Author Archives: Steve

When the snow falls and the lights blink out

The first lake effect snow this year was early, wet and heavy. It was not surprising when the generator roared to life around midnight, reminding us its fresh battery was a good purchase. By mid-day the power was restored, the site of outage again in the 90-year old easement through the Woodland Conservancy neighbor of the Bluecircle. Within days this round of snowfall had melted away and it was time to investigate.

Snow-shattered cottonwood


The cottonwood felled by the show was at the eastern edge of the Conservancy. On a closer look it had sustained old central trunk damage and the collapse was probably predictable. This easement area was last visited by power company tree crews more than 5 years ago and is a recognized “trouble spot”.

Cottonwood trunk damage


This mass of broken branches fell into a former trail in the Conservancy, but in the absence of trail maintenance these paths are now overgrown. The deer who pass regularly through this area will not be impeded and a new Bluecircle trail along the boundary is now open.

Looking South along the new and leafcovered boundary walking trail

August greening

After reaching moderate drought the winds of late August have finally delivered moisture and broken a hot, dry season. Paw Paw lake, “enriched” by fertilizer runoff and low water levels is a poster child for eutrophication in the recent landsat.com aerial image reproduced below.

The Blue Circle has a pair of 8-year old Paw Paw trees that first produced fruit last year. Paw Paws grow wild by the nearby Paw Paw River but only specimen trees have survived at lake properties.

The Paw Paw’s leaves are relatively large and conceal the ripening fruit. This image from earlier this month shows grass bleached by heat and drought. The trees required well water.

Immature Paw Paw fruit, about 3 inches long and pale green as they ripen.

Fallen timbers

The solstice provides a little more daylight, more minutes to catch up on a post I meant to write in early Spring about the hybrid poplars. The plantings continue to evolve with some reaching more than 60 feet into the wind. Less successful specimens die off, rot at the ground and fall.

Wind-sheared tops are now becoming fairly common. This damage usually leaves more than half of the original tree intact, but growth is limited thereafter. It has become impractical to clean up debris between the planted rows so walnut and mulberry volunteers are joining in. The poplar shade is insufficient to prevent poison ivy, wild grape and black locust from adding greenery to the increasingly “naturalized” understory. Oak and pine seedlings added a few years ago are adding to the mix, but will have to survive the threat of falling poplars.

A recent storm was unusually severe and produced a domino-effect shearing of multiple poplars. In retrospect poplars in double rows of no more than 10 seedlings would have been preferable to the larger blocks I planted.

Time and space between the trees

Aging helps the appreciation of history whether that be over the longer time of humankind or the ephemeral experiences of a lifetime. Some early posts in this blog shared stories of Bluecircle land in the years before it was planted in trees. Later images have attempted to document its growth into the young woodland it has become. Today I found a two year-old post languishing in the “draft” box, fixed the formatting error that left it there, and posted it to continue this cycle. Its images and those here are a bit of the history of the farm. The years that separate these posts are the history’s dimensional fabric.

Looking north into the pines, oaks and poplars in mid-December

Most Bluecircle tree seedlings were planted 8 feet apart in regularly spaced rows. This enabled mowing to control weeds but a friend described the effect as “very orderly” – and a bit unnatural. Ten years later extended branches and storm and insect damage have softened the lines in poplar and pine plantings. In some places natural paths have opened, while mowing and trimming keep lanes open in other areas. On the northwestern corner of the farm a planting of 25 hybrid poplars has been reduced to firewood and replaced with a boundary trail and pine seedlings. Fallen poplars lean here and there, slowly adding wildlife cover to the landscape. In the pines lower branches are becoming needle-bare and sight lines have begun to open.

A snow-covered lane splits the firs and larger Scotch pines

The Woodland Conservancy to the immediate west of Bluecircle has maintained internal walking trails for many years. New owners have decided to “naturalize” these paths, perhaps abandoning them to the adjacent thickets of wild blackberry and rose. For now the woods sleep under lake-effect snowdrifts and a night of subzero temperatures.

January Dandelions at Paw Paw Lake 2023

Somehow a year has slipped by since my last posting here. To comfortably wander the Bluecircle with camera and no gloves in mid-January is unusual, but unusual is a good word for the intermittent Winter of 2023. Paw Paw Lake is essentially ice-free and a few people brought lawn chairs to fish from Smitty’s pier.

There have been few sunny days but the snows of November and the Christmas blizzard drifts have quietly slipped away.

The soft green landscape that remains invites a walk on the trails and some early planning of April work. Many poplars planted in the first phase of the farm are large enough to be harvested for firewood as their tops die off. Several will need to be removed and replaced with new firs or pines.

Fraser fir seedling slowly making its way into treedom!

The long shadows of the season forecast snow is still ahead, but this week the deer can graze without pruning the bark and tops of tender conifers. The first flowers of Spring are here already!

