by Winding Pathways | Mar 21, 2024 | Garden/Yard, Garden/Yard, Trees
Bright! Beautiful! Ominous!
As we walked across a New Jersey parking lot last summer an amazingly colorful, and new-to-us, insect fluttered in front of us. It had a gorgeous creamy white and bright red body covered with black spots.
Identifying it was easy and ominous. It was a Spotted Lanternfly. First found in Pennsylvania in 2014 it likely came to the United States from its native China as a hitchhiker in a crate or box.
It may be a pretty bug but its presence is ominous. It feeds on at least 172 different plant species and is spreading rapidly westward from its start close to the Atlantic Ocean.
Feeding off Another Invasive
What’s somewhat ironic about the lanternfly is the insect’s affinity for another Chinese invasive, the Tree of Heaven or Ailanthus. Although the inch-long insect will eat many different plants it prefers this highly aggressive and fast-growing tree.
Important Contact Information
The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship is on the lookout for the Spotted Lanternfly. They ask anyone spotting one in Iowa to report it by calling:
l (515)725-1470 or logging onto their website at IowaAgriculture.gov.
How To Reduce the Invasion
A key to reducing this insect’s abundance may be reducing Ailanthus tree numbers. This invasive tree thrives in urban and rural areas, often forming large groves. It displaces native trees, has little commercial value, and now harbors an introduced insect pest.
Winding Pathways encourages anyone with an Ailanthus in their yard to remove it, convert it to firewood if you can, and replace it with a native tree species. Remember, report any Spotted Lanternflies you spot.
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Grove of young Ailanthus.
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Ailanthus trees grow fast.
by Winding Pathways | Feb 29, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Home Improvements, Nature, Trees
Knot Just Lumber
A local store
When driving through Hiawatha, Iowa, recently, a nondescript sign caught our eye. Posted on what looked like a warehouse the sign said, KNOT JUST LUMBER. We had to check it out and soon entered the ultimate wood candy store.
Leaning upright were immense slabs of white and red oak, walnut, cherry, and mulberry destined to become gorgeous tables. Nearby were smaller boards of at least a dozen tree species. Most were cut from native Iowa trees, but some racks held exotic wood from foreign lands. Purpleheart caught our eyes. It comes from trees that grow in Central and South America. When first cut the wood is dull grayish but within a few days, it transforms into an eggplant purple color.
Local Connections
We returned to visit Nic Carter, who co-owns the store with his sister, Caris. The family is from Alburnett and Nic was an active 4-H member dabbling in woods making jewelry boxes for art shows. After stints as a woodworker and home builder Nic, and his family opened Knot Just Lumber in September 2022. He and his sister decided to open the store because, “The area has no local woodworking place, so, I started one here,” he explained.
His father and son help run this family-owned and operated business located just north of Cedar Rapids. We enjoyed an in-person tour, which is augmented by their website and includes a virtual walk-through.
Knot Just Lumber caters to hobbyists, commercial customers, and families. We have visited several times and enjoyed chatting with individual customers and couples, and watched kids touch and smell the smooth, fragrant wood. The company buys trees from wood brokers. Most originate from trees in southern Iowa. The company mills wood into various-sized boards and turning rounds, dries it in an onsite kiln, surface planes, and sands most boards.
Wood is Special
Wood is special. We’ve noticed that in many brand-new houses doors, window frames, and floors are crafted from composite materials and plastic.
Nothing seems natural. In contrast, our 1947-era house has floors of Douglas Fir and White Oak with our furniture crafted from solid oak, pine, walnut, and cedar. Different woods make our home feel closer to nature while gracing us with the individual vibrant colors, textures, and grain patterns of each species. The woods connect us to woodworkers, friends, and craftspeople from bygone and current eras.
Commercial Lumber
Commercial lumber is usually cut from the straightest and most uniform trees. Buy it from a large commercial outlet and it’s attractive and easy to work but lacks the character implanted in wood by knots and irregular growth. In contrast, every wood slab we saw at Knot Just Lumber showed the individuality and character of the tree that created it. “Some of the most interesting wood comes from trees that grew in urban areas where their branches spread widely. It helps give the wood wonderful character and beautiful grain,” said Nic.
Unfortunately, every year millions of trees, many growing in towns, are felled after they die. Beautiful wood inside the bark is frequently hauled to a landfill, ground into shavings, or cut for firewood. Knot Just Lumber converts old veteran trees into lumber destined to be crafted into furniture that endures for generations. The company even saves sawdust and compresses it into briquettes to feed a wood stove or campfire. We bought some and found that they work wonderfully. We appreciated Nic’s caution that they do burn hot, so we use them sparingly. We are excited to use them with our occasional campfires out back.
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Value added and no waste.
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Fungi-laced wood
A Way to Add Character to a Room
The materials from our recent downstairs bathroom renovation are mostly manmade. That’s understandable, as the surfaces need to be easily cleaned and resist moisture. But the room needed the character of wood. So, we bought an oak board from Knot Just Lumber to cover a small area of plaster. It adds the warmth of nature to an otherwise utilitarian space.
