We are going to the birds (2/27/2025)

We pride ourselves on having an eco-friendly or wildlife-friendly yard. We do not use fertilizers and pesticides and mostly use plants native to the area or those that have at least some wildlife, bird or pollinator benefit. We have five birdfeeders and at least two water stations. Birds are therefore plentiful in our backyard, in particular this winter. It has been a fairly severe winter for us in the Tidewater of Virginia. There have been days that the temperatures did not come above freezing and we had at least three snow events. This has not been fun for the birds in the area, and our feeders have been busy. Below is a list of the visitors that came over for some food or drinks:

Yellow Rumped Warbler	Cedar Waxwing
Red-Winged Blackbird	Song sparrow
White crowned sparrow	White- throated sparrow
Carolina Chickadee	Tufted titmouse
Carolina Wren	Brown Thrasher
Northern Mockingbird	Northern Cardinal
Red bellied Woodpecker	Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker	Northern Flicker
Eastern Bluebird	American Robin
European Starling	Brown-headed Cowbird
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker	White-breasted Nuthatch
Common Grackle	Dark-eyed Junco
American Goldfinch	House finch
Purple finch	Blue Jay
Mourning dove	Eastern Towhee
Hermit Thrush

At least 31 species, not bad for a suburban yard. This list is not in any particular order, but just as I remember them. Watching them on the feeders or bird baths is interesting. There definitely is a pecking order amount the birds. I am amazed about how dominant the yellow-rumped warblers try to be. They will stand up to the big birds on the feeders, sit in the middle, ruffle their feathers and take a defensive stand. They even peck at other birds. Tough little critters they are! They will vacate the feeder when confronted by the bigger birds such as the mockingbird, the bluejay and the various blackbirds. But they will stand up against the thrasher. Bluebirds are a different story. They are fairly dominant as well and they will confront the warbler with varying result. At times they tolerate each other. There is somewhat of a peace between the cardinals and the warbler as well. The goldfinches use a different tactic. They dominate by the numbers, and all the sudden a feeder is swamped by 5 or more goldfinches and there just is no room for other birds, until a bully bird such as the blue jay or mockingbird flies in.

The shiest birds (or maybe the lowest on the packing order) appear to be the thrush, cedar waxwing, titmouse and the junco. The cedar waxwing only uses the birdbath. Thrasher is very secretive but will stand its ground, especially when they gorge themselves on the suet. It is just a lot of fun to observe all the birds, their interactions and behavior during our breakfasts and lunches.

One of the nicest moments occurred the other day. We were sitting inside with our morning coffee and newspaper when we heard a familiar bonk against our sliding door, a bird strike. Looking for the poor victim, I noticed a tiny bird, face down in a snow drift on our deck. Actually, the only thing I saw was a tail sticking out of the snow. I ran outside and softly scooped the poor bird up. It was a “butter but” or a yellow-rumped warbler as they are officially known as. I gently put it under a chair in our yard, in the sun but out of the snow. When I went to check it an hour later, the bird was gone; it had survived the crash. Approximately 15 minutes later I was in the yard and right above me in a tree was a “butter but’ flitting around in the branches, looking at me and chirping like crazy. I had never experienced that, and we have a large number of these warblers in our yard and around the feeders. I figured it was the warbler I pulled out of the snow and brought to its rehabilitation spot in the sun, and it was now thanking me for saving it. I realize that I am anthropomorphizing here but it just made me feel good. It made my day!

A dark-eyed junco on our feeder.

In the Zone and other Mediations (06/24/2024)

The fence is in; while I have no illusion that it will keep the deer out of our yard, it should keep the dogs in. Now, a few days later I already notice that we spend more time outside than before. Part of the reason is that the dogs can finally spend more time with us in the yard. Before fence we felt guilty being out there without them, the dogs were either whining at the door wanting to join us, or we had them out with us on the long leash and then they would wrap themselves around out seats, our legs or a plant, prompting us to get up and save them. Now they can just roam and play. They play like crazy and pass out in the evenings.

