My sermon: Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world (7/18/2018)

It has been a while since I posted something in my blog. For my regular readers, I gave a sermon at the church I attend regularly the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Peninsula in Newport News or UUFP. That took a bit of my time. For some of my friends there and friends in Holland, I promised I would post my sermon on my blog. I will start out with the sermon, followed by the quote from E.O. Wilson’s book “Biodiversity” that I read as a preamble, and the closing words. Regular readers will recognize a common thread in my sermon; for new comers I have an extensive list of labels where you can hunt for more.  It is not great literature but a way for me to express myself.  But without further ado, here it is:

Sermon:

Hello everyone, most of you know me, I am Jan. I’ve been a member of the UUFP since the year 2000. I am a biologist, a naturalist.

My funny accent might give it away, but as a lot of you know, I am not originally from here. I grew up on the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. As a child and teenager, I spent a lot of time in what was called the knoekoe (the local name for the bush) on the island, taking it all in; just moseying and looking around. One of my favorite things was looking for ball cacti, pulling out their little pink fruit out off the white pads, and eating them. I would also just fantasize about what I saw, about making trails so people could enjoy and appreciate nature more.

This carried on in my adult life, I first worked in international development, and then afterwards I had a 20-year stint as a field biologist. I loved being out in the field, experiencing nature in its fullest. I still do, you can try to take me out of nature, but I do not think you can take nature out of me; it draws me in like a magnet. Whenever I can I will be out there, find a tree I can hug and even kiss and be one with for a few seconds, feel grounded.

Of course, you can take photographs of nature (as I do) or look in photo books, but as Annie Dillard wrote in her essay “Total Eclipse”: “Lenses enlarge the sight, omit its context, and make of it a pretty and sensible picture, like something on a Christmas card.” Being emerged in nature, living and breathing it, is so important. At least, it is to me, and I hope to convince you that it should also be for all of us. Only outside can you touch and feel the trees and the soil; breath in the smells and fragrance and feast on the views. As you can imagine, I really hated to go back to the office to write reports about my fieldwork, especially since it usually meant that my fieldwork would turn it into some subdivision and destroy some of nature's beauty.

Earlier on as a graduate student there was nothing better to take pre-dawn measurements of plants in the desert of New Mexico and then hearing the coyotes howling around me at sunrise the minute the sun hit the area. It was magical; you knew they probably had been watching you all along and you never noticed them.

Later on, as a wetland scientist working in the woods I could not just do my job. Especially when working alone, I just loved to take time out at a beautiful spot and just sit on a log or lean against a tree and observe nature around me for 10 or so minutes.

Field work was not without its dangers. I will never forget the day I was struck by a water moccasin also known as a cottonmouth in Virginia Beach. The snake shot out of the high grass and hit me in the legs. I let out a very loud high-pitched scream. Thank goodness it did not break skin but just got stuck in my pants. But that night, 12 hours later my heart was still racing. The very next day, I did come eye to eye with a timber rattlesnake in the same area. I noticed a beautiful skeleton of a possum and bent down to look at it when I heard the rattle. The rattler just stood there and warned me to back off, as to say “this is my carcass,” so I slowly backed off, turned around and walk a different way.

Did I kill the moccasin that bit me the previous day? Absolutely not! As our 7th principle mentions, we have RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART; or in other words, I believe that we all have our place on this little blue marble that floats in space and we need to respect it and take care of it and of each other. The snake defended its territory and I stepped in it. I did not get hurt and I know my heart was good, at the time. On the next day, the rattler just warned me to stay away. Not all snakes are bad, not even moccasins. A number of years ago I ran into two that were mating (and they were not aggressive), they were not at all interested in me.

You have to take precautions, during the times I've spent outside, have been bitten by so many ticks and have gotten rocky mountain spotted fever, one of the tick-borne diseases. And let's not talk about all those mosquitoes.

Did all this deter me from ever going out into the woods or nature again? Absolutely not. This was in 2003, and I still go into the woods for work and I still do it almost daily for pleasure. Am I more careful? Naturally, I am getting older you know. But I just love to explore, bushwhack and take it all in.

I think that I suffer from an extreme form of Nature Deficit Disorder. Nature Deficit Disorder is a term first defined by Richard Louv, it indicates the need of people to reconnect with nature at times to regain balance in their lives. Louv contents that a lot of personal inner problems, social problems and inner-city problems can be brought back to the disconnection from the natural environment.

The way I deal with my Nature Deficit Disorder has always been to go out in nature. I guess in the old days when I grew up on that tropical island you could have called me a loner. Being out in nature was my solace, and actually it still does. You could say that I could be considered an introvert. Later on, I learned by way of some psychological tests that I am truly an introvert among other things. However, as an adult I have forced myself out of my shell when I am in public.

Being an introvert does not mean that you do not like to talk to people or that we are anti-social. Every person needs human interaction and so do introverts. However, we introverts also need a lot of recovery time or me-time. For me it is so comforting to retreat into my own world and in particular in the natural world where I can be alone. That is my way of expressing and dealing with this curse of being an introvert.

So, when I am done teaching or interacting with people, my alone time is best spent outside hiking in the woods, on my sailboat on the water or in my kayak. Doing this alone would be great, but with my loved ones is great too, as long as they do not expect me to talk too much. I often just like to be in my own thoughts. However, when I am sailing I am just concentrating on staying on course and not running aground, but even that clears my mind.

I am not sure if he was an introvert, but the famous John Muir who hiked up and down the Sierra Nevada around the 1900s is credited as the person who initiated the Sierra Club, and was the impetus of the National Park Service wrote “the deeper the solitude the less the sense of loneliness, and the nearer our friends”. Muir also wrote: “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” I think he was onto something here.

Earlier this decade Japanese researchers introduced the term Shinrin-yoku loosely translated as forest bathing. No, it has nothing to do with an outdoor shower, although I am still trying to convince my wife that we need one of those too. The Japanese researchers showed that the volatile compounds or phytoncides emitted by the vegetation in a forest, in particular the conifers, lowered the blood pressure and slowed the heart rate of their subjects, and one exposure to these chemicals (or to the woods) could last as long as two weeks.

John Muir also wrote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” As our friends from Japan found, of all the trees in nature, pines are the highest emitters of phytoncides, those chemicals that are good for you.

Maybe this is why pines have a rich history in mythology. Of course, we use them in our Christmas celebrations and with good reason. Many cemeteries plant pine trees and other conifers as symbols of eternal life, they stay green throughout the winter. Druids in England lid bonfires in Scotch pine forests during winter solstice celebrations. The Romans worshiped pines during the spring equinox festival of Cybele and Attis, while in ancient Greece worshippers of Dionysus often carried a pine-cone-tipped wand as a fertility symbol. Even in Siberia and Mongolia, people there enter a pine forest in silence and with reverence.

Native American people see the pine tree as a symbol of wisdom and longevity. Its needles and sap are medicine that protects people from illnesses, witchcraft, and more.

In the Orient the pines are also associated with longevity, virtue, youth, masculinity and power. The Japanese word for pine is Matsu which also stands for “waiting for the soul of God to descend from heaven.” In ancient Shinto beliefs, gods were said to have ascended to Heaven on a pine tree, where they now reside on a beautiful volcanic mountain in giant or old trees. Pine trees are associated with the New Year in Japan. So much so that many Japanese hang a bundle of pine twigs and bamboo trunks known as a Kado matsu ("Gate pine") on their doors to receive a blessing from the gods.

This almost reminds us of Muir’s quote: “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world,” doesn’t it?

While I love that quote, and conifers such as pines rule, I would love to expand Muir’s quote to: “Between every two trees in a forest is a doorway to a new world.” I strongly believe there is power in nature as a whole, and not only in pine trees.

For me, it does not matter how familiar or unfamiliar the woods are, every time I step outside into the woods the worries of the world fall off my shoulders; I can retreat into my own world and relax. Early on in my life, in Holland, Uganda, Nepal, Yemen, and New Mexico I was in my happy place when I was alone just strolling around in nature, looking around and sometimes studying the things I saw around me.

What do I look for when I retreat into the natural world? For one, I grow bonsai trees at home and it is great to study the canopy of mature trees in the forest for examples to style my little trees. In my reading by E.O. Wilson you heard me tell you that he considers that there is more order in a handful of soil than in on the surface of all planets combined.

To me nature is full of order; full of hidden patterns, and that is another thing I am always on the lookout for. It is survival of the fittest, parsimony, and full of those patterns waiting to be discovered and understood. That is what I do in the woods.

Think about it, every spring the leaves come back, the dogwoods and the redbuds flower and we have to deal with pine pollen. Let me tell you, I had the worst allergy season this year. In summer months, nature does its thing, I enjoy watching the adult birds raise their young, watch the skinks (or lizards) in our backyard, and just see everything grow. In fall nature is preparing for winter. In winter, you notice things you hardly see other times in the year, like when looking up in the canopy you see that not many tree canopies touch each other. Also, that there is a rhythm on the way the trees branch and the way side branches come off.

In her book: “The Solace of Open Space” Gretel Ehrlich wrote: “Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.” Yes, nature to me is very predictable and it helps me to sort my thoughts. So yes, a new door opens every time I enter nature, I discover something new.

Those snakes, ticks, mosquitoes and other varmints are not going to stop me from going out there. I take precautions, use bug spray, watch out where I step. I need to get out and be one with nature. The tall trees are my cathedral, my spiritual home. That is why all those parallel tree trunks in the forest are so important to me; they are my doorway to a different, a new world. As I said those forests are something we all need, not only for clean air and clean water, but also as a spiritual experience, for our sanity, our health and overall wellbeing. Once I enter the woods I need to become one with it and feel grounded, to touch the bark, feel the tree, like when I was young when I needed to eat those little red fruit in in those cacti. But most of all, I need to get out there and I urge you to go too.

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Reading:

Organisms are all the more remarkable in combination. Pull out the flower from its crannied retreat, shake the soil from the roots into the cupped hand, magnify it for close examination. The black earth is alive with a riot of algae, fungi, nematodes, mites, spring-tails, enchytraeid worms, thousands of species of bacteria. The handful may be only a tiny fragment of one ecosystem, but because of the genetic code of its residents, it holds more order than can be found on the surfaces of all the planets combined. It is a sample of the living force that runs the earth – and will continue to do so with or without us.

Edward O. Wilson
The Diversity of Life

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Closing (Benediction):

Let us go out now into the sunlight filtered by the pine trees and oak trees. May the subtle fragrances of the woods bathe your body and your lungs. May this all bring you blessings and enhance your enjoyment of life for days to come, until the next time you can return to nature and experience it all over again.

Bless it be.

The Green Wall (6/7/2018)

Sitting in our gazebo and looking at the late May/early June woods behind our home, I am awestruck by what we euphemistically call our “green wall.” It is a pallet of different levels of green and different textures being contributed by different species of trees and shrubs. Sitting here I see a pyracantha that we are training up the gazebo. Behind it there is our red maple tree that survived hurricane Isabel in 2003 as a mere sapling, but now is a big tree. Next to it is a strange blue spruce that we got as a life Christmas tree one year and is completely out of place here in southeast Virginia. I also see azaleas, dogwoods, a redbud, a red tip, sassafras, a yellow popular (also known as a tulip poplar), white oaks, red oaks. more red maples, sweet gums, loblolly pines, American hollies, a winged sumac, beauty berries, paw paws, viburnums, one butterfly bush, a fringe tree, two magnolias, a Carolina jessamine, and a hawthorn bush. That is only in our small backyard; no wonder we had a shade garden. I am really hunting around to find sunny spots to put my bonsai trees. They really need sun to thrive. You can see that in the understory of our yard where we have a lot of ferns. However, in one sunny spot we have native sunflowers, goldenrod and milkweed. I hate to admit it, but we have a horrible invasion of Japanese stiltgrass.

Two photos from our back yard.  The bottom one gives the view from the gazebo.  As you can see it is pretty darn green out there,  with the sun peeking through the holes in the canopy, also known as sun flecks.   It is woods as far as they eyes can see.  The bottom photo may be a little fuzzy because the gazebo is screened in and I am taking the photo through the screen.

I am probably forgetting some plants in our yard, so be it. Our yard surely is not master piece of landscaping, that will come once we retire and can spend more time out there, and work on the design. But one thing will be for sure, I do not expect that we will change the aspect that our yard runs right into the woods behind our home. Having such a yard that runs into a forest, we hardly can see the edge between the two, and so does the wildlife and nature that lives in the woods behind our home. Although often frustrating, deer make our yard one of the first stopovers in their daily migration into our neighborhood. Tasty plants don’t stand a chance. Over the winter, they even pulled one of my azalea bonsais of the 5-foot-high table to nibble on. Oh well, they did to that tree what was long overdue and what I did not dare to do. In addition to all the plants and the deer, we have so many different bird species visiting our little plot; we have skinks everywhere, frogs, toads, a couple of snakes, bunnies, turtles, squirrels, mice, moles, voles, just to name a few. And let’s not talk about all those daddy longlegs that are out there in our yard right now.

This is the azalea bonsai that was pulled of the table this winter.  It is currently blooming, but as you can see the left side was completely defoliated by the deer that got to it before I got to the deer.  Anyway, the defoliation is probably long overdue.

But one thing is for sure, the green wall in our back yard is in contact and communication with the woods behind our home. Others in our neighborhood have cut all the trees in their yards, turned their yards into managed lawns, hit them with fertilizers and pesticides. They created a biological and ecological desert.

In his wonderful novel “The Overstory” Richard Powers writes a short story about a Ph.D. student who discovers how plants communicate with each other by releasing volatile chemicals in the air, warning each other of pending insect attacks. She gets vilified by the establishment to be proven correct years later after she has dropped out of science. While this is just a story or fiction, it probably comes very close to how communication between plants was discovered. It seems that the Soviet scientist Boris Tokin was the first to describe in the 1920s and 30s that trees gave off volatile chemicals. Boris had an inkling that this was for self-defense, but I do not think for communication between plants or as he called them “phytoncides.” On a side note, it seemed he was an interesting character and being a politically correct communist, he published about his effort of integrating the philosophies and thoughts about Darwin, Marx and Engels. As I mentioned in previous posts, researchers in Japan, among them Tomohide Akiyama and Dr. Qing Li discovered in the 1980s that some of these phytoncides were actually beneficial to humans and introduced the world to the concept of “forest bathing” or “shinrin-yoku.”

But it is not only through the air that plants communicate. We are finding that even through the roots and by way of mycorrhizal fungi plants can communicate with each other over large distances and even exchange messages and even food like carbohydrates with each other in times of need (watch this great YouTube video). I would therefore not be surprised if the trees or the plants in our yard are communicating with the others in the woods. I also wonder if people who put all those pesticides on their lawns, in particular fungicides are severing those connections and isolating the few remaining trees on their properties; making them weaker and more susceptible to insects and diseases, let alone weakening them by pumping chemicals into them.

I guess for right now I will not be able to prove any of this, but all I know, our backyard teams with biodiversity: the trees, shrubs, animal life, and as I described in one of my posts even the little spiders with their iridescent eyes that reflect light from our headlamps at night. I know that our backyard looks pretty darn healthy (with the exception of the stiltgrass); it has not seen many chemicals in a very long time and it seems that nature is thanking us.

Species diversity (4/13/2018)

I am reading an interesting book, in it the author discusses how by the end of the 1700 people started doubting the creation story in the bible.  By that time, explorers and naturalists had fanned out all over the world and the sheer number of different species blew them away.  For example, the Duchess of Portland, Margaret Bentinc was a species collector and purchased samples from naturalists who returned from their exploratory travels. At her death she had thousands of species.  It seems that the auction of her collection in 1785 lasted 38 days.

It was therefore no surprise that around the 1800, people were starting to wonder how all these species could have fit on Noah's arc, let alone travel from all over the world to get there on time.  You get the message.  In a way, this together with what they found in the fossil record made them ready for a person like Charles Darwin.

No, I don't want to argue evolution in this post, but just the diversity of species in the woods behind my home. Although, I could talk about evolution to some extent since one of the plants back there is running cedar or ground pine (Diphasiastrum digitatum).  This plant is actually considered one of the older species alive in our area.  It was most likely here when the dinosaurs were roaming around.  How do we know?  Well, it is in our fossil record.   In addition, it has a very primitive way of sexually reproducing.  It actually produces spores (that used to be collected for use as flash powder) that, once they fell on the soil, grew subterranean and developed male and female parts.  The male parts would release a sperm cell with a tail and swim to the female part to fertilize it.  The sperm cell could only do that when it and the female part were submerged in water or had a water drop on it.  Only after fertilization did you get a plant that emerged out of the ground.  

That is pretty primitive isn't it?  Later on in evolutionary time, plants found a much more efficient way of doing this which was to produce pollen and make us all sneeze.  Only us animals never figured a better way to do it.  Or, maybe we did ... the male animals developed an organ (a.k.a. penis) to deposit the sperm cell pretty darn close to the egg cell or at least in an environment where it is nice, warm and wet and thus easy swimming for those little guys; no rain drops needed.

Running cedar is not the only evolutionary old plant in the woods behind our home.  Ferns are also among the oldest species, and actually they breed the same way as running cedar, through spores.  A minor exception is that their spores turn into moss and a lot of the moss we see is actually ferns that are waiting for the correct moment to get fertilized and become real ferns.  They all have the male and female parts and if a water drop (or more) would straddle a male and female sexual organ a sperm cell would also swim over and kaboom, we would get a new baby fern plant growing right in the middle of the moss.  This has happened in my bonsai pots, to my frustration, where I thought I had a nice moss carpet.  I also saw it on a bonsai channel I was watching on YouTube.  

Botanists have therefore lumped the ferns and the running cedars into one group called the Pteridophytes or plants that reproduce via spores.  Walking behind our home I often see Christmas fern, royal fern, cinnamon fern, New York Fern, lady fern and sensitive fern (6 different species). 

I think this is enough species diversity for one post, the Pteridophytes in the woods behind our home.  But just a quick update on a previous post.  The pines are in full bloom (if you are allowed to call it that).  There is pine pollen everywhere.  This means it is about on time or maybe a few days earlier than other years, even though we had a cold March.  Something to think about.  Not sure what other group of plants I'll write about next, (maybe the conifers) stay tuned!

It is pine pollen season alright (photo taken on 4/13/2018).  On my Instagram account I called it ring around the collar.  

  

Itsy bitsy spider (11/7/2017)

As an ex-field person, fall always reminds me of the times when I did field surveys in the woods and ran into spider webs or at least threads that were strung all over the woods.  The best were always running into nearly “invisible” webs, and them ending up on my glasses and having an imprint of them on my glasses for the rest of the day.  Something like a badge of honor.  Sometimes, at lunch time you took your glasses off and had a perfect imprint of a spider web on your glasses.  Also in the fall, you had these huge yellow garden spiders hanging around in the woods that everyone was afraid off.

A spiderweb in the woods, so difficult to see, so easy to walk into and get an imprint on your glasses or get the threads in your hair.  Here the sun angle was just right to see it and avoid it.

Arachnophobia or the fear of spiders affects approximately one in ten persons in the world.  That is kind of amazing when you come to think of it.  Why would people be afraid of spiders?  Some think the reason is that some spiders are venomous or poisonous and that this is why people are afraid of spiders and part of the population have become afraid of spiders over evolutionary time.  But there really does not seem to be a good reason for why some people are afraid of spiders when you look at their size.  The Goliath spider seems to be the largest spider in the world with a leg span of 12 inches (30 cm); maybe that is a reason to be scared of spiders.

Just a little spider hanging out on a thread in the woods, with all the leaves in the background it would be relatively easy to walk right into this gal (why gal? because a lot of gal spiders seem to consume their male mates after mating). 

I have been bitten by a black widow when I lived in New Mexico and picked up a six pack of beer.  As some of the websites about this spider describe, the bite of a black widow is seldom fatal, but there was no internet back then, and we immediately called a friend in town who was the emergency doctor at the local hospital.  Allan assured me that I would live and he told me to watch my vital signs the next few hours, but assured me that usually nothing would happen and that I did not need to come in.  He also told me I may get a skin reaction, which I did.  I got a brown spot on my arm the size of a silver dollar that remained visible for a year or more, but eventually faded.  Oh well that was my experience with spiders, which really wasn’t that bad.  My father-in-law’s run in with a brown recluse was much more interesting.  He got a huge blister from it that looked like it was ready to explode.  While I am still not afraid of spiders, he is or at least he has a lot of respect for them.

 

My more favorite pictures of the last few days.  This leave seems to hang weightless in the air.  Well, it is suspended from a silk thread spun by a spider and just hanging out there in the middle of the path, perfectly still, like frozen in place and time.  The threads spun by spiders are so strong that the military has been trying to genetic engineer goats to produce it instead of milk so they can make fiber from it (you cannot milk spiders) to make wire and cable.  

Spiders are pretty cool animals, or insects, actually no they are arthropods.  They’ve got eight legs, that can grab things; they have fangs that can inject venom; with the exception of one species that is an herbivore, spiders are predators; and many of them make webs to entangle their prey in.  Others lasso their prey or run them down, actually really cool.  When they catch their prey they inject them with enzymes to liquefy their interior so they can suck the nutrients out of them.  No wonder some of us are afraid of them.

At my home we consider spiders a sign of good luck.  We usually do move them outdoors, figuring that there is more prey out there than indoors.  We get a glass, put it over them and gently slide a piece of (stiff) paper under the glass, trying not to hurt the poor animal.  Then we take them outside where we set them free!  Not good riddance, but good hunting you little guys.

The famous garden spider weaving her web.  She is slightly bigger than a U.S. quarter.

I love walking through the damp woods on an early fall morning in particular.  The early morning dew has accumulated on many of the webs and you can really see them: the beautiful webs spun over the paths; the messy webs between the branches; the funnels of the trap door spiders in the tall grass; the big webs with the thick fuzzy thunderbolt-shaped thread in it that the garden spider weaves in the middle of their web; it is absolutely amazing all the different types of webs they weave.  Obviously, they all work they all have their specialized goal and all capture enough prey for them to survive generation after generation (and scare the living daylight out of some).  Walking in nature is so important.  Whether it is to observe the habits of the spiders, to watch birds, the rooting patterns of the trees, the way the light falls through the leaves, to absorb the smell of the woods, or just the solitude, get out it helps you recharge it makes you happier, live longer and maybe even ward off the diseases of old age like Alzheimer.  

The sun, the dew and an early fall morning makes the webs stand out on the trail.

Yorktown (6/25/2015)

I’ll be mixing work and pleasure in today’s blog entry.

The more southern part of York County or lower York County (we divide county into the lower and upper part, with the division being the Yorktown Naval Weapon Station) is very flat, and we experience a lot of flooding during heavy rainstorm events.  Flooding was so bad that the county started a Stormwater Advisory Committee (a citizens group), of which I was a long-term member.  We advised the county on where to invest in projects that improved the stormwater infrastructure.  We also served as a conduit between citizens and the county and developed a set of publications that citizens could use in managing stormwater in and around their homes and in their subdivisions.  Regretfully, the County Commissioners decided to disband the committee a few years ago, and I will not go into why they did that.

Fast forward to this week.  The county has been building this huge bioretention area near one of our high schools.  Bioretention areas are what they are called.  They store and retain stormwater in an area for some time to allow it to infiltrate into the soil.  Excess water is slowly released into a drainage way, creek, or stream.  The word bio stands for that there is some biology involved with all of this, and in stormwater that means plants.  The photo below shows the area just after it is planted.

Regular readers of my blog know that I teach all things stormwater in my current job.  Lately I have been teaching about plants that can be used in exactly these kinds of projects and I was encouraged to see what plant species they used in their planting.  Why plants?  Well, plants have all kinds of benefits: 

• they shade the water and keep it cooler compared to when it runs off a parking lot; 
• it slows the flow of the water down and allowing sediment to settle out; 
• plants assist in the settling and breakdown of pollutants and contaminants in the runoff; 
• plant roots open up the soil thus allowing for more infiltration and recharge of the groundwater;
•  plants bring oxygen into the soil which greatly enhances the breakdown of contaminants in the water; 
• wetland areas are among the most productive ecosystems in the world and are great in removing air pollutants and CO2 out of the air; and finally, 
• all these plants provide great habitat for all kinds of critters such as insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and even mammals.  

