Pruning trees

 

 

Mall to home

I need to walk more, and I succeeded in getting 14.5k steps. I'm down about a thousand steps from last year.

I walked along Queens Boulevard, looking at the places I used to go when I lived in Rego Park and the new buildings. In Forest Hills, I took the route through Willow Lake. I'm usually on the other side, so this is a fun photo for me. 

I ran into 4 people from the Flushing Bay Conservancy group Guardians of Flushing Bay. They were testing the water. This is the source in Willow Creek, not sure where it starts, but there were minnows in the water. 

Felt a bit tired so only did a 5 minute lake meditation. It's gotten colder, and for some reason the cold is getting to me this year, I'm getting older. 

It's a beaver supermoon tonight, it coincides with the moon's closest approach to Earth in its orbit, known as perigee. As a result, the moon will appear larger and up to 30% brighter than usual, creating a captivating visual spectacle.

Columnar sweetgum

Asked on plant identification of trees Reddit.

My phone said it was a pear tree, but the wise people of Reddit said it was Columnar Sweetgum, which Google redirects to this post. 

House Sparrow and Fish Crows

I was meditating, but I heard a weird bird I'd never heard before, so I downloaded BirdNET. It didn't pick up the bird I was hearing, but it did identify House Sparrow: "It is extensively, and usually unsuccessfully, persecuted as an agricultural pest. It has also often been kept as a pet, as well as being a food item and a symbol of lust, sexual potency, commonness, and vulgarity."

Reading a comparison query on Reddit, and it turns out BirdNet and Merlin Bird ID were both developed at Cornell. 

I've seen crows and pigeons, even saw a hawk flying around with another bird in its talons while it waited for the bird to quit trying to get away. 

Just googled whether a grackle was a crow, and it's not and both are found in NYC. 

I hear the chirp chirp chirp of house sparrows, and the caw caw caw of Fish Crows, according to Merlin Bird ID.

Penelope

I don't want to give it away, just watch the show on Netflix.

Composting

I've been fooled a couple times about composting, here's another article stating that "outreach" will begin in October in Queens. 

CBS News

Equinox

Yesterday September 22nd was the autumnal equinox. 

Sept 20th

The weaker trees and branches are beginning to turn color. 

I saw by the lake for a nature meditation. Maybe just sitting with my eyes open to look at the lake. You can see the branches a fisherman put in to hold his rods. Henry wasn't there. Looked like it would be too difficult to get past all the stuff.

There weren't birds on the lake. I wondered about fall migration. My friend in Portland went to watch Vaux Swifts go down a chimney as a planned stop on their migration, passing through. 

"We’ve been watching the Vaux Swifts most nights roost in a chimney at a high school a few blocks away. They are tiny birds which are in the process of migration from Canada down to Venezuela and hit Portland annually throughout the month of September. This year there have been fewer than most years for reasons unclear. Some years there have been up to 35,000 in a single evening all trying to roost for the night in the chimney. This year the numbers have so far maxed out at 5,430 for a single night. Hundreds of people show up each night at sunset with blankets and bottles of wine to watch and there is usually a fair amount of drama as Cooper’s Hawks hang out on the chimney ledge and nab the first Swifts that try to slip by. 

It’s pretty cool watching the massive swarm of birds that all fly in unison making really interesting patterns in the sky before deciding all at one to funnel into the chimney reminiscent of iwater going down a drain. Being stoned enhances the spectacle in my experience. The birds would normally roost in hollowed out trees, and the chimney apparently seems like an acceptable substitute. 

One year a long time ago the school custodian turned on the boiler by mistake and there was a massive tragedy. The school then decommissioned the chimney and installed a whole separate heating system so that the incident would never happen again. The school mascot is of course the Swift."

Good friends share nature experiences with you. 

I skipped a meditation online with friends in Iran to take my daughter to school this morning. They stopped by to drop something off and I hopped in the car to join in the short journey a few blocks, then walked down to the lake. 

I get nervous a critter will come up to me, there are racoons who seemed kind of ill who lurk around sometimes, and there are hobos who live under the bridge, but most likely is the Filipino fisherman. Haven't seen him in a while because I haven't been down there much lately. There's also a birder who walks around with his binoculars and guide. I've run into park rangers a few times and students doing some nature project. There was supposed to be construction of a run off pipe, but I don't see evidence of that anymore. 

