2026 High Summer

I went for a walk along the berm today. We have had a lot of rain this summer and the mosquitoes inside the forest are about as bad as I have ever experienced them. I couldn't take standing still for too long and had to keep moving.

Here is an apple tree I planted this spring in an open area of the 2011 planting area. It has prospered with all this rain as well. It is an offspring from "Blossom" the apple tree in the front lawn.

The young pine trees that have been planted on the south side of the berm that are more exposed to the road are not doing well. I think they are maybe a year or two from completely dying. There are so many pine trees dying around Ottawa and I don't know the cause. A quick google suggests White Pine Rust, but it isn't just white pines.

2025 buckthorn update

I've been trying to control the buckthorn on the berm, but it is a real struggle. The above is a buckthorn bush a year after it was cut back. It came back with vigorous growth. Even when I cut a buckthorn down to a stump it will quickly create a little bush from the stump. But eventually it can be killed with consistent attacks with a pruner. The stick in the picture below is a buckthorn I have shorn of any greenery about a dozen times and it looks like it has finally given up.

When I do remove a mature buckthorn bush though, it can just create good conditions for a million buckthorn seedlings to spring up. So now instead of attacking all of the mature buckthorn bushes, I am selectively targetting the females that are easily identified by the black berries. I also take out isolated buckthorn seedlings. Where there are large numbers of buckthorn seedlings (ie. where a female buckthorn was recently removed), I let them be, as I don't have the patience to clear them out completely and eventually one of the seedlings in a patch will shade out all the others anyways.

Forest Floor

This spring after pruning the dead branches, I found the 2009 planting area to be almost at the point where I can easily walk under the trees. Almost like it is becoming a real forest. However, while the trees have filled in and in many areas have shaded out the grass, the ground looks nothing like a proper forest floor. There is too much dry bare earth. I don't know if it is normal for it to take this long for humus to develop but digging into the soil isn't anything like digging into a real forest floor. It is mostly heavy clay while a forest floor soil should be mostly organic matter.

To aid the diversity of plants on the forest floor I planted a variety of native plants that I identified as likely understory plants appropriate for a mixed deciduous forest floor. I planted:

• Hop Hornbeam
• Pagoda dogwood
• Liverwort
• Trilliums
• Canada Mayflower
• Purple-Flowered Raspberry
• Prickly Gooseberry
• Dog-toothed Violet
• Ostrich fern
• Virginia Waterleaf
• Chokecherry

Now to see how they take to their new home. Some of them naturally die back in the summer so I'll have to wait until next spring to see if they come back up.

Ruby-Crowned Kinglet

Not the greatest picture of this tiny bird flitting through the branches feeding on insects, but I'm just happy it's in focus because these birds weren't staying still for long. There were a bunch them I saw on that day feeding along the berm. I don't know if I've ever seen them before. Luckily I did spot the small red crown on a couple of them or else I wouldn't have a clue how to start identifying them from this picture.

Early Spring 2024

It is a very early spring this year with the alder tree's catkins already spreading pollen and some maple trees in flower.

Rabbits caused a significant amount of damage to some trees and bushes this winter. The serviceberry bushes in the 2010 area got severly attacked as did many apple trees as in the above picture. It is interesting how the winter damage varies from year to year. That apple tree had escaped their notice for about 10 years until this winter. I also found damage this year on sumac, basswood (see below) and cedar, trees that don't usually get much significant browsing damage. Perhaps it is just a matter of individual taste. Perhaps it was just one rabbit hanging around having a good feed on his favorite things.

An Owl

It was a lovely day today to visit the roadside berm. I spent some time clearing out the european buckthorn bushes that form a barrier between the 2009 area and the older forest. It is really easy to recognize the buckthorns at this time of year as they are the only deciduous bushes with grean leaves still hanging on. On my way home I was surprised by this owl just hanging out a few feet from me.

The 2009 replanting area is now starting to resemble a forest. Some of the maple trees are starting to gain some character, like the one below that is starting to push up the earth as the root flare grows. The forest floor of the 2009 area is losing its grass and some seedlings are starting to establish themselves. Below is the first pine seedling I've noticed growing in the area.

As I was walking along, looking at the forest floor, I found one odd bit of trash. I wonder if it was a eurpoean or african swallow that dropped this.

