Winter 81: Tidings of Spring

Today is the 81st day of winter; the vernal equinox is less than two weeks away.

The two weeks prior, until this past weekend, have been unrelentingly cold. I've always been glad that there's a dial thermometer outside across from the kitchen window; but for some weeks it has been a grim herald, unfailingly pointing to 20°F (-6°C) when I get up, and scarcely improving throughout the day.

This past weekend, it got up into the 50s, nearly to 60°F (15°C); it was up into the 60s on Monday. Yesterday it started in the 50s, and got up into the 70s (and would have done the same today if it wasn't threatening rainstorms). That's the kind of weather that really hearkens to Spring, to the first warm rain, and the first day that cyclists appear en masse. But now I'm not merely yearning for the Vernal Equinox to mark progress towards the end of winter's dire chill, but also for all the delights of spring, and the growing season. KET premiered "Thoroughbred" last night for pledge week, which certainly seems to me like an omen of the Derby, and our coming warm weather.

Sunsets are now noticably later, and the irises out front seem to be perking up, although everything in the yard is still very dormant, of course. My arborist friend identified the main tree in the backyard as a red maple, which appears not to have the expected flower buds, although leaf buds are present. The red maples in Central Park are blooming, the crocuses are blooming on St. James Court, and a few daffodils are getting ready to open their blossoms.

If I was starting seeds, I'd have to start them about now, if not earlier. But I don't really have plans for that, so I'll likely have to buy some tomatoes and peppers in a month or so, and plan on starting seeds next year.

A non-metaphorical garden

Shortly before Christmas, we made an offer on a house, and we will close on it this afternoon. This would be the first time I will have owned property myself, which I can plant as I desire. I have gardened in many ways before: in many containers across two continents, in community garden plots, in neighbor's yards. But now Panglott shall have at last a non-metaphorical garden.

My plan for now is to spend the first year observing the plants that grow there now: to see their types, habits, and varieties; to watch the patterns of sun and water on the property; to mull future garden plans. There are a few patches of English ivy and wintercreeper to work on weeding out, and most of the trees appear to be weedy Ailanthus growing along the fenceline that I'll want to replace, but I hope for the first year to be mostly observation. With a small bit of land, it'll be worth the time to find the sunny patches as the sun shifts in the sky, to find the wet and dry patches, to slowly stress the weeds into oblivion, to plan a layout, and to drag out and savor the slow process of getting things the way I'd like them to be.

For a long time, I have been an avid gardener without any garden. Living in the U.S. and Japan and traveling in China and Europe, I've seen some really excellent and inspiring gardens. At present, I think there are three main traits I'll want to encourage in my yard:

Nativeness
The single largest threat to the environment of the continental U.S. is not global warming, or overhunting, but invasive species. Following more than a century of overhunting, clearcutting, habitat destruction, and pollution, one of the great environmental disasters of the 20th century was the downfall of the American chestnut. Two generations ago, the exotic chestnut blight wiped out four billion chestnut trees, the most commercially, economically, and ecologically valuable tree of the climax forest in the East. A generation ago, Dutch elm disease wiped out beloved elm trees across the country. And now that the emerald ash borer has entered Kentucky, ash trees will likely become virtually extinct in this part of the world for centuries or millenia to come.

Invasive species are bad for our local environment, and their spread is often aided and abetted by home landscaping. Some of Kentucky's least wanted plants are introduced from landscaping: burning bush, Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, and the ugly, obnoxious, highly aggressive wintercreeper. Most of these plants are really pretty ugly, to boot. Louisville's otherwise very cool Riverwalk is absolutely choked with exotic honeysuckle and multiflora rose. There's more information at the Kentucky Native Plant Society or native gardening at USFS

Whenever I go out for a hike or bike ride in the woods or a park, I'll see a patch of English ivy or wintercreeper or honeysuckle beginning the process of taking over a patch of otherwise bucolic woods. It's depressing. And when I come back into the city and see those same plants infesting yards and gardens, it's still depressing. I'd rather, as much as is possible, stick to the plants and flowers common in the area of the Falls of the Ohio, the Ohio River valley, and the Eastern woodlands west of Appalachia. This is hardly a limitation: the Eastern forest of the United States is one of the most botanically diverse temperate ecosystems in the world.

Michael Pollan penned a diatribe Against Nativism 15 years ago, which raises some valid points, but I think this remains an interesting approach to gardening, in general.

Usefulness
If you're going to put in the work to grow a plant, there should be a purpose for the labor. Plants worth cultivating should serve us for food, for spices, for tea, or for useful materials. A tomato plant or two, and a window box full of mint are good; sunflowers and squashes have been grown here for thousands of years, and there are interesting opportunities to experiment with cultivating native plants for food, such as sunchokes or ramps (Allium tricoccum). American bamboo is a good structural material for crafts. Horsetails can be scouring brushes. Bee balm and yarrow make nice tea.

