Late Winter Blooms at Veblen House

Even before spring officially begins its sweep through the landscape, the Veblen House grounds come alive with blooms.  

Particularly prolific in expanse and blooms are the snowdrops that grace the grounds with white in mid-March, echoing the patches of lichen on the boulders. 

Down below the Veblen House, near the fishpond, are some other early wildflowers mixed in: crocuses, the yellow of winter aconite, and the blue flowers of Scilla, also called Siberian squill. All of these flowers are nonnative, but they do not spread into the surrounding woodlands.

Veblen House was once the meeting place for the Dogwood Garden Club, of which Elizabeth Veblen was a founding member. These flowers date back to those times, with another pulse of planting energy happening during the Bicentennial in 1976, a couple years after Elizabeth passed away. 

Showing up even earlier than these early spring flowers, and far more subtle, are the catkins hanging in profusion from native hazelnut shrubs we rescued and propagated. These grow near May's Garden, which long ago served as Elizabeth "May" Veblen's garden, and has been reborn in recent years as a teaching garden for kids.

It was quite a job to cut and clear some 25 dead ash trees from the woodlot near the house this past winter. If left standing they would have become hazardous. Thanks to Victorino for his skillful felling of the trees, and to Andrew and Ninfa for cleaning up the debris. This patch of lawn is often used for croquet. Other games like horseshoes and bags can be found elsewhere on the grounds. 

The flowers of mid-March serve as prelude to the bigger show to come, as thousands of daffodils burst forth in coming weeks. Many of these were planted by Elizabeth Veblen herself after she and her husband purchased the property nearly 85 years ago, in 1941. 

We are careful not to mow down the daffodils after they bloom, leaving their foliage to collect solar energy to drive next year's flowers.

Soft Open for Firmer Trails at Autumn Hill Reservation

If you haven't been to Autumn Hill Reservation in a while, this would be a good time to check it out. A three year revisioning of the trails to make them drier and more scenic is now essentially complete, and we're doing what could be called a "soft open" on the newest sections. 

Signs give hikers a gentle nudge away from the old trails and towards the new. 

This winter's revisions bypass wet areas and follow ridgelines and historic rockwalls that date back to when this land was farmed 100+ years ago. 

Our wonderful mapmaker from Maine, Alison Carver, is already converting my scrawl and tracking files into a new map. The new configuration, with a new "blue" trail, should give hikers more options for exploring the preserve.

Thanks goes to Andrew and Ninfa for their help in clearing myriad invasive shrubs that were growing along the trail corridor. One of the satisfactions of trail creation is the habitat restoration that happens at the same time. Spared from our loppers were the many native spicebush, wild grape, and tree saplings growing along the routes.

With safety in mind, after the routes are cleared, our chainsaw virtuoso Victorino comes in with his assistant Wilbur and clears hazard trees, usually ash trees that were killed in recent years by the introduced emerald ash borer. Here, Victorino is checking to make sure the dead tree he is about to cut down will be able to fall cleanly to the ground. Note the clever ladder he cut from a tree branch so that he can reach the trunk to cut it.

Note also the Asian bittersweet vine climbing up the tree in the foreground. We cut as many of those as we can as part of the restoration work.

Occasionally I ask Victorino to sharpen the blade of my little electric chainsaw so that I can handle the small stuff.

Victorino also cuts some potential table tops from fallen ash trees that have interesting grain--tables that will tell the story of this forest in their tree rings.

A lot of thanks goes to those who support the Friends of Herrontown Woods with donations that make the work of Andrew, Ninfa, Victorino and Wilbur possible.

In other news from Autumn Hill, as of Feb. 28, there were still three big diabase boulders being held up to the sky by the rootball of this fallen tree. (I happened to be standing ten feet from this fine dental display when the first one fell, a couple years ago.)

But by March 6, only two remained. This drama has been playing out since the tree fell 5-10 years ago, lifting the root-tangled boulders up out of the ground. Don't you sometimes wish the pace of news in the world was more Autumn Hillian?