or why we spent the day dropping a sixty foot ash into the pond and then hauling it back out, a task made somewhat fraught by its attempt to swing over into a key laurel bush, jam on the bank, and otherwise hang up.

Why did we take the ash out?  Well, for one it was rooted in the stone wall of the bank; two that it was shading a perfectly lovely black oak; and three…it looked bad.  While the two, much larger, trees (a black cherry and a maple) stood back from the curve of the bank; and the black birch leans far out over the water in a graceful manner; the ash was a perfectly straight pole that broke the curve and stood too close to the cherry disrupting the picture.  It also had a bad top and was thoroughly surplus.  That the long term aim is also for the area to be oak/hickory with a laurel/ilex understory also factored in happily.

Some landscapes aren’t managed by man, parts of the North American north for example, though there a sense of pathos is often created in a piece of artwork (as opposed to the actual experience of being there, when it tends to be an unwanted intrusion) by the careful placement of a man-made structure in the foreground.  Connecticut, however, is much like Europe or Great Britain…man shapes and reshapes the landscape.  Current thought is that even before the colonists, the Native Americans extensively managed the area through the use of fire and hunting patterns. 

Landscape design often deliberately attempts to create something that looks natural, even when it isn’t.  Or that emphasizes certain natural elements and uses man-made elements to draw the eye.  To do this well is fiendishly difficult.  The pond on a lesser scale reflects the same sort of picturesque, shaped landscape that was a signature feature of the movement in the nineteenth century that was best realized in North America under Olmsted’s creations of Central Park, the Boston Fens, Mont-Royal in Montreal and other places.  That it happens that such places can be ecologically as well as aesthetically pleasing makes it even better.  The pond has played host to several groups of migrating wood ducks, teals and mallards, as well as the ever present wood-peckers, the innumberable amphibians, turkeys, deer and many others.  It has healthy , if small, populations of partridge berry, pippiwessa, ilex, laurel, highbush blueberry, three or four fern types, and hopefully will have trilliums, Indian cucumber, native sweet flag and cardinal flower.  By taking the ash out, the dominate feature of that bank (oak/hickory) will hopefully be given emphasis…it is what would primarily occur there anyway, but without any distractions.  The trick is figuring out what counts as a distraction and what is integral, either ecologically or aesthetically.