete Dunne to see hawks from the observation platform. There’s still plenty of migration season left for you to come up and find them.

Late Summer Blues

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.
-- Robert Browning

T.S. Eliot was wrong. August is the cruelest month, not April.

In April you can sense the days are getting longer, the plants and tree leaves will soon be coming out, the temperature will warm. In August you realize that, hey, it's awful dark at 8 pm. In August the heat and humidity eventually gives way to cooler, dryer days and you walk outside to discover the weeds are everywhere and your summer flowering plants are shot and ready to be cut down and composted.

Monarch feeding on butterfly bush flowers (Margo D. Beller)

When I look in the trees, I am as likely to see a falling leaf or a migrating butterfly as I am a bird. Already the apple tree is nearly bare and many of the maple and dogwood trees I see are losing the green in their leaves and showing the underlying red or yellow.

In August the squirrels are dropping as many acorns as they are caching, making it likely I'll either get bopped on the head or step on something that will hurt my foot and might make me lose my balance.

In August many weeds are tall and flowering, particularly ragweed sending out its pollen, just in time for when I can finally open my windows for fresh air instead of being stuck inside in air conditioning circulating the same stale air.

In August many of my peppers seem to come ripe at the same time, so I am cutting and freezing most of them. My tomato plant has suddenly covered itself with yellow flowers, so I will have more fruits soon. My basil is just about done. The coleuses are tall and lovely and I have taken cuttings to pot for next year. But because of the hordes of white flies I am leaving these and the vegetable plants outside to be killed by the frost. At that time the dahlia and canna bulbs will be removed for storage.

In autumn I prefer asters to the ubiquitous mums. (Margo D. Beller)

In August many of my neighbors go away on vacation because it is the last time they can before school starts in September. Even tho' it has been decades since I've attended school, there is something about the advent of September that depresses me. Perhaps it is realizing it is only a couple of months until the end of the year. Where did the summer go? When they return they will start filling their doorways with pumpkins, mums, ornamental kale and corn threshes to connote a harvest time they've never experienced unless they grew up on a farm.

August is when birds are on the move south. The mature female hummingbird I've seen at the feeder for the better part of two weeks has not re-appeared, although an immature (grayer) hummer has come to the few remaining coral bell flowers to feed. There have been others at the feeder but I have not been outside long enough to see if they are the same bird or different.

Inkweed, like ragweed, grows huge in fall. The berries will turn
black and be eaten by catbirds and other birds
heading south. (Margo D. Beller)

Hawk-watching season is already upon us. Hawk Mountain, one of the premier viewing sites in the eastern U.S., opened for fall watching on August 15 and has already reported osprey, bald eagles, various accipiters, harrier and broadwing hawk. There will be many more "broadies" moving through my area, peaking in mid-September. Warblers may pass through my yard but unlike in the spring they won't be brightly colored and won't be singing territorial songs. Mating season is long done, the young have fledged and now the only thing on these birds' minds is getting back over land and sea to the winter territories.

Finding these migrant birds in the trees is harder at this time of year. It's a little easier in more wide-open areas such as the shore or a sod farm. I went to one sod farm recently and found some unusual sandpipers and plovers, including the upland sandpiper, which are endangered because of increasing development eating up the dry open spaces they need to survive the trip south.

Finally, August is when I realize it is dark in the early morning and it is dark before 8 pm. Daylight will continue to decrease and before long we will turn clocks back and it will be dark by around 5 pm. Lack of sunlight makes me moody, in part because I can't avoid the inevitability of the passage of time. I know the longer days will return in the spring but until then the cold is coming, and possibly worse.

Abandoned Nest

The robins in my backyard pear tree alerted me to the nest being built, and they alerted me when the female was sitting on eggs and then feeding young.

Now they are gone, and that silence alerts me the nest is abandoned.

Robin nest, July 31, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I first noticed the nest being built by the female on Saturday, July 6, when she flew back and forth with long strands of grass or possibly the spent greenery from the daffodils I had put atop the compost pile a few days before. On July 10 she was sitting in the nest, her head barely above the rim. She wouldn't move until the male signaled he was nearby and then she'd leave for a dinner break.

