Johnson Woods State Nature Preserve, an old growth forest

Last weekend my husband and I went for a walk through an old growth forest. This particular portion of land had been set aside by the family of farmers who owned it because they wanted to preserve the large trees. Some of the trees in the forest were saplings when the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock, which would make them over 400 years old. The trees on the forest floor, fallen over from storm damage or dead-fall, were very large.

 

There were lots of interesting things, like these colorful lichen (click on any of the pictures to see them larger):

 

Here is a tall tree, taken with the panorama mode on my iPhone:

 Here is a picture of the same tree, taken from the top down, instead of from the bottom up, like the previous photo:

 

 

Here is one of the fallen trees, covered with moss, which shows that when the canopy is in leaf, not much light makes it to the floor (be sure to click on this one):

 

 

The previous picture, and the one below, were both taken in panorama mode with my iPhone. Although the boardwalk pathway was straight, the effect in panorama mode makes it look like it comes to a 'V' where I'm standing to take the picture:

 

Some moss on an old log swimming in a vernal pool:

 

Here are some interesting roots:

 





A large fallen tree in a vernal pool, salamanders will lay their eggs in these vernal pools (click to see larger):

Walking through this old growth forest was different from walking through other forests. There isn't much in the way of underbrush because not much light makes it through the canopy, and there are many more large trees. It was a pleasure to see it, but a little sad that at only 200 acres, Johnson Woods State Nature Preserve is one of the largest old growth forests in Ohio.

A winter hike at Nelson Ledges

Last weekend, my husband and I went for a walk in a nearby state park. It was wintry and snowy at Nelson Ledges, which so far has proved beautiful in any season.

 

There were ice crystals growing up from the ground under ledges of rock (click on any of the pictures to see them larger):

 

 

The crystals pushed the soil, pebbles, and leaves up with them as they grew:

 

 

Here's what looked like  a snowy toilet seat - just in case...:

 

 

Here's a little cave close to an icy waterfall, full of icicles:

 

 

And here is an icicle forming on a rock face that reminded me of either a hummingbird or a dolphin:

 

As long as I'm bundled up, I don't mind a wintry walk.

A Walk in the Cuyahoga Valley

We went for a walk along one of the trails in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park today. It was a bridle trail, but we only met a few people on horseback toward the end of our walk. My camera batteries were low, so I only got a few pictures. One was of a stream with only a little bit of water:

Strider liked it, even if the water only cooled his feet:

There were all sorts of wildflowers, and blackberries ripening, and other interesting things, but you'll have to take my word for it.

Afterward we stopped at a small drive-in restaurant so that we could get a little cup of vanilla ice cream for Strider. That's the only reason - the sign advertising homemade strawberry and banana ice cream had nothing to do with the decision : )

A little history of my back yard

My yard lies right up against a park which used to be a farm. In the picture below you can see the little strip of no-man's land which runs between my yard (you can see my back yard fence) to the left and a long, narrow hill rising up at the right which serves as a buffer between my house and the park. The park people are responsible for mowing and upkeep here:


In the back corner of my back yard, looking just over the fence into the park, you can see some old irrigation piping from the farm, plowed-up rocks which were dumped in what used to be a shrubby buffer between farm fields. and some old fence posts still standing:

There's even an old bundle of barbed fencing wire:

My little town was an important junction on the underground railroad and it's said that the farm was one of the many safe stops here. Runaway slaves would hide out in the forest on the edge of the fields during the day, and find safe shelter in the barn at night until they could be transported to another safe place. We like to think that the forest they hid in during the day is where our back yard is now.

Ohio was a northern state, but runaway slaves weren't safe even in the northern states. They were hunted down by people who made money off of finding and returning them. They were only really safe when they reached Canada. Lake Erie and a boat to Canada was the goal of the runaways. Today, Lake Erie is only about a 40 minute drive away.

If you want to read an excellent children's book involving runaways and the underground railroad, then pick up Shelley Pearsall's book, Trouble Don't Last. It involves Ohio (though not my little town) and one of the routes which led to a boat and safety in Canada.

In the picture below, I'm standing in the back corner of my yard, looking toward the baseball fields in the park. In the foreground is the fence, then the remains of a horde of wild rose brambles which used to flow over my fence. For some reason they died off, but there are plenty more out there. The park left the brushy border between farm fields and it is now a brushy border between the baseball fields and the soccer fields.