Buckthorn experiment part 2

Summer is about over and what I have learnt from my fight with the buckthorn is that buckthorn is a tough opponent. Many of the stumps sprouted vigorous growth so that by late summer it was a significant bush. I removed the suckers from many of the stumps but today at the end of September when I revisited locations where I know I removed the suckers, the buckthorn is regrowing once again. I'll have to go around again removing suckers. Perhaps eventually the roots will expend all their energy and have a hard time coming back in the spring. In the picture below you can see a couple of the buckthorn stumps regrowing as small bushes. They are surrounded by the branches and small trunks of the bushes that were cut down in the spring. While a lot more light is getting through the understory canopy, not much has started growing among the brush piles other than the stumps.

My little experiment this spring with buckthorn cuttings piled on grass demonstrated that the buckthorn cuttings did effectively supress the grass. When I moved it, I found the earth was mostly bare under the loose branch pile (see below). I'm not sure if it was simply because of the lack of sunlight or if there is a chemical component to the grass supression.

Buckthorn experiment part 1

I've spent a fair bit of time this past month cutting back the buckthorn in the 1995 area. It had half taken over the understory so I decided to cut them back in areas to give other trees and bushes a chance. In doing so I've made quite large piles of twigs and branches and I wonder if it is good for the other plants to have such piles decomposing around them. Here I've made a crude experiment where I've left a pile of buckthorn on some grass outside the forest. The above image was on June 4th when I first piled it there. The image below is today the 30th of June after it had been sitting there for a month of mostly dry weather. I'll check back on it and see how the grass under the pile survived at the end of summer. If buckthorn as it decomposes gives off toxic chemicals perhaps the grass will die back from the pile of twigs.

Natives and invasives

 

These Trilliums have been here for 13 years since they were rescued from an area in Kanata that was to be developed. There were 6 flowers this year, about the same number as I started out with but there are a bunch of plants with small leaves so maybe in a year or two if the rabbits don't take an interest there'll be more. For the past few years it seems like one gets felled each year by a rabbit that has to relearn that trilliums don't taste good. This year the rabbit ate half the flower bud from one plant, which is at least better for the plant than taking it down at the stem.

This year I removed some buckthorns from around these trilliums in order to give them a bit of light. I've recently learned that European Buckthorn is alleopathic, meaning they produce a chemical that supresses the growth and germination of other plants, so I've become much more willing to intervene and remove the buckthorn. I've noticed that buckthorns are pretty effective at suppressing grass. Where they form the edge of the forest the grass dies back from under the bushes. Other trees and bushes are not nearly so effective at keeping the grass at bay; for instance grass can happily grow under sumac.

This flower is Creeping Charlie, an invasive from Europe. I planted this patch, inadvertently, about 6 years ago when I planted a black locust in the 2009 area. In contrast to the trilliums, the creeping charlie is spreading quickly as a dense mat in the shade of the blacklocust. That part of the 2009 area still has grass although the black locust is growing quickly. I expect the creeping charlie will eventually disappear when the grass loses out to trees and bushes. Creeping Charlie seems to like growing in tall grass (there is more of it on the north side of the berm in the long grass) but I've never seen it growing in a proper forest's leaf litter.

One Week Later

 

Bitternut Hickory

This Bitternut Hickory seedling has been growing at this spot for 13 years.  Each year it had struggled, appearing from its pit (it had been poorly planted) only in early summer.  I had given up on it about 6 years ago and planted a black locust twig close to it.  The black locust has grown by leaps and bounds and is now a proper little tree.  The hickory had its first good year in 2022, perhaps due to the extra shade the locust provided, and if it survives the winter looks set to reach for the sky.

I have hesitated to positively identify this fellow until now as there are multiple species of tree that have pinnately compound alternate leaves and often a seedling's first leaves are not typical of the species. One identifying feature the tree books point out for bitternut hickory is the yellow naked buds.  Below is a close-up of one of its buds that definitely has a yellowish tinge.     

Activity this year:

• I planted 3 apple trees on the edge of the north side of the berm.  The larger one did very well this year and grew about three feet.  If it survives the winter it will have a good start.  It doesn't have a lot of sun being on the north side but I wanted a location away from the road.  The two smaller seedlings had a harder time against the grass.  Hopefully next year will be their year. 
• I also planted 10 yellow birch  in the 2010 area and within the forest to the west of it. I  planted them in the fall.  Rabbits seem to like the taste of them as most of them got damaged by browsing before I put plastic protectors around them.
• I delimbed several large cottonwood poplar trees that fell from the derecho. The trees would have been over 80 feet high. it was good exercise but I mainly did it so that the city wouldn't feel the need to send in people to clean it up.  When they go in with their chainsaws they often leave a large swath of destruction.   
• I spent a fair bit of time in the fall clearing dead standing trunks and branches from the 1995 forest around the 2009 and 2010 area.  I hadn't gone into the area to the west of the 2010 plantings much in the past few years and it was a bit of a mess.
• The bush west of the 2010 planting area has been taken over by buckthorn and honeysuckle to a significant extent.  While cleaning the place of standing dead wood I got more and more aggressive against the buckthorn that has come to dominate the understory in the area.  I recently read of their allelopathic nature of  chemically suppressing competitors.   