I looked forward to watching the parents tend to the young, something I could never see when I was watching house wrens going to and from the nest box I hang in the apple tree.

The female returning from a dinner break.
(Margo D. Beller)

On July 26 I noticed a change. Now the male, who had been tending to juveniles from a previous brood, was spending more time at the nest when his mate went off for food, which she did for longer periods of time. He'd stand at the edge, sometimes poking around inside, until the female returned. He'd fly off, she'd stand on the rim, lean down and vigorously move. I imagined young birds, helpless but with mouths open, being force-fed as she regurgitated food directly down their throats. This back and forth went on for a few days.

Meanwhile, we went through days of intense summer heat and humidity, thunderstorms, then days of drier, more comfortable air. Through it all the female was brooding her young. When she sat on eggs, she seemed to be in a daze; when the young hatched, she sat much higher in the nest and was more alert and watchful. I was on the porch one morning when fish crows started calling from trees nearby. Crows, as well as their cousins the jays, will eat baby birds so she sat atop her young and did not move, hiding them amid the tree foliage until the crows flew off.

I can't sit on the porch all the time, unfortunately, especially in very hot and humid weather. But on July 30 I went out in the late afternoon and saw no activity at the nest. I wasn't bothered by this, figuring the parents were off getting food and the young were big enough to sit quietly in the heat unprotected. But I did wonder, and today there continued to be no activity, not even a call from a parent robin.

So I decided to take a closer look.

My attempt to see into the nest (Margo D. Beller)

I don't climb trees. However, I did take an extension pole, attached a paint roller, duct-taped a hand mirror and tried to get it up above the nest to look inside. I was not successful but the fact no parent came screaming at me told me this was no longer an active nest.

What happened?

I could be optimistic and say I miscalculated, the birds were bigger than I thought and all had fledged. But my instinct is it was something more cataclysmic: either a predator (crow? squirrel?) got to the young birds or the heat got to them or the female robin was hit by a car as she was flying low over the road and the young starved.

Nature is cruel, as MH reminded me when I told him about my attempt to look in the nest. I don't know what happened with the house wren nest earlier this year and I don't know what happened with the robins. I do know that eventually the nest will fall apart and drop from the pear tree. Perhaps I'll get a better indication of what happened then.

Saving Water by the Barrel

This post is based on one that originally ran on March 6, 2017, on the blog of New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary. The NJA blog was significantly overhauled since then and the archives were deleted. However, I was able to keep a copy so this can again see the light of day.

"When the well's dry we know the worth of water," said Benjamin Franklin. That is never more true than during the summer.

Thirsty titmouse at hanging water cooler
(Margo D. Beller)

Here in New Jersey, unlike in other years, we've had plenty of water from an overabundance of spring rain. Reservoirs levels are at or over capacity, making it certain we won't need restrictions on watering lawns or plants. But that is not always the case. In many years July into August is a time of brown grass and thirsty flowers. The birds are thirsty, too, when they come to the water cooler, their bills open to release the heat.

Back in 2017 I attended a program where people learned the value of saving water by making rain barrels to store water for those dryer times during the summer.

I was there as an observer and didn't make my own rain barrel. In my yard MH only mows every few weeks and keeps the mower higher so the grass protects itself, leaving our lawn a bit greener than our neighbors' albeit crunchy in spots. My plants do well in drought and only need to be watered once a week with the hose. But I admit that after attending the program I felt guilty about how much water is wasted coming off the roof and pouring over the driveway to the street and down the drain.

As I wrote in 2017:

Dry forsythia and viburnum, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

One inch of rain pouring off the average suburban house roof -- 800 square feet -- means approximately 600 gallons of water, according to a fact sheet from the Rutgers University NJ Agricultural Experiment Station in New Brunswick. That's enough water for your garden and your lawn twice over.

