Wool Sower Galls

While hiking in the J. Maynard Municipal Forest the last weekend in June, Wayne spotted what looked to be the kind of white pom poms that I used make and tie to my ice skate laces and zipper pulls. Several of them  were  hanging from a Swamp Oak sapling; and though I didn't know what they were I had to investigate and worry about contact irritations later should they arise. With this frequent abandonment of good sense, I am as surprised as anyone that I have yet to suffer poison oak, sumac or ivy this season. Perhaps it has been the unusually dry spring that has saved me.

A quick search on the internet and I found that they are encased wasp grubs that form leaf galls called Wool Sower Galls. The grubs are encased in a hard woody protective growth that I was unable to pull apart with my fingers. I couldn't find the purpose for the Horton Hears a Who fluff on the outside of the gall and think (hope really) it could relate that old physics assignment to build a case that keeps an egg from breaking when dropped from the school's roof. I truly hope that's it because it would make them almost magical instead of just a home for a parasite.

If you click on this NC State Extension link (highlighted words), you will see pictures of the wasp grub and an adult wasp. Under the heading,  "Residential Suggestions" the extension discuses using pesticides; but another site UK Entomology, mentions that in most circumstances they are not a threat to  host trees. There are an abundance of creepy crawlies and fungi that do require intervention here in VT, and the municipal forest is not an exception; but with this one you can just observe and enjoy the Wool Sower Gall.

More information on the formation of and including other topics of interest such as threats to our town forest and Black Gum Swamps are discussed in a 2017 virtual tour hosted by;  Forester Bill Gunther, Wetlands Program Manager Laura Lapierre and VT Fish and Wildlife Lands Ecologist Bob Zaino. I highly recommend watching this informative video on Vernon's ecological gem!  -Norma Manning

When the Eastern Mountain Laurel Blooms; be Sure Not to Miss it.

I was given an incredible gift from from someone who is composed of such generous spirit that they were able to look beyond their own life circumstance and offer me such a kindness that I have difficulty expressing the depth of my gratitude. 

You see,  I had been wondering if my spending time writing wasn't a very unimportant thing when the world had exploded all around me with broad strokes of  physical suffering, strife and other pressing issues. I have shared as much in conversations with my adult children who are all very active in one way or another preserving what is good and working for change where it is not so good.  I was having a difficult time with my guilt over using writing as a way to escape and even celebrate Vernon's small things instead of working on projects that mattered. I was considering throwing in the proverbial towel because it all felt so foolish in comparison. Then I got an email.

"I just wanted you to know how much I enjoy your nature blog. Due to **** I can't get out for walks as I used to...I enjoy reading it and seeing the different photos you take." 

And there it was, one moment of their time used to express appreciation and it felt like a soaking rain after a dry spring. The Eastern Mountain Laurels are finally blooming in the town forest, how nice it is when that happens and I am so grateful to be able to share it with you. 

Sincerely, 

 Norma Manning

25 Foot Tall American Chestnut

I seem to have accidentally stumbled onto a theme of chestnut trees here; but how could I resist letting readers know that I think that we found a hard boiled egg at the chicken farm?

Wayne and I hiked in the town forest today looking for Eastern Mountain Laurel in bloom and stumbled upon another "stand" of American Chestnut. I put the word stand in quotes because the saplings will in all probability succumb to Chestnut Blight.  A few trees however can survive to be between fifteen and twenty feet tall and produce nuts before they die.  For most, "The blight kills the above ground portion of the trees, but the root system can survive and form new sprouts" -LEAF The American Chestnut: Extinct or Returning These are the chestnut rings that I wrote about in, "Doesn't it Look Like a Banana."

Wayne and I had previously found a small American Chestnut tree in the town forest and so have kept a lookout for a possible mother tree on subsequent visits there and in the adjacent Roaring Brook Wildlife Refuge.  That's as much information as I can give you on the location of these trees as it is not allowed to share the exact locations of rare and endangered species.

