by Winding Pathways | Aug 10, 2023 | Mammals, Nature, Trees/Shrubs
Squirrels: Free Tree Planters
Our neighborhood squirrels proved they are the best tree planters.
We lost most of our mature trees in the 2020 Derecho.
An August 2020 derecho tore through Iowa pushing 140-mile-an-hour wind against trees and buildings. Trees by the hundreds of thousands tumbled to the ground. Winding Pathways wasn’t spared. We lost most of our firs, oaks, hickories, and cottonwoods. The devastation in nearby Faulkes Heritage Woods was even worse.
Almost immediately, shocked people took action. Government forestry departments, aided by tree planting nonprofits, and private citizens unleashed their shovels and planted thousands of trees. So did the squirrels. Well, not really. People planted trees.
Squirrels bury nuts in caches to retrieve them later.
Squirrels planted nuts and acorns.
Then three seasons of drought followed. Once planted, most trees were not tended as they need to be. So, many human-planted trees shriveled in the heat and dryness, while the nuts buried by squirrels sprouted and the new trees were flourishing.
But why?
We have theories. A human-planted tree seedling needs plenty of moisture to keep its trunk and new leaves hydrated. Sparse roots must pull water from the ground and send it upward. That’s a tough job in a wet year. Come drought it’s nearly impossible.
Squirrels did better. These industrious rodents don’t mean to create new trees. They’re simply storing nuts underground so they have enough fat and protein-rich food to tide them through winter. All they need to do is dig up a nut when hunger calls. Squirrels overfill their larder, burying more tasty nuts than they’ll ever need. Unfortunate squirrels are eaten by hawks, foxes, owls, or humans, but the nuts they’d buried remain patiently waiting for spring’s warmth to germinate.
Sprouting nuts grow roots able to pull scarce moisture from the soil and send it to new baby leaves poking through the ground.
As we walked through July 2023’s dry woods we sadly see human-planted trees shriveled up and dead, while nearby a new generation of tiny walnut, oak, and hickories is rising from nuts planted by industrious squirrels.
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Newly planted trees need watering.
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This squirrel planted walnut seedling sprouted just this year in spite of the drought.
Squirrels Don’t Plant All The Trees
Squirrels are the best friends of nut-bearing trees, but other tree species can’t rely on the furry rodents. Cottonwoods, for example, produce millions of seeds too tiny for squirrel food. So, the trees grow cottony fluff that floats seeds to distant places. If one lands in a patch of moist bear soil a fast-growing cottonwood sprouts. Maples have helicopter-like seeds that whirl a gig away from the parent to sprout a ways away.
Pity the poor Osage Orange tree that grows huge citrus-smelling balls containing hidden seeds. Many folks call them hedge apples. A tree must get its seeds away from its own shade. Squirrels do the job for oaks. The wind for cottonwoods. Massive mastodons once munched on Osage Orange hedge apples, wandered off, digested the pulp, and pooped out the seeds. When these massive elephants went extinct the tree lost its partner and saw its native range shrink from much of North America to a tiny spot down south.
Nature provides many ways for trees to reproduce and the results are often superior to what humans can do. We appreciate the squirrels that plant nuts many of which sprout into healthy native trees. Thanks, squirrels!
by Winding Pathways | Aug 3, 2023 | Garden/Yard, Nature, Wonderment
At the foot of East Post Road SE, just by Indian Creek is the frog statue that dons varied outfits each season and for many events. Take a look through the years. And visit our website for amphibian blogs.
The frog is serious about keeping healthy and helping after storms.
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Masks and hand sanitizers did their jobs to help reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2
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Cleaning up after the 2020 Derecho.
Further into the year:
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A green pot of gold.
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Hoppy Easter!
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Keeping it Clean
Middle of the Year is graduation, summer fun, and the Fourth of July with a loyal “Vandal” from Idaho!
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Summertime and the livin’ is easy.
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Frog And Vandal (UIdaho) posing.
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Amphibian Safety Patrol…
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Go Hawks!
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Does this frog practice Reiki?
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Coming for the candy.
Always a civic Duty Calls.
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Research first.
We are “hopping” to add more photos as we walk by the ever-current and exciting Frog Statue. To learn about real frogs of Iowa visit the website link.
by Winding Pathways | Jul 27, 2023 | Nature, Travel/Columns, Trees
Always Something New To Learn
Although we’ve lived in Iowa for over 40 years, we never knew so much history crowded into a small town in the mid-1800s not long after settlement. Our visit to the Lewelling Quaker Museum in Salem, Iowa, brought us up to speed on history. The small museum tells a fascinating, little-known history that impacted people far beyond Iowa’s borders. They focus on three significant areas.
