Pablo - email - url
Another outstanding post, Wayne. I fully understand the “moral value” you derive from this kind of back-breaking, unending work. I face the same prospect in my woods with the SL incursion (though I don’t have any blanketed areas that way you have). You’re right. There are few people who will appreciate the work you do and fewer who will even comprehend that it needs doing, but once again, you’re a fine role model and an encouragement to the rest of us with stewardship ambitions.
Also, fortunately, you are young and fit and vigorous, so all of that manual plucking is no bother for you. And the beer! More of the role modeling!
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 08:19:53
Rexroths Daughter - email - url
Pablo has said it best, Wayne. Your stewardship is truly a model for us. I sincerely am in awe of your project plans, your efforts, and your enthusiasm. Fortunately, there really are tangible rewards for this hard work (and I’m not just talking beer!).
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 11:24:21
dread pirate roberts - email - url
that’s a whopper of a project you have taken on, but there is really no other way to live. well, there is, but it has no moral value. you will be in my mind as i patrol our 2 1/2 acres for thistles and scotch broom. no more complaining from me. i can’t imagine hand weeding on the scale you do it.
i do feel in my body the value of the physical work i do outside here. you must be very healthy by now.
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 11:46:34
Wayne - email - url
If it can keep 49 looking young, it can’t be bad!
Maybe I should start a religion. Let’s see:
It is easier for a poor gardener to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a wealthy sanctimonious plutocrat.
Blessed are they who cultivate their gardens, for they shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven, no questions asked.
and certainly not least:
Lie down not with the Microstegium; it is abomination.
Seriously, what does it take to convince a few billion people, not to mention 300 million hyperadvantaged Americans, to pay attention to their immediate environment? It hardly matters how much money you’ve given to Save the Whales if your own watershed is leaking mercury. I hate to play on other’s religious feelings but surely the first question out of the mouth of any Creator worth his or her salt would be "What the hell did YOU do to respect my creation?"
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 12:10:12
Don - email - url
Uh, Wayne... are you sure that cute little vine isn’t bindweed, the worst little thug in the woods? Good for you for fighting the good fight... I’ve posted here before about our imported abomination, garlic mustard, and I’ve pretty much got it removed from an acre of woods where my garden is, but I doubt I’ll tackle the rest of the woods... I’d guess there are about a hundred thousand plants in the entire area.
Don
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 12:30:14
Wayne - email - url
Don, it certainly has enough similarities to bindweed. If so, out it goes.
I remember your garlic mustard problems, and the infestations are progressing southward too.
One good thing about the annual microstegium is that at least it’s easy to pull up. Perennials are extremely difficult in that respect.
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 12:39:10
Vasha
I live in Chicago, and I recently saw a flier that reminds me how little people know about the environment of their own backyard, even if they’re well intentioned. It goes like this (in part):
HELP PREVENT PERMANENT DAMAGE TO OUR TREES!
What’s the Crisis?
Chicago is in the midst of a serious drought, and because it hit so early in the summer, it poses
a grave threat to trees. Grass will come back, but even trees that aren’t killed now by the
drought are weakened so that they will easily be killed by a sharp freeze come winter.
What Can You Do?
1. Water Your Own Trees and Your Neighbor’s Trees.
Trees need 60 gallons of water a week. Use a leaky hose circled under the outer edge of the
crown or a sprinkler for *at least* 3 hours. Avoid watering in the middle of the day.
2. Water Nearby Trees on Public Property.
etc.
Now, these kind-hearted people surely can’t have forgotten that before there was a city here, Illinois was a prairie state, and the northern part of the state was all oak savanna. One of the reasons that prairie/savanna environments develop is that there isn’t enough water for most trees. I can’t disagree wioth city dwellers who like shady trees – but why don’t they plant native oaks and hickories, instead of water-demanding exotics? I have a white oak outside my window, and it’s a lovely tree, though the crown is not very dense, providing a dappled shade.
Planting and watering inappropriate trees is far from the worst cause of overuse of water, but it’s symptomatic. This group accepts donations; perhaps there should be another Illinois foundation with the motto "Let Your Maple Tree Die, Plant an Oak Instead!"
Sunday: 24 July 2005 @ 22:41:10
Wayne - email - url
Vasha - I remember reading that same watering suggestion a few weeks ago, somewhere. I’ll bet a lot of people either don’t know what northern Illinois was like, or they don’t get the point that some plants just won’t grow without help in many places. It baffles me.
But it’s an important point that it’s not just alien plants from outside the country that don’t belong here, it’s any plant being placed in an ecosystem it really can’t fluorish in. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in individual small scale. But urban planners should know better than to plant thousands of maples, in your example, in an environment that can’t sustain them.
I love our white oaks, and our oak-hickory temperature forests here 
. Just say no to Bradford Pears.
Monday: 25 July 2005 @ 16:00:10
Nuthatch - email - url
Great post, and great job. I feel the same sense of satisfaction after I’ve wiped out another patch of Garlic Mustard, or swabbed my last stump of buckthorn with some Round-Up, although it often feels like a losing battle. Our area has a huge Siberian Squill infestion, too, (http://nuthatch.typepad.com/ba/2005/05/more_invasive_s.html) but because it’s pretty, eradication efforts are stalled.
Tuesday: 26 July 2005 @ 07:55:04
thingfish23 - email - url
I don’t know what’s worse - those exotic trees or LAWNS.
Here in SW Flroda, I really do feel that lawns are the main culprit. What a water-suckin', pesticide-demandin' waste of time.
Enjoy your mowers, ya farty old morons.
Tuesday: 26 July 2005 @ 13:23:22
Wayne - email - url
Nuthatch - buckthorns! I believe yours are actually aliens while ours, Carolina buckthorn, is native, but I’ve heard of yours and know ours is a real mess. Every seed seems to germinate and in some places the ground is literally hidden with yearlings. I usually stick to pulling up one weed at a time but when I run across a buckthorn seedling, up it comes.
The honeybees do love the flowers though. Apparently the birds love the fruits - I find the seedlings in clumps of a couple dozen, obviously deposited through feces.
Wednesday: 27 July 2005 @ 13:01:38
Niches :: Winter Grasses - url
[...] y in Six-weeks Fescue, a native annual grass, Vulpia octoflora. I mentioned this grass earlier this year in the midsummer, along with quite a few other interesting plant [...]
Saturday: 26 November 2005 @ 03:42:20
Niches :: Busyness - url
[...] ;#114;ings.com @ 05:00:49 It’s time to start pulling Microstegium vimineum again, and hence that’s to be the order of the first two [...]
Thursday: 27 July 2006 @ 02:00:51
Niches :: Botanical Saturday - url
[...] um, but still a new find for me, and you remember how excited I was last year when I found Hypericum punctatum. Yesterday morning it was covered in tiny, delicate yellow flowers, [...]
Sunday: 30 July 2006 @ 02:19:46