Detrashing

This truck mud flap has got to be the heaviest piece of wind blown trash I've ever found. It weighed about 20 pounds and was about 80m from the road in the middle of a thicket of buckthorn tangled up with a scrap of tarp. I figure it must have been blown there in the tornado last fall as there is no way a person would have carried it into that thicket.

This spring picking up trash suddenly became trendy. According to the Clean-up-the-Capital website, over a thousand groups organized clean-up events in and around Ottawa this spring. It is great to see this activity picking up popularity, and I feel like Ottawa really did an excellent job cleaning the place up after 5 long months of winter. I've been picking up trash for years along HuntClub Road and this May was the first time I came back with only a half full bag because there just wasn't enough trash.

A sparrow is raising a family in my birdhouse! I put up the birdhouse in the fall of 2016 and this spring is the first time I've noticed someone using it. I was walking by it today and the momma bird startled me by bursting out of the house just as I passed it. I heard the faint chirps of the chicks and quickly retreated. I was a bit surprised because I've been on the lookout for activity at this birdhouse and another that was put up last spring and thought that they weren't occupied. Perhaps I should go take a closer look at Katherine's birdhouse.

I spent a bit of time today pulling up Dog-strangling-vine from the patch at the end of Newhaven. I pulled up over 300 plants and there is at least as much still to be done. I've been attacking this patch for several years now and it keeps on coming back. I don't think I've let many go to seed but it doesn't seem to matter. They must be coming back from the roots.

Turkeys and Turkey Vultures

This past weekend I saw both a turkey and a turkey vulture flying along the berm. I startled the turkey in the field north of the berm; it lumbered into the sky and flew off getting no higher than the rooftops of the bungalows along Kelvin. A couple of days later I saw the turkey vulture in the same spot (well 100 feet higher up) soaring effortlessly. Both turkeys and turkey vultures are relatively recent arrivals to Ottawa. I remember around 2000 hearing reports of turkeys just to the south in Leeds-Grenville and being excited as I hadn't seen one yet in Eastern Ontario. As it happens, this weekend I also got my first taste of wild Eastern Ontario turkey and I'm happy to see them on my plate as well as in the field.

I took advantage of the heavy rain this weekend to transplant a couple of seedlings into the berm area to fill in some gaps. One of them was a seedling of the white spruce I had to take out of my back yard a couple of years ago. The other was a small Manitoba maple that wasn't welcome in the flower bed. I also tried sticking a few willow twigs in the ground to see if they would take. I've heard that is supposed to work but I have my doubts.

It snowed a bit on Sunday but hopefully that is the last of winter for us. I figure the last of the chill left the ground a little over three weeks ago. I snapped this picture of a garter snake three weeks ago as I was picking up garbage in Ben Franklin Wood. I was surprised to see him as it wasn't exactly warm yet, but I guess it was warm enough for him in the strong spring sun.

Roadside Cleanup

Well it is spring again and I went out and picked up some garbage along the bike path and berm. It is interesting what sort of things you find. My impression is that there are fewer grocery bags than there were 6-7 years ago. It used to be I figured you could always find enough bags amongst the garbage to clean-up the garbage itself but now I mostly rely on bags I get from the city's Clean up the Capital program. It's good exercise, and feels more productive than just going for a walk or a bike ride.

It is daffodil time now. Spring started quite early in March with midges out the weekend before Easter and mostly bare ground for Easter but then we got some more snow in the first half of April to cover the bare ground. The bloodroot was out last weekend which is a bit earlier than previous years, but the past few days have been coolish so spring blooms are probably right on schedule now.

Garbage pick up

Well it turned cool this past week and there was a fair bit of rain that the fields probably needed. I went out a couple of times this past week to pick up garbage in the triangle. This is the first time I have really attacked the garbage situation there. I know from past experience in Ben Franklin woods that it takes a couple of years to see satisfying results as the first go through the woods inevitably leaves alot of trash that is hidden by leaves and branches. But after a couple of years there is very little trash left in the interior of the forest and most of the trash is found within 20 feet of the forest edge. On the berm the forested area is quite narrow but there wasn't a great deal of wind blown trash visible, most of the plastic seems to have been there for some time. Even when there isn't that much garbage visible it is amazing how easy it is to pick up a couple of garbage bags full. There is alot of garbage burried in the leaves that you only notice when you look. There was a lot of small pieces of styrofoam, plastic food wrappers of various kinds and larger plastic sheets or bags.

When the berm was originally planted they put a black plastic ground sheet down on top of the soil to keep the weeds and grass from competing. 15 years later this black ground sheet is still there mostly burried but poking up out of the soil here and there. I removed some of this material where it was visible. It seems to have received some holes over the years but was still a material barrier for the plant roots as every hole had roots poking through itin search of nutrients and water. At this point I think the ground sheet may be hurting the circulation of nutrients back to the trees. According to the text books the tree roots will reach into the humus made from the leaves they shed each fall seaking their lost nutrients. It also means that the humus is likely to dry out more quickly as the rain water runs off the berm and the water can't wick up from below.

I don't know how continuous the ground sheet is, certainly there are many gaps in it where trees once were planted and over the years various animals have probably chewed through it. Perhaps it is not materially impacting the nutrient or water flow. In some places where the ground sheet is visible it looks like it is fairly intact but in other areas it dives down under the forest litter and humus and it is impossible to remove without tearing it to shreds. The humus layer can be quite thick and looks like a rich organic soil full of roots.

A sample of the ground sheet pulled up out of the ground. Note: it is relatively intact with some small holes. Some of the larger holes may have been created when dragging it out of the ground.