Oakological Succession

Posted on May 20, 2015 by paulmozina

What does the future hold for the Oak Savannas and Woodlands of Wisconsin? I left the 2015 Oak Savanna Alliance workshop last Saturday at Camp Timber-Lee with a decidedly unsettled feeling aka, cognitive dissonance. Am I fighting for another seemingly hopeless cause i.e., stopping the War On Drugs, or trying to get a real investigation into what happened on 9/11, when I volunteer my time and attention, my spiritual currency, to restore and preserve the oakosystems in the Kettle Moraine? Can, or rather, should, anything be done to prevent the oakological succession of the oak forests below the “tension zone” to mixed central and northern hardwood forests?

“Oak forests on medium- and high-productivity sites throughout the Midwest have been decreasing in extent for several decades. Historically, regeneration in these forests was facilitated by a periodic fire regime. Today, it is difficult to regenerate oaks on these nutrient-rich sites due to competition from native and nonnative plants that outcompete oak seedlings. Browsing by white-tailed deer also limits the survival and growth of oak seedlings. The lack of successful regeneration along with selective harvesting of mature oaks contribute to the gradual succession of oak forests to mixed central hardwoods, which includes species such as red and sugar maple, basswood, elms, green and white ash, and ironwood.” Wisconsin’s Forests 2004 United States Department of Agriculture

DNR Natural Area Conservation Biologist Matt Zine made an excellent presentation about the progress of the oak succession and the master planning process currently happening at the Lulu Lake SNA. But it appears, given the meager crumbs of financial support they get, that the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation should be renamed to the Museum of Natural Heritage Conservation. With an annual budget of around $5 million, supporting 33.5 full time employees (of which only a handful are working in southeastern Wisconsin), to manage the endangered resources on 673 State Natural Areas comprising 373,000 acres, they are hard-pressed to do more than save a few choice relics. Matt explained that they are 10 years behind when it comes to creating master plans for all of the SNAs, and that’s excluding the SNAs above the tension zone, which presumably do not contain any endangered resources, or stand to benefit from any formal management planning. We don’t know how many, or what percentage, of the SNAs below the tension zone have master plans. This limited perspective on our endangered resources ignores the other 5 million acres of publicly owned lands in the state as well as the privately held lands (approximately 29 million acres.)

Wetlands near Lulu Lake

Matt is the messenger and I’m having trouble with the message. Am I fighting Mother Nature when I cling to the ideal of the pre-settlement oak savannas and woodlands and work to restore something that can never be again? It’s not just the trees, it’s the oakosystems and the mystique of the Native Americans who nurtured and mastered a life sustaining and harmonious balance of flora and fauna. I fear that, if we don’t preserve the oak savannas and woodlands, we will loose forever the native wisdom accumulated over centuries, that they intrinsically and beautifully embody.

Thank goodness there are people like Eric Tarman-Ramcheck, Emily Stahl and Amanda Kutka, who organized the Oak Savanna Alliance Workshop, and Zach Kastern and Ginny Coburn, who share my passion for the oak savannas and woodlands of the Kettle Moraine! Zach and Ginny have been organizing volunteer workdays in the Southern Kettle Moraine in partnership with the DNR for three years now. Zach was awarded the Land Steward of the Year award by the Oak Savanna Alliance. Way to go Zach!

Zach receiving the award from Matt Zine.

The Buckthorn Man made a decent presentation baring his heart and soul while sharing his experiences volunteering for 20 years in the Kettle Moraine.

I’m plagued with doubts as I continue my efforts at The Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail: am I doing “The Right Thing” or am I fighting the natural succession? Is it wise to abandon the management practices of the people who lived here for thousands of years, which kept the natural succession in check?

On Tuesday May 12, I spent most of the day cutting garlic mustard with my brush cutter. I am observing that in the areas where I concentrated on cutting garlic mustard last year, there is significantly less this year and the plants that are present are typically 6-8″ tall, spindly, and with relatively few seeds. I am gaining confidence that the strategy of mowing garlic mustard can succeed by focusing on keeping it out of the “best” areas and then gradually expanding the no-GM zone.

The river is starting to make a head cut at the Hotel Spring bridge location where the DNR recently excavated (scroll down to the leprechaun image in this post for more details.)

The sun made a dramatic appearance late in the afternoon.

On Wednesday, May 13, I was back at it whacking garlic mustard and pulling water cress. I also spent some time weeding the spotted knapweed from the patches of lupine that are proliferating on the west slope of the sand prairie.

Sunset at Ottawa Lake.

