Dead Wood Is Still Good Wood

 “Ideally, your forest should have four to six snags per acre,” says Kristi Sullivan, who hails from Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources and the Environment.  This was news to me.  Anyone who works with computers, has a boss, or tries to organize anything is annoyed by snags.  I’ve hit snags when paddling my kayak and even snagged my jeans on a barbed wire fence.  But snags in the woods?  Kristi’s snags, in forestry parlance, turn out to dead, but standing, trees.  Once I’d gotten around that snafu, it all started to make sense. 

What looks like rotting timber to us is a multi-use opportunity for the wild things.  According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, “birds, small mammals, and other wildlife use snags for nests, nurseries, storage areas, foraging, roosting, and perching. Live trees with snag-like features, such as hollow trunks, excavated cavities, and dead branches can provide similar wildlife value. Snags occurring along streams and shorelines eventually may fall into the water, adding important woody debris to aquatic habitat. Dead branches are often used as perches; snags that lack limbs are often more decayed and may have more and larger cavities for shelter and nesting. Snags enhance local natural areas by attracting wildlife species that may not otherwise be found there.” 

Any tree species, including hardwoods and conifers, can become a valuable snag.  The process begins with a hard snag, or a tree which is partially or totally dead but still has its bark and inner tissues largely intact.  Woodpeckers are especially attracted to such real estate and start their excavating activities, earning themselves the moniker of primary cavity nesters.  Since woodpeckers become bored easily and don’t nest in the same hole twice, they move on and carve out new homes elsewhere.  Then avians including bluebirds, swallows, chickadees, nuthatches, house wrens, wood ducks and owls, who cannot excavate cavities themselves, move in next.  Meanwhile, the tree continues to decay, with fungi advancing and weakening the wood fibers, creating a soft snag.  Soft snags don’t have limbs and often lose their tops.  As the forces of weather, animals and fungi continue, the remaining hulk eventually falls over, but still provides food and shelter on the forest floor.  I’m sure foresters have a technical term for a dead tree lying on the ground, but I don’t know it.

This discussion sprouts two ideas in my gardener’s mind.  First, we are often much too neat.  Nature would benefit if we left more rotting stumps and standing snags.  When gardening friends raise an eyebrow over our apparent sloppiness, we could grasp the moment as an educational opportunity.  Secondly, snags could be a way to positively end my relationship with some Norway maples.  These invasives are growing on the edge of our woods, and while I know they should come down, that seems a daunting task.  By removing a four inch band of bark to girdle them, they’ll turn into useful snags, then eventually fall quite harmlessly (I hope) to earth.  That’s my plan, unless I hit a you-know-what.   

Shed Happens

As a gardener, I don’t have to choose my battles, they just appear before my eyes.  The latest offense was the mouse which chewed an entry hole into my shed.  While mice have always gotten inside, they’ve previously politely slid beneath the door, so this creature’s wanton destruction was the rub.  On Saturday I replaced the threshold, armored the door with metal, and re-painted the area.  Lastly, I placed a trap in front of the door.  Said mouse couldn’t resist checking out the upgrades.  The little fellow, now squashed, was so fat he must have been trying to grow into a junior rat. 

I built my shed with own hands, to a design from daydreams.  With an overstuffed garage, a garden shed seemed necessary, but I wanted one worthy of a glossy garden magazine, not a pre-fab job from the DIY shop.  I had always admired small accessory buildings, and was beguiled by those seen at rustic Eastfield Village in Nassau and especially grand Boscobel in Garrison.  If I couldn’t have the main house there, perhaps the outhouse would do, a Greek-revival mini-masterpiece. 

The spark to start came in the form of two ancient classical columns, found at a local flea market.  Perhaps once on a stately Hudson River home, they would create a formal porch for my shed with Greek-revival style.  I found full-dimension timber for the frame at a local sawmill.  Much sturdier than the matchsticks sold at chain lumberyards, it was so green that sap oozed forth when it was nailed or screwed.  Locally-produced novelty siding which slide together, tongue-and-groove style, further strengthened the frame.  Old doors and windows found as roadside freebies provided an air of age.  With slowly increasing amazement, I made a building rise from a pile of pieces.  I spent most of the summer of 2002 working on my masterpiece, which evolved into more of a tiny house than a place to dump the tomato cages and deer netting.