I saw a posting that at 10 on Sunday they'll form a group to pick up the garbage. There are two spots where a garbage bag has broken and people just left it. Most likely the hobos or the people who go down there to smoke. Now that it's legal, I smell it in my apartment on the second floor quite often, but honestly when it was illegal, I smelled is just about as much. My upstairs neighbor his retired and smokes a lot. He has advanced stage COPD, so he doesn't smoke as much these days. 

Say what you want about the narcissism of blogging but I thought I had to get active and get down to the lake to update the blog. 

Nature in the city

The tree across the street that I look at a lot in meditation, the leaves turned a week or so ago, and it's turning more and more. Fall is here. I like the cooling but I want the trees to keep the leaves for as long as possible. I think a lot about vestigial and deciduous trees. When I pick up my daughter I can go by an area that has quite a few pine trees, and I like the pine trees around my house. There are two small Juniper trees under my window.

There was a spider the other day that caught a fly in his web while I was meditating. I mostly keep my eyes closed, but I open them occasionally. The web is on my shrine and I don't clean it away because I want spiders to eat all the flies in my room. I've killed about 10-15 flies a day, and it's been a weird fly filled summer in NYC this year for me in Queens. I thought it was just me, but a friend has a lot of flies inside somehow, despite all the screens. 

I've become a student of how to kill flies. You can't move to much and a big wind up doesn't work, you need quick wrists like Ted Williams. When they freeze, you han't move, but when they start walking you can move a little bit, they're less aware. And then trying to find them on a surface where you can really swat them is difficult, they like to explore everywhere. I can get them all in my bedroom, but they replenish from the kitchen, or maybe I killed them and they'd already reproduced. I want to learn more about the common house fly. It reminded me a little of Amityville Horror (1977) to have so many flies.

There's a mouse in my house too. He scuttled around my bed and I saw him jumping out of my garbage can. 

One time when I was cat sitting for Andandi, Ella the cat left me a mouse. But the next time he stayed over, he didn't catch any mice. 

My daughter said, there's a mouse in the garbage can. I emptied a garbage can that is kind of bigger, and the mouse couldn't jump out of it, and since it was empty there was no garbage to climb on to get out. So I put a lid on it, and let it go outside. I was quite happy to humanely (perhaps) release him outside. I don't know if he has a way back into the building and a way back to my floor. 

Oliver, Transcendentalism and ...

Today is Mary Oliver's birthday. Her poems are really important to me. I recently read her first book. I've read 15 of her books. I have a few pdfs of some hard to find books to read and I'm currently reading her final anthology. I really get something from her poems. 

Two days before was the birth of Transcendentalism anniversary on September 12, 1836, in 2 days. Oliver has some reverence for what may be the first literary movement in America, and references Emerson and Thoreau.  

Smack in between these two important days is 9/11, the day America had an illusion of isolation shattered. We could just remember we're all interconnected, there's interbeing, and that some disgruntled people are willing to wage asymmetrical wars that they can't win, just want some attention for their concerns. Not a great way to get things done, but it does get one's attention. 

There's a similarity to October 7th in Israel last year, but that surprise was more about an unwillingness to work for change through peaceful methods and Arafat walking away from peace accords in 2001.

I wish to draw my attention to positive things like Mary Oliver's poetry, and the birth of literary movements in America. 

What does that have to do with walking in nature? I suppose Mary Oliver's nature poetry and the transcendental movement are vital to walking in nature. 

Latest invasive species

Japanese Knotweed:

NY Post

Daily Mail

The Valley Reporter

Greenfield Recorder

Butterfly Bush

 

Bonus link photos from Penn.

tree of heaven

The invasive plant that the invasive lanter flies like is tree of heaven. (Pictures)

"The usual recommended removal protocol for it is cut and immediately apply Round up or similar to the cut so that it takes it in before the cut heals over. Like, paint it on within 15 minutes of cutting. Sometimes chemicals are helpful, and it’s not like you’ll be broadcast spraying them all over the place. You would be doing a pretty direct and targeted application."

"This exact method of "cut and paint" is what most of the US wildlife service uses to address natives in parks and sensitive places. its incredibly effective when done right."

"This is the right approach. We did this to about a dozen small saplings and had very good results, but the key is to paint them immediately after cutting. I also avoid the use of chemicals in our lawn, but in this case due to the potential of remnant roots and their aggressive rhizome spreading I opted for a permanent solution."