I've long been intrigued by the idea of Kerala home gardens: that every household would have a few trees that supply food to enrich the family's diet. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, we had a peach tree and an almond tree, which provided a fantastic wealth of fruit and nuts every year. We had more peach pies than we could eat. It was great.

This idea has been expanded to forest gardening and permaculture, which seems to be something of a treehugger buzzword. But layering perennial food-producing to mimic the ecologial structure of a forest could be a way to get a wealth of food with less work. I am a big believer in perennials, especially those that can fend for themselves. And the plants typical of our local forests can fit such a system well: a canopy of hickory, pecan, oak, black cherry, or persimmon (but sadly no chestnuts), beside which can grow pawpaws, sand plums, American plums, hazelnuts, or serviceberries. Below, in the understory, can grow native ferns for fiddleheads, mosses, and perhaps wild ginger. Sounds workable, but needs more research.

The things you should grow at home, given the work involved, are things that you want an overwhelmingly bounty of (you can never have too much homegrown tomatoes), or unusual things that are hard to buy in the store.

Aesthetics
And so my priorities are opposite of most. There are some flowers that I enjoy absent practical uses: coneflowers, asters, blazing star, wild roses, &c. And I have come to think "usefulness" should include "attracts hummingbirds and butterflies" (clearly, very utilitarian creatures), so: butterfly weed, meadow lily, trumpet honeysuckle, red columbine. Trumpet creeper is the best hummingbird flower, but very aggressive; I'd be hesitant to plant it, but would be satisfied if it's already there.

Photos: Top—Helianthus tuberosus

Benimoto (CC BY 2.0)

Second—Lonicera sempervirens

pellaea (CC BY 2.0)

Third—Prunus americana

nalilo (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Bottom—Aquilegia canadensis,

nicmcphee (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Indiana Forest Cover

A couple of years ago, I heard a great discussion of Indiana's forest management on Homegrown on WFPL. Bernie Fischer, of the Indiana Division of Forestry, explained that, prior to American settlement and colonization, Indiana had 85% forest cover and 15% prairie. By about 1900, it had declined to 7% forest. It has since rebounded to 20% forest, but very little of that is remaining old-growth forest.

It's a pretty interesting factoid, and an interesting interview overall. Here are some quotes from the episode, which I believe is the December 18, 2004, show; their Web site has been redesigned, and I can't find the link to the original.

BOB HILL: Speaking of woods, we'll go across the river to Indiana briefly, and talk to the man up there who's in charge of the forests, and find out how people can take care of their lands, and all of this information will be applicable to Kentucky residents, too. ..To help us out, we're going to have Bernie Fischer; he's been director of the Indiana Division of Forestry since 1990. As such, the former Purdue University professor and extension forestry specialist supervises 150,000 acres of woodlands in the state's 13 state forests, and also supervises the state's 18 district foresters, who will provide on-site guidance to private landowners. He also supervises the state's two seedling nurseries, which annually sell six million tree seedlings and wildlife shrubs. Bernie, welcome to HomeGrown...
...
JENEEN WICHE: Before we get into more, like, forest-related things, define a forest for me? Are there issues in terms of old-growth forests versus newer forests versus like, a natural sort of forest, and a plantation type of forest, do you know what I mean? Like, what is truly a forest?

BERNIE FISCHER: We lump them all together, and any spot of ground out there that's probably over an acre of trees, we consider a forest. We assume it's not a place where you mow underneath, and you, it's more natural than that. But obviously, if someone plants a forest, and takes care of it and grows trees in a natural setting, we consider plantations just part of an extension of a natural forest.

WICHE: But aren't plantations...are those harvested?

FISCHER: O yeah, plantations. Now, people grow all kinds of forests for lots of reasons. And only one of those is harvesting. You know, recreation, hunting, all the other reasons. So thes forests have lots of reasons. But normally when people plant trees, they're planting them for a purpose, somewhere down the road, to harvest the trees.

BOB HILL: Bernie, we have a lot of forests in the southern part of the state here, but when you get above say, Seymour, off to Chicago, it's pretty much farmland. Now, was the state that way 300 years ago, or was all that land cleared at one point to make that farmland?

BERNIE FISCHER: It was mostly cleared. Indiana originally was 85% forested, about 15% prairie; and agriculture hit northern Indiana, and it was flat, and it was great soil, and they cleared it. And now we just have remnant woodlots here and there. The conservation reserve program has added some forest. We actually have counties way up in northern Indiana that are actually increasing in forest acreage as people are taking, say, marginal farmland and setting it aside and planting trees and putting it back in forest.

JENEENE WICHE: So how many acres in Indiana now is, the percentage is...

