Nature is my refuge, it’s been my Bridge Over Troubled Waters ever since I was a boy growing up in a family of 12, and now no less since I’ve become aware of the truth about how the world really works. I feel a bit selfish spending so much time at The Springs; shouldn’t I be doing something to stop the U.S. intervention in Syria, or, nurturing my gardens at home?
The world “out there” is never far from mind when I’m at my Scuppernong Springs Refuge. I felt comforted and protected there yester-Sun-day morning and, as the day progressed, I calmed down a little.
I started the day in the lower meadow cutting cattails and purple loosestrife. I have seen loosestrife eating beetles and their effects at The Springs; nevertheless, this will be a bumper year for the purple invader.
As I was walking along the south side of the river in the lower meadows heading back to my truck, I had to stop and appreciate how beautiful it was (sorry, the video is blurry for the first couple seconds, while the camera focuses.)
I’m cleaning up my “to do list” — last time it was girdling black locust — and there was some brush I cut back in the spring between the cut-off trail and the river that I needed to get piled (note, I mistakenly refer to the upper meadows at the beginning of the video, s/b lower meadows.)
There is one more place that needs piling and I’m chomp’in at the bit to start whacking buckthorn again. Meanwhile, I spent the afternoon pulling and digging weeds, mostly spotted knapweed on the sand prairie. I’m seeing tons of young lupine plants on the western slope of the north side of the prairie and, in many cases, I was able to dig out the knapweed leaving the lupine unmolested, which was very satisfying.
Later, I took a walk around the trail and captured these images of the lower meadow
After a cloudy day, the sun came out just in time for me to take a dip in the river and do a bit of yoga at the marl pit bridge. I got these parting shoots as the clouds thickened again.
Usually you’ll find me in the mountains this time of year, when they are gentle and uncrowded. This year I’m looking forward to experiencing the waning days of summer right here at home — at the Scuppernong Springs.
I’m taking liberties at The Springs including attempting to transition the cattail and phragmities dominated marshes that border the river into wet meadows, which will encompass a wider diversity of flora and fauna. The upper meadows (shown in blue below) are along the river valley upstream of the sawmill site #12 and the lower meadows (in red) are downstream from there to the gaging station bridge #5.
The upper meadows
It was a beautiful summer day at The Springs yesterday and I got started with a project that has been on my mind for some time i.e., re-girdling the black locust trees on the south end of the loop trail. Some years ago the DNR hired a person to girdle the trees in this area and they did approximately 200 of them before committing suicide (he did not mention the black locust trees being a motivating factor in his last note). Unlike this unhappy forester, many of the trees survived despite being deeply wounded. I re-girdled around 40 trees and added a new girdle to another 20 or so.
There is a vernal pool inside the south end of the loop trail just below the trees shown in the beginning of the video above that was filling in with phragmities, reed canarygrass and Japanese knotweed and I spent some time with the hedge trimmer cutting the flowering seed heads from these invasive plants. Then I headed over to the west edge of the lower meadows at the gaging station bridge to cut some cattails. Below are before and after videos, and again, I was able to cut above most of the flowering heads of the aster, golden rod and joe pye weed.
I almost finished before the hedge trimmer jammed. Then I headed up to the south end of the sand prairie and dug out spotted knapweed for a couple hours and finally finished the day pulling Japanese knotweed on the hillside just south of the Indian Springs. It was a great day to stop and enjoy the sky, the breeze and the summer flowers that are approaching their peak color.
I spent another blissful day at The Springs yesterday contemplating the age old question: “Why am I here?” It’s the labor of love, and I know who to thank. Imitating Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations:
From my grandfather Verus I learned good morals and the government of my temper. From the reputation and remembrance of my father, modesty and a manly character. From my mother, piety and beneficence, and abstinence, not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich. From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.
From Mike and Yvonne Fort (Friends of Lapham Peak), I learned what a labor of love is, and that has made all the difference.
I’ll never forget the time, almost 20 years ago, I was wandering the trails behind the Ice Age Trail Alliance storage barn at Lapham Peak, modestly intoxicated, playing The Battle of Evermore on Pati’s mandolin, when I saw Mike and Yvonne pulling sweet clover from a prairie they were restoring. As Lau Tzu said, “The longest journey begins with a single step”, and their vision, manifest in the prairies and oak woodlands of Lapham Peak State Park, inspired me to take the first step in discovering my own labor of love.
