Snow showers today. I caught one earlier and because it is such a quiet baking day, I played with the shots.
The two surviving cottonwoods at the edge of the bog and orchard.
Flakes of snow.
I've spent some time reading to see how much damage the porcupines are going to create on the tamaracks. Foresters say they are awful pests. Naturalists note that the tamarack inner bark is a favorite of porkies. From "Tamarack Time" at Flandrum Hill:
The inner bark of tamaracks is edible and has many medicinal uses among Native Americans, among them, treating burns, wounds, inflammations and headaches. It’s also a favourite of porcupines.
Tamarack habitats are used by a variety of wildlife species. It provides cover from summer heat for bear, deer and moose, but is browsed by relatively few species. Snowshoe hares feed on twigs and bark, and porcupines feed on the inner bark. Spruce grouse and sharp-tailed grouse eat the needles and buds. Ospreys nest in the dead trees. Red squirrels cut and store the cones. Mice and voles eat large numbers of the seeds off the ground.
I checked all of my archives for photos I may have captured of all of the "pests" of tamarack. I have not found one. But I did possibly find the cocoon of Hyalophora columbia, a rare silkmoth that loves tamaracks. I brought the cocoon inside to raise, but it never developed. But my daughter, Amelia, did find an adult in nearby Brownington at school. That was such an exciting day for both of us! It was also an extremely frustrating day since I have been searching for these for 20 years and she found one in her first bug hunting year.
Columbia Silkmoth (Hyalophora columbia)
I have also documented the Larch Tolype (Tolype laricis), whose host is tamarack. It's a beautiful fuzzy gray moth with a brillo-type haircut. It was my husband's favorite moth each season.
Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)
Larch Tolype - Hodges#7673 (Tolype laricis)
I know that if I called Vermont Fish & Wildlife there would be no advice. It is illegal to move any wildlife to anywhere at all (even skunks). It is illegal to harass wildlife in any way (and who would want to?). And while it may be legal for me to shoot them, I won't.
My conclusion is that I will leave the porkies alone. I will stop resenting them. I will learn to appreciate their place in my biosphere. If they kill one or two tamaracks (they are chewing on two that I know of), I'll get over it. I will hope to see an osprey nest in a dead tamarack here. I will think of the grouse, deer, moose, mice and voles, and snowshoe hares that use the tamaracks. My snowshoe hare tracks, in fact, are always in the same area near them. I will keep track of the progression of tree gnawing. I have an entire new research project.
How high will a porcupine go?
They love the main stem inner bark the most.
I still don't know how they got out on those small branches on the left. I read that many die from falling off trees.
I learned today that the two porcupines that I see are most likely denning together for the winter under the barn. I remembered that they love salt. I remembered when my foot slipped into an underground den of theirs up above the house in the cliffs and came out covered in porcupine poo.
I'm going to ask Amelia to get me a tamarack shoot so that we can plant it indoors as the USFS author did.
Tamaracks can live up to 400 years. My attitude towards porcupines is irrelevant, trivial, compared to that.
Here is a YouTube video of a porcupine eating tamarack inner bark.
The photograph above is of the branches of a tamarack (American Larch) tree, one of my favorites. This is a deciduous conifer (a cone-bearing tree that sheds its needles). Native people used this tree to make canoes and kayaks. We are cultivating every seedling here that we find. The tamaracks glow orange in the late fall long after the other trees have shed their leaves in the autumn.
Large female cones
Tamaracks have male and female cones on the same tree. Above you see the large female cones. It is winter now and the ground is covered with snow. The tamaracks are bare — except that they still have these cones on them.
Male cones
In the photo above you can see (perhaps; you may need to click the photo and see the original size on Flickr) the itty, bitty male cones.The National Phenology Network tells us on their tamarack page that
The small, yellowish male cones bear pollen and the reddish brown female cones mature and become pale brown. Cone production begins when the tree matures at about 15-40 years of age, and pollination occurs by wind.
After the foliage season here, we have Stick Season. That is when the woods are dark, without leaves. The trees are sticks. This season lasts until winter — whenever the snow first comes. But right in there somewhere when all the trees are sticks is tamarack season. These are northern larch trees. They are also called American larch, eastern larch and hackmatack. Long after the oaks and maples have given us their beauty, these tamaracks seem to be on fire. After this bright foliage display, they lose their leaves and appear to be dead. I was going to cut mine down the first year I was here because I thought I had a bunch of dead trees! Thank goodness I didn't. They were back the next spring with vibrant new green leaves. These trees are great for making canoes. They grow quickly and spread easily. As John restored the ancient stream beds and regraded the land here to prevent anymore flash floods, he carefully saved every tamarack tree he could see. We now have over a dozen of the trees between the house and the upper field. These are photographs of three of them.
Come drive our roads during tamarack foliage season. The mountains are wild with their color.
There are many birches in there, but it's on a tamarack.
