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.

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.

Summer Transplants

Last August I transplanted a few seedling into the 2009 square to fill in some gaps where the trees had died. There were six red maple seedlings, two cedars, a pine tree and what I believe is an ash tree; all less than a foot tall. I figured that August was a good time to transplant the trees because the trees had had the summer to build up their energy reserves while it gave enough time for the trees to put some roots down before the frost. Initially they all seemed to do very poorly. The deciduous trees very quickly lost their leaves, the cedars turned an olive brown colour and the pine showed no sign of growth. Finally in October one of the maples started putting out new growth just in time for the frosts to kill it off.

With that inauspicious start I was worried the trees wouldn't survive the winter but this spring they are all showing promising signs of life. The buds on the pine tree (see above) are swelling, the maples look healthy (to right) and the cedars are greening up. These small trees were transplanted from flower gardens and from under trees where they had planted themselves. In the case of the cedars they had rooted in among the pebbles under the eaves of the house and came away with bare roots. It amazes me that they all survived since I don't know how many roots they lost in the transplantation. Yet the late august seedlings have a better record of survival than the potted trees transplanted for the city last spring. I'll save their sorry tale for another post.

In Bloom:
Forget-me-not
Dandelion
Yellow Rocket
Garlic Mustard
Trillium
Serviceberry

Preparation for new planting

As part of the preparation for the new planting on May 8th I spent some time tagging the small trees with bright orange tape so that people can see them more easily.

I took a bit of an inventory of the trees and shrubs that survived from last year. I may have missed a few or double counted a few but by my count the survivors are as follows:

- 3 Pagoda Dogwood (had a lot of die back)
- 11 Red Osier dogwood
- 8 Speckled Alder (vigorous)
- 3 american elderberry
- 12 staghorn sumac
- 3 chokeberry
- 4 unidentifiable bushes
- 32 Red Maple (stubby red bud)
- 26 Sugar Maple (long narrow greenish brown bud)
- 14 tamarack (deciduous conifer)
- 6 white spruce
- 12 trembling aspen
- 5 white pine
- 3 colorado spruce
- 4 white cedar
- 2 hazelnut
- 2 basswood (tentative id )
- 8 oak (red oak? the oaks were a favorite of the voles)
- 2 black spruce (tentative identification, these did not survive transplanting well as several others went brown last summer)
- 15 bushes tentatively identified as service berries
- 5 unknown trees/bushes of very slender fragile twigs with pale drooping leaves. Buds are very slow to develop and more of the ~20 that were planted may have life in them yet. (Very tentatively identified as hackberry)
- 9 unidentified trees (most small twigs with buds only slowly developing)
- 47 white spruce seedlings

A total of 232 trees and bushes survived the first year. We were supposed to have planted 350 last year so about 66% survived. Some trees didn't show any signs of life after being transplanted. They may not have survived the previous winter or may not have been able to handle the shock of transplantation. More than a few bare twigs were planted that never developed a viable bud. A few only had one or two buds that developed. A few of the spruce trees turned brown over summer. A few of the aspens lost all of their leaves mid-summer. Some of the seedlings didn't survive transplantation and some got covered up by the summer grass. Some were chopped down by the mower last summer. The major culprit, however, was winter and rodent damage. At least half of the oaks that were planted did not survive the winter. The service berries received a lot of damage as did the sugar maples, the sumac and the hackberries. Some of the bushes were munched right down to their base and are unidentifiable. Some of the trees lost all of their roots to the rodents and toppled over. Some of the trees that are still alive are not likely to survive the summer because the rodent damage is so extensive around their base. But where there is life there is hope.

On Monday evening at dusk while I was taking inventory of the surviving bushes I noticed several bats swooping around over the 2009 planting taking insects on the wing. It is good to see bats as I don't often see them around Manordale.

In flower:
dandelion
common speedwell
garlic mustard
violets
forget-me-nots
yellow rocket
creeping charlie
serviceberry
crabapple
elderberry
canada plum (? back north corner)