While subzero cold enveloped Winding Pathways we discovered delightful seed and nursery catalogs in our mailbox. Leafing through their photos of rosy ripe tomatoes, peaches, and sweet corn made us dream of warm days as the frigid wind whistled around the house. Catalogs also made us think of our upcoming cherry tree crop.
We love our cherry trees and are happy to have two types growing at Winding Pathways. Most are the wild native Black Cherry, a member of the Rose family and common throughout the Eastern half of the United States.
Black cherry juice was mixed with brandy or rum to make “Cherry Bounce.”
Early pioneers sometimes called this tree the Cherry Bear because bruins would walk for miles to feast on its juicy fruit. Bear cubs learned how to climb trees by following their mother up the trunk to reach ripe fruit.
Birds love wild cherries. They’ve helped spread this tree far and wide by feasting on a cherry dinner here and then flying there to poop out the seeds. In many areas, the American Black cherry is almost an invasive species, but one with many attributes.
Thomas Jefferson’s Cherry Tree Wood
People today rarely bother eating the bitter small fruits, but pioneers made Cherry Bounce by mixing the juice with brandy or rum to make a bitter, but flavorful, cordial. Most people today enjoy this tree for its beautiful cabinet wood. When newly cut it is goldish in color, often with an intricate grain pattern. The wood darkens with age. Visitors to Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, Charlottesville, Virginia, often wonder why our third president loved such dark paneling. They don’t realize that when he lived there the newly installed wood glowed with cherry’s warm texture. Two centuries of aging have darkened it.
In our mail recently came the newsletter of the National Arbor Day Foundation with an amazing story about today’s popular Bing Cherry. That’s the delicious fruit often sold in grocery stores to be eaten fresh. In 1847 Henderson Lewelling, of Salem, Iowa, loaded his eight children, pregnant wife, and 700 of his prized cherry tree shoots packed in dirt-filled boxes, into wagons for the long trek to Oregon. They endured freezing temperatures, scurvy, and dysentery but made it and established the Pacific Northwest’s cherry industry.
Two Types
Today, two types of domestic cherry are readily eaten by people. They are distinct from the American Black Cherry and are native to Europe and Asia. One type is called Sweet Cherries with the Bing variety best known. They are delicious when eaten fresh. Sweet cherries thrive in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana but don’t like the upper Midwest’s harsh winters. Ironically, Bing cherries got their start in Iowa but don’t grow well in the state today. We don’t have any at Winding Pathways.
Tart cherries make great pies.
We love our sour cherries. They thrive here despite winter’s cold and summer’s inferno, yielding an abundant crop in June. Most commercial sour cherries are grown in Michigan, but they love Iowa. Our favorite variety is the Dwarf North Star. It resists bugs and diseases, and even the deer leave it alone. In some years our cherry crop is almost sweet enough to eat fresh. We love them best blended with mulberries in a pie or mixed into oatmeal. A handy cherry pitter removes some of the tedium of evicting the big seed from each fruit.
Tart cherries come ripe in June.
Planting a sour cherry in the yard yields delicious fruit for a family to enjoy. Dwarf varieties can be bought from many nurseries. They like full sun and don’t take much space. In contrast, plant an American Black Cherry and eventually, it will produce fruit savored by birds. The tree needs plenty of space. It can grow to 100 feet tall and likes full sun.
Two Great Sources to Learn About Trees
Elegant lodging awaits at the Lied Lodge.
The Arbor Day Foundation, arborday.org has a wealth of information about trees and sells dozens of species at low cost. A few years ago, we enjoyed a delightful visit to Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Nebraska. We overnighted in the Lied Lodge on the property and wandered trails while enjoying tree lure. Adjacent is the home of J. Sterling Morton, Arbor Days founder.
A wonderful old book on tree natural history is a two-volume series called A NATURAL HISTORY OF TREES OF (Eastern or Western) NORTH AMERICA. If you find one at a used book store…….buy it!