The more diverse their plant selection was the better the chance is that some of these plants will survive, but also the more (different) critters it can support.

Another wonderful thing to see is that the bottom of the area is not flat and uniform.  You can see islands which will be flooded temporarily during a storm and some permanent pools (the darker areas).  This greatly enhances the diversity of the area and all those functions I talked about above.

Why is this so important that I run around the state to teach it?  Well, in the old days when there were less people and less impervious areas such as roads, roofs, parking lots, sidewalks and driveways in our country, rainwater was able to infiltrate into the soil and recharge the groundwater table.  Nowadays, we are pumping the groundwater faster than rainfall can recharge it.  In addition all that rainwater runs off as stormwater and because it did not infiltrate the amount of water that runs off has greatly increased.  Streams cannot handle all this water and we see increased flooding, erosion in streams and increase damage to the stream banks.  All these bioretention areas and stormwater ponds are designed to lower the impact of development, decrease flooding as much as possible, clean up water and recharge the groundwater.

Newport News Park (1/4/2015)

Wow, 2015.  Happy New Year to all my readers.

Today's blog is a multipurpose posting first of course it is a wish to all to make the best of it all and enjoy 2015.  I am sure that some readers may think something like: "this guy had 11 days vacation, and all the time to take the perfect picture, and now see what he shows as his first of 2015."  I'll explain this below.  Remember, one of my favorite sayings is: "It is what it is", and there is not much we can do about certain situations, but to enjoy it (or maybe grin and bare it?).

So why this picture.  It is about unintended consequences.  Lets start: I believe in the inherent goodness in all and everything, and that we as humans are capable in screwing it up (or sometimes misinterpreting it).  I am often reminded of Aldo Leopold who made a 180 degree turn after he shot a wolf (in the early 20th century) and later on came to the conclusion that exterminating wolves was not going to save the sheep ranchers, but that it was actually going to hurt them since the deer no longer had any predators.  The loss of predators resulted in the explosion of the deer populations and overgrazing by the deer, which in turn resulted in the loss of food for the sheep and actually crashing sheep populations.  In other words exterminating wolves actually hurt the sheep farmers.

A lot of human interference in nature has unforeseen consequences, but wolves are great examples.  After their reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park, the ecology of the riverbanks and wetlands improved.  When the wolves were exterminated from the parks, elk became bolder and started grazing in these areas and greatly impacting the vegetation.  The reintroduction of wolves really helped in the restoration of these areas.  This link provides some great information on that.

So why this picture?  During our walks out behind our home, a sight such as this is very common.  The bark is stripped from the small pine tree, and I can guarantee that the tree will most likely not survive.  This is not necessarily bad in this case, you can see in the background that the the tree density is very high and killing some trees would be very good.  But there is a deeper issue here.  What is this stripping of the bark all about?  Well, bucks (male deer) shed their horns in the late fall, and they start growing out around this time of year.  You can imagine that horns that try to poke out of your skin hurt or at least are a little itchy.  That is where these small trees come in.  A buck can not ask one of the girls in his harem to give him a scratch on the head, and so he has to do this himself.  In that process they scratch so hard that the bark comes off the tree.

But briefly coming back to those deer.  We have no (or very few) predators in the woods out back.  We have sighted a few coyotes, but that's it.  Moreover, no hunting is allowed in the park.  As a result the deer have proliferated. eating everything in sight.  The woods very impoverished; seedlings are eaten as soon as they germinate.  (It is actually so bad that the deer are running out of food, and they have invaded our neighborhood.  The other night we almost witnessed a crash between a deer and a car).  So now, the woods out back have very little understory and they are not very diverse.  The only plants that grow there are the ones deer do not eat.  Although I understand we cannot reintroduce the wolf in our back yard, or allow hunting, I wish we could somehow keep the deer population under control, thus keeping the biodiversity in the woods behind us (and allowing me to grow nice plants in my yard).  As you can see, our actions have all these unforeseen consequences in nature that may show up much later and sometimes too late for us to do something about.