If you have good eyes, you can just make out the tall lights that were erected only last week around the furthest ball fields. I'm not looking forward to their being turned on (if you click on the picture you can see them). I've posted about my feelings on artificial nighttime lighting before (you can find the posts - including this one - here):

In a spot just on the other side of my fence, in an area where the brambles died off, I found a clump of lemon balm growing. That made me happy.

Robin Song Morning

This morning as my dog and I passed one of the picnic shelters in the park, I heard the most magical birdsong.

A robin was sitting on one of the picnic tables in the shelter, which is basically a roof and no walls. He was singing his morning song which was being amplified and echoed under the shelter's roof.

He must have thought that he'd found the most wonderful place to sing, and his song, already beautiful, had become almost like a concert in symphony hall.

Even on ordinary occasions I love to hear a robin's song, but this was a real treat.

The noise (and stink)

I live in what many people describe as an idyllic little New England style town. And this is true. The only thing that really has begun to upset me is a business which lies very nearby. It is by no means close to the idyllic downtown, but it does lie no more than about 1/4 of a mile from my home. It is a mulch and soil business and it has expanded in the past couple of years.

Early on, in our first years here, a strong smell of mulch would sometimes drift our way. Now that the business has expanded and the small hills of mulch have turned into steaming mountains, the strong smell of mulch has been replaced with a sometimes overpowering smell - what a friend of mine mistook once for the biting stench of what she thought must certainly have been a chemical spill in the area.

And now, for the past year, this enterprise has been experimenting with what is called Green Grinding. They take in food waste from local grocery chains, grind it up, let it compost, and use it as a soil additive. This is all very well and good, green-thinking and saving our landfills and all, except for one teensy detail.

It stinks.

Apparently it's not supposed to stink, but the way this business is doing it, we often smell the stench of a landfill blowing our way. And in the park next door, which is even closer to this business, the stench is sometimes gut-heaving in quality. Think of the rodents that this must be attracting.

To add to all of this, the expansion of the business means that they are often very busy adding to their mountains of mulch. This process has become excessively noisy. It doesn't take place all the time (please see this post about the pleasant quiet), but when it does, the noise is fearsome. Especially when it begins at 8:00 am.

I've uploaded a little snippet of video that I took this morning from my front porch. I used a digital still camera with a video feature. You know how when you take little video snippets this way, noises which aren't right up close to the camera sometimes aren't caught, and if they are, they aren't as loud as they were in person? Keep that in mind while you listen to the sounds. Be sure to turn your volume up:

On my walk in the park with the dog before I took the video, the noise was loud enough to make my head hurt.

I know that some people live in high traffic, high noise areas, but when we moved here we bought a house at the end of a dead-end street, up against a nice park. Not a high noise, high stink area.

My how things change.

A quick change of seasons

Here is a picture of some cattails. They are in the park next to my house. I took the picture on July 15th for my July Bloom Day post:

Here are the same cattails as of yesterday, November 20th:

I've lived here in northeast Ohio for seven years now. In that time we've never had snow like this, this early. Several years ago we had a year in which snow fell on Thanksgiving and never stopped and never melted until late spring. We didn't see the ground from Thanksgiving dinner until well after Easter. I'm wondering if this year will be comparable.

I need new boots.

Icicles and Snow

We've gotten some snow over the past couple of days:


The old farm buildings I walk by everyday look nice in the snow:


My dog likes to nose around in it. Here he's smelling where one of the deer trails comes out of the wild parts and enters the tame environs of the park:

Here's what he looks like after he's been nosing:

Icicles and snow... argh! It isn't even Thanksgiving yet! :

I saw some bluebirds on our walk. I've never seen them in my neighborhood before. I tried to get some pictures, but they're flighty little things and I couldn't get close enough.

Hope you're warm and cozy, wherever you are!

Why We Need Darkness

Another quick break from this month's spooky posts.

Part of the reason the name of my blog is The Inconsequential Blogger is because I was feeling a little frustrated back in April when I started the blog. I felt that things that I cared deeply about were inconsequential to everyone else.

Part of my frustrations stemmed from the planning commission in my little town. I had recently attended a meeting in which they would be deciding on whether or not to install nighttime lighting on two of the baseball fields in the park next to my house. Living right next to the park of course I don’t want the lights, so I went to the meeting to voice my opinion and concerns. Among my concerns were light pollution, and the effects of artificial nighttime lighting on the wildlife in the area.