On Saturday, May 16, Pati and I stopped at The Springs on the way home from the Oak Savanna Alliance Workshop to check out the lupine.

And finally, on Monday, May 18, I spent an absolutely beautiful spring day cutting garlic mustard, pulling water cress and digging out spotted knapweed.

I weeded quack grass and water cress from the Indian Springs.

In the late afternoon I joined Pat Witkowski and the Ice Age Trail Alliance “Monday Mudders” to do a little trail maintenance near the tower at Lapham Peak State Park.

Views from the tower.

See you at The Springs!

The Woot Of All Weevil

Posted on August 20, 2014 by paulmozina

I’ve had my hands full with spotted knapweed on the sand prairie, so I was curious when The Buckthorn Man said that his old hunting buddy, Elmer Fudd, might have a solution.

I was pretty skeptical, as you can image: Elmer knows a thing or two about wabbits, and wascals, it’s true, but knapweed?

Sometimes I can barely understanding Elmer, so when he described Cyphocleonus achates as “The Woot of all Weevil”, I had to scratch my head. Then, he challenged me to: “wook it up on the intewnet!” I brought up startpage, found Weed Busters BioControl, and before you could say “What’s Up Doc?”, I had my weevils.

Dick Jenks joined me as we wet weevil wun wild on the sand pwaiwie.

These little guys have a grip!

I’ve had a three day run at The Springs — beginning this past Sunday morning — every day spraying clopyralid on the black locust seedlings and resprouts that have emerged in the areas where Steve Tabat and his crew did major league black locust harvesting this past spring.

Ben Johnson joined me yesterday afternoon and helped me finish the area on the south end of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve property. When I told The Buckthorn Man, he said: “dude, I thought you were only going to spray stumps!” “Yeah, I know”, I told him, but I thought these seriously degraded areas were far enough away from the river that it would be ok.

When I told Lindsay Knudsvig that my hands were sore and blistered from pulling and digging spotted knapweed, he suggested I focus on pulling off the flowering seed heads, and I think that is the way to go for the rest of the season. The flower and root weevils we’ve released could take 3-4 years to increase and spread across the whole prairie, and I’m going to do the best I can stop the production of new knapweed seed in the meantime. Sunday I worked on the northwest side of the sand prairie…

… and on Monday, I worked on the northeast side (before and after pics below); I’m leaving the knapweed on the far south end of the prairie to the weevils.

Later, I got in some relaxing time at the marl pit bridge…

… and met some new friends from my old stomp’in grounds up in Hartland, WI.

The big bend.

The view from the Scuppernong Spring

The Indian Spring.

The Sand Prairie.

More views from the marl pit bridge.

The Buckthorn Man and I will be taking a working vacation at My Shangri-La for a week beginning this Friday, so stop in and surprise us i.e., bring your own.

See you at The Springs!

Reasoning With Weeds

Posted on August 16, 2014 by paulmozina

You can’t reason with weeds. Although they are knowledgeable about their environment and, they do seem to understand why they exist, and how to accomplish their goals, they are not capable of reasoning, because, unlike you or me, they can’t change their minds. Like cancer cells, all they can do is: proliferate, refuse to die, steal nutrients, and spread like crazy.

Kneeling in the Church of the Creator on the sand prairie at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail, digging and pulling spotted knapweed, hungry for someone to reason with, I called on the master, Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason is a profoundly stimulating and liberating work, and the world would be a better place if every man, woman and child would read or listen to it at least once a year.

All the knowledge man has of science and of machinery, by the aid of which his existence is rendered comfortable upon earth, and without which he would be scarcely distinguishable in appearance and condition from a common animal, comes from the great machine and structure of the universe. The constant and unwearied observations of our ancestors upon the movements and revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in what are supposed to have been the early ages of the world, have brought this knowledge upon earth. It is not Moses and the prophets, nor Jesus Christ, nor his apostles, that have done it. The Almighty is the great mechanic of the creation; the first philosopher and original teacher of all science. Let us, then, learn to reverence our master, and let us not forget the labors of our ancestors. The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine

This is the first summer I ever focused on weeds and, I’m happy to say, it hasn’t caused an identity crisis for The Buckthorn Man. Pulling weeds is a fine way to intimately connect with woodlands and prairies.

On Tuesday, August 12, I started the day with my brush cutter at the trailhead sprucing up the old buckthorn alley. It’s not an alley anymore, and the sunlight hitting the buckthorn seedlings, and the stumps we didn’t poison last winter, is causing explosive growth. I’m trying to decide whether to re-cut and poison these sprouts this fall, or, let them grow and wait for the DNR to burn the area again.