My time outside is divided between working on my bonsai (looking, watering, and shaping), weeding, odds and ends, and just sitting. First, I needed to reorganize my bonsai area or what we call our Bonsai Zone, a term that I stole from Nigel, who has a YouTube channel called the Bonsai Zone. It appeared that part of my “Zone” was actually going to be located outside the fence. I had temporarily moved my tables and now it was time for the final layout trying to maximize sun exposure on my benches.

It was never productive to put plants in our yard. Deer would go for them as soon as they were planted. We finally felt adventurous enough to do some landscaping now we have a fence. I have already shared some of the work we have done in a previous post. We have been trying to add native plants to our landscape, plant that usually get hit hard by deer. The fence may hopefully discourage them from entering and be somewhat protective. However, because of the past, non-maintenance, the garden is overrun with invasive plants. It is now my daily chore to pull out Japanese stilt grass, and ground ivy.

My favorite activity is just sitting somewhere in the yard and observing. As I mentioned earlier, the fence made it much easier since the dogs have free reign now. I already just sat on my behind with friends, with my wife and just alone. We have a screened-in gazebo, and even sitting in it has been great especially in the evenings when the mosquitoes are out. It is better now because the dogs can just roam.

But I enjoy just being on my own, observing and listening to the world around me. I look at the birds, skinks, and just the landscape around me. It seems that every time I sit out and just meditate, I discover something new or different. We just heard the call of the yellow-billed cuckoo. Going back in time we determined that we have at least seen or heard 53 different bird species in or near our yard. Our property is slightly less than half an acre (2000 square meter), and the back yard is half of that. But we try to leave it natural and do not use chemicals there. The rich birdlife is our reward. We want to keep it chemically free as much as possible.

All things considered, we are very happy with the fence and so are our dogs Japer and Radar. It is wrestling mania at least three times a day. They greatly enjoy being out, and so do we. Temperatures are going to approach 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius for the rest of the world) this weekend and we’ll haven’t see how it goes. The yard is shady; maybe it will be bearable, but only time will tell; I hope I can still sit out there, meditate and enjoy our garden.

One of the two Buddha statues we have in our yard

Sassafras in the sun

Spring 2022 part 2 (4/7/2022)

As the pandemic winds down, and I whole heartedly hope it stays down, I am reminded that this is my third spring of teleworking or working from home. My department has decided that May 1 will be the date that things are going to go back to “normal.” Normal means working at least one day at the office and the other days are still allowed to be telework days. For me that means that on weeks that I do not teach or travel to teach (in May I teach in Williamsburg which does not require any travel), I need to show my face in the office one day a week. Our supervisor told us that if this would be the reason for one of us to quit or start looking for a different job, to let him know and we could talk about it. There is obviously some flexibility in the new rule. 

Working from home has become the new normal for me and I like it. While working I can bake bread, do the laundry, do some writing, explore the news, make dinner, and spend some time outside either looking at my bonsai or just looking and walking through the woods behind our home. Many of you know, I am a huge believer of the concept of forest bathing.

Forest bathing or regularly spending time outside in nature lowers the blood pressure and the general anxiety one has. Just looking around, spending time outside, and breathing in the smells of the natural world increases your immunity to diseases and most likely fight cancers as well.  Research in Japan showed that the volatile compounds or aromatic compounds released by the vegetation, called phytoncides, are responsible for all this and the effect of a one-time exposure to these compounds can actually last up to two weeks.  Naturally, movement itself strengthens your immunity, skeletal and your cardiovascular system.  I get a lot of creative ideas for new classes, for changes to my current classes or to the way I teach by simply walking outside in the woods meditating and thinking. This is where I get my inspiration. Thank goodness, my supervisor know this and he encourages this.

One of my more favorite areas in the woods behind our home.  Just past this crossing is a grove of very large yellow populars (or tulip trees).  I just love it here!