One last thought from Marcus Aurelius — who was probably one of the most powerful men to have ever walked the face of the earth — I heard from John Taylor Gatto in The Ultimate History Lesson: “Nothing you can buy with your money is worth having, and no one you can boss around with your power is worth associating with.”
It was a misty morning and I lingered at the Hotel Spring before heading up the trail, past the old barn site, to meet a fallen red oak or two. Keeping a trail clear can be challenging and is always gratifying.
This one wasn’t blocking the trail yet, and, since I was all geared up for it, I took it out too.
On my way back to the truck I passed by the bend in the river across from the old barn site and decided to cut the cattails in this area too, given the excellent results we see in the “upper meadows“.
Before and after video perspectives below.
Then I headed over to the Indian Springs to tangle with Japanese Knotweed, which, per Don Dane, is growing like crazy all over the Kettle Moraine State Forest Southern Unit.
I see the wisdom in Jason Dare‘s advice to focus on herbaceous weeds for as long in the growing season as makes sense. I’ll be pulling Japanese Knotweed for another week at least and this is one that I definitely need to learn how to identify in the early spring when it first appears.
It was a cool evening and I was glad to leave the bug net in my pocket.
The valley along the Scuppernong River headwaters is starting to look more like a meadow and less like a marsh since we began working there in May, 2011. The marsh was screened by a curtain of buckthorn, willow, dogwood and black cherry, and dominated by cattails and phragmities in its interior. Thickly overgrown watercress damned the river causing it to overflow and saturate the valley. Aspen clones established themselves over the old hotel site and all the way up both sides of the river. Left unattended, this is what had evolved “naturally” since the hotel burned down in 1972 and the ponds were drained in 1992; a far cry from the state in which the Sauk, Ho Chunk and Potawatomi peoples maintained it, I’m sure.
Consider the mix of random and deterministic effects at play; the acts of man and the laws of nature. We homo sapiens (wise man) are in charge, capable of altering the course of nature, but deferring to nature’s laws for the outcome manifest. I’ve chosen, with a little help from my friends, to intervene in the course that nature had been set on by the random acts of man. We cut the brush around the perimeter, unplugged the river, cut the cattail and phragmites, girdled the aspen and burned the place.
Yesterday I finished cutting the cattail and phragmites seed heads in the river valley south of the old hotel site and the fruits of our labors can be seen in the Scuppernong Springs Meadows. I got a chance to literally walk across every square foot of the valley and see the amazing diversity of plants that have emerged and note the many, many small, unnamed springs and seeps that will keep this meadow on the wet side. I hope you get a chance to visit The Springs soon and see the wonderful displays of color in the wet meadow and sand prairie.
Here is the view of the last patch of phragmites.
And after I cut it (watch full screen if you want to see the butterflies).
Then I got after the cattail jungle north of the footbridge in the former lower pond.
After.
Marlin Johnson, retired UW Waukesha biology teacher and currently resident manager at the UW Waukesha Field Station, warned that the cut ends of the cattail and phragmites can take root. I’ll be monitoring the results to verify.
Then I went to the sand prairie to continue pulling weeds, mostly spotted knapweed, this time armed with a little garden shovel to get the roots out. It’s going to take years to get rid of the weeds, but it’s starting to look pretty good.
I mentioned last time that I had named the Hatching House Springs, per their physical location which corresponded to #9 in the trail brochure map, and that I now know where the Old Hatching House actually was and the correct location of the Hatching House Springs. This video will help you place it.
I took a dip at the Marl pit bridge and practiced a bit of yoga and deep, conscious breathing, while enjoying the views.
Your mind is garden soil; carefully fertilized and sown with the right seed it is capable of growing something beautiful. I just finished reading 1491, by Charles C. Mann, per recommendation of the “keeper of the springs”, John Hrobar. Its New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, chronicle the incredible legacies of the indigenous, native, peoples of the Americas north, central and south, in a way that, like a superb mulching legume, “fixed” the oxygen feeding my brain allowing new conceptions to take root. Thanks John (below on the left, in a literal sense only of course).
The earth was their garden and they worked the soil and landscape to suit their purposes, which, per a deep understanding of Natural Law, were typically in harmony with the Will of Nature’s God; The Creator. Those cultures that violated natural law, e.g. the non-aggression principle, eventually fell to the murderous onslaught of their “neighbors”. Cultures that recklessly harvested the earth’s bounty in the same rapacious way we often see around us today, i.e. coal river mountain, failed as well. Without a doubt however, the main decimators of the Native American populations were the infectious diseases that accompanied the pale faced European Invasive Species.
