Photo Essay: Free Yard Mulch
January 31st, 2012In the life of a xeriscaper, there are fewer questions sweeter than "Would you like some free mulch?"
Why the affection for ground up tree trunks, branches, and leaves? Because mulch holds moisture in the soil. It also builds the soil and controls weeds. In the arid Southwestern United States, we like such things. A lot.
Yesterday was free yard mulch day at my house. It came courtesy of Romeo Tree Service, which offers it at no charge. And that includes delivery. Romeo does this in order to avoid costly trips to the landfill. If you're in the tree business, those tipping fees can really add up.
Here's the Romeo crew, preparing to dump a truckload of fresh mesquite mulch on my driveway...
Here it comes!
Okay, so now I've got this big pile of free mulch in my driveway. In honor of this occasion, I got up bright and early to get some of it into the yard before work.
Since I don't have a wheelbarrow, I'm using a trio of five-gallon buckets to move the mulch. It's not difficult to push handfuls of mulch into the buckets, then haul them over to the piles I've created in the yard.
Matter of fact, it took only 40 minutes to reduce the driveway pile by a third. Only two more thirds to move, and then I've got some mulch raking to do.
Tip: Want some free mulch for your yard? Use the Romeo Tree Service request form.
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Photo Essay: Battling Buffelgrass
January 18th, 2012So, there you are, trying to do the right thing. You go to all the trouble of controlling the weeds on your property, then there it is: Buffelgrass.
According to the Southern Arizona Buffelgrass Coordination Center website, "[R]apid spread of buffelgrass and conversion of fire-resistant desert to flammable grassland rivals urban growth and water as the region's most pressing environmental issue. Buffelgrass has introduced a new wildfire risk into an ecosystem that is not fire adapted. It grows in dense stands, crowds out native plants, and negatively impacts native wildlife species and their habitat."
Buffelgrass is an invasive species, and it's one that we need to control before it destroys the ecosystem on which we depend. This post shows what you can do if you find yourself face-to-face with buffelgrass.
First thing to do is identify it. Buffelgrass grows in bright green clumps, and it looks like it has bottlebrushes on the ends of its stems. Lots of seeds in those bottlebrushes.
Here's buffelgrass, invading my neighborhood...
Now that we've fingered the culprit, let's prevent it from spreading its noxious self around the neighborhood. Since the above plant is growing out of a gap between a public street and a curb, we can't dig it out with a caliche bar. Too much risk of damaging municipal property.
Instead, let's chop that buffelgrass down as far as we can, then spray the remnants with a glyphosate product like Roundup or a generic equivalent...
Prefer to use a more organic approach? Try BurnOut. Or, if that's too rich for your budget, white vinegar. You may need to apply several doses, but guess what? That's often the case with the glyphosates or BurnOut...
Once the remnants are brown and dry, you can use a hand weeder to dig them out. Then you can trash them, just like the chopped buffelgrass...
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Photo Essay: Penn Wood School
January 11th, 2012Always fun to go back and visit the last grade school I attended. If it's not peering into classrooms and seeing wall charts teaching skills that adults take for granted – remember what life was like before you learned how to tell time – it's taking a walk around the school grounds and realizing how different the world is from a child's perspective.
Did we ever sit in chairs that small? Was the basketball hoop really that high?
Are beech trees that massive?
That's the upside.
The downside is seeing what has happened to one of the great treasures of Penn Wood School. That would be what everyone called The Field. It was a grassy field that had been carved out of the woods behind the school.
To get there, you had to walk down a terrifyingly steep hill – no running allowed – cross a stream that had a very sharp looking wooden bridge, do a dash to the end of the paved path, and then there it was. The Field.
You could run around like crazy during recess, run laps during gym class, or win one of those oh-so-stylish ribbons at the annual Charlie Brown Field Day. (I treasured my third place broad jump ribbon for years.) After school, it was a great place for hanging out with friends, and you could even take a little hike on the nature trail that a Boy Scout troop had built in the woods.
Such was life for kids in the late 1960s.
These days, the paved path is falling apart...
The bridge is covered with rotting leaves. And it feels shaky when you walk across it...
The Field is well on its way back to being The Woods. Looks like Penn Wood School has a tree planting project underway, but what's with all those junked doors? Someone remodel their house, then dump the old doors over at the school?
Come on, Penn Wood, it wouldn't take much to clean this place up. Just get a roll-off dumpster and some energetic people to tote all the junk away from The Field/Woods, and it's an attractive place again. Might even create some jobs.
The falling apart path? Well, that could be converted into a terraced hiking trail. Just find some railroad ties to create the edges of each terrace, fill 'em with dirt, and there you go. More jobs created and a new exercise trail for the Penn Wood kids. The bridge? Very fixable – even more jobs worth doing.