During these two years working from home, I have been able to come much closer to the natural cycle of nature and how it affects my bonsai trees, my yard, the natural area and the woods out back. It has helped me to become calmer and more accepting of who I am and everything going on around me. I would say that I have become more introspective. More and more do I realize that I am me and no one can take that away from me. I have gone through a lot of tough times in my life (personally and with or because of my extended family), some of which I have chronicled in these postings; someday I will post some more. However, I am happy with where I am and where my life is heading; I would not want to change a thing right now.

As I write this the redbud in my backyard is blooming profusely. The honey bees that we keep in the back yard are all over it and so are the chickadees. The chickadees are eating the small pink flowers which must be loaded with vitamins, flavonoids and all kinds of micronutrients. Or are they eating insects that feast on the flowers? Those small observations are so enjoyable and keep me going, that sapsucker I can see working the tree right outside my window, the lemon tree seedling in my office that are rapidly growing towards the light. It is almost time for the tropical to go outside and make an attempt to rig up that irrigation system. Summer is rapidly approaching.

The view from my home office window.  You can see the redbud in its full glory.  Other trees are starting to leaf out.

Meditation and frogs (9/16/2018)

Living next to a nature preserve, a natural area, woods, or whatever you want to call it, has its positive points and negatives. For one, we will never have any development behind our home. Secondly, I have a place to practice my forest bathing; if not just by standing in our yard and meditatively stare into the woods, I can just disappear into it. I also have a lot of material for my classes; especially the wetland class I teach. In addition, I take a lot of pictures in those woods and my Instagram page is replete with them. Finally, they are a rich source for some of my blog posts.

Here it sounds that I am using the woods for selfish reasons; but that is far from the truth. While I am still debating whether to allow advertising on my blog, for right now I don't make a penny by writing it. My objective was and still is educational and sharing some of my photographs, my thoughts, life experience, philosophy and love for the natural world. Isn’t that what the internet was intended to be, a free exchange of ideas? But then, who could not use some extra money.

But I digress. To me there is almost nothing better than to step out of our back door on a Saturday morning after my morning coffee and reading the newspaper, to walk to the edge of our very small plot of land and just stand there for maybe five minutes and take it all in; to absorb it all. I may even walk 30 or 50 steps into the woods to this small hill, most likely a remnant of a redoubt that was constructed by Washington’s troops during the Revolutionary War. It is at this point where everything I experienced the past week starts making sense. I look up at the top of the trees and watch the warblers hunting among the leaves in the top of the canopies. I listen to the calls of the blue jays which sometimes sound like a hawk; the calls from cat birds which, you guessed it, sounds like the meowing of a cat; the towhees that invite me to “drink your tea”; red-bellied woodpeckers; and chickadees.

“Oh”, you might say, “isn't that a selfish reason, dumping all the weeks thoughts, worries and troubles in the woods and on to those poor birds?” I promise you they can handle it. Nature is much more resilient than us human beings. They are not faced by me standing there and taking it all in. Actually, the chickadees sometimes get pretty annoyed with my presence and they are the first ones to let me know that, in particular when I bring my dog Jake with me to just take it all in. They’ll come to a branch close to us and sound their nasal alarm, as in “we see you; now go away.” Jake knows the weekend routine. He gets up and walks to the back door the second I am done reading the newspaper and get up; it is time “to walk the grounds” or “explore the out-back” as I call it.

This past Sunday the “out-back” was amazing. But I must take a step back. In a previous post, I mentioned that the weather Gods have it out for me. Well, they must have known that we were at a concert in Williamsburg on Saturday night and that I was driving back. The skies opened up on the way home. I could not see a thing while driving. The way I drove was from dashed line on the highway to dashed line, saying out loud: “there is the next line” and keeping those lines under my left tire. A neighbor with a rain gauge told me later that we got 5 inches of rain that evening. All that rain must have fallen in maybe an hour or so; our neighborhood was partially flooded. 

This is what the woods looked like in the morning.  Part of the yard were flooded.  In the far left you can see the bee-hive we have in our yard

We walk our dogs in the evening before going to bed. We could already hear what was going on. Frogs had come out of hibernation immediately! It was amazingly loud. Later, even with the windows closed you could hear them inside our home. The next morning, we saw why. Our back yard was still under water. The noise was amazing (I made a recording and will try to imbed it <here>). This was one of the few times that it was so loud in the 18 years we have lived in our home. The interesting part is that the next day it was quiet again behind our home. The frogs had either gone back to bed or done their thing and were exhausted after a night and morning of debauchery. They are so opportunistic.