Quakers
The Museum’s formal name is the Lewelling Quaker Museum. These peaceful people moved to the area during the decades prior to the Civil War. Among their many beliefs was a strong aversion to slavery. Neighboring Missouri settlers owned slaves just 20 miles south of Salem.
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Decorated in the era of the 1800s.
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_Note Height Difference
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Way to make music
The Underground Railroad
Salem area Quakers, joined by others of various faiths, were a significant part of the Underground Railroad that helped escaped slaves move north to legal safety in Canada. In the museum, located in an old home, we were able to enter the tiny crawl space beneath the kitchen where slaves hid from slave catchers. The process must have been scary for both slaves and those who helped them. Captured slaves were returned to their owner for likely punishment and continued to live in bondage. Whites who helped risked arrest and incarceration. Yet, the Underground railroad persisted and helped many people gain freedom.
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Salem was a major depot.
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A rug and kitchen table covered the closed trap door.
Fruit
The Lewelling Family were nursery people who cultivated and sold fruit trees. They developed several productive varieties of cherries and apples. In the early days of the Oregon Trail travel fever infected the Lewellings. They modified a wagon to hold tiny fruit tree slips and made the arduous trek over the Great Plains and mountains all the way to the Willamette Valley. Most of the baby trees survived the trip and were used to start the Pacific Northwest’s famed fruit industry. People enjoy different fruits and apple varieties to this day in part because of the families that carried the tiny fruit slips west.
18″ thick walls.
The volunteer-operated Lewelling Quaker Museum is open for tours Sunday afternoons from 1-4 pm May through September and by appointment at other times and dates. We found our visit fascinating and encourage others to go. Salem is located a few miles south of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, in the SE corner of the state. For information check lewelling.org.
by Winding Pathways | Jul 20, 2023 | Reflections/Profiles, Uncategorized, Weeds
Wisdom From “Johnny Appleseed” of Prairie Plants
“Weeds are mother nature’s stitches,” prairie restorationist Corliss “Jock” Ingels told us years ago.
“If you badly cut yourself, a physician stitches the wound closed so it can heal. If you bare the ground, weeds quickly sprout, shading the soil with foliage and filling it with roots. Weeds reduce erosion until more permanent plants take hold,” he proclaimed.
Even rag weed has a purpose. Birds love the seeds.
On a hot summer morning, we pedaled along the Grant Wood Trail, seeing mother nature’s stitches alongside the new pavement. Recently the popular bicycle trail was paved. Machines bared the soil at the edge of the pavement that’s now covered with bright yellow trefoil, crown and purple vetch, golden dandelions, white spurge, sweet clover, ragweed, and poison hemlock. All are so-called invasive weeds, but they’re providing a service by holding the soil and giving homes to trailside wildlife until more “desirable” plants establish. Some of those pioneering weeds sported an array of bright flowers that made our morning ride delightful.
Beyond Human Centric
Weeds have a purpose, but must a plant or animal need to have a “human-centric” perspective?
The night before our bike ride we sat on our back deck with Neil and Renata Bernstein. He’s a recently retired biology professor and remarked that sometimes people ask what purpose a particular plant or animal has.
Purpose! Must plants and animals have a purpose from a human perspective?
Easily recycled cans become trash.
Dr. Bernstein sometimes responds to these questions by saying, “What’s the purpose of people?” Indeed, our observations are that modern humans have forced out original people from their lands. We have done a great deal of harm by polluting the air, siphoning off life-giving water to maintain green grass, and stripping the land of topsoil, precious metals, and crystals. We greedily take a resource, convert it to our own purpose, then throw it away. “What’s the purpose of people?”
More to Purpose Than Our Perspective
We can learn much from turtles.
Some living things certainly have a great purpose. Without wheat, cattle, corn, penicillin mold, lumber, trees, and thousands of other plants and animals we couldn’t live. Others may seem to have a negative purpose. Think disease-causing microbes, poison ivy, ragweed that spews allergic pollen into the air, mosquitoes, and a host of other creatures that cause human misery. To view them negatively is human-centric.
The vast majority of living things neither produce tangible benefits nor problems for people. Like turtles, they simply live. Probably they have a valuable ecological role that may not be obvious but they are here. They have a right to be here whether or not they provide human impact. As we have learned over millennia, different plants and animals, offer benefits to us. We simply have to observe and incorporate.
To Everything…There is a Purpose
Every living thing has a purpose in the great scheme of things that people barely understand.