Under Winter’s blanket

Pines and firs blanketed by a February snow

The new year brought the season’s first real lake effect snows to Bluecircle. The ground has remained white since then, with the recent storm leaving a “too deep for boots” total. At least the transplanted pines of 2021 are well hidden from snack attacks by deer – like the one that left the tracks pictured below.

Sunny afternoons have been plentiful, albeit usually well below freezing. Electrical problems kept the Gator in the shop (again!) through the month so no ski tracks were packed. Fortunately the nearby Sarett Nature center’s trails have enabled plenty of exercise. A defective wiring harness apparently caused the Gator’s problems and it’s good to have it back in the barn. However, the current snowpack is too deep for even it to navigate.

This leaves plenty of time for trombone practice, beginning with a dozen exercises composed by E.F. Goldman in 1909. He described them as the “Daily Prayer” of every brass instrument player so I suppose this is just a little religion in the Bluecircle.

A little distracted – or so many notes to play

Bluecircle from above, 2021

The warm seasons have come and gone since the last post here so some explanation seems in order. Happily the farm’s people, dog and extended family have stayed healthy despite the pandemic. As opportunities to play brass music in groups emerged from last winter’s snow the writer found the lure of playing in them irresistible. This led to concerts in jazz, symphonic and brass band groups based at Southwest Michigan College. The new skills required to play trombone in a jazz group put me in the practice room on a regular basis. Poetically, “the Blues scale” was lesson 1!

The summer season included community and St. Joseph Municipal band concerts with the euphonium while my brass band baritone rested. In a just-completed holiday marathon of 8 concerts (over 10 days) by 5 different groups all 3 horns each got their turn to shine.

So, this blog has been neglected. The aerial view of the farm shows areas now filled by Scotch and red pine, with firs and cedars making progress. High winds have damaged silver maples and upper trunks of the hybrid poplars, and even topped some tulip poplars. These holidays will include a first – the cottage stove will be fired with wood from poplars planted when the farm was founded.

Deep Midwinter

After a reluctant beginning the depths of a Michigan winter have arrived. Paw Paw Lake froze at the end of January and now rests under its snowy blanket. Nightly the beacon of the Bluecircle fairiehouse casts tree shadows, its light amplified by drifts of lake-effect snow.

Fairiehouse as a wintery beacon

A daily inch or two of fresh snow has fallen this week so the dog and her people have concluded it’s too deep for long walks in the woods. Even the Gator slides and struggles in the drifts as it tries to keep a packed trail open for cross-country skis.

Trails in the trees

It was a long year of social distancing, hand sanitizing, masked shopping and generally staying out of harm’s way. The Bluecircle’s original Gator – all-purpose (but fun) vehicle – found a new owner a few months ago and was replaced by a winter-ready Gator that’s now leaves its tracks in the somewhat snowy woods.

Gator footprints twice around

A trails network has been part of the farm plan since tree planting started. Some of the original locations have already been abandoned as pines reached their branches across potential trails, and the early demise of one poplar planting enabled a new trail along the eastern boundary.

Trails in the “old woods” show the legacy of the Woodland Conservancy where young maples were slashed and left to regrow as brittle, multi-trunked specimens. The carnage left by summer stormbursts is now starkly visible. Mature ashes killed by the emerald beetle have now mostly fallen and add to the mazes of broken limbs.

Tulip poplars, maples and little oaks mark the downhill to N. Watervliet Road

On a shadowless December afternoon the hues of Winter are browns and grays with a touch of muted green. The images raise the question, are there no straight trails in the Bluecircle? An aerial view would show that most of the seedlings planted over the last decade were evenly spaced and aligned. As the canopy of pine branches rises a straight trail or two may cross these sanctuaries. Until then they are reserved for the rabbits, deer, crows, hawks and fox.

In the distance, the older woods of the Conservancy.

Oaks up in the weeds

November 1 brought frost and bursts of gale-driven snow to signal the winding down of farm color for another year. The low angle of Fall sunlight enables vivid reds and oranges but yellow, brown and faded green will soon be the dominant landscape colors.

Our Bluecircle hens already know Winter is coming – we’ll be buying eggs while they take a sabbatical leave until March. The plastic panels that shutter their coop windows aren’t required yet but already they roost huddled together for warmth. A few more pleasant afternoons are forecast this week.

The Bluecircle recently celebrated a birthday; 10 years have passed since the first spruce and arborvitae were planted on the north property line. Most of the acreage is filled with conifers and hardwood but a few projects remain. A bare-root planting intended to be red oak turned out to bear hybrid chestnuts instead of acorns, presumably because of a shipping error at the nursery. Hybrid poplars from one of three suppliers were disease-prone and 23 died off in the last year. And the Japanese beetles that plagued Pinot Gris grape vines are equally fond of red raspberry leaves.

In a prickly cocoon this hybrid chestnut is definitely not an acorn.

So there will be room for a little more planting and a new trail site in the new year. For now its time to break out the leaf blower!