When Timing Is Everything

I am no expert. I do not have the training to understand what trees need to grow and thrive aside from the basics of sunlight and water. But this coronavirus year of 2020, which has been topsy-turvy in so many ways, has changed the dynamics of the trees in my front and back yard. 

In this case, events worked in my favor.

All in a day's work. There are more leaves on either
side of what you see here. Nov. 21, 2000
(Margo D. Beller)

I've written before of my front yard black locust trees. The ones on my property - planted on the orders of some long-ago functionary on my town's shade tree commission - are all male trees except for one female. The locusts are the first trees to drop their small, yellow leaves and long stems everywhere I walk. These are the leaves that get tracked into the house.

The amount of long, black locust seed pods on the female tree varies from year to year. Some years, when the tree is full of them, a wind storm drops so many pods the lawn turns black in some areas. Raking them is heavy, tiring work but at least it is only one tree. Several houses down the street have double the work.

Some years, especially the year after a bountiful year, fewer pods are produced, as tho' the tree is catching her breath. This turned out to be one such year, as it was for my apple tree and the white oaks' acorns. Most of the pods came down in one strong wind storm, and because they were so close to the curb there was less distance to rake them. What few were left hanging came down the other week after a particularly violent storm, where the squall line was thin and intense, the wind blowing the heavy rain to look like waves on my street. What detritus was washed away.

The apple tree provided few fruits this year, a relief
for me and the house wren that nests in the box
I put there. (Margo D. Beller)

Meanwhile, in the backyard, oak leaves came raining down earlier than usual. We had our first frost in mid-October and had a week of freezing temperatures, followed by a period of warmer than usual temperatures before a hard freeze at month's end. And we had rain. The white oak, ash (what I once thought were elm trees) and maple trees dropped their leaves seeming at once, thickly covering the grass. 

Luckily, MH had plans to do one more mowing and was able to mulch all the leaves. Mulched leaves help the lawn by decomposing and providing nutrients. Mulching leaves also means not having to rake them into loose piles in the street for the town to take away, presuming the November winds don't blow them back.

After the last intense storm - and we have had a number of intense rain and wind storms this season - I realized all the white oak leaves were off the trees. In fact, all the leaves were off all the trees (except for the red oak trees in the next yard; leaves on the lower part of these trees will stay on until spring), including the apple, the pear and the dogwood. The viburnum shrub still had leaves, which turned a deep bronze (so deep I had to look closely to see if the berries were still there; they were). But that was it. Even the walnut tree in the front yard on the border between our property and a neighbor's had dropped all its leaves. Many has been the year when we've finished with the oak leaves, generally the last to fall, only to find the walnut still leafy, giving me more work to remove the thin, red-brown leaves for weeks after.

So aside from sweeping up baskets full of leaves that had accumulated on the back patio and putting them into compost, I had done very little raking this year. That changed yesterday.

First, I went out with my rake to pull leaves away from the house, the areas at the base of the feeder poles, the flood wall, the patch where I have ornamental grasses. Then, as the leaf blowers elsewhere started their racket, I put on my noise-cancelling earmuffs and began my own blowing. Once MH got himself together we started hauling big tarps full of leaves to the street - ultimately, five tarps full. I left the leaves that piled up around shrubs and other plants. These leaves will get raked out and composted in the spring when the growing begins.

It is essential dahlia tubers be completely
dry before they are stored so they don't rot. This
was one of the many chores I did earlier
than I had last year. (Margo D. Beller)

Yes, it was aching work. The raking put a blister on my hand despite protective gloves while the blower's vibrations affected my arms and hands. MH's sore knees made hauling the tarps to the curb slow work for me and at one point I stepped wrong and hurt my ankle. But the job is done - what blows onto the lawn will stay there until the next time MH mows. Soon enough I expect snow to blanket the lawn anyway.

I keep a sort of almanac on old calendars. Today I looked at it. I didn't mark the last day we raked but last year - when I was underemployed until December and we traveled to Maryland and then to NH during November - I handled my winter prep chores in early November. This year, when I've been working at home and have no plans to travel very far for the holidays, I did those same chores on the last day of October, which was a Saturday. Why so early? On that day, I woke up to find the foliage blackened on the cannas and dahlias, and the coleus plants dead. So I composted and stored for winter. Last year I could do these same chores over the course of several weeks, maybe because 2019 was one of the warmest years ever.