Politically, they reached their apex in the Five Nations confederation of the Haudenosaunee, of whom Cadwallader Colden, vice governor of New York and adoptee of the Mohawks said, they had “such absolute Notions of Liberty, that they allow of no Kind of Superiority of one over another, and banish all Servitude from their Territories.” This is the heirloom seed we need to sow and nurture in our brains!
The book helped me reconcile the fact that my work at The Springs is not sustainable. The restoration of the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve, indeed, the whole Scuppernong River Habitat Area, will always need the hands of caring people to cultivate its natural beauty.
I spent a care-full day at The Springs last Friday pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie and trimming cattail and phragmities seed heads in the valley along the Scuppernong River headwaters.
Join me on a stroll through the sand prairie before we get started.
I’m encountering a lot of stubby spotted knapweed that I cut with the brush cutter back in July to prevent from going to seed. The scope of the invasion is thorough in some areas and will probably require hand to root combat with shovels and forks to defeat. It’s not sustainable, but I’m determined to give it my best effort; this is my garden.
Here is what the west side of the Scuppernong River, just across from the observation deck, looked like after I did a little pruning with my hedge cutter.
Later I took a walk around the loop trail to admire the new sign posts that correspond to the Scuppernong Springs Trail Brochure that Melanie, Tara and Jim finished installing last week. Nice work! It motivated me to take another look at Robert Duerwachter’s wonderful book THE PONDS OF THE SCUPPERNONG, and I noticed the real location of the Old Hatching House. I added a new blue #9 on the map below that conforms with the maps shown on pages 155-156 of Robert’s book (shown below) and conforms as well to the old foundation, infrastructure and spring physically at that location.
Ron Kurowski supplied these maps to Robert.
When Lindsay, Pati and I uncovered the springs that begin to flow right at the location corresponding to the old #9 on the map above, I thought, per the description in the trail brochure, that this was the site of the Old Hatching House, hence The Hatching House Springs. Here is a good look at the Old Hatching House site and the Real Hatching House Springs, which just began flowing again this past June. (I make an incorrect reference to the Emerald Spring at the end of the video.)
We’ll have to come up with another name for the set of springs that I previously referred to as The Hatching House Springs. Any suggestions?
What is truth? Mark Passio says it is: “That which is; that which has actually undergone the actuality of occurring.” To know and understand the truth and communicate it with others is one definition of The Great Work. I have benefited tremendously in my personal quest to know the truth from studying the work of Mark Passio, at What On Earth Is Happening, and Richard Grove, at Tragedy and Hope and the Peace Revolution Podcast. Mark introduced me to the principles of Natural Law and explained the true difference between right and wrong. Richard reintroduced me to philosophy, the love of wisdom, and showed me how to apply critical thinking in my daily life. So I was very excited to consume the fruits of their collaboration via this wide ranging discussion, where they intersect their respective life’s work and boil it down to the essence: The Great Work. Hear them out, you won’t be disappointed.
Meanwhile, last Saturday, back at The Springs, I continued to pursue my modest version of The Great Work pulling and slashing weeds on the Sand Prairie. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and I think my immune system is getting the upper hand on borrelia burgdorferi.
Melanie and Tara arrived just as I was starting to pull spotted knapweed.
They were joined shortly thereafter by Jim, who was carrying a new sign post for the Indian Spring. I was so busy the rest of the day, I never got a chance to checkout the final touches they made to the new set of trail signs.
I pulled spotted knapweed for a couple hours and moved on to the purple nightshade that is overrunning the hillside on the south end of the loop trail. The DNR 2-track access road that merges with the trail there was getting pretty overgrown, so I “mowed” it with the brush cutter and then spent the afternoon cutting weeds on the west edge of the sand prairie.
I’m trying to keep a huge batch of weed seeds from maturing and being blown up onto the sand prairie.
I’m still thinking about the fate of the Scuppernong River where it crosses Hwy 106, a bit north and west of Palmyra, and I went there to get a water sample for Doctor’s Data Inc. to perform a heavy metals analysis on. I already have the results from the Scuppernong Spring and there are no detectable traces of any heavy metals at the source of the Scuppernong River.
I parked at the boat launch at the Prince’s Point Wildlife Area, put my chest waders on, and walked upstream crossing the first two drainage ditches from Steel Brook, and continuing past the confluence of the Bark River, which was very hard to identify from the south bank of the Scuppernong.