"Everything I've seen has recommended basal bark or cut and squirt application in late summer or early fall."

"Is this the only TOH in the area? If it's a baby sapling, you might be able to get it out this year by digging only. It's definitely worth a shot. TOH has an extremely large root mass, so if it's more established, you won't be able to dig it all up, especially since it's in a shared area. It suckers extremely aggressively and stores a lot of energy in the root mass, so if you just cut it down, it's going to send up shoots from all over the root mass, which can be the entire city block. The recommended method is to apply targeted herbicide in late-summer when the tree is starting to pull sugars down into the root mass-- this way you poison the roots, rather than just stimulating growth. You can try to starve it by repeatedly cutting it down, but if it's a large root mass, you'll need to get your neighbors on board as well."

Isoprene

"Oak trees, which already let out 800 times more isoprene than maples, emit in especially high volume when the city reaches boiling temperatures in the high 90s as well. They make up 37% of city trees while the sweetgums consist of 17%."

Isoprene mixes with other pollutants to perhaps create asthma and bronchitis. 

(NY Post)

So maybe more maples than oak trees in urban areas. 

Wikipedia Isoprene

Four Pests Campaign

I just read about in China how they tried to get rid of sparrows, and that lead to locust destroying the crops and led to a great famine. 

Kind of an odd choice. They replaced it later with bed bugs, which makes more sense. 

Frogs

 

Birding

Interesting article about using apps to identify birds

Female black-chinned hummingbird in central Texas, enjoying scarlet sage.

Brazilian tanager

Dying in wilderness collection

I'm tempted to send these articles to my friend, but I think it's better just to collect them in one place for a while. I have several collection blogs that I write, and collect over time, and I'm hoping here to collect articles where people die or suffer being lost in the wilderness. 

I'm not super into trying to get people to fear the wilderness, and at the same time I feel that there is real danger in being unprepared and unaware while in the wilderness. 

Collection:

Three Hikers Die in Grand Canyon National Park in Less Than a Month July 9th 2024 (Times)

Three hikers die in Utah parks in suspected heat-related cases (Guardian)

Survived 2 weeks in wilderness of Kentucky!

Utah again.

'Freak storm' in Yosemite causes 20yo to slip off Half Dome and die, dad demands change (source).

I almost died sailing on Lake Huron in Saginaw Bay. Coast Guard rescued us. These people were not as lucky on Lake Powell: Woman and 2 children dead, 2 others critically injured after pontoon boat capsizes on Lake Powell in Arizona.

Fell into Grand Canyon (source).

12/18/24. A collection of people lost in Adirondacks:

Thomas Messick- disappeared in the Lake George Wild Forest in 2015.

Wesley Wamsganz- disappeared in the High Peaks in 2010.

Irene Horne- remnants of her campsite were found in the West Canada Lakes in 2007, no other sign of her has ever been found.

Jack Coloney- disappeared in the Moose River Plains in 2006.

George LaForest- disappeared near the Cedar River in Indian Lake in 2006.

Thomas Carleton- disappeared in the High Peaks in 1993.

Steve Thomas- disappeared in a storm on Mt. Marcy in the High Peaks in 1976.

George Bombardier- disappeared near Paul Smiths in 1971.

Douglas Legg- disappeared near Camp Santanoni in 1971.

The lake on summer evening

 

For some reason a tire in the water has me disgusted with my meditation spot, and I haven't been in a while. Today there was a can and two bottles bobbing in the water. You can avert your gaze from litter, but it's distinctly ugly. The sky is beautiful, the waves, the birds. 

I'm reading Devotions by Mary Oliver, but I'm past my posting online about her. This book is a greatest hits, and there are a few books that got away from me, and I haven't read. It's like you have to listen to all the albums first before you listen to the greatest hits album. 

I've decided to do a bit of a Lucretius kick today. Born 99 BCE, he lived to 55 BCE, 44 years. De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) is his one surviving work. There is not much know about his life, and the various rumors that come down to us aren't convincing. It is the a book on Epicureanism: "Epicurus was an atomist and materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to religious skepticism and a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Epicureanism was originally a challenge to Platonism, and its main opponent later became Stoicism. It is a form of hedonism insofar as it declares pleasure to be its sole intrinsic goal. However, the concept that the absence of pain and fear constitutes the greatest pleasure, and its advocacy of a simple life, make it very different from hedonism as colloquially understood."

