Author Archives: Steve

Biggest leaves, smallest pun’kin

The days of falling leaves are almost over.  A few stragglers remain in the poplar tops and some oaks will keep their rusty decorations till March.  The treetops often hold larger leaves than lower branches and a young Burr oak provided some trophy specimens this year.

Burr oak leaves

 

The Bluecircle leaf “grand champion” was a 5-year Sycamore that blanketed its lawn on North Watervliet Road with fallen giants.   Many had a span over 12 inches, and some were larger.   It was good that this naturalized area needs no raking – by Spring these enormous remnants of a good tree year will be gone.

Sycamore leaf measures 18 x 16 inches!

One pumpkin vine survived the groundhog chomping in the corn patch and bore a single tiny fruit. Maybe a fairy carriage?

Tiny pumpkin

Seven Bluecircle Years

The Red Oak leaves brown and blow on a howling Halloween and the tree farm has reached another birthday.  Occasional bursts of lake-effect snow from a lead-lined sky warn of harsh weather ahead, but for now the grass is green.  Freed from competition by frost-pruned weeds it’s growing thanks to lots of October rain.  It will be left a little long  where there are not too many leaves to mulch or move.

A rabbit, or maybe 2 elude the clutches of our resident fox by living beneath the largest Scotch Pines.  Those planted as 3-year seedlings are now almost 9 years old.  Volunteer raspberry and blackberry vines like the pines too, waiting to grab the sleeve or hat of the guy on the mower.  Poison ivy that stealthily made its way up trunks all summer is now bright red and obvious – but only until the next hard rain sweeps the leaves away.  The myth that this vine only thrives in shade is busted on the Bluecircle since it’s everywhere the mower blades don’t reach.

Spagetti squash proved to be the champion crop of this year’s garden.  The pepper and tomato plants and never fully recovered from a late frost, and a groundhog that tunneled into the sweet corn/pumpkin patch feasted on the young vines.  Soon it will be time to clean out the beds, hang up the tools and wait to anticipate the first signs of Spring.

Growth and amputation in the pine grove

 

Oaks and pines

Midsummer in Michigan, cooler than many years and mostly rainy enough to keep established trees healthy.  The Bluecircle’s older pines now close the rows between them and briars thrive in their shade.  It will be a few years before you could lose yourself here, but even now you could stay out of sight in the Scotch pines.

The mixed planting of spruce, fir and pines is susceptible to the white pine weevil.  Especially in the sunniest areas this pest has infected some topmost branches leaving then brown, dead and soon broken by the wind.  New branches form below this crude amputation but the crooked trunk of affected trees marks the damage.

 

 

 

Both oaks and conifers continue to develop new leaves or needles, often with transient immature colors that contrast with established growth.

Spruce tip on a July afternoon

 

 

Winter softly, coldly slinks away


The advent of Spring at the Bluecircle brings its share of surprises, from a (? last) burst of lake-effect snow to an outbreak of small tornadoes and nightly visits from a portly skunk.  Meanwhile, the greening of buds and grasses proceeds.  A new batch of hybrid poplar cuttings rests in the greenhouse and awaits more sun and fewer frigid nights.  The first bare-root trees of the year are planted and today’s soaking rains are just what they needed to settle in their new rows.

The Bluecircle hens have agreed that Winter is over and egg production is back to normal.  They are happy that most of the coop window covers were removed to restore their view of the big world.  Fortunately the red fox of the Woodland Conservancy who brought a feathered chicken dinner home as “take out” last week enjoyed his meal a few hundred feet beyond their coop.   Now the winds of March have scattered the feathers of this unfortunate prey.

 

Visiting a prairie beyond the circle

Six hundred or so miles southwest of Paw Paw Lake lies Prairie Village Kansas were you can walk wagon ruts from the 200-year-old Santa Fe and linked Oregon Trails. Beyond the community park that preserves the “Prairie Highway” heritage older, well-preserved homes fill this southeast suburb of Kansas City. Only in your imagination can you see the gently rolling hills spread with prairie grasses, now dusted with a little snow or trampled by freezing rains.

This eastern terminus of the frontier trails to the West is far from the sheltering ring of the Bluecircefarm, but free of lake-effect snow drifts. Visits totaling weeks here have let Sophie establish her daily route of neighborhood inspection and nap times. But she looks longingly at her space in the back seat of the truck and will be glad to leave this one house, two dogs neighborhood.