I’m riding a lymes roller coaster physically, mentally and emotionally frequently checking in with myself; how do I feel? The doxycycline antibiotic helped with the more acute symptoms and now I’m working on next steps with Dr. Norm Schwartz and we’re seeking consultation from Dr. Robert Waters as well (see this interesting story about Dr. Waters for more on lymes and the insurance industry). There is nothing like a day at The Springs to help me forget about it.
I was reminded yesterday of the wonderful opportunity we all have to nurture the land and, more specifically, how lucky I am to be realizing my vision for the landscape at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve and Trail. This article from Wisconsin Trails includes a wonderful quote from John Muir that has inspired me ever since I first read it on a sign at the Hartland Marsh Ice Age Wetland trail head.
A year before his death, John published “The Story of My Boyhood and Youth,” in which he wrote extensively of his time at the farm and his adventures there:
“Our beautiful lake, named Fountain Lake by father, but Muir’s Lake by the neighbors, is one of the many small glacier lakes that adorn the Wisconsin landscapes. It is fed by twenty or thirty meadow springs about half a mile long, half as wide, and surrounded by low finely-modeled hills dotted with oak and hickory, and meadows full of grasses and sedges and many beautiful orchids and ferns. First there is a zone of green, shining rushes, and just beyond the rushes a zone of white and orange water-lilies fifty or sixty feet wide forming a magnificent border. On bright days, when the lake was rippled by a breeze, the lilies and sun-spangles danced together in radiant beauty, and it became difficult to discriminate between them.”
The valley along the Scuppernong River headwaters is transitioning from a brush encircled, phragmities and cattail filled marsh, to an open, wet meadow, alive with grasses, rushes, sedges and flowers of all kinds. Thanks to Lindsay Knudsvig for the many volunteer hours he contributed last year to making this happen.
I was at it again yesterday pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie and purple nightshade on the south end of the loop trail and using my hedge cutter to lop off the flowering tops of the cattails and phragmites. In most cases the seed heads were just above the height of the flowers emerging from below so I was able to leave the later undisturbed. Hopefully, I have my phenology right, and the phragmites and catails will not set seed again before the winter.
The Sand Prairie was lovely as I pulled spotted knapweed (pics and video courtesy of my iphone since I forgot the camera).
I started with the hedge cutter at the Scuppernong Spring, at the south end of the valley, and worked my way north on both sides of the river up to the spur trail that leads to the Hidden Spring, and then focused on the east side of the valley. I covered a lot more ground than I thought possible and that is really encouraging.
Last Saturday’s effort on the north end.
And yesterday’s work on the south end.
Its been a bumper year for mosquitoes at The Springs, in contrast to here in Milwaukee, where I don’t think I’ve seen more than a couple mosquitoes all season. It was cool enough to wear a pumori and I tucked the bug net inside, keeping hands pocketed as I watched another day ending.
I’m still absorbing the wonder-full wisdom Atina Diffley eloquently expressed in Turn Here Sweet Corn; I’m definitely going to have to read it again. She tells beautiful stories about miracles manifest in the life cycle of seeds, and the imperative of planting the right seeds. Every seed planted at Gardens of Eagan has a story and was planted with attention in just the right soil, location and time. Getting and preserving the right seed is an art, one that our good friend Rich Csavoy has been practicing while feeding his family from their organic garden for over 30 years.
I raised the question about how we wanted to approach reintroducing native sand prairie plants and now the importance of the seed we use is much clearer to me. Don Dane said they did not have any appropriate seeds gathered at the time and that only locally harvested seeds could be used. I’m looking forward to seed collecting adventures with Don and Amanda! In the meantime, we’ll let the native plants that are thriving on the sand prairie contribute their seed. We do need to review whether or not the native plants we currently find there are simply highly adaptable, opportunistic plants, from a different ecosystem, or, are they the right seed for a sand prairie. Any botanists out there?
My Lymes test came back positive showing active antibodies fighting a current borrelia burgdorferi invasion. I can feel it in my head and body and am pursuing a remedy in earnest. The sunshine, fresh air and water at The Springs provided some relief and I was chomp’in at the bit yesterday to try Don Dane’s idea to use a hedge cutter to remove the cattail and phragmites seed heads before they mature. After the ponds were drained, invasive cattails and phragmites began to dominate the valley along the Scuppernong River headwaters.
The hedge cutter was like a hot knife through butter and, just like when brush cutting the sand prairie, slowly “hedging” the valley gave me a perfect opportunity to look closely and carefully at the land. I’m encouraged by the variety of native plants, like joe pye weed, goldenrod and blue vervain trying to make it just below the canopy of cattail and phragmites; their blooming flowers will become very evident in the next few weeks.