Nature is wonderful, the wetlands or Grafton ponds behind our home are a unique ecosystem. This is why the area was designated as a nature preserve. It protects the endangered Mabee salamander and a sedge. Obviously, the frogs do not mind this arrangement. At night we have them on our windows and sliding door, waiting for unsuspecting insects to fly by, attracted to the bright interior.

But let me also come full circle and get back to the start of this post. As I mentioned there are positives and negatives of living next to these woods. The possible negatives of living where we live include deer, ticks and mosquitoes. At times we have enough of them, but for right now the positives still outweigh the negatives, especially those evenings and mornings when there is a cacophony of frogs, or when I can go and explore the out-back.

Forest bathing II (12/22/2017)

The other night we went out into our back yard after dark to show my wife what had excited our dogs today.  We put on our trusty head lamps and went to take a look.  Right on the other side of the fence, in our neighbor’s yard were the dismembered guts of an animal and some fir laying in the leaves.  We surmised it was most likely a rabbit or a squirrel that had become prey of a hawk or an owl.  We do have coyotes in the woods behind our home, but they would have had to jump over the fence and there was very little disturbance of the leaves; much more likely that the guts were dropped from the tree above.  I am not sure if either a hawk or an owl does not eat the guts or if they simply had their fill.  Anyway, the smell of the (rotting) guts had excited the dogs earlier in the day.

Turning around, my wife spotted two very bright emerald sparks in the leaf matter at her feet: “Wow, crystals?”  On further investigation, there was a small black spider scurrying around the leaves and the light beam from our headlamp reflected from its eyes and those were the sparkles that she saw.  It was 38˚F (3˚C) and the spider was still active in the leaf litter.  I don’t know what the little guy was hunting for, as I write in my spider blog, most spiders are hunters, but he or she was pretty safe.  Come day time the spider may become the hunted by all the birds in our back yard that scurry through the leaf litter.  As you know that makes me so frustrated watching all these people bagging leaves.  They are so important in our ecological cycle.

One of our bagging neighbors.  In addition to mining nutrients, getting rid of nutrients for birds etc, they also are exposing their topsoil to erosive forces.  Yes, they may have less mice, ticks and chiggers, but at what cost?

 I have learned a lot of things in 2018.  I have learned a new term: “Forest Bathing.”  I used to use the term “Nature Deficit Disorder” and while they are closely related, I think forest bathing describes a more intimate nature experience.  You linger in nature, absorb it all, take it in.  I guess you can forest bath to take care of that nature deficit disorder; although I read that even nature wall paper on your computer screen may take care of the disorder to some extent and that is not forest bathing.

That little spider with its reflective emerald eyes was part of such a forest bathing experience.  So were the guts of a dead animal.  It can really only be 5 minutes of observations, but longer would be better.  When walking through the woods behind our home, I always discover something unique, something different; at least when I am not in a hurry (see the photos below).  Even our dog Jake finds new things.  He often happens to roll in something very stinky in these woodsWe regularly flush a barred owl in the area and now I wonder if an owl discards the guts of its prey and that is what Jake rolls in.  He also feasts on deer pellets or as we call it deer pro-biotics for dogs.  Oh well.  

Regular readers know my writings about the discoveries in woods behind our home.  I have written about Washington’s shovel.  Well, it is still there, I saw it this morning.  I wrote about the over population of deer and signs they leave behind, but just look at my keyword on deer and there is much more.

The photos below were taken on this morning’s walk in the woods.  Just a quiet slow walk, observing what is around me.  It is just great to be out there, to take it all in.  We were not in a hurry.  Jake (the dog) was apprehensive this morning, "what was daddy doing, just standing around looking at things, taking pictures and taking his time?"   We were observing.  Just read the caption with the pictures.  Go do your own forest bathing, it does not have to be spiritual or mystical to enjoy it or to learn from nature. Remember any nature is good. 