In the afternoon, I pulled spotted knapweed on the northwest end of the sand prairie. The ground was relatively wet and most of the plants came out root stem and all.

Before …

… and after

The sand prairie is looking better than it has in many years!

Later, after a refreshing bath and a little yoga on the marl pit bridge…

… I visited my favorite spots,

… and watched the sun set from the boat dock at Ottawa Lake.

Our deconstruction of the flumes just below the Scuppernong Spring was almost complete, save some old pipes and stakes that supported the structure.

Thursday morning was perfect for playing in the river, and I soon had them all dug out.

Here is the view of the spring just below the deck that Todd, Ben and I recently repaired.

The sand prairie is amazingly beautiful and every minute I spend pulling and digging spotted knapweed there is totally satisfying. I was ready for a cool dip after gardening in the sand all afternoon.

Anyone recognize this woodland flower?

Sunset at the marl pit bridge.

Despite blisters and sore hands, I was back at it on Friday, mowing weeds around the marl pit bridge and pulling burnweed along the cut-off trail, near the old marl factory.

I spent the afternoon on the sand prairie, in the church that is my mind, listening to Thomas Paine’s brilliant sermons, and digging spotted knapweed.

Later, I ran into my new friends Joe and Kellie, this time with their family, at the tail end their Ottawa Lake camping adventure. Peace.

See you at The Springs!

Sticking To My Weeding

Posted on August 11, 2014 by paulmozina

It’s mid-summer at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail and I’m sticking to my weeding.

The challenge of being an activist, and what caused me to take a break from that line of work and seek refuge at The Springs, lies in the fact that people make it their business not to know things, that would cause them to understand things, that would conflict with their strongly held beliefs. Before I get to my weeding, let me give you one quick example: people don’t want to know how the Twin Towers were constructed and what the laws of gravity dictate.

To do so would cause them to understand that, the only way the towers could destruct at the rate they did — free-fall acceleration — would be for something to remove the resistance of the steel frame structures.

Hmmmm… what could have done that? Who could have done it? I don’t recall NIST mentioning anything about this in their report. Come to think of it, neither did the 9/11 Commission. Never mind, I’m going to stick to my weeding…

One weed success story at The Springs is that we have kept burnweed from spreading. I spotted this aggressive invader last year and pulled all that I could find before it went to seed. The only place I’m seeing it this year is right off the trailhead in an area where we cleared buckthorn last winter.

I’ll get these pulled in the next few days.

We made significant impacts on: sow thistle, garlic mustard, Canadian fleabane, nodding thistle, bouncing bet, white campion, ragweed and others, with spotted knapweed being our biggest challenge. This past Thursday and Saturday afternoons I pulled spotted knapweed on the sand prairie. I’m not taking the time to dig the roots out now. If the stems break off while I pull them, that’s ok, at least the flowers won’t go to seed.

Before…

… and after.

I’ll probably resort to mowing the remaining knapweed flowers soon: except for the area on the south end of the prairie where I released the flower weevils (root weevils should be arriving any day now.)

I replaced or repaired a few boardwalk planks near the hotel spring bridge where forked aster are blooming…

… and over by the the no-name spring.

I’ve been seeing a great blue heron hunting in the river lately.

Thursday night was a bit sticky, and very buggy, so I sought out the wide open and relatively bug free shores of Ottawa Lake to watch the sunset.

Saturday morning I patrolled the banks of the Scuppernong River between the Scuppernong Spring and the Hotel Spring pulling sow thistle. Then I mowed the DNR 2-track access road on the south end of the property and cut pokeweed and fleabane that I missed last time.

These yellow composites on the cut-off trail are 12-15′ tall.

It was a pretty busy day at The Springs and I got a chance to play host and talk to a lot of people.

There is a lot of repetition in the scenes I shoot but I’m just trying to capture the changing seasons.

Another marl pit bridge sunset.

The perigee moon.

I went over to the boat launch on Ottawa Lake to get a better look at that moon.

Wish I’d been here as the sunset!

See you at The Springs!

Simplifying Life at The Springs

Posted on August 6, 2014 by paulmozina

Thank you, dear reader, for following my exploits here at The Springs. Long-time readers know that I’m an activist at heart; frustrated in my attempts to change the world. Why is that? I’ll let the over-quoted icons, George Orwell and Winston Churchill, explain:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

“History is written by the victors.”

“The great game” is being played constantly by the titans of finance and their minions in government. It’s one thing to become conscious of it and quite another to do something about it. I know, I’ve tried. And now, I’m taking refuge at The Springs. I’ll give it 7 years; I started in May, 2011. Yup, then I’m going to move on and change the world, but for now, I’m living the simple life at The Springs.