Now, I just need to learn how to keep the hedge cutter sharp!
I’m looking forward to getting my truck back tomorrow and thank Pati for letting me use her Subaru Outback.
I feel so much better about my work at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve since making the commitment to go organic. One barometer of healthy human consciousness is whether or not your thoughts, emotions and actions are in unity. The cognitive dissonance I was feeling about using poisons in the restoration effort is gone now and my thoughts, emotions and actions are unified in a renewed commitment to take care of the land; naturally.
Yesterday, it was my great pleasure to participate with a dedicated team of Wisconsin DNR Water Resource specialists as they conducted their annual fish count of the Scuppernong River. Fish Count in that they are viewed as key indicators of the quality of the water, the health of an ecosystem and even global climate change. We made significant changes to the Scuppernong River headwaters and valley last year by removing water cress dams, which freed the river’s flow lowering its depth 4-6″, and cleaning out springs to allow the water to join the river more directly. In theory (because I don’t have any data to prove it) these efforts should have reduced the “thermal pollution”, i.e. the temperature increase caused as the water warmed while slowly filtering through dense mats of water cress, which is a good thing because native brook trout like cold water. The downside is that we reduced a source of food and cover (water cress) and we disturbed a lot of muck. Did we inadvertently tip a delicately balanced system out of favor for the brook trout? I’ve been waiting for this year’s fish count with nervous anticipation since we heard about it from Craig Helker last November.
Meet Craig, Rachel, Adam and Chelsea.
Craig and Rachel explain the fish count.
And Adam provides the safety explanation.
That was on Tuesday, August 6, and unfortunately, there were problems with the equipment that could not be resolved and we had to reschedule for Thursday. I’m waiting for the crew at the gaging station bridge and here they come.
We reviewed what the problem was on Tuesday (a faulty probe) and I got a more detailed explanation of the system. The generator in the white boat creates the electrical current that flows from a plate on the bottom of the boat, which acts the cathode, to the probes held by the shockers, which act as anodes (I mix this all up in the videos) creating an electrical field. There is a separate system, powered by a battery, that shuts the current off if either of the shockers looses control of their probe. The current flow is also stopped if a probe stops working for some reason, which did happen again on Thursday, but this time the team was prepared and simply reverted to using only one probe.
Here is my first attempt to use iMovie to string a couple videos together showing our shocking actions. Note that Shelly, also from WDNR Water Resource team, has joined us.
We finished at the Hotel Spring and they setup buckets and began sorting the fish.
Adam, Craig and Rachel measure and count the fish.
Chelsea gives us a close up look at four of the eight different fish species that were collected.
And Rachel delivers the final tallies.
I got 2010 – 2012 data from Craig. Let’s see how we’re doing (note that we may have also impacted the 2012 numbers since we began our work that spring).
The numbers are definitely down from previous years and I wonder if the appearance of Northern Pike is significant. There are a lot of variables that could affect the number of fish collected, including the changes we made to the river last year, but I don’t know if we can go beyond speculation to identify specific cause and effect relationships. We are assuming that removing as much water cress as we did last year did reduce the food and cover that brook trout need, and hence we are letting it grow this year, but not to the extent that it forms dams like it used to. We did collect some “young of the year” brook trout, which indicate that they are still spawning in this area of the river.
Anne Korman, Assistant Superintendent of the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine State Forest stopped over to say hello and take this picture of the crew (Craig, Paul, Chelsea, Rachel, Shelly and Adam).
I managed to pull a few weeds yesterday before meeting the DNR team. I got this queen anne’s lace along the first bridge over the river downstream from the Scuppernong Spring.
And some of this purple nightshade on the south end of the loop trail
Rachel showed me this chara plant, which is the source of the calcium carbonate that forms into marl.
I spent the rest of the afternoon pulling spotted knapweed, common ragweed and hoary alysum on the sand prairie, which is poised for an explosion of color from rough blazing star, golden rod and many other flowers. Come and see the prairie!
Summer is flying by and you no longer have to walk way out along the marl pit channel to see the sun going down. I got these pictures from the marl pit bridge.
