Year in Review

Eight pictures for eight months.

Preping the site for grading and paths in what we're calling the "farm area". (It's difficult to see at the moment with plants in seasonal transition and nearly everything ripped out and piled up in the picture. We've estimated the location of paths, now we're ready to finish the grading and add compost.)

 Sunchokes!

 A strange and beautiful insect (I still need to figure out what it is. I saw it regularly throughout the summer, only on this Sedum.)

 Some of the wheat/rye mix I planted last Fall came back in the spring so we kept it.

As it turns out, our wheat/rye (which was it?), was a beautiful addition to our landscape. It kept the ground covered, shown bright in the sunlight, and waved around in the wind, adding movement that most of our other plants cannot do. 

 Excavating for a path around the strawberries and cold frame. (It is now complete, and very comfortable; pictures to come.)

Everybody remember the Blizzard of February 2011? Of course. Here's a visual reminder so you can prepare for the next; it's projected that Winter 2011 will be much like last year, with the same amount of snowfall.

Finally, have you ever wondered what landscape architects do in the Winter? On that particular day, I went skiing.

Sidewalk - Project Summary

The New Entrance. I like to think of it as a well-done face lift, and in a few months, nobody will ever remember a time when it looked differently.

 The new entrance (just one!)

A three-picture summary of two major projects, the White Pine 'Deconstruction' and the Sidewalk Reconstruction.

May 10, 2010

May 10, 2010

October 11, 2010

The Berm. Oh dear, I made a berm. It makes me think of suburbia, er, subermia? Not in this case. The arc and slope created by this berm is part of the new site engineering. The berm will collect and direct stormwater from the roof and send it to the rain garden. This will protect the house from water seepage and will irrigate the plants that arrive in Spring.

The berm.

Seed and Straw. A cover crop has been planted to protect the exposed soil. I used a mix of agricultural plants - Wheat, Rye, Buckwheat, and Oats - because they all can be turned into the soil as 'green manure'. Over the seeds is laid a fine layer of straw to protect the seeds from dehydration and hungry birds.

 Straw mulch, watered daily.

Finally, I'd like to point out our subterranean friends, the Cicada Nymphs. I exposed several while digging the soil the grade the site.

 Cicada nymph, posing next to the hole he was in.

More info on Cicadas:

• Cicadas are among the most benign of insects. Neither the root-sucking nymphs nor the adults do any significant damage to trees or other plants.
• Though some species are called annual cicadas because they are present every year, all species take at least four years to mature in the ground.
• Nymphs grow gradually through eight stages before maturity.

[This Cicada information came from Mass Audobon.] 

The Chicago Botanic Garden mentions:

Cicadas are edible....but recent research has determined that cicadas may contain high levels of mercury...and diners are cautioned to limit their ingestion of these "delicacies" to just a few.

I guess my small urban farm kitchen can add another item to it's menu. Cicada Tempura anyone?

[By the way, during a locust invasion of biblical proportions while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia, locals refused to eat the large, juicy locusts even when it meant literally saving their livelihood. I'll take a cue from them.]

"It's looking beautiful!"

As I was documenting the site this morning, I received my first comment from a total stranger. A woman was running with her dog and as she passed, she removed her ear-buds and shouted to me "It's looking beautiful!"

THANKS!

Also, comments and analysis on the sidewalk project forthcoming.

Sidewalk Deconstruction & Reconstruction – Day 2

The Front Yard, looking East, During & After

 10/4, 12:08pm

10/5, 1:40pm

 

10/8, 2:18pm

What the neighbor's see, Before & After

10/4, 10:40am

10/5, 11:40am

Porch view, Before & After

10/4, 2:40pm

10/5, 3:03pm

Finally, an added joy to a project is the discovery of artifacts. Here's what we found:

Our sidewalk on the left (cut and moved), pre-existing sidewalk on the right (discovered below ours).

Note the relative 'thin-ness' of the horizontal piece in the middle, the pre-existing sidewalk, thought to be 50+ years old.

These two images show leaf prints found on the underside of one excavated piece of sidewalk. In contrast to every other piece, which was covered with chunks of old concrete, this one caught my attention! It appears we have imprints of leaves from two tree types, an American Elm and some kind of Maple.

Sidewalk Deconstruction & Reconstruction – Day 1

At the crack of 7:30am this morning, the sidewalk project got underway. For many moons, I wondered whether this was going to come together. With the impending Chicago Winter and more free time of my own, the project jumped to a start once we had a new contractor for our curious project.