Was the roller coaster of freeze followed by warmer than normal temperatures followed by freeze this year why the oak and walnut trees dropped their leaves so early or why were there fewer acorns, apples and locust pods? Was it the long periods of summer dryness after a wet, cool spring? Or were the trees as stressed as we humans are by what is going on around us in this pandemic year? Did climate change play more of a part than usual?

As I said, I'm no expert. I just know what I see. The relief of finishing one of the year's hardest chores is tempered by a vague sense of dread.

It Happens Every October

I know I've written before about late-summer blues and how December can be especially depressing, but in this year of coronavirus I am feeling particular sad this October for many reasons.

Speedwell Lake, Morris Township, NJ, Oct. 24, 2020. I had to walk
some distance to get away from all the other people and get this
picture. (Margo D. Beller)

October is when my mother died and when a good friend, gone too soon, was born.

October is when the lawn services switch from mowers to blowers, both the usual loud and the hurricane-level superloud types. If the services are not working the homeowners are, which means nearly constant noise at most times of the weekday and on the weekends (such as now, as I write with headphones on).

October is when the locust tree pods once again darken the lawn. This year we have far fewer than last year, which means less to rake to the street - a good thing because until this week MH has not been able to mow due to work on our street by the gas utility, including digging in our yard. When he mows he will crunch up the mat of leaves covering front and back yards but I don't want him to crunch the pods and spread the seeds to create a forest of locust trees. So I must still rake.

In October the garden gets cut back and the pots of cannas, coleus and dahlias are left out until frost kills them or their foliage, at which point it will be time to compost the plants or store the roots in the garage.

Makeshift greenhouse (Margo D. Beller)

October is when the house plants must come in from the porch and the table can now hold bird seed containers and feeders. I am trying an experiment this year. I have two pots of peppers and one tomato on the enclosed porch, in the corner that gets the sun the longest, in the cage I used to protect them this summer. The cage is wrapped with medium-grade plastic in such a way there is a flap I can pull up and over the plants at night. If the night is very cold, and we had at least one night so far when it got very close to freezing, I can add an old sheet as a cover.

As a control I have one pepper and one part of the tomato plant I rooted and potted in the house. This year I did not see white flies. However, if I see any in the house, or if the tomato grows like a weed, the plants will be moved outside to my makeshift greenhouse.

October is when there is a tug of war between warm weather and colder chill. More nights are in the 40s but some last week were in the 50s or low 60s, creating thick fog in the morning, making it even darker and so harder to get out of bed. When I sit on my porch now I have to put a throw on my knees on colder mornings.

October is when there is now less daylight than before, the sun's arc far shorter than it was in summer. I must bring in the feeders at 6 p.m. before it gets too dark (to avoid bears), and it isn't light out in the mornings until close to 7 a.m. If I want to get anything done before I start work at 9 a.m. I must rise in the dark, which I dislike greatly.

October is when the farm markets begin to close, if they aren't offering corn mazes, pumpkins, petting zoos or pick your own apples. The place where I go closes on Halloween this year and I've already stocked up on tomatoes, peppers and spinach. But they won't last forever, even if cooked or frozen. 

Pine siskins, visitors from the north, a
one-day wonder, Oct. 9, 2020
(Margo D. Beller)

October is when I realize that, for the most part, bird migration is over. The hummingbirds, house wrens and catbirds are long gone from my yard (tho' there have been reports from elsewhere). Yes, there are white-throated sparrows and juncos whose migration brings them to my area and there are plenty of the usual backyard birds visiting my suet and seed feeders. There's even the occasional surprise, such as the small flock of pine siskins, visitors from the north, that have been passing through lately in an irruption year. But now it seems I have little reason to get out of bed early most weekend mornings to look for new birds in the parks near me. New birds are now few and far between.

And this coronavirus year has brought additional challenges. I work in the house five days a week again (MH runs the outdoor errands). While I don't miss the commute, I do miss the daily walk to the train. On some non-rainy weekend mornings, unless I know we are going somewhere or I am busy in the house I feel an almost urgent need to get out, despite the dark. Unfortunately, other people (a LOT of other people) also working at home feel the same and not many of them are birders. Unless I travel in the dark somewhere to start birding at first light I run into walkers, runners, bikers, dog walkers. (Many times they are out at that early hour, too.) More people are on the local streets and in the parks where I used to have solitude. Not many of them wear masks.  