The tree that we found today, Wayne estimates to be between 20 and 25 feet tall. I plan on revisiting the tree in late summer to see if any nuts have developed and if so, I will visit again around the first frost as that is when the nuts drop to the ground.

It's important to note that Chestnut Blight is easily transmitted. If you do locate an American chestnut tree, please do not touch it if you have been in contact with other chestnut trees. I was informed by forester Corey Keeffe that he cleans his tools between trees with Lysol spray to help prevent disease transmission. I sprayed my shoes when I got home today. Even with the greatest care, it is likely that this tree will soon die as blight resistant trees are rare.

Reference - I am 5'9"

Tree base

Just above the base 

American Chestnut in center of photograph

Chinese Chestnut; A Miller Family Legacy

Mary Miller writes: Each spring we anxiously look for the first fruit trees to blossom while watching a thermometer at night with hopes that the fruit will survive a late frost.  Weeks after we quit worrying about frost, there is a "late bloomer" which appears.   The three Chinese chestnuts at the Miller Farm now show their strange origins of chestnuts.

After a flower is pollinated, it will be approximately 12 weeks until we gather mature chestnuts under each tree.  One tree produces tasty small nuts; next to it another tree drops large easy to peel fruit; and across the yard the third young tree delivers medium size, tasty nuts.

When Paul's grandfather, Arthur L. Miller, was nearly 80 years old he told his wife, Ethel, that he wanted to order and plant Chinese chestnuts.  She said, "why? You will never eat them?" and he said, " No, but my grandchildren will."-Mary Miller

Mary included the link: How a Flower Becomes a Chestnut

I am also including an article on how the Chinese Chestnut may play a role in creating a blight resistant American Chestnut hybrid. 

The Miller's Chinese chestnut in bloom

We Have Options

I began my morning by dumping a full mug of coffee onto the living room carpet. Just so we are clear, it was an accident and coffee is not some sort of trending biodegradable cleaning agent that I am aware of. Be that as it may, I wish to emphatically state that I believe in accidents. Like a resurgence of Bob Ross and his "happy little accidents," and that infamous bumper sticker "it happens" I like to believe if for no other reason than preservation of spirit, that there is something to be gained from little mistakes.

Wayne and I went through a phase of leaving things on the roof of our Toyota pickup and driving off. Mostly it was pizza and Rand McNally road atlases; but one time it was my purse with a bank check inside for the amount of every last dollar we had. We were moving from FL to NY and I hadn't even realized that my purse was missing until I spoke with my mom on the phone. A woman had found my purse, located mom's number inside and called her. Now this was back in the days when we used payphones, so the serendipity of that particular stranger being the one to find my purse still humbles me. She had options.

We found a McDonald's beverage cup along Pond road. From what I was able to find from a Google search, around half of the litter along roadways is there unintentionally. I also discovered that there is a lot of information out there on the subject of littering. For example; McDonald's sells 500 million cups of coffee in the US every day. The cup we found wasn't a coffee cup but I couldn't find a number for fountain drinks. I'm not trying to create a McDonald's commercial here; but imagine the odds of finding one of their cups here in Vernon VT when we don't even have a restaurant in town. Fun facts: It takes twenty years for a coffee cup to decompose. Nine year old Milo Cress from Burlington VT started a movement to eliminate single use plastic straws when he estimated that 500 million straws were being used in the US every day. It can take 200 years for a straw to biodegrade. Disposable drink cup lids are not very recyclable though recycling symbols are on the lid, it depends on the facility that it is sent to.

As anyone who follows our small town of Vernon knows, trash disposal and litter are hot topics.  It's not all bad news however thanks to folks like Hannah Palmiter Rosinski, who volunteers to coordinate Green Up Day here in Vernon.  Green Up Day takes place the first week in May and is the one time of year that free pay as you throw bags are handed out to residents who in turn comb the roadways bagging up all that unintentional litter. The rest of the year it's up to good neighbors or disgruntled property owners to foot the bill for picking up. Whatever your motivation for picking up another's mistake, thank you. There are a lot of good people here in town and sometimes it takes finding a cup on the side of the road to be reminded of that.

