Frozen but Surviving

December 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I have never seen either "Frozen" movie but this week I got an inkling of what it is like to live in a frozen world.

In the past week we've had freezing rain that coated tree limbs, power lines, blades of grass and shrubs; followed two days later by an intense snow squall that threw about an inch of white on everything, including the roads; then came the intense cold. Only now, on this first full day of winter, is there any expectation of above-freezing warmth to melt the ice and allow my bowed-down yew hedge to rise and me to add matter to my compost pile.

In the meantime, as I watch the thermometer, the sun is shining prettily on the iced limbs of the trees and shrubs I can see from my porch.

Bowed boughs (Margo D. Beller)

It has been a hard week, particularly because I have started a new job and, for the first time in years, I must commute into New York. The sun rises later but I must rise earlier, and I must dress in layers to be ready for the harsh cold in my town and the (somewhat) warmer temperature when I arrive in the concrete jungle. Today, on the porch, I can see the sun is lower and its arc much shorter from when I could last spend time out here.

Feeders are out, but aside from some titmice and a cardinal in one of the bushes, there's been very little activity.  But I know that will change because when the feeders have come in at night this week they have been nearly empty.

In midtown Manhattan, it's another story. If I have the time to walk through some of the smaller parks near my office, it is easy to find what I call the "usual three" types of birds - house sparrows, pigeons and starlings. These birds will eat anything, including bread tossed by people. To survive they have adapted to life and people in the city.

Frozen feeder baffle (Margo D. Beller)

So, too, have white-throated sparrows, which I'm now finding so often in my city travels I may have to start referring to the "usual four." While these sparrows don't go for tossed bread, they manage to survive by scratching the soil for insects or gleaning what they can find (insects or fruit) from foliage. At night, they roost where they can - the other day I heard something as I walked along Madison Ave., and found a white-throat atop an office tower display of Christmas trees surrounded by concrete!

White-throats are winter visitors - they are common in my yard at this time of year - but catbirds are not. On the coldest day of this past week, when the wind chill in New York City was in the single digits, I found one catbird sitting at the base of a shrub in the sun. Catbirds have been gone from my yard for months (usually the white-throats replace the catbirds) and yet the previous week, before the frozen rain and cold, I had found a total of five catbirds in two Manhattan parks.

Sun on ice (Margo D. Beller)

I was astounded. They were not perturbed by my closeness at all. One, in fact, sat on a railing and looked at me. Then the cold came. Obviously, these birds either fly to another, more hospitable habitat, work harder to find food in this park or die. On this day at least one catbird has managed to survive. But it is a tough world out there and a small bird faces large odds, so who knows what happened to the catbirds and other birds I've seen over the last two weeks that should've been elsewhere (including a brown thrasher, swamp sparrow and ovenbird).

No doubt the annual Christmas Bird Count, where people comb the streets and parks all over the U.S., if not the world, to see what birds are around at this time of year, will find all sorts of birds in the urban parks. I know there is an annual count in New York's Central Park, that oasis of green that attracts dozens of types of birds during the spring and fall migration periods and likely many staying for the winter. But for me, finding a bird in a small patch of green in an area surrounded by traffic, noise and people is more than just a bit of wonder, it is a small miracle. Like that catbird basking in the cold sun.

I've been thinking of it a lot as I make my way along in this frozen, hard world.

Frozen world (Margo D. Beller)

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.

When the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease

Same overflow pond a year apart. In the top picture, from 2018, the pond is
not frozen but some of the trees near it were cut down. (Margo D. Beller)

I am lucky that not far from my home there are a number of parks of varying size. One of them is a linear park that was once a short-line railroad that failed. At one point there were plans to extend a major road through these woods but that failed, too. The resulting park is called Patriots Path because it was first formed in Morris County (the path has since been greatly expanded into several counties), once known as the "Birthplace of the Revolution" because of its proximity to Jockey Hollow, where Washington's troops encamped for two winters years before the better-known encampment at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania.