You can feel the intensity as people rush around on the weekends to make up for the time lost working or helping their children, also stuck at home, with school. When MH and I travel on weekends, I make our lunch and we have to hope there is a convenience store with an open bathroom because most park bathrooms are now locked, unless there are port-o-sans. We don't feel comfortable around people, including in diners.

As I write, this virus has been with us since March, nearly eight months. The infection rate went down a few months ago for the summer (in my state where there have been more restrictions than elsewhere) and we were able to make short trips to visit family or look for birds. Now, with the October cold, infections are starting to come back up as people gather with friends or family indoors. For those who fear this illness, even getting together with generations of family for Thanksgiving is threatened, and that is extremely depressing.

October's end means it's only a week or so later we turn back the clocks and it will be dark at 5 p.m. Winter, its deep chill and the potential for a lot of snow are not that far off. 

It is the inevitability of that and everything else that happens every October, even without a pandemic, that may be the saddest thing of all.

October means death.

Nuts (and Pods) to You

Last week, as is my habit at this time of year, I spent two hours one day raking locust pods off my front lawn to the curb. Raking pods is my least favorite garden chore, worse than turning the compost pile (which I don't do every year), worse than cutting back the dried ornamental grasses in the spring, worse than replacing fence posts and deer netting. But I feel compelled to do it, with or without MH.

Acorns on lawn (Margo D. Beller)

Pods are ugly to look at, heavy to rake when enough of them are put together and have a sickly sweet smell. My leaf blower isn't strong enough to move them and I am not buying or renting one of those hurricane-strength fans I see others rolling along to blow leaves and what-not clear across the street. So I must rake them. Pods are good for nothing except feeding some of the birds (I've seen woodpeckers whacking them to get at the seeds) and making more locust trees. If left alone I would have a forest where the lawn is now.

Each year I wish I knew who came up with the idea of planting locust trees so I could punch that person in the nose.

I don't mind raking the falling leaves. I find it a calming activity when the day is sunny, the wind is light and the birds are singing. My rake is quiet compared to the electric blower and I enjoy the time outside. But in the years when the one female locust tree on my property is fruitful, it is literally and figuratively a pain. (I have discovered that, like many plants, there are separate male and female locust trees. Of the four on my property, three are males that do not produce pods. All are town trees I can't cut down and replace.)

Another thing I have in excess this year: Acorns. The oak and elm trees are having a boom, or mast, year - same as the locust. For weeks the squirrels have been running along the tree branches after the nuts. As they go for one they drop five more. As they were with the apples, they are sloppy eaters. Acorn caps they tear off and pieces of the nuts they are gnawing on fall from the trees, whose long branches hang above my enclosed porch's roof and the patio. At dawn and dusk you can hear the loud "thwack" as the falling nut hits porch roof and bounces down to the patio, usually just in front of the back door. It has become so bad I must wear hard-soled shoes or slippers or I'll step on something and hurt my foot. I've been sweeping or kicking nuts away from where I walk with the bird feeders. It is particularly bad after a heavy rain or wind storm.

Trees overhanging porch roof (Margo D. Beller)

If I left the acorns on the lawn, perhaps the squirrels would eventually come get them to cache for the winter. But I do not want to wait that long for the same reason I don't want the locust pods sitting on the lawn.

Like the pods, acorns feed certain birds (jays, woodpeckers) plus deer, bear, squirrels and chipmunks. At this time of year I am likely to find deep holes in the lawn and next to certain plants behind the deer netting as the critters cache their acorns for winter or rob another's cache. I have found tree saplings in the spring where such caches have been forgotten.

In boom years, the increase in food fuels larger families of the eaters. In turn, more of those eaters, such as squirrels or chipmunks, become more food for those that eat them, such as raptors. This can also have a big effect on which birds I see this winter both at my feeder and elsewhere. For instance, according to the annual winter finch forecast out of Toronto, the pine and spruce trees there have been so prolific there is plenty of seed for the evening grosbeaks, white and red crossbills and redpolls, among others, which means they won't be heading south to the U.S. for food this winter. No purple finches at the feeder this winter.

Pods on the grass, alas (Margo D. Beller)

After the boom comes the bust. Somehow, by a process botanists are still not sure they understand, the trees "communicate" with each other and will coordinate their mast. Boom years create more nuts and create more trees, even with the squirrels, etc. Then come the bust years when the trees produce fewer nuts as a way of  regulating the populations of trees and feeders so we're not overrun with either.