Life can change suddenly, even for a shed.  Straight-line winds toppled our mighty white pine one July day in 2008, and it landed in the worst possible place.  Pine limbs violently punctured the roof.  While the shed stayed intact, it was pushed a foot off its foundations to the east, and stood leaning to the left like a drunken cardboard box.  Just cleaning up the tree debris took days, and for a while it seemed the little building was beyond repair.  Perhaps I should pull it down and haul it to the Colonie dump.

I didn’t have the heart for demolition, and by tugging carefully with my truck and a come-along winch, the frame gradually straightened – mostly.  Using a car jack, I leveled the floor – mostly.  After adding twelve cross braces, the shed was sturdier, but a little less straight, than ever.  I splurged and hired a roofer who installed a new red metal roof, scrounged another old door, then painted it all.  With people and sheds, I’ve decided being slightly crooked adds character.   

Warts, Ribs and an Empress

Halloween offers the opportunity for “normal” people to take on new forms, be it a Ninja Turtle, spooky ghost or an even spookier presidential candidate.  The holiday’s official horticultural ambassador, the pumpkin, is also available today in many forms beyond the standard orange globe.  Farmers grow triple the acreage of Cucurbits nowadays than they did 30 years ago, attempting to fulfill our desires for the weird and wonderful.  Here are just a few that have caught my eye. 

Warts, at least on pumpkins, are hot.  The ‘Warty Goblin’ sitting on my front porch is both cute and ugly, having an orange body splotched with bright green warts (top specimen in photo).  This hybrid usually weighs in between 8 and 20 pounds, is designed to be a good keeper and sports a strong stem, or “handle.”  ‘Knuckle Head’ is vibrant orange, rounded in form and freckled with orange warts.  These fruits average 12 to 16 pounds.  While it may seem that warty pumpkins must be a modern oddity concocted in a laboratory test tube, they’ve actually been around for centuries.  Also on the porch sits ‘Red Warty Thing,’ a vibrant red-orange specimen covered stem to stern in a multitude of lumps (on right in photo).  This Thing was introduced back in 1897 by the James J.H. Gregory & Sons Seed Company of Marblehead, MA, and was the result of a cross between and ‘American Turban’ and ‘Hubbard.’  Mr. Gregory, an entrepreneurial farmer, plant scientist and seed salesman, developed the most-famous and original ‘Hubbard’ way back in 1844.  These squashes have history.

 If green and orange warts are not your thing, how about grayish bumps?  ‘Marina Di Chioggia,’ a sea pumpkin of noble Italian ancestry, can range in color from aquamarine to blue-gray-green to very dark green, and has the surface texture of a heavily pimpled teenager.  Gourmands say its sweet flesh is among the best for a wide variety of dishes.  Of a gray-blue hue, and trading warts for heavy vertical ribbing is ‘Jarrahdale.’  This is an heirloom from western Australia, but I can attest it will grow well in the Hudson Valley, too.  New to me this year is ‘Triamble,’ another wonder from down under, a gray three-lobed pumpkin whose shape might qualify it for a contemporary art gallery.  Reportedly it can last in storage for more than two years. (left of “Red Warty Thing’ in photo)

Some pumpkins are truly sophisticated.  ‘Empress of Iran’ is mottled dark green, light green, orange and beige, with a svelte, rounded shape. (next to porch post in photo)  Perhaps this is the pumpkin that P.G. Wodehouse’s Lord Emsworth grew, alongside his equally high-class but much fatter pig, “Empress of Blandings.”  The ‘Flat White Boer’ hails from South Africa, has a lovely cream-white skin and tasty orange flesh, and is rather flat and disc-like, but with ribs.  It is named for the Dutch Boers who once ruled the country and it will keep your fall porch display from being boer-ing (it’s the white pumpkin in the photo).  Also wheel-shaped is ‘Rouge Vif d’Etampes’ with a spectacular burnt orange skin.  Hailing from France, it is nicknamed “Cinderella’s pumpkin.”  What could be more cosmopolitan than that?