Derecho

The May Derecho windstorm did a lot of damage in Manordale and the surrounding areas. Many large trees came down. Pinhey forest to the south-west will not be the same in my lifetime. Acres of trees came down where the loose sandy soil did not give enough purchase for the trees to withstand the winds. Some parts of the 60+ year-old pine plantations toppled like dominoes one after another. One blow-down just off Woodroffe south of Slack Rd. must be about 20 acres.

The roadside area this blog follows was relatively fortunate; a couple of the large cottonwood poplars came down but otherwise it got off quite lightly. The picture above was a large 100foot high popular that fell length wise along the berm. It damaged several smaller trees as it toppled. I cleaned up the limbs that were hung-up against other trees leaving this long trunk. It will be a barrier and landmark for many years, I imagine, as it is still a few feet off the ground. I also spent several hours going around with a handsaw clearing other smaller standing deadwood in the 1995 woods. The forest really needed a clearing out as the ash trees that fell victim to the emerald ash borers were left standing and only now have finally rotted away enough to be easily pushed over.

Fall 2021

The trees in the 2009 and 2010 planting areas have grown up and together this summer and it is starting to feel like a part of the forest now. There are a few open areas where the grass is holding on but under the thicker canopy and the evergreens the grass is pretty sparse. The 2011 and 2013 planting areas are still very open. Many of the seedlings planted by the cub scouts had a good year and are getting to be able to hold their own against the grasses and vetch.

I haven't made any posts to this blog this summer as I was unhappy with the camera on my old phone, so the following are some notes about the summer that never made it into a post:

• The patch of trilliums is hanging on, but not getting larger.
• I saw bats and fireflies one evening
• I saw a few monarchs fluttering along the Avenue.
• I attacked the dog strangling vine patch again. It is just as big a patch as it ever was.
• The path that the mower had cut through the sumac last year filled in as predicted with a thick covering of young sumac.
• A squirrel was hanging out in the old birdhouse. It had stuffed the hole in the back wall of the house with grass to make a more comfy home.
• I took off the lowest branch from the big oak tree this year. It is now quite a handsome tree.
• I also limbed up some of the poplars to try to get some light down to the slower growing maples in the 2009 and 2010 areas.
• I planted a maple and a spruce seedling on the north side of the berm with a couple of stakes to protect them from the mower.

Red in Beak and Claw?

Last weekend I planted a couple of baby trees I rescued from the garden. The trees are very small, the stakes are very large. Good thing I put the stakes in right away as the next day the mower came by. This part of the north side of the berm was originally planted by the school children 12 years ago but the mower accidentally cut down about a dozen trees a couple of years later before they realized what they were doing. Some trees and bushes started to regrow from the stumps so I planted one six foot high stake at the edge of the tree planting area to indicate where the trees were regrowing. The north side of the berm only gets mowed a couple of times a year so it has to be a pretty substantial stake for the mowers to see it. Unfortunately over the years sometimes the mower would consider it a challenge and squeeze between the stake and the trees, again cutting down the saplings that were valiantly trying to recover. There is still one hazel bush that I recognize as from the original planting as well as a few other volunteers that are growing from seed.

The other day as I was coming back from watering the trees I started to pull away in my car when I noticed a crow was fighting in mid-air with some sort of bird in front of me. I stopped and decided to intervene to save the poor bird that was by then on the ground with the crow on top of it. Before I even got out of the car a red wing black bird dove down onto the crow distracting him. I then got there and the crow flew up into the bushes where one of his mates was looking on. I could then see that its victim was a small baltimore oriole that was sitting in a depression in the grass, clearly injured from the attack. He didn't move when I approached and I didn't know what to do. I thought of taking him to the Wild Bird Center that is off Moodie but I was afraid that he would injure himself further if I attempted to pick him up and I didn't have anything to carry him in. I could tell he was quite alert even though he wasn't moving, but those crows were right above watching us and I was in a bit of a quandary about what to do. Eventually those two crows flew off while I was scratching my head. Then the oriole took the dilemma out of my hands and ran off into the bushes when I briefly turned my back. I guess in his eyes I wasn't anymore a friend than those mean crows.

