With Our Own Hands

Sometimes, we need to take matters into our own hands; in the garden, in life, and in politics. After eight years of banging my head against the brick wall of indifference and hostility towards conservation and environmental issues at the Environmental Commission and Land Use Board level, I’m raising the bar.

I’ve thrown my hat in the ring for elected office --- our Township Committee. With luck and hard work, I’m hoping that our town will never be the same again. Andover Township, located in northwestern New Jersey has a uniquely sensitive environment. So sensitive that The Nature Conservancy has purchased several parcels, some of which are home to species found in only four other places on the planet.

The town lies in two distinct physiographic provinces --- the Highlands and Valley and Ridge. The latter includes the Great Limestone Valley, home to plants and animals unique to limestone fens and a major aquifer. Since most of the private and “public” water in our town comes from wells, you would think people here would guard this precious resource with their lives.

Yet, a previous administration allowed a sewer plant (shown above) to be sited on top of the aquifer that feeds thousands of homes in many towns in our region. Several proponents have tried to convince me that the water coming out of today’s state-of-the-art purification systems is cleaner than a natural stream. Yet, none of these people has ever taken me up on my request to watch them drink that super-clean water straight from a sewer plant. When they drink it, I’ll believe it.

Fortunately for us, Nature herself stepped in and provided a solution. For now.

A number of wells and ponds in Andover are hydraulically connected to the aquifer. We found this out in 2005, when a nearby quarry stopped pumping 8 million gallons of water a day out of the quarry pit. The water table rose by 35 feet. Ponds that had disappeared were restored; water surrounded the sewer plant. Imagine the disaster that we would have had, if the sewer plant had been operational. But the looming shell still sits there, waiting for an opportunity.

Now, the adjacent town intends to allow a private company to pump 2 billion (that’s billion with a “b”) gallons per day to line their pockets with cash. Playing with people’s lives this way is immoral. I can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch my neighbors twitch and tremble as their lives are manipulated by those who care only about themselves. I’m taking matters into my own hands.

You can see my campaign blog at http://www.voteforloisdevries.blogspot.com

Gardening from Scratch

Happy Spring everybody! Let the gardening season begin. This year I decided to grow more plants from seed and I’m having a blast. I know I started too early, the first weekend in February, but cabin fever was at such a pitch that it overcame my better judgment.

My seed-starter kit has a water-reservoir in the bottom that keeps the soiless mix moist. It sits on my desk in front of an east-facing window, so I can check frequently to see what’s growing. The Mesculun mix, cherry and Cherokee tomatoes, and Galeux d’Eysines pumpkin have all moved on into their transplant pots. What remains are the miniature fans of Candy Lily (Pardancanda), seedlings of Columbine (Aquilegia), and a couple of stray tomatoes that came up after I disturbed the starter mix.

Last year, I bought an inexpensive greenhouse on wheels at Lowe’s for $35 in order to buy garden center plants early and hold them over until they could go into the ground. This year, I put it indoors, without its plastic cover, in front of the French doors. It holds my transplants and rootings of Coleus and Begonia. On rainy days, a Gro-light compensates for the lack of sun.

I didn’t really start this gardening from scratch to save money, but rather to make sure I’d have the plants I loved. Commercial growers are so much in the same mode as the fashion industry these days; always a new color, spikier leaves, different growth habit, that it sometimes becomes very difficult to find the right old-fashioned flower in the right old-fashioned color. There’s something to be said, too, for the always-magical experience of being able to watch your own seeds sprout and grow.

Wildlife in the Garden

As the daffodil leaves push up and buds start puffing out on trees and shrubs, ground hogs and chipmunks are waking from their winter sleep and making sporadic appearances. In two more months, our perennial herd of deer will be birthing fawns, cottontails will multiply, and the flying squirrels will have moved out of our shed and into the telephone cable connector cover. The latter will be unceremoniously dumped out in what has become an annual ritual, when my phone service dies completely.