BERNIE FISCHER: Four and half million acres of forest land, about 20% of the state is forested. And that's from a low in the early 1900s of about 7%. So we've rebounded.

WICHE: So how much is state, how much is federal, how much is privately owned of those forests?

FISCHER: 85% is private, so private owners are the dominant player; federal's about 5%, state's about 5%, and other holdings, military and other things, are about 5%.
...
HILL: ...There's almost a poetic image to the old-growth forest, "Don't touch my land"; but that's pretty difficult for a private homeowner to do and see any success in a hundred years, isn't it?

FISCHER: We have basically almost no old-growth forest left. The reaction we get from a lot of landowners is, if a landowner owns, say, 40 acres, we find that landowner usually has a favorite tree or two out there that's already quite large, maybe at least an older tree, a hundred years old or whatever. And sometimes the landowner is most concerned about "What do I do to protect that tree? Not the whole woods, I like to go look at that particular tree. Because it's special: it's big, it has an odd shape, or whatever." So, you tend to, as a forester, very quickly pick up on that, and say "OK, I want to make sure I do something good for that area over there, for that tree, and the rest of the land has smaller trees on it, and they want them to be large over time. What can I do to make them grow faster?"

HILL: There is an old-growth grove up near Dale, the Pioneer Mothers Forest?

FISCHER: There's Pioneer Mothers...

HILL: It's a beautiful bunch of woods...

FISCHER: And there's a nice, there's also Donaldson's Woods at Spring Mill State Park; there are a few isolated holdings, but boy, they're small, and they're really rare and hard to find. But yeah, there are a few out there. There's also a few in Kentucky I've heard about, I can't give you off the top of my head, but you've got a few in Kentucky, too.

WICHE: So when you all go in to assist the private forest owners, landowners, is there also an understanding of the rest of the ecosystem in the forest, when you suggest certain types of management practices?

FISCHER: Yeah, we're always thinking about water quality, because forests are the best protectors of water. So if you're going to put in a road system, if you're going to do a timber harvest, we want to make sure that we protect the water, and usually we do that through what we call "best management practices". And those are generally so you keep ground disturbance to a minimum, and you direct water flows away from streams, so that the soil doesn't get into streams. A lot of landowners, their number one goal, when you ask them what their goal is, and they'll say "I want more wildlife". So you have to ask them, well, "What kind of more wildlife". But wildlife is, it really is an interest. And generally if you want wildlife, you want a variety of habitats. You want some big trees in one area, you want small trees in another area, maybe a brushy area, so that you get a variety of wildlife. Because wildlife for a lot of people means birds, and different birds like different kinds of habitat. So it's all-encompassing, and in fact, many landowners, if you have them list their goals, wildlife will be first, aesthetics will be second, hiking or whatever, which relates to those first two, might be third, and then maybe timber harvesting is fourth or fifth. So we are generally not talking about timber first. But we do talk about that too, because a lot of the landowners will say, "Yeah, but someday, my son's going to go to college, and I might need a little extra revenue, or...how can I do things right?" And most landowners want to do things right.

Fischer also discusses the procedures for helping private landowners manage their land, from a state's perspective. The foresters will meet landowners on the site and provide advice based on their goals, although long-term management for timber harvesting needs private foresters. He notes that as little as 10 acres may be sufficient for timber management and discusses the process of timber sales and harvesting on private land.

Haiti & the earthquake

A week ago, on January 12 at 4:53pm, a powerful earthquake struck Haiti. The images from the disaster, such as this graphic Boston Globe photo gallery, are staggering. The Guardian has a map of relief efforts.

The NYT brings together eight ways the rebuild Haiti. Felix Salmon advises not to give money to Haiti (at least, not earmarked for Haiti); AidWatch concurs and has more advice. Similar thoughts here, although aid can relieve immediate suffering. Jeffrey Sachs and David Brooks consider postdisaster reconstruction.

Econoblogger Tyler Cowen was anticipating a Haitian renaissance hours before the earthquake struck. He'd luckily avoided being there on holiday, a trip influenced by his history with Haiti. Cowen discusses other ways to help Haiti, geopolitical speculations about Haiti, and considers why is Haiti so poor. It's a topic of great interest: Why is Haiti so poor?

Some point to the timeline of U.S. involvement in Haiti. Haiti's history of terrible governance is justly infamous. Ronald Bailey argues that Haiti's lack of human, social, and institutional capital explains its lack of wealth. A news report from last summer highlights the lingering colonial debt:

The appalling state of the country is a direct result of having offended a quite different celestial authority — the French. France gained the western third of the island of Hispaniola — the territory that is now Haiti — in 1697. It planted sugar and coffee, supported by an unprecedented increase in the importation of African slaves. Economically, the result was a success, but life as a slave was intolerable. Living conditions were squalid, disease was rife, and beatings and abuses were universal. The slaves’ life expectancy was 21 years. After a dramatic slave uprising that shook the western world, and 12 years of war, Haiti finally defeated Napoleon’s forces in 1804 and declared independence. But France demanded reparations: 150m francs, in gold.

