Laboring on Labor Day

With one hour of  labor, from 8:30 to 9:30 am,  Linda Gorwood, Maggie Heineman,Tom Lang, Pete McCord, Trish Mori, and Miriam Swartz filled several trash bags with ragweed.  It was a start in the race against the ragweed seeds which spread in September. 

Irene Trail 16

About 10 o'clock the Trails/Woodlands Group disbanded.  Maggie then started an inspection of Trails 16 and the RR trail, the 2 trails that she monitors.  On trail 16, not far from the entrance near the tennis courts, the trail was blocked by a fallen tree covered with vines.

After the tree was "untied"  (the vines removed) as much as possible, the 2nd photo was taken, with the lopper hanging on the base of the vine where it was too thick to cut.  Enlarge the photo to see the vine and the place where it was cut - just left of the capital C in "Cut."

It turned out that the tree was not dead.  The small branches of the tree that were thin enough and near enough to be cut were removed after the photo of the untied tree was taken.

It's now an attractive gate to Trail 16 from the tennis court entrance.  I hope it remains.

my beautiful "Japanese Gate" (now removed) click the pic to see it large

Irene - Sweating the Small Stuff

Residents clear the paths as much as they can. Enlarge and look closely at the 1st photo and you can see John H sawing this fallen tree.  John C. is holding the end with branches so it won't drop abruptly.   After the tree had been cut, John C. put the top of the tree to one side and Carol, John H., and Maggie pivoted the heavy base of the tree so that it lay along side the path, not across.

There were many places on the trails where fallen trees would have to be removed by landscaping. Click photos to see them big. 

Irene - Bridge across Sandy Run

A "bridge" across Sandy Run had been dislodged.  "Bridge" is in quotes because the bridges that the trails committee maintains are planks, chained to the ground so they won't float away in floods.   In order to relocate the bridge the working group approached the run from different directions.  John C. and Ruth were on one side of the run.  Maggie, Carol, and John H. were on the other.   As it turned out the water level was much lower than it had been when John made his observations the day before and it was not difficult to step across the run.    In the 1st photo the photographer is on one side of the run while John C. and Ruth are on the other side, discussing strategy for shifting the plank -- which is heavy.  The 2nd photo shows John H. crossing the dislodged plank and Carol in the foreground. The 3nd photo shows the plank back in place. Click photos to see them large.

Irene - Tree Across the Rancocas

This fallen tree across the Rancocas would be a fun footbridge to Dark Waters if only  we were a few decades younger.  The Roots of this tree together with the top branches of another huge fallen oak  block the Orange Trail.

The stump of the tree with the branches at the far end which mingle with the roots of the tree that's crossing the Rancocas. 

Roots of tree that crosses the creek next to branches of the tree that broke leaving a stump

click the images to see them large

In the sky over Lumberton Leas

On August 8th there was a perfect rainbow over Lumberton Leas.

Four days later, three hot air balloons flew over.

Farm Photos by Perry

I'm thinking of a slideshow using Perry's farm photos.   This might become the opener.

update August 30.  The slideshow is now on http://mlra.org and will be the home page through the month of September. 

Lumberton Meadow Planting

Miriam's report:

Dear Maggie,

Here is my report about the planting of the Meadow on Monday, April 25, 2011. Please feel free to edit the following and if Herb wants to use some part for the Chronicle its fine with me.

Thirteen residents whose homes bordered on the Meadow gathered on Monday morning April 25, to plant bulbs and flowering plants(mostly native) in our Meadow.   Five, Pink Coneflower were planted in circles  in 12 spots, six orange Butterfly Weed will make a beautiful display in late July and August and 6-7 ' tall Gateway variety of Joe Pye Weed will rise above the Mugwort to make a showing in August and September.  

Flowers are now coming into bloom.  Lots of purple Dame's Rockets are flowering in the north east side of the meadow.

I want to thank all of the following people who planted and adopted plants to water over the next few weeks: Carmelita Aseron, Judy Atwood, Dave Bartram,  Linda Gorwood, Janet Gray, Maggie Heineman, Sue Kuhn, Eileen McConville, Trish and Geno Mori, Mary Noll, Rolfa Rodgers, Dave Swartz and Louise Tompkins.

Miriam

Siberian Wallflower providing food for a Mourning Cloak Butterfly, the only butterfly that lives over the winter in our region of the country.

Wake Robin Hunt

That Jane Bourquin is really something.  We were on The Island - and off to the left of the (Yellow 12) trail there was a pretty good patch of White Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) but no Trillium erectum,  which is referred to as Red Trillium, Purple Trillium, Blue Trillium, or Wake Robin.  Well at least it was obvious to everyone but Jane that all the flowers were white.   Nonetheless Jane went tramping through the Trillium, careful not to step on any plant, and kept searching.   In time she spotted a plant with a tiny bud, which was sort of dark.  Jane announced that this bud would become a Blue Trillium.  We marked the location with two crossed sticks (X marks the spot).  We expect that Jane is right and that we'll see the Wake Robin next week.