This is my lucky week: the theme for this week's Photo Sunday is tree. I've got a few. Thousand. When I drove in the driveway on Sunday I saw the porcupine again but from this side of the house, it was closer. The photo makes it seem as if it is in the woods. It isn't. There is a small field behind the porcupine and the tamarack tree. I zoomed iPhone in as much as possible (10x) and got this shot above.
You can tell it's on a tamarack by all of the cones.
I went in the house and got my tripod, bug camera and dog and went back to the driveway and settled in for a long photo shoot. That didn't happen. It was too cold and the wind began to blow down the mountainside. I never even set up the tripod. Also, the porcupine did not move. I took over 67 shoots and they are all the same (they only differ in zoomosity). At one point, trying to get the porcupine to move, I yelled, "Hey, porkie! Move a little. Show me your face!" Well, that got Lucy all excited and she ran to the tree and told the porkie the same thing in doggerel. I have learned that porcupines cannot see very well but their hearing and smell are very good. So it obviously ignored us. Kids at school, animals at home, now porcupines in the wild—they all ignore what they don't want to hear.
Same pose, just more zoom. What looked to me like an eye or nose was simply a cone.
These porcupines are actually becoming boring. They move so little. They behave the same each time I see them. I need to learn more about them to see if I can find something to observe or watch for.
To see the hackmatack tree properly, please click on the photo in order to view it in a new window.
For an excellent New York Times article on tamarack trees (Larix laricina, or the American larch), click here:
But it's in the Northeast Kingdom, that wild, lonely upland northeast of Montpelier, where the tamarack really comes into its own. This stands to reason - the closer to the arctic treeline you go, the more the tamarack likes it. Every year about the time that maple tree down on our common sheds its last leaf, I take my family on an overnight drive along the back roads of the region, enjoying not only the golden tamaracks and the spare, craggy beauty of the landscape, but the luxury of having it virtually all to ourselves.
Visit other participants of the Unplugged Project here. Next week's project is open-ended and the theme is RED.
When I let Lucy out after supper, just at dusk, I looked up at my favorite tamarack tree as I always do and said, "Aww, there are two bird nests from the summer up there." But then I stopped and said, "No! Those nests were not there yesterday or last week or this morning! It's the porcupines!" And I groaned.
Just after the tamaracks lost their needles (they are a deciduous conifer tree), I saw the evidence of my Barn Porcupine damaging the tree. I showed it to my kids and they chuckled.
Porcupines ate the bark off the left branch.
The kids didn't know what they were looking at, so I pointed it out to them:
But even I was questioning if it was porkies eating the bark because it isn't the strongest branch and the damage was way out at the end—where the tenderest bark is. Porcupines can be huge like the one that is living under my barn. In the top photo, my Barn Porcupine is on the right on the trunk of the tree and presumably his smaller lady love, who may or may not be under the barn living with him, is on the left here in the photo:
Here is Lady Porcupine
This was a handheld shot with my bug camera (I have lent Amelia my huge camera with my long lens and think I have to get it back now). I used digital zoom while I braced my arms on my walker while sitting on a stool in the laundry room with the back door open heating the entire outdoors with the price of oil what it is.
I'm going to call Fish & Wildlife for advice about my trees. I have over 100 tamaracks that my husband carefully tended for me because I love them so. Plus the apple orchard, which porcupines also love. Plus the sugar maples that they love that we used to tap.
A porcupine's only natural enemy is a fisher cat. Fisher cats are vicious wolverine-type furry animals that will attack for no reason at all and are legend for killing house cats and small dogs. I have had them trying to get into my house in the summer through open windows. I close all first floor windows at night in the summer now. But I haven't seen a fisher here for years. I don't want them back. And I don't want the porcupines to kill my trees. And I don't want them shot.
The same tamarack in 2013. It was much smaller. In November they turn this brilliant orange and are seen blazing on mountain sides everywhere here. The boulder is Pansy Rock where Angel Pansy, a disabled cat, was buried by my husband.
The annual "back of the house" shot showing how snow melt is progressing. The semicircular tracks near the back door are from deer.
It was the annual Vermont Maple Open House weekend. We found no open sugar houses to visit. But it was also the first day of spring so we took a walk in the back by the road that John plowed (to ease his angst at there being snow). It wasn't a long walk but it was as long as we could make it. In the photograph above, you see the deer tracks around the back door. To the right of the door is a big shadow cast by the house and on the right border of that, near the garage, you can see a pile of snow. That pile, only one week ago, covered the entire living room window behind it. We're making progress! I love the snow half on and half off of the metal garage roof.
A deer run down the mountain. That's a tamarack tree on the left.
There are deer trails all over out back. Here, above, is a photograph of one coming down off the mountain. See the tamarack tree in the foreground? It looks dead. It isn't.
American Pussywillow (Salix discolor)
Nearly all the pussywillows are in bloom! Now that is a sign of spring!
The snowpack has been cut in half this past week!
The brooks are all running and gurgling happily. Love that sound of running water! And the depth of the snow is half of what it was last week! Happy days are coming . . . but wait . . .
Our white house is tucked under the mountain down the road on the left.