Lastly, if you enjoy this and some of my more naturalist posts, I am reading a great book by David George Haskell called “The Forest Unseen, A Year’s Watch in Nature.”  It is a great read and even this biologist is learning a lot.

Most of the trees in the woods behind our home are sticks, indicating it is a fairly young forest, but this oak was able to take advantage of an opening in the canopy to spread out wide.

This pine appears to have been hit by lightning but as the next two pictures show it is holding on to life, unlike many trees that are hit do.  However there is a dead streak going up all the way.  The bark is pealed off and woodpeckers have been busy.

The dead streak going up.

And up.

I am not sure what happened to this maple but it is holding on too.  The hardwood is dead but it seems to be doing fine.  You can see the live vain thickening on both sides of the cavity.

Leaves, leaves everywhere (12/8/2017)

Fall is almost over, and winter is about to start. Our neighborhood has all the icons of late fall mixed in with the signs of early winter.  The inflatable turkeys are being replaced by inflatable Santa’s, but worse, all over the side of the roads we see stacks and stacks of plastics bags filled with leaves.  People that live along the wood line in our neighborhood blow or dump the leaves in in the woods.  I guess they don’t realize that they create a fire trap for themselves.  They have piled up this huge layer of incendiary biomass that if it ever catches fire would create a spectacle with embers that would definitively fly everywhere (read their roofs).  Interestingly, I was teaching the people who maintain the trails back in the woods and I told them where I live. The first question they asked me was: “Are you one of those leaf dumpers?”  My emphatic answer was: “NO!”

It's all in a day's work!  Kids could really have fun with this, building forts, except they are a favorite target of many of the male dogs in our neighborhood.

During one of my workshops I teach a course on soil amendments where I talk about plant nutrition and compost.  I always get a few laughs and definitely a few smiles when I tell my students that plants are different than us bipeds or animals in general.  We humans need hamburgers and French-fries to sustain our selves (unless you are a vegetarian or a health nut, of course); but, I tell my students, plants make their own hamburger and French-fries.  All they need is sunshine, water and some boring minerals.  I pop up a list of all these boring minerals and discuss the three most important ones: Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.  I tell my eager students what the function of these three elements is in the plants.  Nitrogen for leaf growth and protein production; Phosphorus for (root) growth, DNA and energy; and Potassium for flowering, and energy.  If you are a biologist, I know, this is very a very simplistic and rudimentary explanation, but so be it.

If plants needed to hamburgers and French-fries to survive they would need to look like this carnivorous mushroom.  Naturally this is completely fictitious!  Happy they don't exist, although meat eating plants or carnivorous plants do exist.

Maybe difficult to see, but these are pitcher plants hidden under the grass.  These plants are carnivorous and capture bugs.  I took this picture in June in Newfoundland, Canada.  

I tell the folks under my tutelage that in the fall trees shed a lot of Phosphorus in their leaves.  Leaves are full of DNA, RNA, Chlorophyll, Mitochondria, and ATP which all have their fair share of Phosphorus, and a lot of this Phosphorus rains down in the fall with the leaves.  Subsequently, a lot of people rake the leaves up and dispose them in a landfill (as I tell my students, their dumb neighbors do that, and I am sure they don’t).  The only way the trees get that phosphorus back in the leaves next spring, is by pulling it out of the soil (if there is still some left after all those years of carting leaves off to the landfill or dumping it in the woods somewhere).  In fact, people that bag their leaves, mine phosphorus out of their soil and the only way they could get it back is by paying the fertilizer companies or start a seagull colony in their backyard, but who wants to do that.  Alternatively, they could use a mulching mower and grind the leaves into small pieces so that the leaves can decompose and the Phosphorus can leach back into the soil.  Folks could also compost their own leaves and turn them in to black gold; use them as mulch; or send them to a composting facility.  However, they still would be mining Phosphorus when they send them to a composting facility, unless they buy compost and put it back in their yard.

In addition to returning the nutrients back to the soil (organically), the leaves in the flower beds provide habitat to the animals in the yard, especially the birds.  In my yard, the towhees, fox sparrows, white-crowned sparrows, juncos (in the winter) and the brown thrashers are running around the leaves and are scratching for bugs like chicken.  Whatever goes for a lawn in my yard has a lot of mole, vole or maybe even shrew tunnels.  I don't know if it is true but they say that chipping your leaves gives you a lot of soil insects, such as grubs, which attracts these critters.  Oh well, I rather have this than poisoning my environment.  We are harming our planet enough already that I think that all small things help, and we try to keep all poisons and chemical fertilizers out of our yard if we can.  I use chemical fertilizers on my bonsais but I use soapy water to fight off any bug infestation in my miniature trees.

We really should try to do our part for the environment even if it is a little bit.  A small steps help.  Thinking that your use of fertilizers or pesticides do not contribute much to the whole picture is erroneous; damage is cumulative, it all adds up.  All those small positive things add up too, and while we may not notice it in our life time, our kids or grand kids surely will.  We only have one blue marble to live on.

So let's not bury our leaves in landfills and mine nutrients from property to replenish them with artificial nutrients.  However, let's recycle, compost and reuse them.

Newfoundland "bathing" (7/9/2017)

Back from vacation already for about three weeks and Newfoundland feels worlds away.  It was such a different world.  I’m not sure if it was the news blackout we gave ourselves, the relaxed atmosphere, the constant supply of seafood, the great people, the cool temperatures, nature, or what it was.  Life had slowed down, I felt so relaxed. 

I took this picture at sunset along the west coast of the island just outside Rocky Harbor. 

I want to bet it was a combination of a lot of these things. But one thing I am for sure, I was constantly reminded about some of the things I wrote in my posts about “forest bathing”; the smell of the balsam fir in the forest was overwhelming. As I mentioned in that post, Japanese researchers found that the smell, fragrance or volatile substances called phytoncides that these and many conifers give off have a property of reducing stress levels and increasing killer cells, cells that kill tumor cells, in your body. They also lower your blood pressure. This effect seems to last a couple of weeks. Well darn it, it must have worn off in me by now, especially after being confronted by our life back here in the U.S.A., including nasty tweets!

The woods of Gros Morne National Park, a mixture of peat lands with balsam fir, larches, black fir, pitcher plants, and some other really cool plants.  It is especially the fragrance of the balsam fir trees that is so good for you! 

Nature in Newfoundland was amazing.  From some of the historical photographs and documents we saw, the island was quite forested and loggers cleared it over the years.  It looks like nature has not yet recovered from all that logging.  Newfoundland has a harsh environment, say the least, but wonderful.  I was amazed that on parts of the island, the deciduous trees had not yet broken bud and the larches had had just started in early June.  The ferns were in their fiddle stage.  Even the evergreens appeared to have just started their annual growth spurt.  This means that the growing season in these parts of the island is not more than about 4 or five months each year, and those cleared forests have a difficult time growing back.  Combine that with moose browsing and you know the results in some areas.  Still it kind of looks like what I would expect (tundra like).

This and many of the ferns in this area were finally sticking their head above the sphagnum moss.  Other plants that were growing here included pitcher plants and alder. 

Then there is this amazing variety in a small area. I am referring to an area called the “Table Lands” from which you can hike the Green Gardens Trail in Gros Morne National Park. In that area you go from a region that literally looks like Mars in a few miles to the Garden of Eden. It is a 8 mile hike (4 miles each way) but a crazy experience.

While not exactly the "Table Lands", this is an extension or the bottom of it.  There is little plant growth because of certain toxicities.  This is where the "Green Gardens" hike starts, and there is not much green here.  Actually the story goes that the Mars Rover was tested near here on the Table Lands.  How appropriate.

But then you come over the ridge and after a gorgeous hike you get in the "Green Garden."  Wild sheep graze here and there is some amazing scenery.  This hike will stay with me for a long time, because it was so beautiful, but also because my phone was stolen here (my only bad experience on the island ... see my previous post <here>).