ARBOR DAY
Most northern states honor Arbor Day on the Fourth Friday of April each year, but many southern states celebrate it at seasons more appropriate for planting in their climate. Arbor Day dates for all states are listed on this link.
Guest Blogger
Nancy Garberson shares these observations and photos with Winding Pathways.
This time of year, we call it “wild kingdom” in our backyard because we see deer every day. All kinds of birds and tracks in the snow from the nocturnal creatures dot the snow as well. Our dog is fascinated by the steady entertainment. It’s funny but she never chases them, she respects them as if they were family.
Watching deer roam in our yard can make us feel as if we are living in a natural paradise. Our neighbor has a pond and we have connecting woods. We think that’s what attracts the deer to our area. The deer feel safe and they have lots of water and natural food, as well as our feeder supply, to keep them happy. Another neighbor has an apple tree, which appears to be another draw for the deer. Even the bucks walk in nonchalantly to feed.
So, not only are we enjoying the winter wonderland, but we also have a steady showing of wildlife to enjoy on winter days.
Abby takes in the scenery.
The deer come to the feeder in the late afternoon.
Mice got into the hybrid system of my Prius and destroyed it. They also got into our greenhouse and ate some important seeds my husband Bob was growing. These critters are a common problem, but we have always used live traps; after all, they were here first and are just doing what they need to do to survive. That is until they crossed the line and, reluctantly, we declared war and the snap traps and peanut butter came out.
Once a nature lover, always a nature lover, though, and hoping that some good can result, Bob puts the dead mice out in places where they will be found by “someone” looking for an easy meal.
Yesterday he had an amazing experience. He had caught a couple of mice and put them out but yesterday afternoon no one had taken them, so he moved them to a more open place. As he was crouching down, he felt something soft. An owl swooped down and took the mouse while Bob still had the tail in his hand. The owl remained still in a nearby tree, for the rest of the afternoon while the second mouse stayed on the ground and we waited to see what would happen next, but nothing happened before dark. This morning both are gone.
We have hosted at least one pair of Barred Owls for many years. We rarely see them, so yesterday was a real treat, but we regularly hear them (“Who cooks for you?”) Since mice are the secondary host for deer ticks (those are the ticks that carry Lyme disease) these owls and the yearly expanding family of hawks which also lives here are very welcome.
Be sure to take in the International Owl Center in Houston, MN, this winter. Their Owl Festival is scheduled for March 1-3, 2019. Whooo’s up for it?
We
celebrated the first day of 2019 with a drive in the country. An inch of crusty
snow had fallen a few nights earlier, and the countryside looked wintry.
Wildlife seemed tucked in on this frosty morning, but as we rounded a gravel
road’s bend, we spotted 20 huge white birds in the stubble of a picked corn
field.
They
were too far away to identify. Were they snow geese or swans? Fortunately, our
binoculars were at the ready and we were soon delighted to watch trumpeter
swans feeding on corn missed by the combine.
In
previous years we would have had to rummage through coats, mini shovel, rope,
and other debris stowed behind the pickup’s seat to find our binoculars. Too
many times the birds we wanted to see departed before we found the optics. Not
this time.
We recently received a Bino Dock device. It fits securely in a car or truck cup holder, making it easy to grab our binoculars quickly. Roof prism binoculars fit snugly into the Dock, reducing the odds of damage caused when optics are stored loosely under or behind a seat. More important they’re instantly available should we spot an unusual animal or even vintage airplane we want to observe more closely.
Binoculars are handy in the dock.
Cover the binoculars with a cap.
We found only one downside to the Bino Docks. Because they hold optics at the ready, they are visible from outside the vehicle. This could make them a target of thieves who are able to quietly and quickly break a side window and be off with valuables. We solved this problem by simply putting a dark colored baseball or stocking cap over the binoculars when we are away from the car. Remember it’s never wise to leave anything that appears to be valuable visible within a parked car. Stow them in the truck, under the seat, or cover them.