So, as we cycle along, we doff our bike helmets to the diversity of life we pass and silently thank them for sharing the world with us.
by Winding Pathways | Jul 13, 2023 | Gazette Features, Travel/Columns
What is a Pilgrimage?
From: University of York: “‘Pilgrim’ and ‘pilgrimage’ are words that have carried a range of meanings over the centuries.
“The English term ‘pilgrim’ originally comes from the Latin word peregrinus (per, through + ager, field, country, land), which means a foreigner, a stranger, someone on a journey,…. It can describe a traveller making a brief journey to a particular place….”
Our Context
We consider travel a “pilgrimage.” The destination is not the sole purpose. We enrich our souls by being open to amazing travel surprises. Here are some we discovered on recent trips to New Jersey and Saskatchewan, Canada.
Interstate Highways are outstanding for getting places quickly, but we consider them a boring slog that bypasses fascinating places. Too many people focus on getting to a destination and miss intriguing sites along the way. In contrast, we often scan maps and brochures and, from time to time, duck off Interstates to drive on somewhat parallel, smaller roads stopping in towns bypassed by the interstates.
Two trips from this summer that highlight this concept come to mind. We’ve featured the Hopewell Earthworks around Chillicothe, OH, and took in great southern BBQ at Old Canal Smokehouse. The server presented us with an enormous slice of peanut butter pie and regaled us with tales of his childhood exploring the steep mounds and snaking earthworks while four of us made quick work of the dessert.
Easterly
An unusual cafe.
On our return from the East Coast, we needed a respite from the truck traffic and fast driving of I-80, so we exited and drove through Brookville, PA. Seeking coffee, we discovered the Calico Cafe. While ordering we asked the barista where the restrooms were. She responded, “You’ll find them through the cat room behind me.” Cat room!!!!! Well, we opened the door to find people petting cats. It was a place for them to get their cat fix. We’re not cat people but the experience was different……something that can’t be found in chain eateries along Interstate exits. And the coffee was decent.
Westerly
On a more recent drive to Saskatchewan, Canada, we were cruising north on Interstate 29 in North Dakota and spotted a tiny note on the map showing the location of North America’s tallest structure. It was along a small paved road that headed in the direction we wanted to go, so we exited, made a few turns, and saw, not a massive skyscraper, but a 2063-foot-tall television tower. To stabilize the tower, guy wires extended scores of yards out. Not terribly exciting but a sight we’d have missed had we stayed on the interstate. And it has a history.
Just north of the tower we passed through the small town of Mayville, North Dakota, and discovered a gem of a college called Mayville State University. With 80+ majors/minors, a student/faculty ratio of 14:1, and reasonable tuition, MSU would be a good bet for a solid education and a bright, “no-debt” future. Only a few miles north we tented overnight in Turtle River State Park. Songbirds serenaded us in the evening and greeted us in the early morning.
Medicine Wheel and College Towns
Glacial boulders align to the rising and setting sun and moon.
On our return trip we were eastbound on Interstate 94. We’d picked up a brochure at a North Dakota welcome station about the Medicine Wheel Park in Valley City, a town between Bismarck and Fargo. Even though it was raining we exited, donned raincoats, and walked around a fascinating and well-maintained medicine wheel almost adjacent to the big road. The structure, inspired by the Big Horn Medicine Wheel, marks the rises and sets of the sun and moon in relation to the Earth. Then we drove through Valley City State University before jumping back on the big road. VCSU has an interactive financial program with surrounding states and two Canadian provinces. Recreational opportunities abound.
Our western trip passed the geographic center of North America in Rugby, ND, (watch the video! It’s rather fun!), and a Continental Divide (Laurentian) between water flowing to Hudson Bay and that flowing to the Gulf of Mexico. Actually, a map reveals several watershed divides in the Americas.
Most travelers would have buzzed by these interesting stops. Curiosity grips us and leads us to unusual places we’d usually never heard of. We are richer for this.
Great Plains Colleges
Our son, Daniel, graduated from a college few people have ever heard of – Black Hills State University in Spearfish, South Dakota. It was an outstanding educational experience for him. And, tuition and living expenses were modest. He graduated debt free.
We’ve explored other colleges in small Great Plains towns, sometimes to have coffee in their student center, and to learn about them. Many, like Black Hills State, are little known, offer outstanding education, and are inexpensive. They offer students the chance to earn a college degree without debt.
Here are a few we’ve visited:
Black Hills State, Spearfish, South Dakota.
Valley City State University, Valley City, North Dakota
Mayville State University, Mayville, ND
Wayne State University, Wayne, Nebraska
Know someone considering college? One of these rather obscure but top-notch schools might be a perfect match……and there are many more we’ve yet to visit.