Wasting water leads to drought restrictions, usually during the hottest part of summer. So this year, instead of over-using the sprinkler or hose, why not consider a way of collecting at least some of that runoff each time it rains -- a rain barrel.

New Jersey Audubon's Scherman Hoffman sanctuary held its third annual program on how to build your own rain barrel, and it is easy to see why this is a popular program.

Not only did those attending learn something about making their gardens more sustainable while saving water, but they were able to use shop skills many might not have realized they had to create a 55-gallon blue plastic rain barrel (donated by Ocean Spray) at a fraction of the cost of what you'll find at your local Do-It-Yourself store..

Alexandra Cavagrotti, Americorp Watershed Ambassador for the region encompassing the Passaic, Rockaway and Whippany rivers in northern New Jersey, said most homes shed water through gutters and leaders down nonporous surfaces such as driveways, where the water picks up lawn chemicals, car substances and other pollutants and runs into street drains and thus down to streams, rivers and, ultimately, the ocean.

House sparrow at water dish (Margo D. Beller)

Rain barrels are a good way of cutting down on some that polluted, wasted water, said Cavagrotti.

Sherman Hoffman program director Stephanie Punnett said the sanctuary has two rain barrels. "When you have 275 acres, water is problematic," she said. The rain barrels "have been a great help with our native planting" program, that includes removal of invasive, non-native plants throughout the sanctuary.

Plus, rain barrels are fun to make.

Certainly the people making their own were enthusiastically having fun using a drill to create a hole for a faucet and one for draining overflow, then caulking the faucet and putting mesh over the donated screen to keep mosquitoes out (standing water is prime mosquito breeding territory in summer).

One woman, who happened to be Cavagrotti's mother, was wielding the drill like a pro, with the barrel steadied by her husband. "I've built whole houses," she told me when I asked if this was her first rain barrel. I can believe it.

"You get such a feeling of satisfaction" from wielding a drill, said another woman. (Having used a drill I know the feeling.)

For those not power tool-inclined, Cavagrotti and several other Ambassadors helped drill the holes. Americorp is a public service program supported by the U.S. federal government, foundations, corporations and other donors. These Ambassadors teach the importance of water to schools and at programs such as Scherman Hoffman's.

When they finished, everyone put their barrels into their pickups, SUVs or sedans (with a little shifting around of seating), to take them home and position them under a downspout (or not -- Scherman Hoffman's barrels are not connected to the roof, said Punnett, because all of the Hoffman Center’s downspouts are connected directly to a groundwater recharge system. The rain barrels are connected to two other buildings on the property). The more creative can even decorate their barrels for use this summer.

Dry lawn, 2015 (Margo D. Beller)

And that's one thing to keep in mind if you want to buy or build your own rain barrel.

Once it's November, no matter how unusually mild the weather, unhook your rain barrel, use up the remaining water, clean the barrel out and store it inside. You don't want a barrel full of ice that might expand and damage your handiwork. According to Cavagrotti, it's best to use your rain barrel from April through October.

Also, while rain water off a roof is all-natural it may not be all-edible. Some roofs are treated with chemicals to keep mold and moss off. Birds and squirrels have been known to leave their mess on roofs.

So while the water flowing from roof to rain barrel may be fine for your lawn or your flowers or even washing your car, don't put it on your vegetable garden or in your pet's water dish or into a bird bath.

Some of the people making their own rain barrels, 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

You can get more information on rain barrels and wise water use from a number of online sources including the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Water Resources Program.

If you don't want to buy or build a rain barrel, there are other ways of using water wisely in your garden this summer.

Use soaker hoses (available at most garden supply stores) that provide an even, small drip to the roots of plants. Install native plants that are accustomed to your area and can survive dry conditions. Plant more trees -- they will not only provide shade from summer heat but they will suck up rain water that would otherwise go down the sewer drain.

Or create a "rain garden," using trees and native plants, that features a depression in the ground for pooling water. There are many websites on how to design a rain garden including that of the Rain Garden Alliance at http://raingardenalliance.org/planting.