Indeed, things have gotten much simpler at The Springs: I don’t fret about the possible side effects to me and the environment from foliar spraying toxic poisons anymore, I gave up on the phragmites and narrow-leaved cattails that dominate the river valley (last year, I cut the tops off with a hedge cutter, which was a waste of time), and I let the life cycles of the many invasive plants dictate what I work on e.g., my highest priority now is pulling spotted knapweed before it goes to seed.

Last weekend I continued to clean up the area just downstream from the Scuppernong Spring, where we pulled up the flumes and support beams, and Ben Johnson and I kept it really simple pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie.

On Sunday, I got out the brush cutter and whacked many huge American Pokeweed plants that were flourishing on the south end of the trail. Although they are native, DNR trail boss, Don Dane, advised me to keep them out of The Springs. I cut a lot of Canadian Fleabane and tidied up the trail a bit on the south end. I pulled knapweed in the afternoon, which, I think, along with the frequent rains and the hand of the creator of course, is helping the sand prairie burst with blooms.

Yesterday, I called out the big guns i.e. the mighty arms of Rich Csavoy, to help me rebuild the sloping deck at the Indian Springs.

Rich picked the northwest corner of the deck to anchor and level the new foundation.

He moved like a cat.

We soon had a new foundation, set on pillars buried in the front and 6″x6″, 4′ beams recovered from the river, nestled in the hillside. Then we relaid the deck on top and replaced a few missing deck boards.

It makes a really nice place to sit and enjoy the Indian Springs. I wasn’t through with Rich yet, and I asked him to take a look at the cantilevers in the deck pedestals we recently build; there were some gaps between the supports and their loads.

After a few minutes of study, Rich selected a few choice shims from the nearby pile of flume scraps, and neatly toenailed the beams together. Thanks Rich, you taught me a lot! And, before I forget, thanks again to Big Jim Davee for kick-starting our boardwalk and deck rebuilding efforts.

We had a 4′ section of boardwalk left over from the deck rebuilding effort at the Scuppernong Spring and Ben suggested we place it on the riverbank near the decks we recently moved to the place I call, for now, the no-name springs.

It’s a nice pedestal for river viewing.

Celebrations are in order! After two failed seasons in a row, our resident Sandhill Cranes have successfully raised 2 chicks to robust young adults.

Ahhh, the simple life.

See you at The Springs!

Friendberry Jam

Posted on August 1, 2014 by paulmozina

I don’t remember the words, but I’ll never forget the way I felt when Todd sang his song “Friendberry Jam” to me. Just imagine how sweet and delicious it was. We’ve been friends — going on 35 years — since we roomed together in that basement closet on Humboldt Avenue, just a bit north of Brady Street, in Milwaukee’s hip “East Side”.

We lived for music, and it seemed so simple and obvious at the time that, if you did what you loved, you would be forever satisfied. It’s true. I know it, and feel it every time I come to The Springs.

My old friend Todd Nelson, who works as a finish carpenter in San Francisco, was passing through town and I jumped at the chance to enlist him to help me rebuild a deck near the Scuppernong Spring. He was willing and able and, after I picked him up from the airport and he got settled at our place, we headed out to The Springs. Ben Johnson promised to join us after work and I was feeling pretty confident that we could get the job done.

Over the years the end of this deck has slouched into the springs and it’s pretty slippery when wet.

I was an eager apprentice as Todd taught me the tricks of the trade and how to think about solutions to problems like this. After an hour of musing and discussing, we agreed on the plan and, while I cut the 18′ oak beams we recently harvested from the river into quarters, Todd performed the deconstruction.

Ben arrived as Todd made the finishing touches refitting the top section of the boardwalk, and he sparked us into high gear. A coworker just gave Ben a laser level, but watching him excavate and build the support platforms was enough to convince me that he can do pretty well without one. I was amazed that none of the 4 platforms he constructed needed any tweaking after it was laid.

We may have to put some railings on this deck!

Thanks Todd and Ben for your extraordinary efforts and thanks especially to Todd, for spreading us with Friendberry Jam.

We relocated our vehicles at the main parking lot on Hwy ZZ, preparatory to bathing at the marl pit bridge, and I saw our good friend, Andy Buchta, piling the last of the buckthorn I recently cut.

Thanks Andy!

We had a refreshing, and relatively bug-free, time watching the sun go down.