Why in the world, one week after a three foot snowfall, would I post photographs of a dusting of snow in October? Because I love the photos and with all the computer and software problems I have had the past few months, I have been unable to post these until now.
The photo above shows our house underneath Barton Mountain. A cloud is beginning to pass over the mountain. The monochrome colors are broken by the double yellow line down the road. The small barn on the left stabled two horses back then. They have moved to another farm. The flat land on the right is the beaver bog (a small slice of a very large area). We love it here.
Roofs
Old New England farmhouses grew over the decades. They have many roofs at different angles. I am fascinated by the geometry of these roofs. Do you see the two windows on the right of the house on the first floor, underneath the right chimney? Those windows are now invisible — hidden by feet and feet of snow. The backdoor could not be opened because of deep snow blocking it. These windows and that door are always buried like this every winter. But some melting, some dripping from the eaves, and John's strength finally freed the door yesterday. He cleared a very narrow path from the back door to the left of the house so that I can go out and feed the birds. The spindly looking tree in the foreground is one of our tamarack trees — which I blogged yesterday.
I wandered out to the apple orchard to see the snow on the trees and brush. The first snow is always beautiful.
Tomorrow the weather here should be sunny and nearly 40°F (4.4°C)! I think I'll go outside. If I can find snow shallow enough to walk through.
Saturday, May 16, 2009 about 2:30pm, another and different black bear showed up behind the house in the little field behind the break of tamarack and willow. We are debating if it is bigger or smaller than the first bear. Matt shot the video from outside the back door. Of course, I was not home. The baby geese hatched and bears are tramping all over my land. They do this when I'm not there. Of course.
So we are now in a bear corridor. This is probably a male bear either following the first female bear or following another male bear. A female won't follow a male, so this is the same bear or a bigger male. It is probably not the first bear because she saw us and learned that there was no food here for her. She will probably not return in the daylight hours. The muzzle on this bear is bigger and browner than the first bear, also. So no more wandering around the mountainside looking for new wildflower photographs.
The backdoor yard had to be graded to stop water flooding the basement. There is a small hill not far from the house in back and it sloped right into the house. So John drove the backhoe back there and began excavating . . . and found another household dump and the stone foundation of a very old barn. Nothing here is very simply, is it? He hauled boulders out of the dirt and used them to build a stone wall at the bottom of the hill. He spend many hours excavating the dump, and even I was able to work at it one day. There were hundreds of antique bottles, piles of broken glass and crockery, farm implements, leather harnesses, the harrow, metal fence posts, old dry cell batteries, and other debris.
Looking to the backdoor and flat yard from the top of ungraded stone wall.
After the excavating and grading, John planted grass seed and put in tomatoes, peppers, and three kinds of squash. He transplanted a good-sized lilac shoot from the big lilac on that hill. From friends, I planted more rhubarb,horseradish, chives, marigolds and small pansies which I put over the brook (which flows under this hill through a culvert that was installed long, long ago and comes out on the right of the photo, unseen here.) I also planted one pumpkin plant that the children and I started at Sunday School. Finally, when Zorro died, we moved a snowball bush from the day lily garden to the left of the big lilac here on the hill.
A June 1 hailstorm did not damage the little tomato plants.
This wouldn't be Vermont without dramatic weather, and on June 1 we had a violent storm with large hail. In the photo above you can see the rock pile from rocks pulled from the leach field and the back yard. That is where the mink lived this past winter, and from the way the cats behave around the pile, still lives today. You can see some of my many tamarack trees on both sides of the rock pile. Where there was bare dirt on June 1, we now have squash vines growing and blooming all over. Years ago, John had saved Hubbard squash seeds. He planted them this year but figured they were too old to germinate. They germinated. Come fall, I will be selling many Hubbard squash at the Barton Village Market. This property is lush with these new gardens.
John's been pretty busy. He has drained the water from around the barn as you can see above. I always thought that the water was from underground springs. It is, sort of. The brooks off of the mountain go underground before they reach the barn and then go underground because of the willows and alders that have grown wildly around the barn and the edge of the small field. John brush hogged the brush and the water began draining through his newly excavated ditches. He is recreating the natural flow of the brooks.
The brush in the photo above obscured the end of the shed at the end of the barn. John has brush hogged the entire barn and about a quarter mile of the right of way that goes up the mountain.
Technically, brush hogging means that you use a brush hog. But the tractor is best for this job because of the size of the brush. John hauls it to the far edge of the property. He got a burning permit from the fire warden and it took a whole day to burn the brush that he pulled in only two days. There is no snow pack now, so unfortunately John had to wait for a snowy, rainy day to burn. He had to stay with the fire the whole time in order to prevent a forest fire. It was a miserable day for him!
Below, John is clearing brush from the upper field. Our views of the field and the wildlife that visit it have been blocked by the willows. John left all of the beautiful tamarack trees, which we both love.
Below is a view from the bottom of the upper field to the barn.
And finally, the end of the barn is nearly entirely cleared. This part of the barn will be detached and rebuilt for a chicken coop that is weasel-proof.
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Wordless Wednesday