One final note regarding the attached photograph, ants don't actually eat McDonald's cups so I can only imagine the little guys were trying to move it to a trash can. -Norma Manning

The Most Beautiful Flower in Vernon

"I was in the fourth or fifth grade and I used to take the long way from school to my grandmother's so that I could feed the goats on the hill milkweed. I walked up and down hills to feed them. One goat used to eat the milkweed. I probably killed that goat." My Mom knew exactly the story I wanted from her when I  called and asked her to tell me the milkweed story. My mother is 82 and for as long as I can remember, she has recited that story when the milkweed was tall enough to be seen above its neighbors. I imagine that decades of hearing about mom's guilt for poisoning that poor goat is the reason for my fondness of Milkweed.  I also suspect that she unnecessarily suffers her guilt, as each and every time she returned to feed the goat, there it was. When our Country set out to save the beloved Monarch Butterfly by planting the noxious milkweed up hill and down dale, I believe in my heart of hearts that each seed scattered by school children everywhere, has been an offering of forgiveness for not only my Mom's goat food indiscretions; but also for all of us who uprooted the weed to the point of almost losing the Monarch.

One of our first landscaping projects at our house in Vernon was to transplant two crab apple trees growing under the electric line; but why stop there? There were three rows of purple lilacs that "required" re-homing and Rosa rugosa was all the rage back then. I had taken to the idea that I needed a rose bed to feed the bees and no amount of work Wayne was up against  was going to dissuade me from this trend. At every opportunity I picked up a bush, a bag of dirt and everything else I could find to improve their chances for survival. Each blossom filled the air with the fragrance of sweet reward and the blossoms buzzed with Japanese Beetles. At first I began picking each beetle off by hand in the morning ...even those that were madly in love. Next I bought beetle traps which stunk to high heaven and so required emptying each evening. Pretty soon we were picking bugs at every opportunity and spreading Milky Spores on the lawn.  Finally, we removed our bushes when the now hoards of  ravenous Casanovas consumed every rosebud before it could bloom. Well, as the great 1980's philosopher Bret Michaels of the group Poison once penned, "Every Rose Has It's Thorn."

I love receiving messages from Mary Miller. Mary is a wonderfully encouraging presence who often shares her favorites and finds with me here. Each time she contacts me she delightfully offers things like: One of my favorites.. another one to watch for... Do you forge for wild edibles? and, two on my mind today... It's difficult for me to tell which is Mary's absolute favorite plant so I have come to think that her favorite is the one that she has just witnessed while wandering about here in Vernon. Mary's most recent share with me was Bedstraw. Mary wrote: Walking by this beautiful bedstraw this evening...my attraction this week is that it is such a fluffy cloud of flowers!  I just looked it up and it is edible.  I've never tried it and don't think I will yet.  It said that early settlers brought it over for its medicinal value. All I knew was that it was one of the plant materials used to fill mattresses. This article says it is fragrant so I'll have to smell it!

So what is the most beautiful flower in Vernon and why am I even writing about this subject anyway? Of course Wayne has something to do with it; but when I asked him this very question his initial response was, "I guess I don't think about it very much" He then followed up with, "I guess I like Snap Dragons." The funny thing is that we don't have a single stalk of Snap Dragons on the property and never have.  It's like that time I was telling Wayne that we needed to paint the dining room and I asked him which yellow was best and Wayne said that he didn't like yellow walls and I said, "but I always paint the dining room yellow" and he said, "I know." I think that I am on to something here, for it was when I asked Wayne if the yard was looking the way that he had envisioned he replied, "We have too many plants, there is too much to mow around."