Hidden Gems
Fusing old and new technology.
Knot Just Lumber is a local store we found by accident. The staff consult, have working spaces and classes for customers and specialize in epoxy with the wood to create gorgeous pieces for homes. Their prices are reasonable, especially compared to national stores or online sources. Similar local stores are scattered across the country. Finding them can be tricky but hobbyist woodworkers know where they are and anyone can Google hardwood lumber and they might learn of a nearby place to buy gorgeous local wood.
Resources
One of our favorite resources to learn the diverse characteristics of dozens of different species of native and exotic woods is the book WOOD! Identifying and Using Hundreds of Woods Worldwide, by Eric Meier.
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Families taking in the lumber.
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Assessing lumber.
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wood has a characteristic smell.
by Winding Pathways | Jan 18, 2024 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Nature, Pests
Frustration Yields to Creativity
Reprising the blog on thwarting House Sparrows. Here is a recap of our initial frustration and subsequent ways to encourage native birds and discourage exotics.
As we wrote earlier, hordes of House Sparrows almost made us give up feeding birds. We’d fill our feeders each morning and hope to watch juncos, cardinals, chickadees, woodpeckers, and nuthatches visit on cold winter days. Unfortunately, hordes of House Sparrows began arriving. We don’t mind feeding a few, but dozens soon devoured all the expensive seed, leaving empty feeders for native species.
Coming Up Short on “Expert Advice”
We asked bird experts what we might do to discourage House Sparrows and tried several of their ideas. Nothing worked well, so we experimented and came up with a few tricks that seem to discourage House Sparrows to a degree yet let other species eat. Our tricks aren’t perfect and sparrows still come, but not in huge numbers.
Here’s what we did:
Altered filling time:
We noticed that cardinals, jays, chickadees, and nuthatches visited feeders in the early morning and late afternoon, but House Sparrows came more late morning and toward the middle of the day. So, we put out small amounts of seeds early in the morning and again in late afternoon. Often our feeders are empty mid-day when the house sparrows prefer to visit.
Eating from platform feeder
Sparrows enjoy feeding on the ground, on horizontal tables and other flat surfaces, and from silo-type feeders with long perches and large openings. We took down our standard silo feeders and replaced them with a silo shape feeder made of hardware cloth with a quarter-inch mesh.
In our quarter-inch mesh feeder, we put a mixture of black oil sunflower seeds and hulled peanuts. Native birds seemed better able to extract the sunflower from the mesh than House Sparrows. The peanuts don’t fit through the mesh, but many native bird species peck at them through the wire and extract pieces of peanuts. House Sparrows seem less able, or willing, to do this.
We also stopped feeding cracked corn and millet on the ground. Sparrows love them. Instead, we now toss full kernels of corn on the ground. Sparrows can’t swallow the big seeds and are unable to peck them apart. Woodpeckers, cardinals, blue jays, and nuthatches swallow or carry away the big seeds.
Put up with some House Sparrows
Our system helps deter these pesky exotic birds but is far from perfect. House Sparrows still visit and eat seeds but not as many as before we started using these tricks. Maybe they’ll work for you.
A few of you have shared. Now Others Can Share.
Winding Pathways is eager to learn other ways to deter House Sparrows. If you have discovered something that works, please let us know.
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by Winding Pathways | Dec 14, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Bugs, Garden/Yard, Nature, Pests
Autumn Reveals Nature’s Wonders
Bare trees reveal a bald-faced hornet nest.
November’s wind stripped the leaves off one of our maples and revealed a big gray football-shaped bald-faced hornet nest. Although we’d walked under it all summer, we had no clue it was there.
This fall many people will discover similar “paper wasp” nests in their trees or shrubs or even tucked near a light fixture. Made of a paper-like material, the nest was really made by insects called “bald-faced hornets” that are related to other wasps, including yellow jackets.
These social wasps can attack in droves. Their sting hurts. Because their stingers are smooth, unlike honey bees, they can sting again and again.
So, what do you do when you spot a nest on a crisp fall afternoon? Leave it alone!
Life History
The insect’s life history gives the best clue on how to avoid painful stings.
Last fall the colony of 500, or so, worker wasps died as the weather cooled. The fertile queen survived by tucking herself under a rotting log somewhere to slumber through winter. Come spring she’ll make a tiny paper-like nest, usually in a tree, and lay eggs that become workers. These hard-working new insects expand the nest and forage widely.
They are omnivores eager to dine on rotting fruit, but among their favorite foods are caterpillars and adult insects. Bald-faced hornets are a gardener’s friend, removing vegetable-chomping insects. They also sip on nectar so are good pollinators.
Aggressive or Protective?
Most sources claim they are highly aggressive, and they are if someone disturbs their nest. Several years ago, an adult neighbor spotted a nest above the doorway that the family had used all summer. He tried to knock it down and only damaged the nest. His misguided aggression unleashed an attack by dozens of upset bald-faced hornets. Stung many times, he’ll likely never again molest a nest.