I sure hope the little guy wasn't too badly injured and is able to recover. The brief episode from start to finish probably wasn't more than a couple of minutes, but I think it will stick with me for quite some time. What strikes me as remarkable is how both the red-wing blackbird and I reacted in essentially the same way to the suffering of an individual from a different species. Who is to say the red-wing blackbird didn't also feel empathy for the poor oriole?

Early Spring in 2021

It was a pretty mild winter this year without any particularly severe cold snaps and without any thaws either. After a green Christmas we had a good blanket of snow shielding the ground all through January and February. Now soneone has flipped the switch and spring is running at full speed.

Below are three photos of the north side of the berm from March 20 to March 30. Ten days ago it was still winter on the north side of the berm. Now the snow has practically disappeared and the crocuses are out.

Downy Woodpecker

The other evening I was walking by this birdhouse and saw a downy woodpecker poking its head out of the hole. It is the second time I've seen a downy woodpecker around this birdhouse in the evening so I guess it is one of their regular roosting holes. I always think of birdhouses as places for nesting in the summer and forget some birds also need places to shelter at other times of the year. This is a daytime picture from earlier in the year of course, as it was too dark to get a good picture.

A few weeks ago the mower took a swath out of the 2010 bush are. I don't know what the mower was thinking, perhaps he remembered an old path that went aproximately that way but that path hasn't been mowed in five years and was thoroughly filled in by the sumac. There were a few elderberry and nannyberry bushes planted there that were struggling amongst the sumac, perhaps they will come back stronger.

Late Summer Update 2020

We had a dry June and July but we have had a few good rains in August and the grass has greened back up. The picture above is of the 2013 planting area. The seedling pine trees that were planted there 6 or 7 years ago, are now about 6 feet tall. Some of the burr oaks (picture below) are also about that tall while other are still fighting with the grass.

Grass still dominates the 2011 and 2013 planting areas but has grown sparse in the 2010 and 2009 planting areas where the sumac and trees have formed a continuous canopy. The grass is still holding on underneath the sumac and in clearings but some perennial old-field plants like goldenrod, milkweed and thistle that had established themselves in the 2009 area are now losing ground.

Annual Updates:

• I saw some bats one spring evening when I was out late on the north side of the berm.
• I saw a monarch butterfly along the berm yesterday.
• I cleared out the patch of dog strangling vine at the end of Newhaven again. It is every bit as large as previous years. I found a single DSV plant behind the houses along Kimdale St.

Black Locust in bloom

Aunt Pat's Black Locust bloomed for the first time this year. It is five years since I transplanted it from her home in Curry Hill and it has turned into a handsome tree.

Baltimore Orioles

A couple of Baltimore Orioles flew out of this lovely crabapple. I attempted to take a picture of them as they were hopping around in the bushes but all I got were flashes of orange in leafy green. It is interesting how you can see things much more clearly in real life than in a photo. It isn't just a matter of pixels, "seeing" is more interactive than "looking". You change your focus of attention, you use your depth perception, you move your head to parallax shift thing that are in the way, all in order to construct an image in your mind of the item that has attracted your attention.

I've been noticing these violets along my path for about a decade now. The mowers abandoned their strip around the 1995 planting area over 5 years ago, and now the sumac are starting to overgrow the path yet the violets persist. The trilliums and bloodroot I planted that are a few steps away from these violets inside the forest are still there. They have hardly expanded there presence. I think there were 6 trilliums this year, before the rabbit tax. Time moves at a more sedate pace for plants.

Spring Stirrings 2020

Pink Spotted Lady Bug Coleomegilla maculata

These pink spotted lady bugs over-winter as adults in large groups and can often be found stirring from their slumber location in the early spring sun. I came across a bunch of them earlier this spring at the base of the large oak tree. A couple of days ago I think I came upon the same group but this time they were chowing down on dandelion pollen. Practically every dandelion close to the oak tree had a pink lady bug on it.

I've met this cute baby bunny a few times this past week. He has been hanging out by the large poplar cut down by the hydro people. The logs provide convenient hidey-holes for him. The logs also provide convenient places to sit.

I've planted 5 sugar maples seedlings, 2 baby spruce and a small cedar this spring. I've also done a fair bit of clearing of poplar suckers to give more light to the slower growing maple trees.