I’ve been busy this past week, and on Monday I spent the morning cleaning up the debris from our recent excavation of the oak beams from the riverbed. Below you can make out the edge of the one beam we left in the river, creating a nice bend where the dead straight flume had run.

The edge of the flume was built over a substantial stone base and I dug out an opening to allow the water to carve its thalweg around the bend.

I pulled spotted knapweed all afternoon and that darn stuff is causing me to break out in nasty red blotches or bumps that make me scratch like a hound dog. The bugs were driving me crazy as well, so I escaped to the shores of Ottawa Lake to watch the sun go down.

On Wednesday my spotted knapweed weevils arrived! Because of the super fast response I got from the DNR, my permit was ready in time for Kandace, at Weedbusters, to send me the flower weevils (the root weevils will be available in a few weeks). Look at those hungry critters!

Dinner is served!

Yes, yes, be fruitful and multiply!

Long-time followers of this blog know that I’m a big fan of audiobooks and I can’t recommend this superbly rendered version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin highly enough. Here, take a listen as George and Eliza contemplate the meaning of freedom and liberty as the Canadian shore looms ahead.

Peace.

See you at The Springs!

Big Jim Steps Up and Out

Posted on July 27, 2014 by paulmozina

Even the Buckthorn Man looks like a shrimp next to Big Jim Davee.

Jim is a thoughtful, compassionate, gentle giant, with a visionary streak and the energy and motivation to make his dreams come true. Like most people who hike the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail, Jim noticed that the boardwalk at the Hatching House Spring (just around the corner from the Hotel Spring) was falling apart and potentially hazardous.

So he contacted Paul Sandgren and Anne Korman, the Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent respectively, of the Southern Unit — Kettle Moraine State Forest, describing the situation, and they promptly delivered materials to the site we needed to repair the boardwalk. Jim contacted The Buckthorn Man and Ben Johnson, and we setup a workday for Saturday July 26.

Big Jim drives it home.

We recycled all of the deck boards!

As we evaluated how to integrate our newly constructed boardwalk with the existing boardwalks on either side, we all concluded that these boardwalks were serving no purpose. They were sitting on hard packed, bone dry, trail with no evidence of spring water moving under them from the hillside above. I gave Anne Korman a call, and she took a break from helping out at the triathlon taking place next store at Ottawa Lake, to come over and confirm our conclusion. She agreed, and we re-purposed the two boardwalks at the unnamed springs, located between the Hatching House and Emerald Springs, replacing one of the decks that was completely dilapidated and adding another boardwalk over a previously uncovered wet area leading to the springs.

Thanks for being our leader on this project Jim! Not only did Jim step up but he is also stepping out on the biggest adventure of his life!

On Sunday July 27, 2014 I’m going to begin an ” adventure of a lifetime.” I’m going to backpack solo from Madison to St. Croix, Wisconsin along The Ice Age National Scenic Trail. My goal is to reach St. Croix by the middle of August and to join a Mobile Skills Crew with the IANST. Afterwards I’ll hike up to Duluth Minnesota and hike the Superior Trail. During the winter I will continue my adventures preferable in the South. Next year March 2015 I’m planning on hiking solo North on The Appalachian National Scenic Trail. I will cover over 2,000 miles in about 6 months. My long term goals are to obtain the title The Triple Crown, hence my email mytriplecrown.2017. The four digits represent the year I want to finish them. The triple crown is made up of The Appalachian Trail, The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, and The Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. Please follow me right here on Facebook for all the latest news and updates about my journey.

Go for it Jim!

If that was all we got done yesterday, I would still categorize it as a great day, but Ben and I were determined to finish removing the huge oak beams that bisected the river just downstream from the Scuppernong Spring, and I wanted to promptly return the DNR Fisheries Team’s “jetter pump”.

There were five beams remaining and get got after it with controlled fury. Ben is, at least, twice as strong as The Buckthorn Man, and he single-handedly ripped a few of the beams from their moorings. Thanks again to DNR Fisheries Technician, Steve Gospoderek, for suggesting the “jetter pump” as the right tool for the job, and to the DNR for loaning us the equipment.

The new thalweg through this stretch of the river will become much more evident in the weeks to come.

I’m trying to catch up on the weeding at The Springs and spent last Thursday and Friday pulling Sow Thistle and Spotted Knapweed.

Sow Thistle likes it wet and was prevalent in the areas around the Indian Spring and along the river from Scuppernong Spring down to the Hotel Spring. The knapweed is dominant (not for long!) on the Sand Prairie.

I got my permit to move live biological control agents from the DNR and should be getting flower weevils delivered next week. The root weevils will be arriving in August.