 Deconstructing Sidewalk

The job basically entails swapping materials from one place to another. As much as possible, materials will be reused to create a better sidewalk where there was grass, and better growing space where there was a troublesome sidewalk.

The pre-cut with a dry saw and final cut with a wet-saw

My concrete guy, who we will call Chris, said to me "Oh, this is not a concrete job, this is a landscaping job." We'll see about that. Every project comes with some surprise, good or bad. So far, we've discovered a pre-existing sidewalk used as the underlayment below the existing sidewalk. Whatever kind of job they want to call it, I'm just glad to be paying someone else to do all of the cutting, lifting, and hauling.

 Placing the new sidewalk pieces (stepping-stones)

The job:
Saw-cut the existing concrete sidewalk at the expansion joints and half-way in between.

Use 3'x5' slabs (now made of two half pieces) as Dr. Seuss-ish oversized stepping-stones.

Stepping-stones will outline the newly expanded growing area, allowing the growing area to extend all the way to the wall of the house.

Growing Area will include a native plant rain garden and food-production garden.

 End of Day 1

Here are two bonus images, showing the dust cloud created by the saw-cutting. Dust cloud = Bad, Cool pictures = Good!

Facing East in the morning

 Facing West in the afternoon

See you again tomorrow!

White Pine, Laid to Rest

First, a little bit of historical information to bring us to the significance of the present moment.

On January 4, 1872, J. Sterling Morton proposed a tree-planting holiday to be called "Arbor Day" to the State Board of Agriculture in his home state of Nebraska. The first Arbor Day took place in Nebraska on April 10, 1872. Arbor Day became an official state holiday on March 12, 1874, as proclaimed by the state's Governor Robert W. Furnas, the first legally established celebration in Nebraska took place in April 1885, and then spread to other states in the 1870s, and took place in schools nationwide beginning in 1882.

The White Pine tree in my yard was probably aged about 37 years, as best I can count the rings. At that age, it would have been planted around 1973. Perhaps even on the 100th anniversary of Arbor Day, which was in April of 1972.

By the way, J. Sterling Morton had a son, Joy Morton, who was aged 17 years at the founding of Arbor Day. Following his own successful founding of the Morton Salt Company, Joy established the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois in 1921 to carry on the family motto of "Plant Trees".

Here are two pics from before the first cut and right after the crew left the site.

8:00am

 10:30am

The White Pine has come down, laid to rest at 9:55am this morning. All of the tree will be kept on-site. The wood chips will be used to nourish and protect the perennial and vegetable planting beds, and the logs from the tree's trunk will be allowed to decay on-site, in the meantime being used in the design detailing.

Woodpecker Indicator

When I say "Yellow-bellied Sapsucker" you are probably drawn to say "sufferin' succotash, that sounds like a fictitious animal if I ever heard one". Well, in this case, it may actually be a suffering White Pine. The Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is a woodpecker known for feeding on the sap of trees and on insects that get caught in the sap. Other birds exploit the holes made by sapsuckers and thus, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is considered a "keystone" species, one whose existence is integral to the health and stability of a community.

Recently, I noticed a woodpecker tapping into my White Pine tree. Much to my delight, it was a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, the bird I studied for a year as my senior research project in my undergraduate program. While studying the feeding pattern of this bird species, I observed and counted thousands of holes, and saw the bird only once. During that year with my research team, we discovered that, among pine trees, sapsuckers have a significant preference for black pines and will "NEVER" eat from a White Pine so long as they have other options. And they almost always do; they feed from a variety of both gymnosperms and angiosperms. The characteristic pattern of holes made by sapsuckers can be seen in some White Pines, however, and that day I discovered them on my neighbor's side of the White Pine.

Upon my excitement at seeing 'an old friend', I immediately emailed my former professor at Valparaiso University's Biology Department, Dr. Laurie Eberhardt. She reminded me of her own research conclusions on sapsucker feeding. Sapsuckers tend to feed from trees that have overall poorer health. When a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker feeds from a White Pine, it is an indication that the tree is producing an elevated amount of amino acids - which is effectively the trees immune response to sickness. The feeding by a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker in my White Pine indicates the tree is probably sick. Removing the tree will remove a food source for this interesting migratory bird species but the tree will likely need to come down anyway as its condition worsens and potentially becomes a safety hazard.

[Image courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: All About Birds. My own images are too fuzzy.]