Being out there in the Atlantic Ocean, close to Greenland and Iceland; right there where the cold Labrador Current runs into the Gulf Stream, near the Grand Banks one of the richest fishing grounds in the world, you can expect that Newfoundland is a seabird paradise.  It is therefore also a birdwatcher's paradise.  There are some colonies of birds that you only find here in North America.  One of themy are the puffins.  Other colonies we visited were those of the Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve, which were just absolutely unbelievable.  

Suffice it to say, we need to go back!  We did not get to see it all.  We need to hike more, go whale watching, see more moose, caribou, and visit areas we did not have the time for.

Puffin rock near Elliston.  During our visit is was around 38 degrees Fahrenheit (4 C), the wind was whipping (more than 20 mph) and it was drizzling.  When we got off the rock someone told us that last year a lady was blown off the rock to her death under very similar climatic conditions.  

The Murres of Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve.  These guys are sitting on eggs.

Gannets, gannets and gannets everywhere at Cape St. Mary's.  From a distance it looked like the rocks were snow covered, but they were brooding gannets.  And it smelled like their food ... fish.  

More gannets.

Need I say more?

Yorktown (11/11/2015)

The leaves are falling!

The leaf of a sassafras tree/shrub; one of my favorite species.  I just love the trident shaped leaves and while I do not like the taste of root beer, I love the smell of the crushed leaves which smell like root beer.  Old folklore tells me that in the south people would crush the roots and make tea from the roots claiming that the tea would make them better able to deal with the heat and the humidity of the summers.

Fall is definitively here.  It always seems to hit hard in November (see my post from around this time last year).  It is around Thanksgiving that I rake, blow or mulch for the last time.  The roads in our neighborhood are beginning to be lined with clear bags with leaves that are going to be carted off to the county's composting facilities (I hope), and maybe next spring these same people will bring some of the leaves back in a different form to fertilize and mulch their yard; although I would not bet on it.

Many of these people mine their yards for nutrients.  In one of the classes that I teach I surprise my student with the little factoid that fall leaves contain a lot of phosphorus and by us carting leaves of to the dump or to the composting facility we are really mining phosphorus and depleting our soil.  This forces us to go buy fertilizer at our landscaping stores and put artificial fertilizer on our lawns and gardens which we basically cart off again next fall.  The fertilizer companies  (and the garden stores) love us, don't they?

Our neighborhood has them all, there is this one guy, I swear, he gets the blower out when he sees one leaf on his lawn or driveway (he's obviously OCD).  My wife and I call him "Jack the Blower".  He has the leaf blower going for at least two hours every Friday, Saturday and Sunday (we are not home the other days so we don't know if he blows those days as well); one wonders what else he does in life, or if he has a life.  I feel sorry for his neighbors; who have told me that they actually caught him blowing leaves into their yard.  When we lived in Cincinnati 20 years ago, we knew an equally OCD guy (an ex FBI agent) and when we walked by his property we made sure to bring a leaf and  place one leaf on his lawn, just to tease him.  Boy, we were mean in our younger years.

But leaves are important, as I mentioned, they recycle nutrients and organic matter, but they also are the home to a lot of insects and other critters.  It is a lot of fun to see towhees and brown thrashers going after bugs in the leaves in my yard.  They do it just like chickens scratching away in the leaves, throwing them all over.

I took this photo a couple of days ago behind our home and titled it: "Fall massacre in full swing" 

But there is more, all the mushrooms that are out there are fed by the decaying leaves and rotting plant materials, salamanders lizards, frogs and a lot of other critters need them.  The fallen leaves serve as natural litter that keep  the weeds from growing; although, in some cases to much litter may be a bad thing as I complained about in an earlier post.  There is too much litter in the woods behind our home, which in my eyes has suppressed the native weeds and forbs.  The only way to remedy that would be with a controlled burn and good luck in getting that approved.

But again, it is important to mulch the leaves back into the lawn and back into the flower beds.  The organic matter, nutrients, weed control, and habitat for our wildlife provided by those leaves is so valuable!