The most beautiful flower in Vernon is: a childhood memory, a reminder of love when nothing else makes sense, it evokes a feeling of value and is where you find it. -Norma Manning

Bedstraw - Mary Miller

Rosa rugosa

One of 197 species of Milkweed 

Grumpy Painted Turtle

Today Wayne stopped the car on Huckle Hill after a brief rain so that I could cross a Painted Turtle who was in the road. I was rewarded for disturbing her plans with turtle pee down my leg and into my shoe. Well that wasn't very friendly now was it? -Norma Manning

Painted Turtle

Watch Out For Little Families

There I was on my hands and knees combing through the area looking for the tiny pink creatures too small to make a noise. When I did find one it remained motionless with its legs straight up in the air and it's tiny mouth slightly opened. Frozen with its dark marble eyes still closed, I wondered if it would live, if I shouldn't just leave it there to let nature take its course.

Minutes earlier had I carried my old porch bench onto the lawn, gave it a good sweeping then went to the trailer to get the big ratty tarp we kept there.  I reached over the side and began pulling it towards me when two little somethings rolled out of it. Realizing that I had upset a mouse nest, I placed the little mice onto the nest and proceeded to drag the tarp over to my project. I began unfolding the tarp when a rather stunned adult brown mouse fell onto the grass staring at me like I was a barn cat. Now you have to know that I have done battle with this little critter's relatives, mostly in the Autumn when they found their way into my basement and began filling our snow boots with birdseed; but how was I to not to take pity knowing that her babies were back in the trailer and I had unwittingly been the cause of this family breakup. I briefly considered scooping her up with my hands but common sense took over and I headed to the shed to find a pail. Of course she took off running for the wood pile when she saw that pail.

I was finally ready to resume my project when it occurred to me that mice babies seldom came in twos, in fact they typically come in litters of six or more. So I picked back up the tarp, gave it a firm shake and out popped the third mouseling. The fourth was close by in the lawn and that is all that I was able to recover. Being 100% invested in their minuscule chances for survival, I stayed in the area just in case a predator took notice. That is when I noticed that a couple of Carolina Wrens were flying in and out of our canoe which we keep upside down on our clothesline. I took one last look at the mice whose mother had yet to return, painted my bench and went inside for the evening. 

I'll probably feel differently come fall about families of mice moving into our basement; but for now I can't help but feel a little bit saddened.  - Norma Manning

Four mouselings 

Carolina Wren's in our canoe 

Assassin Fly

While hiking in the Roaring Brook Wildlife Refuge, I crossed paths with an Assassin Fly on the hunt. Also known as a Robber Fly, it buzzed just in front of me and caught a moth roughly the same size as itself. I was fortunate enough to have it land on a nearby leaf with its prey and captured this photograph.

Assassin Fly preying on a moth

Directions to Roaring Brook Waterfall

 The old saying is true, the third time is the charm. With blue skies and temperatures in the low seventies, the perfect hiking day was beckoning Wayne to try once again to locate the High Falls at Roaring Brook Wildlife Management Area. In my previous three posts about this quest, "Don't go Chasing Waterfalls" ,  "Another Day, Another Trail" and "Trail / No Trail" I fear that I might have needlessly dissuaded a few hearty adventurers from taking on the challenge and here is why - we were almost there.

We left the dogs at home as I had promised Ginny that I wouldn't subject her to another grooming from an aimless day of wandering (being lost really) in Roaring Brook. We also assumed that being dog free would allow us to move at a quicker pace and so have more time to travel further into the area. As it turns out, it hadn't been the dogs that kept us from our destination, it had been the early spring trials and a deeper, swifter brook. So the take away form all of this is that on a cool dry day in June, a couple of fifty six year olds can make it to the High Falls in a little over an hour.

From the Basin Rd Trailhead go left of the sign and take the Red and White trail. Where the Red and White trails split, take the Red trail to the Blue. Follow the Blue trail until it ends at a clearing where the Sweet Fern grows. The logging road directly ahead will take you into Roaring Brook. You will go left on that road.

Disclaimer: These directions will not guarantee that you won't get lost.