The path is under the jurisdiction of the county, so it is county workers who do the maintenance. Thus, I am going to blame the county for the seemingly haphazard destruction of trees along parts of this path because of a small menace called the emerald ash borer.

The borer is an insect that, like the Asian long-horned beetle, is invasive and likely came over in wood pallets or other wood products shipped here from abroad. The borer's destruction of ash trees has been well known for months but it was only in the last few weeks signs have gone up along the trail warning of work to be done in the coming days to keep any damage from spreading through the entire forest.

Warning signs (Margo D. Beller)

When that work was finally done and the men, saws and heavy machinery I'd seen were gone, I brought MH to one part of the path for a short walk along the flat, paved trail. What I saw was horrific.

2017 - overflow-created pond, frozen tight.
(Margo D. Beller)

Trees were cut down and the stumps left in the ground. The cut trees were tossed aside or dragged away from the path and left in piles. Why would the county cut down trees it feared would be invested with borers and then leave them there? Did someone think the winter cold would finish off the insects? Maybe it will, but the ugliness of leaving them on the ground to become months of eating pleasure for a plethora of bacteria and insects makes me very angry.

I can understand taking down trees to save a forest. What I can't understand is leaving the area ugly so it is devalued and thus more easily ignored by people who don't care or want to understand why forests are as important to have as ballfields, dog parks or a shopping mall.

A year before, when the wind chill was in the single digits, MH and I had walked this same part of the path and we marveled at how the overflow from earlier rains and the nearby Whippany River had created huge frozen ponds. This year has been particularly rainy so the ponds that formed were deep but definitely not frozen.

Either way, it seems no one cares about these woods, all they care about is killing trees that maybe - maybe - were invested with borers. These county people are no better than my neighbors who take down a 50-year-old, inconvenient tree because they fear it maybe - maybe - will fall on their house.

Two different views of the destruction, Dec. 31, 2018
(Margo D. Beller)

There is such a thing as forest management. I've seen it at work. You take down trees to open up the understory to other types of trees. Thoreau wrote about it when he noticed that in a forest of white pines, any open ground was soon filled with oak seedlings.

Patriots Path, like many other parks, is a bit of woods in a suburban environment. When not chopped down for a housing development it is affected by the pollution from cars, lawn chemicals and even fireplace wood smoke. Too many times I have seen woods along state roads covered with choking vines, usually poison ivy but also mile-a-minute and Virginia creeper. At some point the vines will shut out all light to the trees and they will die. The state sends out mowers to cut the roadside grass but no one notices, much less cares for, the trees. The system seems to be based on benign neglect.

To those areas that proclaim, "See? We have woods here that are protected!" I say, well, I guess that's better than wiping them out and putting in a road or ballfields. But if you don't take care of the land and remove the sick or fallen trees or the vines and other invasives, people are going to ignore the woods as just so much wallpaper. Too many times I have seen people using these natural resources as backdrops to walk the dog, make a phone call or talk to their friends. Maybe it relaxes them but to me they are not walking in the woods to get away from the pressures of modern life or even to look for birds and wildlife. It's just a prettier background than walking Fido on your neighbor's lawn.

Dec. 31, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

Winter is an ugly enough season in New Jersey when the leaves are down and everything is gray. Today with MH, walking on Patriots Path the only birds I heard were the woodpeckers high in the remaining trees. Many of the shrubs that lined the path were either ripped up by the county tree cutters or flattened by their machinery, so the white-throated sparrows that hid in these shrubs are gone.

I am hoping for a heavy snow to cover this mess, and that someone does something to remove the dead trees in spring and make this park meaningful to those who walk the path when the tree leaves sprout and the wildflowers are in bloom.

A Reunion I Can Enjoy

This Saturday my old high school will hold its annual reunion. I will not be attending.

I have nothing against the old school. Being a private school I send a contribution every year. I learned a lot of good things there, including that there was life beyond my little enclave of southern Brooklyn. I learned how to make my way across the borough via subway, and how to get around the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood when I didn't have a class to attend.

That was 40 years ago.

I look forward to seeing this year's Baltimore orioles.
(Margo D. Beller)

Looking at the school website I saw that only 5 members of my class would be attending, and these are people I didn't particularly like, for the most part. Did I want them to see me, graying hair, even grayer husband, and then, in answer to the inevitable "What are you doing now?" and "Do you have children?" say "nothing of importance" and "no," respectively?

No.

I have gone to some of the reunions a few times, the last time to see all the physical changes to the place both inside and out. But do I want to be reminded I am 40 years older than the time I graduated from there and went on to a different city for college life and where I met MH? Not really.

So I gave my regrets, which were not sincere.

I'm ready to start hiking now. (Margo D. Beller)

Instead, I will be having a different kind of reunion.

MH and I will be going to a park in another state and look for returning migrants. We've had wacky weather this year, and the cold and wind that returned after unusual warmth this April are gone now - for good, I hope. Birds that have been trying to get to their northern breeding grounds, including New Jersey where I live, have been delayed. But I think they are now on the way, if the reports I read are right.

The phoebe returned to the bridge over the brook, as usual. J.J. Audubon tied a string around the leg of a phoebe he found as a young bird and the next year the bird returned, one of the first instances of banding to track the migratory path.

And the chipping sparrow has returned, not long after its cousin the junco departed. For a little bird it has a big song and it will sit and sing it for hours. So will the house wren, another spring visitor. I am looking forward to hearing one in my yard again. Same with the Baltimore oriole and wood thrush. Goldfinches have been coming to the seed feeder.

The warblers are returning. These little bits of sunshine don't really warble much in their song and they are a challenge to find and identify since they tend to arrive just as the trees start leafing out. But that's the fun of them. We've already had a reunion with three of the earliest returnees - the pine, the palm and the myrtle (or yellow-rump, as some call it). We've even made the acquaintance of a usually southern warbler, the yellow-throated warbler.

Soon will come more -- the northern parulas, black-throated greens and the American redstart, and perhaps a yellow warbler or a common yellow-throat will grace our backyard again.

In my element. (RE Berg-Andersson)

We've already been greeted by the ruby-crowned and the gold-crowned kinglets, the field sparrows and the green heron in our travels. The other week we sat on Scott's Mountain with Henry Kielblock and his group and watched ospreys and broadwinged hawks head north.

These are the reunions I enjoy.

I'm not against family reunions. I've had some wonderful times with my maternal relatives, not with my father's side, unfortunately. MH and I have plenty of reunions with his family and our far-flung friends, either at their houses or at ours, as well.

But in this case, given the choice between sitting with people I haven't seen for 40 years and wandering the fields and parks with MH to once again see winged wonders, I'll take the wandering every time.

Stately Mansions

I’m not part of the wealthy class, the 1%, despite living in one of the richest counties in the U.S.

Luckily, when I want to leave my middle-class existence for a while, I can find a way to pretend.

There was a time when, like Fifth Ave. in Manhattan, roads in Morris County were lined with mansions. The area was considered country, where the titans of industry could flee the city with their families in summer for cooler, fresher air.

However, as with the most of the Fifth Ave. mansions south of East 60^th Street, most of those in Morris County were converted to office buildings or torn down for something else. (For pictures of Morris mansions, some long gone, some still standing as private residences, click here.)

Many Morris mansions only live on as street names. The ones I know are Mayfair and Idlewild in Morris Plains. Danforth and James in Madison. Kahn Drive, the road that led to financier Otto Kahn’s “country” mansion in Morristown. (His NY town mansion is still standing, at 1 East 91st and is a Catholic school.)

Then there’s the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge estate in Madison, Giralda Farms, where the mansion came down and the grounds were converted into an office park (with a sidewalk around the campus for walking - outside the fenced grounds, of course). Florence Vanderbuilt and Hamilton Twombley’s nearby Florham is now a campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University. The mansion is the administration building.

But some of the biggest estates were donated to public or private entities and became parks, for the enjoyment of all, and that‘s where I go.

The various members of the Freylingheusen family held wide swaths of land in Morris County. The mansion of Peter Freylingheusen is now the Morris Museum. Another one, George Freylingheusen and his wife Sara, an heir to the Ballantine Brewery (Newark's own) fortune, donated Whippany Farms, their summer home, to Morris County (and adjacent land to the Morristown-Beard school). It became the Freylingheusen Arboretum and the mansion is the headquarters of the Morris County Parks Commission.

This park  is one of my favorite places to walk, my go-to spot when I have to let off steam immediately.

Whippany Farms, from the back

I have been there at all times of the year - with boots and stick in 7 inches (or more) of snow, in spring when the many different birds pass through, summer with its resident nesters (including Baltimore and orchard orioles) and fall when the colors come. The garden plants around the parking lot are labeled and many garden courses and one big garden sale (always the first Saturday in May) are held there. You could drop me anyplace there and I’d find my way back.

Morris County isn’t alone, of course. Somerset County is lousy with estates, too. One that became a park is Natirar, whose last owner was the King of Morocco. It straddles the borders of Peapack-Gladstone, Far Hills and Bedminister.

After the king died his son, for some reason, wanted out of New Jersey. The estate was bought by a group that includes Richard Branson of Virgin Media. They donated the land down the hill from the mansion to the Somerset County park system. The mansion, which makes Whippany Farms look like a toolshed, is now an exclusive restaurant/spa.

(UPDATE: I have since learned that the land was NOT donated, it was bought by Somerset County for $22 million and the mansion leased to Branson and his group for 99 years. So much for charity.)

That’s fitting for this wealthy area, and the late King of Morocco would feel right at home, I’m sure.

I don’t find most of the park very interesting to look at, although if you want to just walk or bike or jog in a very large loop it will do you fine. The main path is wide open, with very little shade except for the area along the north branch of the Raritan River (Natirar is Raritan backwards). There is a second path, up a different hill, I’ve yet to try.

More interesting to me is Duke Farms. Like the Freylingheusen arboretum, this property is now set up to be a sort of teaching landscape with various habitats. But unlike the Freylingheusen Arboretum, everything is on a much larger and grander scale, as the Dukes were (Duke tobacco, Duke Energy) compared with the Freylingheusens (a colonial family, one of whose descendants is my congressman).

Duke Farms is so environmentally correct it’s almost scary. The paths are wide and walkable. Bicycling is encouraged. You can only park in one area across the road from the main park (a crossing guard stops traffic for you). Only one tram runs from the education center (the former stable) to three points in the park, every 30 minutes. Otherwise, you’re on your own.

After being there twice, I still feel I haven’t seen everything.

Duke mansion

But there is one path I took the second time where I could see the Duke mansion through the trees. This is where the reclusive Doris, only child of James Buchanan Duke, lived when she was in NJ., one of her four mansions. The mansion is still kept up but it is gated off.

That makes it rather sad. I doubt Doris as a child was allowed to explore the grounds. When JB was in town he was driven (first by horse, then by auto) to other parts of the farm to supervise whatever work had to be done. I can’t see him walking around for the hell of it either.

So much estate for one small family, just sitting there and not being enjoyed. It was a protective buffer for the Dukes, set up to be a self-sustaining farm and shut off from the world. I’m glad when Doris died the Duke Foundation decided to open up the land as an environmentally correct, self-sustaining park (growing its own seedlings, for instance) for the enjoyment of all.

But when I saw that mansion hiding in the distance and thought of the lonely woman who lived (at least part of the time) within, I’m reminded the rich are different, and not necessarily in a good way.