We walked under and near the bald-faced hornet’s nest in our yard many times this summer and didn’t even know it was there. They didn’t attack us. Rather, they snacked on our vegetable gardens’ pests.
The lesson: leave these insects and their nest alone.
Ironically, by the time most people discover a nest in very late fall, the colony has already abandoned it. The best thing to do is NOTHING. Winter’s wind, rain, and snow will disintegrate the nest, and the queen will find a new spot to build next year’s colony.
by Winding Pathways | Dec 7, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Birds, Nature
Why do Birds Fly Into Windows?
The spray makes the window opaque.
Windows, deadly for birds. According to the National Audubon Society, about one billion birds are killed every year when they crash into windows. About half collide with low commercial building windows with the rest crashing into home windows. Surprisingly few seem to crash into the high windows of skyscrapers.
Birds fly into windows because they just don’t see them and assume they’re about to zip through safe soft air. Sometimes they may see reflections of vegetation behind them and think they are zooming to a convenient perch.
How to Help a Bird
When Rich was director of the Indian Creek Nature Center, he’d often get calls from upset people who had just found a quivering bird beneath their window. In his experience one of two outcomes is likely. Either the bird will soon die or it will fully recover and fly off. He suggests leaving the bird alone for at least an hour unless it’s likely to fall prey to a hungry neighborhood cat. In that case, it is probably best to gently place it in a cardboard box to give it a chance to recover…or die.
Unfortunately, there’s no effective first-aid technique to reverse death. Hopefully, the bird will soon recover and speed away. If not, a respectful burial is in order.
Tips
Here are some tips from the Portland, Oregon, Audubon Chapter of the National Audubon Society for reducing window collisions:
- Place bird feeders away from large windows.
- Avoid putting house plants immediately inside windows. Birds may see them and attempt to fly to a perch.
- Put stickers/decals on the outside of windows. (Note: Many sources recommend these. Stickers can be bought online or at bird-feeding stores……but we, at Winding Pathways, have not found them very effective.
- Stretch netting across the outside of the window to physically keep birds from crashing. We’ve found this best on windows that experience frequent bird collisions.
- Put colorful tape on the outside of the windows.
- Douse outside lights. Come sundown our nation is way over-lit. Lights block viewing the magnificent night sky while often disorienting migrating birds.
We Can Help
Songbirds face many challenges in our modern world. They crash into windows, hit poles, get gobbled up by house cats, and are confused by electric lights. They need all the human help they can get to stay alive and healthy.
by Winding Pathways | Nov 30, 2023 | (Sub)Urban Homesteading, Garden/Yard
On Fire?
Many readers know we burn our yard. What? Are we nuts? Fire kills. Fire destroys. Well, it can but it also cleanses and heals.
It’s one way to manage natural growth on properties. So, on a balmy early November day, we set our yard on fire! Flames towered over the yard as intense heat pushed outward.
We usually burn smallish prairies we’ve planted in both our front and back yards. Years ago, we usually burned in March but more recently we’ve shifted to November. Burning in fall seems to encourage wildflower blooms next summer.
Preparation is the Key
We’re unusual but not reckless. (A good read is at this address. www.prairienursery.com/media/pdf/burn-your-prairie-safely.pdf.) Before burning we did these things:
- Mowed a wide firebreak around our proposed burn area. Closely clipped lawns are nearly as effective as a firebreak as pavement or bare soil.
- Acquired a fire permit from Linn County Public Health.
- Found friends and neighbors to help us manage the burn.
- Ahead of time educated neighbors about the value of burning and then alerted them of our plan to burn in a certain time frame.
- Had appropriate tools on hand before we burned. These included garden rakes, matches, and both a portable fire pump, called a “Smith Indian”, and a hose stretched to the burn site.
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Workers spread flames.
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Working together.
Important Last-Minute Steps
On the day of our proposed burn, we did what the Health Department requires and first checked the air pollution report. We are only allowed to burn when the air quality is good, so jump online to a local map that shows real-time air quality. If the air quality is good, we call the sheriff’s department before burning. This is so that if someone reports smoke or fire, they know not to send out firefighters.
A light breeze helps push the fire through standing dried-out prairie grass, but too much wind can be dangerous. Our permit allows us to burn only if the wind is 20 mph or less.
Consideration of Neighbors
Because busy 30th Street Drive is our south property border we burn only when a south wind will push smoke away from the road and neighbor’s homes. North of our property is a large woodland where no one lives and there’s plenty of space for the smoke to disperse.
Rewards After Burning
Burning takes planning and preparation but the actual burn is over in a flash. On November 5th we were all ready, called the sheriff, and lit the prairie just after 3 pm. Flames roared through the grass and stopped dead when they reached our mowed lawn. Less than an hour after striking the match our fire was completely out and we were munching on pizza.
Most homeowners can’t burn, but many can. It’s an interesting and natural way to manage property. And, it’s fun.