Cross the field of Sweet Fern to the logging road

Go left on the logging road pas the White Trail sign

When the trail splits go right / green

We stacked rocks on the side of the correct trail

You will have walked on the trail for a long time, continue straight at this junction.

When you get the end of the trail, take a left on the road- note the stacked logs. 

First brook crossing

Note the timbers after the first crossing

Stay to the left on the trail

Second Brook crossing

Third brook crossing

You can start to hear the falls, stay on the trail

Top of the High Falls

High Falls at Roaring Brook

The brook disappears into a deep gorge.

Wayne decided that we should continue on the trail to see if we could find the end.  

End of the trail

I-91

Doesn't it Look Like a Banana?

Sometimes when wandering about in nature you encounter a heart stopping moment that has nothing to do with smacking face first into the web of a Black and Yellow Garden Spider. I was so excited about this possible find that I didn't dare confess to Wayne exactly what it was that I thought that I had found for fear that I had gotten it wrong. "Look at this long banana leaf, doesn't it look like a banana?" I don't even know what that means, bananas don't grow in the town forest I silently scolded myself.

Honestly I was unprepared for how excited I was; but it felt like that time I was eating church breakfast in the basement of St Rose of Lima church in South Hero when Governor Jim Douglas and Dorthy Foster walked in and sat down with my family to eat Red Flannel Hash. I just don't know how it is that Wayne remained composed while I went all paparazzi on that banana leaf. "Do you know what this is? Do you see any more?" I asked Wayne who speculated that we were looking at an American Beech. "Beech tree leaves are wider in the middle" I informed him. I desperately wanted to slam dunk my identification, however I hadn't a clue what the difference was between  American Beech bark and American Chestnut bark. We had some discussion about it as we continued on the trail and it went like this; every time I saw a Beech I pointed to it and said there's a Beech, there's a Beech, see the bark that's a Beech, that leaf is wider in the middle, it's a Beech.

Now I knew that there used to be American Chestnuts in the town forest because I went on a guided tour into the Black Gum swamps last fall when the guide announced that she had heard that there was a Chestnut ring near the area where we were standing. Like Scouts who had just failed their hiking badge test, the entire lot of us went off trail in search of the ring. I'm not entirely sure that we found it; but it was a lot like hunting for a hard boiled egg at a chicken farm. Speaking of finding treasure, Wayne thought that it would be nice to take the State Line Trail and lo and behold that is where we once again bumped into Karen Saunders who is a scientist with Antioch College and studies the swamps up there. I didn't immediately recognize her as she was carrying different instruments than the last two times I met her. I inquired about her tools which turned out to be depth rods and she told me that the deepest swamp she had found thus far is the State Line Swamp (she dubbed it that) at 19 feet. She said that the upper and lower swamps though purported to be deeper, she had measured at 12 feet. Slyly now, I worked my leaf photograph into the conversation after learning that the swamps are located in troughs created by upright rock that predates the glaciers. I queried, "Could it be that the swamps are filling in with dead trees, and oh hey speaking of trees look at this picture." With that Karen both confirmed a tree on my bucket list and then dumped it back out by adding that it was the big mature trees that they are interested in. The little ones like in my picture wouldn't survive due to the blight.

Karen showed us a neat trick, she explained that on the Beech, the underside of the leaf's base is hairy while the Chestnut's is not. With all of this information, the next time I venture into the forest, I'm bringing my binoculars and looking for a mother tree. In the meantime I'm going to do a better job of my homework and find out more about this rare and once queen of our forest. One last note, if you think that you have been in contact with an American Chestnut, take every precaution to not transfer the blight from one tree to another. - Norma Manning

American Chestnut Comeback? CBS This Morning

The American Chestnut Foundation Note there is a VT chapter that can be accessed through this link

Karen Saunders of Antioch College with depth rods

By 1920 Chestnut  Blight fungus had decimated the mature tree population

Elongated toothed leaves

The American Chestnut is a member of the Beech family

The American Chestnut can reach 100 feet and live 300 years