In his poem, It seems he gives a material interpretation of reality to avoid the contradictions and upset from believing in the gods.

There's an old translation on Librivox. And plenty of videos on YouTube. Here is one. 

Legends

“Among the Kazaks, even trees come in for veneration, especially lone trees. According to Kazak legends, it was from just such a tree that their ancestors were born a long, long time ago. It's a legend shared by many other tribes, including those in Southwest China such as the Tung.”

P.137 The Silk Road by Bill Porter

Cercospora

Not sure learning about Cercospora would happen, but it's captured my mind. Cercospora is the fungus that attacks leaves, a plant disease. 

Things that grow on leaves file here.

I’m seeing cottonwood tree seeds.

Eriophyes tiliae

Parasitic Gall wasp

Racoon

 

Supposedly Tokyo is battling a racoon problem. I remember them getting into our garbage when I lived with my parents. Some people call them trash pandas. 

In other news, Rhododendrons are seen as dangerous in England, they could help carry a disease.

Freezing

When you live in the city, you learn New Jersey and Long Island in small episodes. People from long Island know Hicks. My friend who works for Hicks reports last weekend was the beginning of the most busy season because it's the cut off line when you plant, because it's highly unlikely to freeze after that point. 

The freeze line captured my imagination, and it's mother's day that the line is drawn, a fascinating correlation. 

I try to meditate with my eyes closed, but I do open them. Watching the clouds cross the sky is part of the joy of meditating for me.

On a down note, I've seen 5 dead smooshed baby birds on the sidewalk, and my first thought is they were pushed out of the nest, but I don't think there was a nest above them. It's a mystery.

Rousseau

Mountain Landscape, by Soga Shōhaku, ca. 1761-1763

Japanese prints make man small and nature big.

Rousseau is at the heart of going back to nature phantasy, that the Concord Transcendentalists connect with. By postulating that society corrupts and doesn't corrupt, he rightly points out that owning land was the start of when nature is not allowed to be free.

I was trying to explain to my daughter how the Portuguese could exploit Japan's isolation in the TV show Shogun(2024), there was a time when information didn't flow as freely as it does now. It begins to flow more freely with writing, then radio, then TV, then cable, then internet.

Rosseau wasn't so hostile to civilization, he says the opposite, forgets his repudiation like all good dialectic thinkers. Civilization is amazing too, helpful, supportive.

I feel a kind of tug by Dionysian ecstasy, and civilization. Yesterday in Madison Wisconsin, they arrested 80 revelers at the Mifflin Street Party (source). You are allowed to be wild and dress up for sporting events, Mardi Gras, Halloween to get candy. Religions want to harness this energy, if they're smart. Milarepa thought he got enlightened after a beer, after sitting in meditation year after year so that there were calluses on his butt. He wrote poetry and sang his songs. 

There's also unrealistic nostalgia in harkening back to an ideal time that never really existed. Going back to nature might not be what you really think it is. Our internal input is the most important thing we have, that is who we are. Some people think it's listening to God even. Uncovering our Buddha-nature. 

Small not on style, I'm no sure whether it's Buddha Nature, buddha nature, Buddha nature or Buddha-nature. Wikipedia has the last. 

Back to Rousseau. I found it shocking that he gave up all 5 of (probably) his children with Theresa to orphanages. Going back to nature was just a simplified version of callousness to him, and honestly I lost all respect for him.

I wonder how he could write Emile, about education, if couldn't be bothered to raise his children. Then I realized it was about how he would have liked to have been educated. An extension of his theories.

When I was younger, I thought the ideas were pretty important, but I think what you do speaks the loudest and crimes against humanity are always an empathy gap. That is the biggest problem and the most unnatural thing. 

Still, I like this idea (Strathern 2002, p.56): He specifically states that "in respect of riches, no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, nor be poor enough to be forced to sell himself." The state should "allow neither rich men nor beggars."

Mr. Five Willows (Wuliu), Tao Yuanming 

Cunningham

 

Lilac

Eastern Redbud

Hilltop

 European Crab Apple Tree

Grape Hyacinth

Rhododendrons 

Tulip

Tulips

Dead nettles

Siberian Buglos

Tulips

Bugle

Wild Cabbage

Phlox