Weather may also be a factor. In my area we had a lot of rain this spring, which might have contributed to the seed boom. In past, drier years, there have been fewer nuts or pods produced as the tree focuses on taking care of itself.

But that is not this year's situation. At some point, the acorns will be done. Today, after the town took away the leaves and pods at the curb, I looked out my office window and can see plenty of locust pods still hanging in the tree. They'll be down after the next storm. It is as regular as the sun rising in the east.

Preparing for Winter, Part 2

If there is one thing I hate doing among all the things I must do before winter hits, raking is the worst. And the worst of the worst is raking black locust pods off my front lawn before they are chewed by deer and squirrels, the seeds scattered and a forest springs up.

Female locust tree, with pods. Oct. 2017 (Margo D. Beller)

I've written about raking before, how it is a way of communing quietly with nature as I listen to the early-morning calls of the birds, and how it is yet another way MH and I can work together as a team toward a common goal.

But every year, and we are talking about decades now, I take my rake to the thick mat of pods shaken down by the wind and curse out the person or persons on the Shade Tree Commission who thought black locusts would be a fine tree at the curb of my street.

They certainly can take the summer heat and car exhausts. But whoever put them in put them in haphazardly. I have learned you need male and female trees in order for pods to be created. On our property we have two males and one female, the female hanging over the driveway, which means if pods are down heavily here too they have to be broomed to the curb. I have done that twice today alone.

Some years, as with the apple tree, something happens with the atmospheric conditions and there are fewer pods to rake up. But this is not that year.

It could be worse. Several of my neighbors down the street have two female trees, with double the mess.

About a decade ago our town realized that when the locust roots spread, they push up streets and sidewalks. There was a move to remove these and replace them with walnuts. My politically connected former neighbor got one of those walnuts before the money ran out for the project. The walnut is the last tree to drop its thin leaves, usually all over my side of our common yard. In a few years, the mature tree will start forming fruits, which look like large green balls filled with the nut that only a squirrel can somehow saw open.

More mess.

Pods at the curb. Since this picture I added more
and the town came through to collect them. More to come.
2017 (Margo D. Beller)

Our town takes the pods along with the fallen leaves. MH did a close mowing, his last for the year, and that took care of the leaves but only temporarily. November is when most of our raking is done because the town will stop coming through in early December.

That is not all I do, of course. When a friend mailed up some bulbs of lilies and daffodils, they had to go into the ground. When the weather forecast showed a trend toward overnight temperatures in the 30s, I had to bring in my peppers, cannas and the tomato I potted after finding it near my compost pile. The dahlia was brought in, too.

And there was last week's chore of completely redoing my Bay Garden. Checking on things today I found a chipmunk did some small bit of digging, either to bury nuts for later or dig up past plantings. I can only do so much. The rabbit fencing is not small enough to deter a chipmunk but they will dig or jump over most barriers anyway. I have found plenty of small trees growing in my netted gardens where a chipmunk has been digging and forgotten what it has planted.

Lawn mowed, pods raked, Bay Garden plot redone, the pots
to the left brought inside. Ready for winter. (Margo D. Beller) 

In the coming weeks I will cut back watering all but two of the peppers and the tomato. These will come inside, to be protected from cold and lit by the bay window. The rest will be cut back and stored in the garage or taken from the pots and put into compost.

I know there are pots and garden plants that will have to be divided, but that will be for the spring. For now, knowing there is more raking to do soon, this labor has been more than enough.

Sometimes I worry what will happen when I am no longer able to do this work. That will be for another day, too.

Musings

There are times I feel like the character in "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens, who runs around the country agitating on behalf of starving children in Africa while her own children are neglected at home.

I have been doing a lot of writing lately in other blogs, on a variety of subjects, at the expense of this one, my own.

One blog is that of the Scherman Hoffman sanctuary of New Jersey Audubon. One is run by a couple of women for those 50 and older, WriteSideof50. And then there are my more political observations in the Morris Plains Patch.

I am glad to be doing so much writing, even tho' I am not paid for this effort. It is forcing me to use my skills as a reporter, writer and editor for a larger public than this humble blog has received. It is forcing me to use my brain in a creative way, even as I am busily trying to keep the house running, work eight hours for a job that does pay me and rake off this week's blanket of black locust pods.

Just a few of the seeds found raking. (photo by Margo D. Beller)

The last time I wrote here, I discussed how I wanted to punch in the nose the person who decided black locusts made good shade trees. Now, several weeks and many passes with the rake later, I want to kill that person.