She’ll be bringing a member of the Bluecircle family to interim residence in the guest house, widening her choice of people to love and protect. I think she’ll enjoy keeping track of a bit larger family. The orange “U” trailer behind us will be as big as the prairie schooners outfitted here in the 1820s but our journey will be shorter, and far easier.

Fallen leaves, needles and temperatures at season’s end

img_1995Bright October afternoons of oak and maple leaves swirling in the wind are gone for another year.  The last red raspberries and tomatoes have frosted away so only b’sprouts, tiny broccoli and milkweed pods persist in the garden beds.
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A few yellowed needles drop from the Bluecircle pines but it will be many years before they make a layer of mulch under a mature canopy.  On a recent hike near Gun Lake fallen needles from the tall pines decorated the still-green maples.

But now the first gusts of lake-effect snow have brought shivers to the hilltop. Bronzed leaves that evaded the mulch pile blow randomly between the trees, finding company in the piles that grow by fences and shrubs. And the sun sets low in the almost-winter sky. img_0164

Trees of the Bluecircle after Six Summers

dsc00875The months roll by on the Bluecircle and soon the last of the Fall colors will be under the first blanket of lake-effect snow.  Mowing is almost done for this year and both the machine and mower are ready for a break.  The red oak grove and Douglas firs pictured here hide the spruce and pines behind, but the last leaves remaining at the top of the poplars show them towering over the field.  After six years of planting, sun and rain this area of the farm is beginning to mature.

dsc00871North Watervliet Road at the bottom of this hill marks the east edge of the property.  Two-year tulip poplar, maple and oak seedlings here will eventually define a path into the older plantings above.   White plastic “grow tubes” around some of the maples are needed to discourage grazing by the doe and fawns that traverse this entrance to the farm.

dsc00870Looking northwest over a recently cleared and planted area with hybrid poplars and tiny pines in the foreground.  Taller Scotch pines and wind-bent poplars are beginning to hide the storage barns.   Behind this clearing rows of white and blue spruce seedlings will mark a corner of the Bluecircle.

A walk in the Wilderness

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A week’s camping in Wilderness State Park at the northern tip of the Lower Peninsula was highlighted by warm days, cool nights and virtually no biting bugs.

The large stands of mature red pine and hemlock in the park are linked by lightly used hiking trails and abandoned logging roads. The dune terrain is gently rolling and for the most part unblemished by public access.

At the western end of the park a peninsula of conifers, sand and gravel beds extends far into Lake Michigan and is reserved for pedestrians, birds and its native species.IMG_0087

Looking up into the canopy of mature pines, oaks, firs and a few maples reminded me of the future of the Bluecircle trees, a forest in its early days. IMG_0094

Beauties and the Beasties

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First, the beauties of mowing in midsummer include the scents of flowers and cut grass. The Queen Anne’s Lace is beginning to fade with goldenrod soon to come. The garden beds are overgrown with tomatoes ripening faster than they are needed and a few summer squash are still filling in the ground level. We’re impatient with sweet corn that isn’t quite ripe enough to pull.

And then there are the risks of the field when the weeds have grown tall. A hidden groundhog den neatly trapped the rear wheel of the Snapper mower, bottoming the deck and adding a
“tow out” break to the afternoon chores. Another good assignment for the Gator.

A hornet's nest on a maple seedling lurks in the weeds

A hornet’s nest on a maple seedling lurks in the weeds

The pink tree flag in this picture marks a second-year maple seedling in the weeds. Just below it, and with its bottom nearly touching the ground, is a very active 10-inch hornet’s nest. The photograph fails to capture the path the lucky author used to speed away from the beasties, leaving these weeds (and the nest) to the frosts of October.

Pomona Point Neighbors

My neighbor shared this crisp late-summer view of the Bluecircle Farm from recent aerial photography of the Pomona Point area on Paw Paw Lake.  Pines, spruce, poplars and oak march like ragged battle lines across the grass.treefarm

As Pomona Point approaches its 150th anniversary Bluecircle Arts recently tried its hand at publishing and crafted a brief history of the Point and its neighborhoods.  This is now an e-book: “Pomona Point Neighbors at Paw Paw Lake”   http://www.blurb.com/ebooks/586338-pomona-point-neighbors-at-paw-paw-lake .  The book expanded a March, 2015 post on this blog about the history of the Bluecircle land to tell the resort history of the peninsula.