Acair Fearann

This is an odd spring, very slow, cold and dry. The redbud tree, which usually dominates the east lawn from mid-April has yet to come into flower. On the other hand, the peas are finally up.
We are always the last on the hilltop for things to break bud. I rely on the star magnolias as a gauge, ours is two weeks behind the valley and almost a week behind the other two on the hilltop. The same holds for our saucer magnolia. It doesn’t really make sense, except to demonstrate how complicated the micro environments are. If we look at the saucer magnolias, ours is located on the north lawn in the garden. So it has western exposure, wind/sun block to the east, and is in part shade (almost full sun at the moment, due to the number of deciduous trees). It is also in heavy, wet clay soil in an essentially ‘unimproved’ setting (shrubs, perennials, uncultivated and undrained). The other two magnolias, belonging to a neighbour at the same elevation, also have the same western exposure. To the east they have a wind/sun block, but it is a house rather than trees. The magnolias are also in a heavily fertilized, manicured, turf lawn in full sun. The soil in that area has been improved, cultivated, and thoroughly drained.
Now then, what is the deciding factor? Is it the full sun? Is it that a modern turf lawn heats up much faster so the soil warms faster so the plant blooms that much earlier? If that is the case, then some interesting variables arise concerning heat islands and the commentary about plants blooming earlier than they used to….no question that they are a little earlier, but the accompanying questions are which plants, where, and what has changed in that location?

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Nice, foggy, rainy weather….lots of water….the ground is frozen rock hard.   Entirely too much of that water is going to go running off into the rivers.  Actually, the rather interesting things, for those of us interested in this sort of thing, is that the ground is not frozen solid in the woods.  It is frozen of course, but it retains some ‘give’.  That is to say, anywhere with deep leaf litter has the capability to absorb the water connected to this warm spell despite the extreme cold that came before.  Lawns, hayfields, bare fields; those all might as well be impermeable bits of pavement right now.  Today there are no puddles in the woods, there are on lawns.*  There is also plenty of run-off from the frozen lawns, if there is any slant at all.  Eventually, of course, the sponge quality of the woods will be filled up and the intermittent streams will start to run; but it will take much more water to create an intermittent stream in the woods than one bordering a field, subdivision, or road.

We know that forests are better at recharging ground-water than developed areas.  The immediate assumption is that is solely due to the developed areas using the immediate water and having more impermeable surfaces such as roofs, patios, parking lots, etc.  But it is also due to the fact that forest areas are genuine sponges.  It would be interesting to do a storm-water comparison of two identical house-lots, with identical houses, and the only differences being that one has retained over half of its original tree-cover/topsoil and the other has it stripped to lawn.  I think the result would be sobering.

Water companies used to buy watersheds in this area to protect the water quality.  Inadvertently, and happily for all concerned, they have also helped to protect the amount of water available by doing that.   Of course, it still isn’t nearly sufficient; but it helps. 

Do water-wars exist in the east as well as the west?  Oh, yes indeed!  google: farmington, mdc, uconn, mansfield, etc. to see one in action.

*unless of course your lawn has decided to establish some nice colonies of what look like sphagnum moss, in which case the puddles disappear.

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This is a somewhat deceptive photo of perhaps one the most important features of the place.  From its purchase in 1872 Julie began planting trees in front of the house, between it and the then sleepy road.  She added to the already extant group of two Sugar maples and two Norways, with a grouping of Norway spruces, and a line of maples along the road.  By the 1880’s a commentator noted that it was going to become a ‘lovely grove’ in front of the property.  Such natural landscaping, while all the rage in the cities where the first great landscape parks were being created, was unusual in an area dominated by open fields, charcoal wood lots, and the picturesque but rigid lines of sugar maples along hedgerows.  Over the century this grove has gradually been bulked up with more trees.  And more distance.   And, of course, size: many of the trees are between 70 and 90 feet in height. The maple in the foreground was orginally planted on the road edge.  Mercifully, when the state highway was created in the 1930’s, it was moved away from the house.  It is actually visible in this photo, at the center back.  The road, like the house, runs north-south; this photo was taken looking directly northeast.

Today, this area, 500 feet long and between 40 to 100 feet wide, acts and looks like a piece of undisturbed forest.  Over time, some of the native wildflowers have recolonized it: starflower, trillium, canadian lily-of-the-valley, wood aster, princess-pine, etc.  Many of these have had help in first getting established, but are now genuine colonies.  However, it is aggressively managed: both in the removable of undesirable plants and the planting of new trees and shrubs to continue to block the road, to add to the wooded nature, and to ensure that in another century it might still look like a forest.

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