Thursday and Friday were mostly cloudy but yesterday Ben and I were treated to bright sunshine as we relaxed at the Marl Pit bridge after a grueling day’s effort.

The view from the Gaging Station Bridge looking east.

We barely made it back to the marl pits after touring The Springs to catch the sunset.

See you at The Springs!

Free the Scuppernong River

Posted on July 18, 2014 by paulmozina

For thousands of years the Scuppernong River ran free, cutting its path across the bed of the old Glacial Lake Scuppernong per the laws of nature.

In the 1870s Talbot Dousman established a trout hatchery at the headwaters of the river at the Scuppernong Springs, temporarily subjecting the river to the laws of man. The trout farmers engineered the river with multiple levees, dams and flumes eventually leaving the headwaters submerged under two ponds.

I’ve been getting intimately familiar with the river, you might say, “getting in bed” with it, literally running my fingers through the muck searching for the original riverbed. As I removed the planks that formed the flumes, I discovered that the river is bisected by 10 huge 6×8″ beams 16′ long.

While the river was under the ponds, a lot of silt and marl migrated into the riverbed and, as we can see above, was trapped behind the beams. This past Wednesday, Ben Johnson and I removed the first of these beams, the one shown above that points to the left, and we also removed more planks from the flume and other wood structures where the flumes began.

Ben and I are very excited about giving mother nature a free hand to restore the natural riverbed in this area by removing the remaining 9 beams. Free the Scuppernong River!

Pati and I took a short vacation last week up at the Chippewa Flowage to relax and do some paddling and biking. The area is beautiful and we looked forward to exploring it. Pati found the excellent documentary below about how the flowage was created, and it was disturbing to see yet another case of the native tribes being steam rolled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As we paddled different areas of the flowage, I kept thinking of how beautiful it must have been before the dam was put in, and the native way of life in the Chippewa River Valley was destroyed forever.

I was eager to get back to The Springs and on Monday, July 14, I spent the morning cutting weeds like Bouncing Bet (shown below), Nodding Thistle and Canadian Fleabane on the sand prairie.

In the afternoon I got into the river and removed more of the planking that formed the flumes just below the Scuppernong Spring (see pictures above), and I discovered the 10, huge beams, bisecting the river.

Happily exhausted, I watched the sun set and imagined the river set free.

On Wednesday, I “mowed” the trail from the area around the hotel spring, north up to signpost #13, and then, following the cut-off trail, to the marl pits. I cut a lot of thistle that was about to go to seed and tons of white clover near the marl pits with my brush cutter, which is a lot more handy than a mower for stepping off the trail to get the nearby weeds.

In the afternoon, I cleaned up the area where I removed planks from the river. Some of the oak planks are in relatively good shape and might make interesting components in some artwork. I plan to revisit the stacks and reclaim some choice pieces. You are welcome to do the same. I asked Ben to bring his cordless reciprocating saw thinking we could cut notches in the beams to create gaps for the river to flow through. That was a bad idea and Ben quickly concluded that we needed to dig the beams out. It took the two of us over an hour to remove the beam shown in the picture above, but I think the process will go faster in the future now that we know what we are up against.

Yesterday I returned to The Springs to cut some buckthorn and pull spotted knapweed and found that Andy Buchta had completed piling all the brush near the parking lot on Hwy ZZ. Thanks Andy!

I wanted to finish a strip of buckthorn that separated an area we opened up last Fall from the area near the parking lot that we cleared this Spring shown above.

I had to deal with some technical difficulties with my stump sprayer and chainsaw, its been a while since I cut buckthorn, but I got it done.

I spent the afternoon pulling knapweed on the sand prairie. Although the knapweed is starting to flower, there is a window of opportunity to continue pulling it before it sets seed. Assuming I won’t get it all pulled, I’ll use the brush cutter to mow the remainder (except for the areas dedicated to introducing weevils.) The problem is that its impossible to cut the knapweed without also cutting the surrounding native plants, so I’m trying to pull as much as possible. The good news is that I sent in my permit to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, which I got from Weed Busters, and I should be receiving my Cyphocleonus Achates knapweed root weevils soon. We’ll get the Larinus Minutus Obtusis flower weevils next year (that is how they recommend doing it).

Steve (third from the left below), and his Ecology class from UW Madison, stopped on their tour to say hello as I was wrestling with the knapweed. Did you take a drink of the marvelous spring water?

It’s buggy as hell now at The Springs and my bug net is constantly at the ready. So be prepared if you come out…

See you at The Springs!