The photo of the Red Trillium was taken by Jane a few years ago.  The photo on the right of a patch of White Trillium was taken by Maggie today. -- click it to see it bigger.   Jane explained that May Apple flowers always occur in the notch between two leaves at the top of the plant.  If there's only one leaf, the plant is sterile.

click pic to see it large

Also in bloom: Lesser Celendine, High Bush Blueberry, Spring Beauty, Trout Lily, Dead Nettles, Ground Ivy (Gill Over the Ground) 

Each of the links above goes to the flower's page on mlra.org -
For comparison, here is the page for the Marsh Marigold, which we did not see.   We also saw a small white flower, the size of a Spring Beauty, but with six petals, not five.  It looked somewhat like the photo of the Star of Bethlehem, but I doubt that's what it was.  We also saw both yellow and purple violets.  This page has the six varieties of violets which were identified by Rudy Salati.  I think what we saw were the common yellow violet and the marsh violet.  There may have also been field pansies.

 Pebble Run Bridge, l to r: Jane, Cecile, Ro.  Milly behind Ro

Lumberton Trails - April 18

Ferry Tale 

Art Hartwig was our leader and he had so much to tell us about the work of the trail committee past, present and future.   I have added captions to the PHOTOS IN THIS ALBUM but they don't begin to tell the story.   I think we should have a slideshow with a narrative by Art in one of our community meetings.  Herb thinks there should be a photo essay in the Lumberton Campus Chronicle.  Art thinks we should have have more small-group walks -- two or three persons with a leader.    Art has a long story about the past and future of this raft.  I can't begin to do it justice, so I won't even try.   Do go through the photos slowly and read the captions.

Master Gardeners - Philadelphia Inquirer

ARTICLE IN TODAY'S INQUIRER about Master Gardeners at Medford Leas - and weeds. There were many more photos -- big ones in the paper-- front page of the Home and Design section.

Wildflowers Walk on April 8

We took Yellow Trail 12 to the Island looking for Trillium.   Not yet, but plenty of Skunk Cabbage.  It was a cloudy day so the Lesser Celendine was not open.   We saw Spring Beauty buds but not full flower - which we had seen on Tuesday on Trail 13.      The photo  from the walk shows Jane pointing to the "State Champion"  Butternut Hickory which was struck by lightning in 1997.  CLICK HERE to see it big and read the sign insert.

Before the walk we spent some time learning to use Newcomb's Wildflower Guide.   Irregular flower, opposite leaves, lobed = locator key 143.   ahh- ground ivy - Gill on the Ground   On another weed Jane showed us the long pointy seedpods which identify it as belonging to the mustard family.   Herb Minkus had told us on Monday that it was Bittercress. --  CLICK HERE - look familiar? scroll down for a photo of the weed growing out of gravel.  We saw plenty of both weeds on our walk.

Trail Walk on April 6

Click here to START THE SLIDESHOW WITH THE 7 PHOTOS from the walk on Trail 13, led by Steve Denham.   I never saw such large trees growing out of a fallen nurse log, and the culverts under the RR embankment were HUGE.    Great views of the Sharp's Run floodplain at this time of year.   We started the walk near the guest cottage at Bridge 6 - I thought that's where Herb said there was a Beaver Dam.  No dam there, however.

Court Walk on April 5

Click here for THE FIRST 19 PHOTOS IN THIS ALBUM which are from the  April 5 Court walk with Herb Minkus.   Next time I'll take notes - Herb please provide info to label the photos that have "Dunno" in them.    I do remember a couple of things -- we have 600,000 daffodils,  80% (is that right?) of the pachysandra died last winter, and there was some sort of scientific experiment with residents wearing heart-rate monitors going thru the courts and sitting for a few minutes at various courts.  Court seven was the most relaxing.   I probably have that story completely jumbled.  Herb, please explain.

Trail Maps and Aerial Views

Lumberton Campus Trails - Aerial View

A couple of these have been posted before. I'm reposting because post titles are important in locating stuff. In fact that's why I'm going to be posting separately for each of the 3 walks this past week. A reminder: if you click on the pic it gets bigger. On some computers a 2nd click makes it bigger yet -- or to increase the size of pics or font use Control + on PCs and Command + on Macs.

Medford Campus Trails

Medford Campus - Aerial View

Climbing a Holly Tree - from Deb Lux

Debbie Lux sent two photos of the Historic Holly. Of the one looking up, she wrote, "Thought it would be fun to imagine climbing a holly tree."