I was cut off in the middle of describing the wildlife in the park. It made me feel kind of foolish. Like I was some sort of nut or something. The lights were approved, so now little-leaguers can stay up late playing ball.

Today I felt a little bit better about my concerns and that maybe they aren’t so inconsequential, when I looked at the November issue of National Geographic that came in the mail. On the cover the “dazzling Chicago nightscape lights up the clouds but obscures the stars” in a striking photo by Jim Richardson. In large words on the cover it says, “The End Of Night - Why We Need Darkness.”

One of the concerns raised in the article was about the increasing light pollution worldwide and its very real effect on wildlife. And something else that the article brought up was that “at least one new study has suggested a direct correlation between higher rates of breast cancer in women and the nighttime brightness of their neighborhoods.”

We need darkness because we are diurnal creatures. Artificial nighttime lighting interferes with our natural circadian rhythms, and the natural feeding, reproductive, and migratory rhythms of the creatures which share our world. The article states that of all the types of pollution, light pollution is the easiest to combat through better lighting design and light curfews.

I’m sure the National Geographic article won’t sway the planning board in my little town. In fact I’m sure they don’t even remember the kooky lady who they had to cut off mid-sentence because they didn’t want to hear about wildlife in a park made for little-leaguers and soccer players. I, however, feel a little teensy bit vindicated. But I’m still sad about the lights.

Nelson-Kennedy Ledges

There is a place called Nelson-Kennedy Ledges, which is a state park up here in northeast Ohio.


You might not think of Ohio as having places like this - rocky, mossy, full of crevasses to explore.


But they're here.


Down in the deeper places it's cool on a hot summer's afternoon.

The rocks turn green with thick layers of moss and hanging ferns.

It's a fun place to go for a hike.

First Post

Hello. This is my first blog post. Welcome! If there actually is anyone out there who stumbles across my blog - wow!

I decided to start a blog because I've found that the things that are important to me seem to be inconsequential to most other people. I've started feeling like a non-entity, so in order not to go crazy, I decided to start a blog. Here I can write about things and if someone happens to stumble across it and likes it, well hey, then maybe I'm not alone after all.

The picture below is my dog heading towards home between two ball fields in the park next to our house. The tallest tree in the distance to the left of the dog is in my backyard. This picture was taken a month or so ago.

Okay. First off, I'd like to tell you about something that happened the other night. I live right next to a very nice park (see above). Half of it consists of numerous soccer fields. The other half consists of little league baseball fields and a pond. The parks department in my nice little city is planning on putting in lighting for the two baseball fields furthest from the houses that abut the park (those fields would be located behind the picture-taker in the above photo). My neighbor and I don't really want this to happen because we think that it will adversely impact the enjoyment of our yards on a summer evening.

We went before the planning board when the issue came up the other night to voice our concerns with the project. My house lies 560 feet from the closest ball field that will be lit. They assured us that spill-out light from the field will reach acceptable levels 425 feet from the field, so they are well within regulations. Wow! A cushion of 135 feet!

That's fine, I know that the lights won't be shining directly into my yard or windows, I'm really just concerned with the general glow and light pollution which will wash the stars from the night sky. I like the stars, but lots of other people don't really care about them, so it's not really something that was looked into. I will miss them terribly. Terribly.

The noise, too, that will come along with the games, which will last until 11:00 pm, six to seven nights a week during the season, was a concern. That and the fact that right now the park closes at dusk. With the advent of the lights, people will be able to roam around, right by the houses, after dark. That's a little creepy, but I guess not creepy enough to be of concern to the parks people, or the planning board.

I also enjoy the wildlife in the park. I asked if they knew what kind of an impact the artificial nighttime lighting would have on the migratory red-winged blackbirds which nest all along one side of the ball fields, and the killdeer which nest in an open field on another side. And what, if any, the effect would be on the other night denizens of the park. I tried to bring up the fact that the wildlife that could be found in, over, and around our park was on par with what could be found in a neighboring National Park - including bald eagles - and so we shouldn't ignore any impact to the habitat that the lights may incur. But I was interrupted and asked if I had any data about all of that. No I didn't, but I reiterated that maybe these things should be looked into.

I know that these things aren't as important to other people as they are to me, but it was worth a try. I guess. But really I just feel pretty foolish about the whole thing. Maybe I came off as nutty. I don't know.

The lighting was approved. My neighbor is putting her house up for sale.