Last year, three Red Tail Hawk chicks sat in their tree-top nest a mile away for what seemed like months; then spent every summer day soaring above our house, calling out incessantly to one another, enraptured by the joy of flight. A Northern Harrier has moved in and favors a roosting tree opposite my home office window. Sometimes he’s hunting, sometimes just snoozing.

Over the winter I heard, for the first time, one of my neighbor’s many foxes “bark,” as it hunted in our wetland. After all these years living in the same place, it’s great to know that there are still new things to discover.

Our east-facing 75-foot-and-taller trees receive strong morning sun. In early spring, Turkey Vultures favor them for roosting and warming their wings. On a foggy April morning, it’s not unusual to see ten spooky shapes hunched up in a single leafless tree.

The calls of Screech Owls, the Dracula-like whoosh of the Great Horned Owl’s wings, together with Pileated Woodpecker and Yellow-Shafted Flicker cries conspire to create the illusion that a dinosaur might appear at any moment.

Just before daybreak one morning, I watched a bat laboriously wedge itself under one of the cedar shingles on the rose arbor, ignoring our carefully placed bat house nearby. I guess it couldn’t read.

Slithering ribbon and garter snakes in the flowerbeds don’t bother us; copperheads in the woodpile require caution. We know they are there, but it’s always a shock to disturb one.

This year the three male “driveway turkeys” have been displaced by twelve females. Later in the season, there will be chicks and the circus show of 20-30 heavyweight turkeys launching themselves from our plateau into the oak and hickory trees to roost for the night.

The usual songbirds at the feeder, opossum, raccoons, skunks, butterflies, dragonflies and frogs near the fountain, several kinds of bees, wasps, and beetles, salamanders, and an occasional hummingbird or black bear round out our garden guests.

While some of these critters can put a damper on our gardening efforts from time to time, we view them all as part of the great web of life on Earth. They enrich our lives immeasurably.

To read more about wildlife in the garden, join the folks over at Gardening Gone Wild http://www.gardeninggonewild.com/?p=3914#more-3914 .

Balancing the Gardening Budget

Those of us whose parents lived through The Great Depression and/or the Dust Bowl know that they survived, went on to marry, raise families, and lead normal lives. Despite the dismal economic forecasts, we will too.

But what should we do in the meantime? How do we decide what is necessary and what is frivolous in the garden? That depends on why we garden.

Here’s an example. Last year, as an experiment, I bought six tomato ladders (http://www.gardeners.com/Tomato-Ladders/VegetableGardening_Supports,37-793RS,default,cp.html) and raised two types of indeterminate tomatoes. When they outgrew the ladders, the tomato plants flopped over, pinching the stems at the top and putting the fruit within easy reach of rabbits and groundhogs.

This winter, I needed to decide whether to buy extensions for the original ladders, as well as add a few more (they’re good for cucumbers, too). Not an inexpensive proposition. But the results of my experiment were great-tasting, plentiful tomatoes, grown in a small space among my ornamental plants. Since I plan to continue growing these vegetables indefinitely, it made sense to buy the hardware now. I won’t save a ton of money at the grocery store; I will be able to walk out into the backyard and pick a tomato that tastes like a tomato.

But there is a less tangible factor, too. Most gardeners derive a great deal of pleasure from this pastime. Caring for favorite plants, the earthy smells, the colors and fragrances of blooms, the respite from day-to-day problems, working outdoors, and enjoying the fruits of our labors, all soothe the soul.

Creating a balanced gardening budget means weighing the financial cost of proceeding, against the psychic cost of denying oneself a meaningful pursuit. It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition, of course. If funds are really tight, instead of buying plants, grow your own from seed, or focus on dividing existing perennials. Or, instead of planting out a whole new flowerbed, buy just a few colorful annuals to create a spectacular, overflowing focal point container.

Just make sure to nourish your soul.