Watercress Bio-Logs

Posted on June 22, 2014 by paulmozina

It’s been a week of dodging rain and catching rays at The Springs; mostly the former. It’s really wet out there and it’s going to be like a steam bath when the summer heat finally arrives.

On Wednesday, June 18, I waited in my truck for the rain to stop and got in some uninhibited practice on my recorder. I still sound really bad, but I’m learning my way around the instrument and it’s fun to make sounds. When the rain finally stopped I mowed the DNR 2-track access road on the south end of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve with my brush cutter; not the most efficient tool, but dragging a mower out there is a lot of work too.

I followed up on my efforts last week at the Indian Springs by transplanting a few of the sedges that are growing downstream into the area where I pulled quack grass and watercress, just to see what it would take. If you have not visited the Indian Springs in a while, you will be surprised by the new look. There was a shelf of peat/mud/clay around 20 yards downstream from the deck at the main springs that created a little waterfall about a foot high, and I removed this material. So now the outflow stream has found it’s natural bed in stone and sand and the water table has fallen to this new level in the upper area where the main springs emerge. Now we can proceed with the transplants, and hopefully, sometime this summer, replace the deck.

I pulled and dug a ton of spotted knapweed, hoary alyssum and hawksbeard from the sand prairie in the afternoon. Lindsay Knudsvig and John Hrobar both informed me that there are weevils that attack spotted knapweed and I do need to follow up on introducing them on the sand prairie.

On Thursday, June 19, we had a date with the DNR Fisheries team to observe them performing an elevation study at the hotel springs bridge, but the weather was dicey and they decided to reschedule. I’m hoping they will also study the elevation at the two little foot bridges that are upstream of the emerald spring, as they seem to have the same profile, i.e. a place were an embankment formerly dammed the river and where marl and sand have collected in the riverbed upstream (symptoms of the river not making a natural headcut.) These are locations where humans intervened with the natural lay of the land that we need to put right.

Pati is back from her adventure in South Africa and we had another mission that day to do our monthly river monitoring on the Scuppernong River, where it crosses Hwy Z, just west of forest headquarters. Pati spent 9 years as a research assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin and she really enjoyed doing a little science in the river!

On the way home, the sun was shining and we stopped at The Springs to take a walk and there we ran into a team from the USGS recalibrating the measuring devices at the gaging station. I forgot to get their names but they were very friendly and thoroughly explained what they were doing.

The consistency of the measurements are vulnerable to any changes in the river’s profile; moving rocks around, or even a bloom of underwater foliage a few feet downstream, can throw off the calibration.

Friday, June 20, I was back at The Springs with watercress on my mind. It was three years ago that Lindsay and I attempted to clear out the watercress that was damming the river and it has come back vigorously since then forming new dams. We started naively thinking we could actually get rid of the watercress, so we pulled out as much as we could, from bank to bank, and heaved it up and out of the river forming huge piles. This released the river’s flow to the pull of gravity and significantly lowered the water table in the whole upper valley (from the Scuppernong Springs down to the old barn site.)

This time around, I decided to try something new. After learning more about how the DNR Fisheries team used bio-logs to shape the river’s course, I thought of using the watercress to form natural bio-logs. When I put my hands down in the riverbed and began to pull up the thick carpet of watercress roots, I realized I could just roll it over and pin it behind the stakes that were still in place from the effort the DNR made years ago to install bio-logs and stick bundles.

This approach addresses the fact that brook trout need bugs and cover. Leaving the watercress on the perimeter of the river, creates a natural shelf the fish can hide under, and, in a few weeks, new growth from the watercress will again cover the river providing shade and a source of bugs. The difference is that now the watercress root system will not be clogging the main channel of the river. Of course, it will grow back into the channel and again have to be rolled out, but each time a layer of marl and mud will come with it deepening the main channel. Well, enough talk, here is what it looks like now. As far as the long-term results, we’ll have to see.

Looking downstream from the first footbridge below the Scuppernong Spring.

Just as we saw back in 2012, the water level fell by 2-3 inches after the watercress dams were removed

I think keeping an open channel will also compliment the DNR’s efforts to adjust the elevation of the river and produce a headcut. My good friend John Hrobar, who spent his career working with water and studying it’s movement and behavior in complex ecosystems, totally disagrees with this approach and we have had many intense discussions about it. I invite John to explain his position and rational either in a comment to this post or in a separate post.

In fact, later that afternoon, I ran into John and Sue Hrobar on the sand prairie as I was pulling spotted knapweed. They pointed out a few new plants they had not seen before:

Clasping Milkweed.

Last year, John pointed out that I was cutting all the purple prairie clover in my zeal to cut flowering spotted knapweed. I was happy to show that I learned my lesson, and now we are poised for an explosion of purple.