For WriteSide, I made raking sound rather pastoral, a metaphor for the teamwork of a long and successful marriage. MH and I go out, get in each other's way, but somehow we wordlessly figure out what we have to do to get the pods and the many, many leaves that have fallen to the curb. We work together as a team. When done, we celebrate by going out to lunch and then collapsing at home, aching.

Well, besides raking, another thing we did together today was remove leaves from the gutters - rather, he went up the ladder to remove leaves, I stood at the bottom and held the ladder to keep it secure.

One year as we were doing this and I heard a yellow-bellied sapsucker, my sixth woodpecker of the day.

This year, a flock of 13 black vultures (and one turkey vulture) suddenly appeared over our house, circling for over five minutes.

Black vulture ( photo by R.E. Berg-Andersson)

I know better - vultures eat carrion, not live men pushing leaves out of gutters - but I involuntarily shuddered. MH and I are in our 50s and not getting any younger. We are closer to the end than the beginning. I didn't want him falling and hurting himself, or worse. There will come a time when this and many of the other chores we do will have to be done by others, for a fee.

I was very happy when he was back on terra firma.

I am also happy to be traveling for the next week away from the pods, acorns, leaves, bills, job and neighbors. I am hoping to come back relaxed and refreshed, at least for a couple of days. If we see some unusual birds, so much the better.

I promise to write about them here first.

Good, Bad and Raking

Robert Frost wrote, with irony, in a poem that "good fences makes good neighbors."

In my part of town, where we are not supposed to fence the front of our properties to retain something of a "park-like setting," autumn creates an opportunity to remember just where one property starts and another ends.

The leaves fall and you will see one house with an immaculate lawn. The service has come through, many people with lawn blowers and hurricane fans putting leaves to the curb, more or less; or perhaps mowing the grass, mulching the leaves, sucking them into the bag, which is emptied at the curb. The service goes right up to the property line.

One side, pristine green. The other side, my lawn.

Good raking makes good neighbors.

My husband does one final lawn cut, crunching up the first round of fallen leaves to allow them to work into the lawn. After that, we'll be out with our rakes, blower and tarps for the next few weeks, until the town stops collecting what we put out front.

In the backyard we have the maples, elms, apple, pear and oaks shedding leaves. In the front, however, we have black locusts.

I don't know who decided many decades ago to line my street with black locusts. That man or woman could've picked the Bradford pears. These stately trees line my downtown street and perhaps yours. They bloom wonderfully in spring, the leaves turn red in fall and they produce ornamental fruit the birds eat.

Black locusts are not so nice. Their roots push up the curb and the street. The little yellow leaves fall early in autumn and get everywhere, at which point they are tracked into home and garage. The stems also fall and mat on the grass. There are male and female trees, and if you are one of those "lucky" enough to have a female tree, as I am, you have  LOTS of long black pods that must be swept off the lawn or you'll have a forest instead of a park-like setting.

So as I am raking the pods down to the curb every year, I wonder if the person who decided on locusts has a few in his or her front yard and is also raking pods. I would like to meet that person, ask, "Why locusts?" (which are no longer planted in my town because of the damage they cause) and, if I'm in the wrong mood, punch him or her in the nose.

It is literally and figuratively a pain to do this every year, but there is some good that comes from all this raking. I am out of the house, using my arms and legs in much more (to me) useful exercise than lifting weights or riding a stationary bicycle. I am reacquainting myself with my lawn - I can see where the ground ivy is taking over, where the skunks and squirrels have been digging, where MH is going to need to put down more grass seed. I prefer this to paying a lawn service that mows every week whether the lawn needs it or not.

brown creeper

Raking also allows me to hear the birds. As I work, I hear the Canada geese. I look up and see about 10 flying generally north. However, I know these are not migrants. They would be heading south at this time of year, would be in a much larger group and be much higher in the sky. Still, I enjoy watching geese as they fly.
 
One year, resting from my labors, I looked up to find a brown creeper making its way up one of the locust trees, probing the crevices of its bark with its long, thin bill. Unlike the nuthatch, which climbs up and down trees with abandon, the creeper only goes up. Once at the top, it flies to the bottom of the next tree and works its way up again.

This morning as I was raking there were bluebirds - a rare pleasure - and a Carolina wren singing nearby, reminding me that soon I must bring in my plants and put out my feeders.

Winter will be here soon enough. Even with the cold and the darkness at 5pm, I welcome the respite from the garden chores.

Especially the raking.