When the next soft snow falls, go tracking outside! A late December 2019 skiff of snow delighted us. There was not enough of the white stuff to shovel but the thin white blanket that covered our yard revealed who visited the night before.
The dimples of deer tracks were clearly visible as we went out to get the newspaper, but one set of tracks was unusual and especially interesting. Four footprints, in a rough line, kept repeating with about three feet of untrod snow between them. Just what animal created them?
A skiff of snow is best for tracking.
Gottcha!
A small bird left tracks in the snow.
After a bit of sleuthing, we decided it was a coyote out seeking a mouse or rabbit dinner. Coyotes aren’t rare around our home but they aren’t in the yard often. We wish we could have watched it lope across the yard.
A skiff of snow makes for a delightful walk in the woods, grasslands, or wetlands. Often animals are easy to spot as their dark coats contrast with the white snow and tracking is superb. It’s usually not hard to figure out what animal made the tracks, and following them gives some idea of what the animal was doing and where it was going.
Many Websites and books help with track identification but we like www.naturetracking.com because it shows tracks of animals most likely to be in a backyard.
A modern glacier visited Winding Pathways in October.
Our area of Iowa doesn’t have much rock. There’s limestone bedrock in some places. Over the top is a thick layer of subsoil and topsoil with one exception. Glacial erratics.
Thousands of years ago the Upper Midwest was a cold world. Summers were so frigid that the previous winter’s snow didn’t melt. It packed down on top of previous winter’s snow and formed ice. Thick ice is fluid. It moves. Slowly. But it moves. Up in today’s Minnesota, glaciers scooped up granite and other rocks and gave each one a grand, if pokey, ride. As the ice inched forward, often southward, it carried rocks. Often they churned along the bottom of the ice, gradually rounding off like pebbles in the ocean surf do.
Fifteen or twenty thousand years ago the climate warmed. Ancient climate change. Instead of expanding, glaciers shrank, leaving their stone cargo in place, often hundreds of miles from where they were scooped from the ground.
This massive erratic is the centerpiece of a new Marion, IA, park.
It’s complicated because there were several glacial periods of warming and cooling. Sometimes a new glacier picked up and moved rocks left by earlier ice sheets thousands of years earlier. The last glacier to visit Iowa melted about 12,000 years ago, leaving erratics here and there in the prairie that was converted to farm fields. Two of the most renowned glacial erratics in Eastern Iowa are Waldo’s Rock in Marion, and Bever Park’s boulder that generations of kids have climbed.
At Winding Pathways, we needed a retaining wall and first considered using manufactured concrete blocks. Then, we met Cody Rossman of Hardscapes. His business crafts glacial erratics into retaining walls. It’s not easy. Those hunks of rounded granite are heavy.
Cody’s crew brought truckloads of erratics to our yard from where the last glacier abandoned them near Troy Mills, Iowa. It took a husky truck about 45 minutes to bring the rocks 24 miles. That’s nearly 30 miles an hour.
It’s not certain how fast glaciers moved rocks, but it was slow. It could have taken years, decades, or even centuries for ice to move our rocks 24 miles. A speedy glacier might move a rock a mile a decade. Maybe a mile a century. Cody’s method was faster.
The wall’s in place. Every time we look at the rocks we wonder about their travel. Probably they originated in Minnesota hundreds of thousands of years ago to end up preventing erosion in our yard. What stories they could tell? Winding Pathways will find out in a few weeks when retired geologist, Ray Anderson visits and inspects the rocks and shares their stories.
Our wildlife also loves the rocks. A chpmunk popped up between two rocks as soon as the work crews left for the day. The uneven rock surfaces and the nooks and crannies between them provide safe living spaces for our chipmunks and garter snakes.
View of the old wall.
The old retaining wall material was removed first.
Glacial rocks arrive.
Sorting the rocks.
Bobcat moves rocks.
The rock wall takes shape.
After excavating, geotextile is placed and glacial rocks arranged.
