Today it is again
overcast and about 40 degrees at
Photo 1
Old Raised Beds
Members of the congregation periodically get inspired and come out and
plant small trees. Someone put in
several white pines with no weed protection or follow-up support. While they are surviving, they have not grown
more than a couple of inches a year since I first noticed them in 2001. Note the yellowish color of the needles. I had samples of the soil tested in 2002 and
the pH came back at 8.0! This is way too
basic for many varieties of pine. It
may explain why this seedling is not doing very well. Note the buckthorn next to it. I suspect it is doing a lot better.
Photo 2
Pine struggling with basic soil
I took a whole series of pictures of the “bare ground” we have to deal
with this spring if we don’t want a huge crop of gullies. This hillside faces northeast and is quite
steep. I wonder if we can get anything
to grow on it fast enough and with enough tenacity to prevent gullies and the
runoff of any small particles of subsoil which are near the surfaces of the
stones which are already working their way free of the smoothly graded hill.
Photo 3
Steep Northeast Face with small stones popping out
The placement of the road along the downhill side of the spoils pile is unfortunate. It was very prone to rutting before the pile was enlarged. The construction traffic and the occasional winter exploration of the “back 40” by congregational SUV’s has already created an ugly and potentially even uglier set of muddy ruts. Photo 4 is of the problem area. This part of the road has been in use since the church was built. It was re-graded to bring in heavy equipment when the spoils were dumped and when the septic field at the south end of the property was enlarged. Now the road floods completely and it takes several days or weeks to dry out enough to be resistant to massive rutting. If we use it before grasses have been re-established, this area is going to be a muddy car trap for years to come.
Photo 4
Melt softens the road
There is a “new road” and a new set of ruts at the top of the spoils pile, apparently recently created. Possibly people trying to get back to the sweat lodge decided to avoid the first mess and created this new one at the top of the spoils pile near the western edge of our property.
Earlier, in December or January, this ground was smooth and had no
ruts. One vehicle probably was all it
took. In my opinion, it is essential
that we control access to this area by motor vehicles if we expect to have any
success in an effort to restore the area to something even faintly resembling a
“natural praire.”
Photo 5
Vehicle tracks on the top of our spoils area.
Our contractors used a heavy bulldozer to contour the subsoil piles after the new RE wing was completed. It compacted the clay and left its’ footprints on the ground. In a little less than three months, 2” deep mini-gullies are forming all over the area.
I’m going to try to come back later in the spring and see if I can document how fast they widen and deepen. The picture shows one runoff track which is on a relatively level portion of the back of the spoils area near the old path and road which was used to take people needing to haul food or firewood to the sweat lodge.
When the new spoils pile was added, the old road to the sweat lodge was blocked. As the spoils pile was re-graded part of the road to the lodge was buried. The mess in Photo 5 above is probably a direct result.
It never ceases to amaze me that people who organize and participate in so-called “Native American” rituals in our sweat lodge can choose to drive an SUV into bare muddy ground we just paid a contractor to level. I dictated a string of invective into my tape recorder when I saw this. These ruts are less than eight weeks old. They were not in evidence when our contractor finished grading the site. Somebody drove up there and back and forth enough to create a set of water holding ruts which will prevent the germination of any of the rye grass seed that might have been spread as an initial cover crop. Leveling these ruts with hand tools would be back breaking work because the material is heavy clay. It is not likely that we can get grading equipment back in to repair the damage.
Photo 6
Baby gully
It will also be interesting to see how long it takes for the pile of dog poop in this picture to decompose and disappear.
The healthiest plant growth in the uphill part of the spoils pile which was not re-graded seems to come from a massive species of dock which starts early and grows to way over my head. There is a lot of it growing in the wetter edges of the spoils area. There will be more popping up from seed. At least the dock will have roots spreading through the wetter portions of the ground which can stabilize it a bit if people try driving on it next year.
Photo 7
Dock rosettes waiting for a real thaw. These plants shoot up in the spring.
Photo 8
Prairie seed source? Weed source for shure!
A small portion of the original spoils pile created when the sanctuary was built was not redisturbed. It will serve as a primary seed source for the bare ground we now have exposed. Unfortunately the native grasses we seeded there didn’t take there very well. There are still large bare spots of clay where nothing grows on the subsoil extracted from the foundation area under our sanctuary and common rooms back when church construction began on this site.
To the south and west of the sanctuary, a grove of specimen white pine trees were commercially planted. Every one which was sited in the slight depression which channels runoff from the parking lot behind the dumpster has died or is dying. The tree pictured below was alive in 2002, but is now rapidly decaying.
Photo 9
Dead landscape white pine with orange fungus
I pulled off some of the loose bark and found the fungus hard at work.
Photo 10
Decomposing under the bark
The white pines which are still standing in the swale fed by parking lot runoff are not looking very good. One which was alive last season appears to have died completely this winter, and another which I thought was going to be OK last year is loosing a lot of needles.
Photo 11
Dead and Dying white pines
It saddens me to think about how much money members of our congregation have spent on landscape planting which has failed. We had 2 ½” diameter oaks and maples planted in little “cut outs” in our main parking lot. Almost all of them have died. There isn’t enough water for them and the heat reflected from the blacktop burns them up. In winter, salt poisons what little water may seep in. If we re-do the parking lot and want to have trees for shade, a lot more open ground is going to be needed to support trees within the confines of the parking area. Species selection is also going to be key. We’re going to need some tough trees if they’re to survive in and around the parking lots.
Photo 12
Crabapples…
This tree is along the eastern border of the