For Haiti, this debt did not signify the beginning of freedom, but the end of hope. Even after it was reduced to 60m francs in the 1830s, it was still far more than the war-ravaged country could afford. Haiti was the only country in which the ex-slaves themselves were expected to pay a foreign government for their liberty. By 1900, it was spending 80% of its national budget on repayments. In order to manage the original reparations, further loans were taken out — mostly from the United States, Germany and France. Instead of developing its potential, this deformed state produced a parade of nefarious leaders, most of whom gave up the insurmountable task of trying to fix the country and looted it instead. In 1947, Haiti finally paid off the original reparations, plus interest. Doing so left it destitute, corrupt, disastrously lacking in investment and politically volatile. Haiti was trapped in a downward spiral, from which it is still impossible to escape. It remains hopelessly in debt to this day.

The debt, 150 million gold francs, would be the equivalent of about 1.4 million troy ounces. That amount of gold today is worth nearly $1.6 billion. Haitian mud cakes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) are an attempt to cope with the physical suffering of chronic hunger.

There's also been interest in Jared Diamond's comparative discussion of Haitian and Dominican history, environment, and development in chapter 11 of Collapse. Diamond's discussion is a broad overview, but he begins with Haitian deforestation:

To anyone interested in understanding the modern world's problems, it's a dramatic challenge to understand the 120-mile-long border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the two nations dividing the large Caribbean island of Hispanola that lies southeast of Florida. ...From an airplane flying high overhead, the border looks like a sharp line with bends, cut arbitrarily across the island by a knife, and abruptly dividing a darker and greener landscape east of the line (the Dominican side) from a paler and browner landscape west of the line (the Haitian side). On the ground, one can stand on the border at many places, face east, and look into pine forest, then turn around, face west, and see nothing except fields almost devoid of trees.

That contrast visible at the border exemplifies a difference between the two countries as a whole. Originally, both parts of the island were largely forested... Today, 28% of the Dominican Republic is still forested, but only 1% of Haiti. ...In Haiti and the Dominican Republic just as elsewhere in the world, the consequences of all that deforestation include loss of timber and other forest materials, soil erosion, loss of soil fertility, sediment loads in the rivers, loss of watershed protection and hence of potential hydroelectric power, and decreased rainfall. All of those problems are more severe in Haiti than in the Dominican Republic. In Haiti, more urgent than any of those just-mentioned consequences is the problem of the loss of wood for making charcoal, Haiti's main fuel for cooking.

...there were many reasons why deforestation and other environmental problems began earlier, developed over a longer time, and proceeded further in Haiti than in the Dominican Republic. The reasons involved four of the factors in this book's five-factor framework: differences in human environmental impacts, in various friendly or unfriendly policies of other countries, and in responses by the societies and their leaders. Of the case studies described in this book, the contrast between Haiti and the Dominican Republic discussed in this chapter, and the contrast between the fates of the Norse and the Inuit in Greenland...provide the clearest illustrations that a society's fate lies in its own hands and depends substantially on its own choices.

EDIT
I've been updating this post significantly in the time since I posted it, mostly to add more links. Nicholas Kristof interviewed notable aid critics, who emphasized the need for assistance to earthquake victims, and advocated garmet sweatshops. Kristof has defended the importance of sweatshops in 2000 2006, and 2009, echoed by Paul Krugman. Andy Kershaw demands a more respect for Haitians.

Trains, cycles, trees

Via Broken Sidewalk, an story on the impact of Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail, and discussion at the Lexington Streetsweeper. If New York City replaced the subway system with roads for cars, they'd need a bridge 167 inbound lanes wide, to say nothing of the parking.

Cycling is one of the best treatments for stress, since it is accessible, enjoyable, low-impact, and can give a physiological runner's high. The world's longest bicycle tunnel has opened in Basque country, in Spain, in an old railway tunnel.

The flash flooding Louisville had last Tuesday (Aug. 4) was pretty crazy. There were some amazing scenes on TV: sewage boiling out of flooded streets, cars a few blocks from where we live flooded to their windshields or roofs. Channel 41 had water pouring into their building; they were broadcasting images of their own studio flooding. The Kentucky Derby Museum started a blog about the damage, the C-J says the flood's effects could drag on for months, and they have some photo galleries of damage at Churchil Downs and the library.

In Cherrapunji, India, people grow bridges from living tree roots over hundreds of years. Trees can grow in amazing ways, from espalier to the Belgian fence to tree shaping furniture or buildings.