Flowering Spurge.

The sun came out in its solstice fullness and it turned into a hot summer day for a couple hours.

On Saturday, June 21, I joined Jared Urban and the State Natural Areas volunteers at the Bluff Creek SNA to girdle aspen. We worked on the area marked in red below on an aspen clone that they started working on last month. We focused on the little aspen that were spreading out into the prairie.

Zach Kastern showing Jack and Brandon where to go…

… and how to do it.

Jack, Zach, Brandon, Jerry, Jared and Ginny.

I left shortly after noon to girdle aspen back at The Springs but Zach, Jared and Ginny stayed to finish the job and pull some sweet clover and parsnip while they were at it. It was an excellent learning experience for me and I realized that I needed to follow up on the aspen girdling I did last year to make sure the clonal colonies were completely killed.

See you at The Springs!

SEWRPC Surveys The Springs

Posted on June 15, 2014 by paulmozina

I love to landscape the landscape at the Scuppernong Springs. This distinguished tract of land deserves our love and attention for the sake of its beauty. So please, come out and help me dig a little spotted knapweed from the sand prairie!

The lay of the land at The Springs was evoked beautifully by John Muir, in his classic: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, and I had to pinch myself last night as I walked alone behind the Scuppernong Spring and thought: ‘this is my garden’.

I’m intrigued by how others experience my garden.

Here is a great image from Landscape Photographer Byron S. Becker: “The photograph was taken in the spring of 2008 along Suppernong River near sundown. The camera was a 4×5 with a 90mm lens, using TriX 320 film and the exposure was 2 minutes; the developer was Pyronal.”

Below is an example of Kristen Westlake’s Fine Art Photography. You can see more of her images of The Springs, and all of her other outstanding work, here.

I had a wonderful week of beautiful weather for landscape gardening at The Springs! Last Monday, June 9th, I tried something new, per the advice of Jared Urban, and burned the first-year garlic mustard off the cut-off trail with my blow torch. Below is where the cut-off trail joins the main trail at signpost #13.

And after…

I got the worst patches and now the trail is officially “burned in” as Don Dane would say. I spent the afternoon digging spotted knapweed from the sand prairie and was glad to have Ben Johnson’s help with this seemingly Sisyphean task. We focused on cleaning up the lupine patches.

On Friday, June 13, I was joined by Dan Carter, Senior Biologist with The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC). Dan was continuing SEWRPC’s ongoing effort to document the vegetation at The Springs and invited me to come along.

SEWRPC has divided The Springs into 4 areas for their vegetation surveys:

1) The dry prairie at the springs (aka, the Indian Campground)
2) The dry woods
3) The springs, immediately adjacent wetlands, and upper reaches of the creek
4) The fen and sedge meadow in the vast open area immediately to the west (includes trench where marl was mined).

The first three areas listed above are located in the blue circle on the right below and the fourth is in the larger blue circle to the left. Click the links above to view SEWRPC’s preliminary vegetation surveys.

As we walked through Buckthorn Alley on our way to the hotel spring, Dan and I stopped frequently to make notes and take pictures. Dan recently completed his PhD in Biology at Kansas State University and he has a wealth of knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Here are just a few of plants he identified.

Be careful at The Springs! Poison Hemlock.

Bulrush

Forked Aster, a state threatened plant!

Valerian

Horsetail

We visited the Ottawa Lake Fen State Natural Area and Dan showed me two new springs that I had never seen before. They emerge from the east side of the wetlands and you can find them by walking across the fen from campsite #334 towards the north until you come across their outflow channels.

Of course, there were lots of interesting plants here too.

Bracken Fern

Lake Sedge

And the carnivorous Pitcher Plant

Thanks Dan, for showing me around the place I love!

I spent the afternoon pulling and digging spotted knapweed on the sand prairie. There is a bumper crop of this noxious invader!

A soothing sunset at Ottawa Lake.

A “Honey” moon at the Lapham Peak Tower.

I had the pleasure of spending yesterday, June 14, at my favorite spot again.

The Indian Spring is being quickly overrun by quack grass and water cress so I spent the morning pulling these invasive plants. Before…

… and after.

Then I moved up the hill to the sand prairie and continued pulling and digging spotted knapweed. It’s going to take years to get rid of this stuff unless I get a whole lot of help.

Speaking of which, my good friend Carl Baumann, who has been harvesting black locust on the south end of the trail, split all of the logs in my woodpile setting the stage for some cozy fires at My Shangri-La. Thanks Carl!