Its finally dawned on me; Go Organic! Stop using poison on the land if you don’t want to poison the land! It’s obvious to me now after reading Atina Diffley’s award winning memoir Turn Here Sweet Corn. The organic approach is the embodiment of the Hippocratic Oath; do no harm. Atina’s love story with the land opened my eyes to the potential of applying organic farming techniques to our work at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve. Atina and her husband, Martin Diffley, (Organic Farming Works LLC) are pioneers in the organic farming movement in Minnesota, their efforts culminating in a “Kale versus Koch, Soil versus Oil” pipeline smackdown where they stood up to the Minnesota Pipe Line Company, which is operated by the Koch Pipeline Company, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, and prevented a pipeline corridor from being routed right through their Gardens of Eagan Organic Farm. They saved their land AND Atina contributed to the preservation of other organic farms via the creation of the Organic Appendix to the Agricultural Impact Mitigation Plan that all pipeline and transmission line companies must comply with if they succeed in routing their lines across organic farmland.
Atina explains that it’s all about relationships: people to the land, plants to the soil and people meeting each others needs in community. I’m inspired to only employ non-toxic ways to nurture The Springs back to health a la organic farming techniques; I want the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail to be “Certified Organic”. Atina and Martin helped me realize the importance of building and protecting the soil and, after reviewing the research on the residual effects of Milestone and Transline and their potential to leech into groundwater, I concluded that I could no longer use them in any context at The Springs. Jason Dare began turning me in this direction and now I’m fully committed. The only exception to the ban on poison that I will make is to use Tahoe/Triclopyr on cut buckthorn stumps (painting, not spraying), and hopefully, we’ll find a natural alternative to that as well.
I claimed to want to garden the sand prairie. What was I thinking? Would you use poison in your garden? In the past two years I had acquired no less than 7 different poisons: Aquaneat/glyphosate, Habitat/imazapyr, Bullzeye/glyphosate, Milestone/aminopryalid, Transline/clopyralid, Tordon/picloram and Tahoe/triclopyr, all of which I have returned to the DNR except the Tahoe stump killer. Martin Diffley summed it up pretty well: “If we don’t change direction, we’re going to end up where we’ve been going.”, and my approach was slowly poisoning The Springs. One story from Turn Here Sweet Corn that really impressed me was how they handled a 9 acre field of quack grass. Despite being pressed by demand for their produce to get this land into production, Martin recommended they wait for just the right combination of dry and hot weather. When it finally arrived, they used a 930 Case tractor fitted with a Vibra Shank field digger to “rake” the weeds, exposing the roots to the blazing sun, repeating the process over 6 weeks until the quack quit. That got me thinking about the phragmites and cattails in the valley along the Scuppernong River headwaters; maybe we could do the same thing there! Like Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”, and now that my organic consciousness has been awakened, I’m seeing new, non-toxic, solutions.
Yesterday, Pati and I met with DNR Trail Boss Don Dane to walk the trails and review our approach to restoring the Scuppernong Springs Nature Preserve, and we we joined by John and Sue Hrobar. I’m prone to excited bursts of non-stop chatter and, true to form, I began by telling Don that I wanted to go organic. He was totally on board with this and promised to help us achieve that goal. The first area we reviewed was the valley along the headwaters of the Scuppernong River that is dominated by phragmites and cattails. I told him Martin’s story and we talked about mowing and raking and Don suggested that, in the short term, I get a hedge cutter and simply cut the seed heads off the phragmites and cattails at a height that will leave the myriad of other plants that have emerged in the “understory” since the burn undisturbed. This will drain the energy from the phragmites and cattails while allowing the native plants to compete and, combined with fire, we hope this will be an effective strategy.
One of my big concerns is all of the buckthorn seedlings and resprouts that have emerged since we cleared the mature buckthorn. I explained this to Jason Dare and he suggested I rely on fire to control them. I talked to Don about this and he is committed to burning the scuppernong every 2-3 years. That was the assurance I needed! In the meantime, Don suggested brush cutting areas where the resprouts are thick to better enable fire to move through. We talked about the north end of the trail, buckthorn alley, and agreed that I should focus on clearing the buckthorn there to help facilitate getting a hot fire through this part of the Nature Preserve; the DNR has never been able to burn this area.
Here is a native swamp thistle Don pointed out by the hatching house springs.
John, Sue and Don at the gaging station bridge. I’m hoping that more volunteers will step forward if they know we going organic.
Pati and I spent the afternoon pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie, which Don said they also refer to as a cliff messenger prairie. The purple lovegrass is thriving!
Here is a view of the sand prairie.
I felt totally calm and at peace with my hands in the sandy soil pulling spotted knapweed all afternoon. The rough blazing star and golden rod are set to flower and I’m really glad I took the time to clear the prairie with the brush cutter rather than simply mowing it. Here are a few parting shots from the marl pit and gaging station bridges.
Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail 