Sunday Silence

Once again I'm going old-school, attacking the autumn leaves with broom for my compost pile and the locust pods with rake for the town to take away.

Locust pods, a constant part of the autumn landscape.
(Margo D. Beller)

"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection," according to Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau knew that wood ensured surviving a cold winter. However, eventually the woodpile would have to be replenished. It is an annual ritual, as expected as the seasons themselves.

I do not look at the locust pods I must rake every year with anything resembling affection.

It is that time again. I am outside in the early morning cool on a Sunday, enjoying some rare quiet, where the only things I hear are the scraping of my rake, the screams of the jay and the tapping of leaves and pods falling to the street in the breeze. It is rare because at this time of year the air is usually filled with the roar of leaf blowers and the stench of the gasoline that fuels them. But not at this hour on a Sunday. At least, not yet.

As sure as the sun rises in the east, during the weekdays the lawn services have been blowing every last leaf off my neighbors' properties. Those who don't use a service do the same on evenings and weekends. Also like clockwork, the articles have come out either directly blasting the use of blowers or making fun of them. But that makes no difference to those in suburbia who equate success with a neatly cropped, leafless lawn.

White-throated sparrows have come south to New Jersey.
(Margo D. Beller)

(Two anti-blower articles, as it happens, were sent to me by my brother-in-law, the teaching naturalist. He lets the wind takes care of what leaves fall on his rural NH property. His son, by contrast, uses a gas-powered, backpack-enabled blower on his property. He must wear ear coverings.)

I have a blower, an old, electric-powered model. I find that unless I am blowing leaves into a rough pile for my husband (MH) and me to rake into tarps, it is useless on the heavier pods. So I have been using a broom on the leaves matting the patio and a rake on the pods littering the driveway and the lawn. MH plans to do one last mowing soon to cut the grass he recently fed and mulch the leaves, and I want the pods out of the grass.

As in past years, I silently curse the person who, 40-plus years ago, thought locust trees would be a fine street tree. The locust leaves are very small but their stems fall and clump when raked. The dark brown pod contains the seeds the birds and squirrels and possibly deer eat and then spread through their poop or their digging. 

I recently finished reading a very interesting book on seeds and the lengths plants go to protect the seeds until they are ready to be expelled into the world and create more plants. During the summer the female locust put out greenish pods, some of which dried out and fell to the ground. But the pods didn't start falling in large numbers until they had developed the familiar tough brown casing to protect the seeds. Now, opening one of the pods, my hand was filled with small brown seeds. If I threw them on the lawn I might have a forest before too long.

Part of the fairy ring. (Margo D. Beller)

As I work I see all the ground ivy taking up space, happily fed along with MH's grass. In one area, a strange circle of mushrooms has sprung up, a "fairy ring." I'm not bothering to pick them because they are likely poisonous. The mower will do the work for me. 

There is always some good in doing this raking. It is another thing I do to prepare for the winter when I won't be working in the garden (except for possibly shoveling snow). When I stopped to straighten my back I could enjoy the increasing color of the leaves in my trees - red maple, brownish-yellow oak, yellow elm. The dogwood tree's red leaves haven't fallen but the fruit is long gone, and with it the catbirds. Now I hear the "old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of the white-throated sparrow, which finds my part of New Jersey just fine for winter roosting. I am hearing woodpeckers, including a pileated flying over the trees beyond my neighbor's house across the street. The air is cool, the exercise healthy. I've needed exercise after a summer spent mainly indoors due to heat, humidity and illness.

Now I am making up for lost time.  

Black vulture, a southern bird becoming more common
in the north. (RE Berg-Andersson)

At one point something casts a shadow and I look up to see nine or so black vultures circling, Black vulture is a southern species but, like the red-headed woodpecker, it is slowly extending its range northward as the U.S. continues to warm. These birds might be heading south, but maybe not. I also hear Canada geese honking from the nearby community garden. Canada geese migrate but some found suburban yards, parks and office lawns so pleasant they have stayed, bred and become as much of a pest as the deer.

I hear other birds, including a mockingbird making its rasping "this is mine!" call, no doubt guarding a fruiting tree or bush. Smaller birds are flying between the trees looking for insects to pry out of the bark, including the gold-crowned kinglet, another winter bird that typically doesn't hang around my yard. (It prefers pine forests.)

For now, I'm done. Have I removed every pod? No, but most of them. Did I get every leaf off the patio? Not by a long shot. There are plenty more in the trees to come down. They always come down, as sure as day follows night and autumn follows summer.

And, as expected, now I hear a distant leaf blower. By the time I get to the top of my driveway to put the rake in the garage, a second, louder, blower is going nearby. 

So much for Sunday silence.

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.