Arboretum Slideshow for Lois Forrest Tribute

THIS IS THE SLIDESHOW which will be shown in the Theater on Friday as part of the "Tribute to Lois Forrest."

Tagged Trees in the Barton Arboretum

Dave sent me a spreadsheet of the tagged trees in the arboretum. This database not only has the location, the common and latin names, but also a column for a photo url -- which lo and behold is a live link!! Cool. For the first item I typed in the url http://mlra.org and automatically it became a live link.

TAGGED TREES IN THE BARTON ARBORETUM

NATIVE PLANTS IN BURLINGTON COUNTY

Native Plants in Burlington County

This is the homepage of the NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY OF NJ They have photo galleries of flowering plants by season, and "To submit your best photos to the Photo Gallery, send JPEG files via e-mail along with the scientific and common names and the location of the photo to webmaster@npsnj.org."

They also have spreadsheets of native plants, by county, as xls files. However, through the magic of google docs, I have made the Burlington County spreadsheet available to anyone who has THIS LINK. Scroll down and you'll see that I've red-bolded some of the names on the list. (just a few - will finish the job later) Red-bolded plants are those that are on Rudy Salati's DATABASE OF WILDFLOWERS at Medford Leas. As we take photos of wildflowers, I'll be replacing outsourced photos on the wildflowers website with out own - and in addition, if we have great photos that are on the Burlington County spreadsheet we could send them to NPSNJ.

Herb and Deb, I'd like to also mark in bold-red fonts the trees and shrubs that we have on campus. I can give you editing permission on the spreadsheet (my preference) or you can provide me with a list and I'll do the editing to highlight names of the native plants we have here.

The galleries at the NPSNJ site are flowers in bloom by season, fall foliage, pinelands, and Isle Royale. Most of the photos are from from H. Ling or M.Ling. Pinelands by M. Hogan.

Maggie (who accidentally signed in as Arboretum Blog Team)

Beavers at work in Sharps Run

This morning's email from Herb Minkus:
"The beavers have been busy(once again),constructing dams on Sharp's Run. They are working on one under the bridge by route 70 and also behind the arts and social wing parking lot. I hope we can tolerate the damage and appreciate this industrious animal."

evidence of beavers

closeup of another tree

click the images to make them big - I think those are dams in the background of both pictures, but I'm not sure (sez Maggie). 

Sharp's run is the creek that one crosses entering Medford Leas from Route 70.  Go to the map in the previous post,  click on it to make it big, then click again to make it bigger.  Sharp's Run is labeled.  You can locate it between the RR embankment and the guest cottage.   Herb, can the dams be seen from yellow trail #13? 

Wildflower Walk March 19

Click the pics to see them big

Jane Bourquin and I went on a wildflower walk today. Jane will be leading walks the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month, and they'll be announced in the monthly calendar (this one wasn't).
First we went over Bridge#5 on Yellow Trail #12 to The Island (4 o'clock on the red trail)

Then we went north along the red trail and walked a short distance on Yellow Trail #11.

Along Pebble Run we saw a few Lesser Celendine in bloom. And many more (sort of a ground cover) that will soon be in bloom. Lesser Celendine was a favorite of Rudy Salati and of William Wordsworth -- HERE'S THE POEM BY WORDSWORTH.

However Jane dislikes it because it takes over and crowds out other plants.

This is a photo from Delaware Wildflowers site where the Lesser Celandine are crowding out Virginia Bluebells.  The captions says "this plant covers acres of the Brandywine River floodplain."

We took another photo looking up Pebble Run toward Bridge #3 - I liked the Beech with the white leaves leftover from last year. Then we walked along the run up to the red trail and back to the car where we started -- near Bridge #5.

Click the map to see it big - then click again to expand it so you can read it. 

Court 12 - Now It's Spring.

Side by side - Court 12 in February and again in March.

Click pics to see them large

Photos by Jim Muir

Arboretum committee & signs of spring

Click on the images to see them full size.  Kitty Katzell sent these five images with this message:
"This morning, I went to the quarterly meeting of the Estaugh Arboretum Committee. Pictures 1 and 2 show people at the meeting in the Nature Center. I walked home from the Nature Center via Medford Leas Way and Medford Leas Way Extention, past Parking Lot B, and into Court 4 from Parking Lot A. Picture 3 shows the only daffodils I saw in flower along that entire route. After I turned onto Medford Leas Way Extension, I walked around the circle in the Memorial Garden, where I took Picture 5.  The leaves around it resemble the leaves on a rhododendron, but the flowers were unfamiliar, and very low to the ground.  [Deb Lux's comment says they are HELLEBORUS; she planted them about 6 years ago.]  At Parking Lot B, a Magnolia tree's buds were bursting, and that's Picture 4."

#1

#2

#4

#3

#5 - Please leave a comment if you can ID this plant.