If the Penn Wood kids are too small or young to help, they could still learn from the renovation of their school grounds. Matter of fact, here's the outdoor classroom where the workers could brief the kids on what's going on that day, what their jobs are like, and how the kids can grow up to get one too...
And if any of the worker/teachers need a place to put their notes, well, here's a lectern that could be put back into service...
So there you have it. A jobs program at my old school.
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Photo Essay: Westtown School
January 6th, 2012When I was growing up, Westtown was that hippie-freak Quaker school at the end of the street. The long hair and love beads crowd were quite the contrast to the buttoned down, straight-laced kids in my neighborhood.
I can remember one of the moms making jokes about “Westtown's finest” whenever she saw students heading away from campus toward the bus stop. They were headed toward Philadelphia, and judging from their expressions, they couldn't wait to get there.
Then, as now, the Westtown campus was surrounded by farm fields and forests. It's not a hotbed of excitement for teenagers.
After I left home and went to the University of Michigan, I met a graduate student who'd gone to Westtown during the hippie-freak era. She regaled me with tales of her efforts to end the Vietnam War by doing door-knocking campaigns – in my neighborhood.
Apparently, her antiwar activities ran afoul of what she called the Quaker Vatican, and she was told to tone things down. Me? I was amazed that there was anything conservative on the Westtown campus, much less a Quaker Vatican. And, no, I don't recall her ever knocking on my family's front door.
Fast-forward to the present, and Westtown is now a pricey prep school – I've heard that the tuition is more than $20,000 a year. Not the sort of school that many of the neighbors can afford, but Westtown is beloved for the fact that it has kept much of its 600-acre campus free of development.
Part of the open space is leased to Pete's Produce Farm, which does quite a brisk business. Looks like Pete is growing some daikon radish...
Care for a hike? Plenty of trails to choose from, and some of them even offer challenges like trees to hurdle and obstacle courses to conquer...
Do be on the lookout for deer and hunters during the annual hunt...
And make sure to spend some time hiking around Westtown Lake...
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Nature Photography: Solids and Liquids
January 4th, 2012A Christmas holiday visit to family in Pennsylvania reveals a timeless truth about the Keystone State's winter weather: It varies.
On one day, it's cool enough for a jacket. Perfect weather for my mother to stroll around the neighborhood with Buddy the Labrador Retriever...
Looks like Buddy's found another interesting scent. This one merits very close inspection. Which means that the four-legged detective is on the job...
Eastern Pennsylvania normally gets around 40 inches of rain each year. The 2011 total? More than five feet, which included a late summer drenching courtesy of Tropical Storm Irene. In late December, the ground's still saturated, and watch out for the low spots...
When the cold comes, and it always does, the water turns to ice, entrapping everything within it...
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Bicycle Photography: The Pedaling Arborist
December 9th, 2011Being the owner of a middle-aged house that I'm slowly fixing up, I've had the need for more than a few tradesmen and women. Many of them have arrived in huge pickup trucks.
Imagine my surprise when I heard about a local arborist who plies his trade by bicycle. Time to do something about that mesquite tree in the front yard. Thing's developed a much too cozy relationship with the house. Whenever the wind blows, the tree branches lovingly caress my roof. Sounds like a haunted house in here.
An e-mail to Aleck MacKinnon, The Pedaling Arborist, resulted in a on-site consultation and a very reasonable estimate. So, we scheduled a haircut date for the mesquite tree.
Aleck's company bicycle is a sturdy tandem that he and his wife have ridden from Tucson to Vancouver, British Columbia...
Here's Aleck, taming my unruly mesquite. This tree has huge thorns, which makes a tree trimming job all the more challenging. And I speak from personal experience when I say that wearing a hard hat is a very good idea. I've been poked in the head by this tree...
After the excess branches were removed, I had Aleck pile them in one of my water harvesting basins. This basin could use a bit more mulch, and the leaves from those branches will more than suffice.
The branch pile will serve as a winter refuge for birds and lizards. In the spring, I'll use those branches for other projects around the yard...
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Nature Photography: White Tank Mountains
November 1st, 2011My recent visit to the Phoenix area included a hike at White Tank Mountain Regional Park. My hiking host, Judy Vorfeld, selected the Waterfall Trail, a two-miler.
Being an Arizonan who's quite concerned about our state's long-term drought, I was curious to see how the native desert plants have been holding up. Sorry to say, the answer is not very well.
One of the more pernicious effects of drought is the stress that it inflicts on plants. This stress makes them more vulnerable to infestations like mistletoe. See the big, dark clumps in the middle branches of these two trees? That's mistletoe. Over time, mistletoe kills its host.
Back in "civilization," trees like these would probably be considered too far gone to be saved. They'd be cut down. With mistletoe, the best thing to do is to remove branches as soon as they show signs of infestation.
Then there are the various species of cactus. Although these staghorn cholla don't have that tumble-down, severely shriveled look, they're way too pale for plants that are just coming out of the summer monsoon season...
But, then again, we didn't have the best of monsoon seasons this year. It was more like a non-soon that was gone too soon.
You can't hike the Waterfall Trail without stopping at Petroglyph Plaza. Here the stress is man-made. Note the chipped off parts of this rock. That wasn't done by nature -- it was done by thieves...
Our hike was cut short by the heat, so back to Judy's car we went.
At the eastern edge of White Tank Mountain Regional Park is a LEED-certified public library and nature center. According to an Arizona Republic story written before the facility opened, "LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a nationally recognized rating of the environmental friendliness, or sustainability, of a building."
The sustainabilty extends to the parking lot. Nice to see that it isn't another sea of asphalt that aggravates the urban heat island effect...
If you're going to have a sustainable parking lot in the desert, what better plant to have than Arizona's state cactus, the saguaro? This transplanted specimen is being supported while it adapts to its new home...
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Travel Photography: Visiting the Phoenix Zoo
October 28th, 2011There's something about visiting the zoo. You can't help but wonder who's being more closely scrutinized, the animals or the humans.
Let's begin our tour at the pelican beauty parlor. Nothing like preening with a whole crowd watching. Not that this pelican cares...
If you're a giant iguana, you can pretty well forget about having privacy with your lunch...
A human audience sure doesn't stop this pair from, ahem, doing what they're doing...
The positioning of this feeding basket is of great concern to any creature that isn't a giraffe. But, hey, the short one is in a perfect position to get whatever falls to the ground...
Of all the animals I saw, the primates seemed to be most interested in watching the zoo's human visitors...
On the other side of the "interest in human visitors" spectrum, we have the carp in the pool near the zoo entrance. They couldn't care less about the human photographers catching their swimming moves...
Okay, I'll admit it: The Phoenix Zoo offers some of the best people-watching opportunities in the state of Arizona. Take, for example, the humans crowding into the orangutan pavilion. The creatures are in hiding, but we flock to see them anyway...
And a shout out to my Phoenix Zoo guides: The wonderful brother-sister team of Judy Vorfeld and David Crook (below)...
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Travel Photography: Vermont Fall Foliage
October 25th, 2011Just got back from visiting family in Waterbury, Vermont.
October in the state of Vermont means one thing: Fall Foliage. The aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene was very much in evidence, but it didn't stop the annual party thrown by the trees.
Let's start our fall foliage tour at the Waterbury Public Library...
The library was on high enough ground to avoid the overflow from the Winooski River, which flows through Waterbury. Even so, the front door has a sign asking patrons not to return flood-damaged materials.
The story of my trip to Vermont was the rain. It rained almost every day during my week-long visit. The wet weather created a lot of fall color vistas like this one...
The rain made it difficult to pursue one of my favorite activities, going for a walk. But I managed to take a stroll through Waterbury's Hope Cemetery before the skies really opened up...
My Aunt Jean hosted me during my Vermont visit. Jean's lived in Vermont for a couple of decades, and she loves to show the state to visitors. From an afternoon trip to Stowe...
Shhhh, don't tell anyone, but this pumpkin was on the edge of one of those gated properties with all sorts of "keep out" signs...
From the St. John’s in the Mountains Episcopal Church parking lot in the village of Stowe...
Post-Irene Vermont is a place on the mend. You won't be in the state very long before you hear of at least one benefit to help flood victims.
Since I'm an avid walker, the 5k walkathon in Waterbury Center's Hope Davey Park was like a magnet. I was hoping to meet some local people to walk with, but I didn't find any on the park's nature trail. So, I took a solitary walk with camera...
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Nature Photography: Sudden Storm
September 30th, 2011This past Tuesday, the 2011 monsoon season busted loose with its last hurrah. Which prompted a photographic frenzy around here.
First stop on the frenetic home front picture tour: The garden. Is it raining out there? Yes!!!
I'm looking forward to the day when the seedlings (which are still too small to see in the above photo) start peeking through the straw.
The photographic frenzy continues in the front yard, where the pot in which I've planted all sorts of seeds is getting a good drink...
Looks like I may be successful at front yard container gardening after all. It's been kind of a bust so far.
Time for a check of the front yard drainage. I had a problem with water pooling near the porch.
When I was creating my garden basins, I put some of the excess dirt in the front yard low spots. From the looks of things during this storm, those low spots are a thing of the past...
Here's another experiment that appears to be working. My home-made compost bins are staying upright during the storm...
Hey, look! Now it's really coming down! Look at that rain gauge filling up! Wonder how much rain we're getting...
My official side yard rain gauge reading: .30" of the wet stuff.
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