Native Plants

Why native plants?

Suburban sprawl and development has led to the fragmentation and disappearance of native flora and natural habitat for both plants and animals.  The crisis in the honeybee population has brought attention to the disappearance of pollinators of other sorts as well.  Many native insects depend on specific native plants for their food source and the disappearance of those native plants leads to the disappearance of those insects.  In turn, these insects are often the primary food fed to baby birds, so a decrease in insect population results in a decrease in the bird population.  We generally see insect-eaten plants as a bad thing but it is a natural part of the food web and we need to appreciate the role of native plants and insects in the grand scheme of life.

Native Plant Societies

American Horticultural Society List of Native Plant Societies

Pennsylvania Native Plant Society

New England Wild Flower Society

Helpful Websites

Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania: Native Plants: Attract birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects to your garden

The Audubon Society at Beechwood Farms in the North Hills offers native plants for sale and has a list of native plants with descriptions.

Pennsylvania Native Plants for the Perennial Garden

The Penn State Extension has provided a list of native plants without photos.

Landscaping with Native Plants

The Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources tells you why to landscape with native plants and what to look for.  The site includes a searchable native plant database.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center Database: Pennsylvania

Commercially available native plant species suitable for planned landscapes in Pennsylvania.  These include a photo.

Bibliography

All of the following books can be obtained from the public libraries in Allegheny County.  Just do a title search in the eiNetwork online catalog: https://librarycatalog.einetwork.net/

Subject Search: Native Plant Cultivation

Armitage's Native Plants for North American Gardens
By A. M. Armitage; Timber Press 2006
Armitage provides an alphabetical guide by scientific name to native plants of North America that make good garden plants.

Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control By Jessica Walliser; Timber Press
Jessica Walliser cohosts the Organic Gardener radio show on KDKA with Doug Oster.

Attracting Native Pollinators, Protecting North America's Bees and Butterflies
By The Xerces Society; Storey Publishing 2011
The Xerces Society is a nonprofit that works to save invertebrates (including insects) and their habitats.  Check out their other publications.

Bringing Nature Home
By Doug Tallamy; Timber Press
Tallamy contends that because man has left so few natural areas in the U.S., people have to make their home gardens into habitats that can support wildlife.

Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change
By Larry Weaner and Thomas Christopher; Timber Press
"Garden Revolution shows how an ecological approach to planting can lead to beautiful gardens that buck much of conventional gardening’s counter-productive, time-consuming practices. Instead of picking the wrong plant and then constantly tilling, weeding, irrigating, and fertilizing, Weaner advocates for choosing plants that are adapted to the soil and climate of a specific site and letting them naturally evolve over time."

The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden
By Rick Darke and Doug Tallamy;  Timber Press
Darke and Tallamy show how you can make a diverse layered landscape: "one that offers beauty on many levels, provides outdoor rooms and turf areas for children and pets, incorporates fragrance and edible plants, and provides cover, shelter, and sustenance for wildlife."

Native Plants of the Northeast, a guide for gardening and conservation
By Donald J. Leopold; Timber Press 2005
Entries for nearly 700 species of native trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, grasses, and wildflowers from the northeastern quarter of the U.S. and eastern Canada.

Planting in a Post-Wild World
By Thomas Rainer and Claudia West; Timber Press 2015
Rainer and West advocate gardening to bring nature back to cities and gardens by replicating nature’s style: robust and diverse.

Easy-to-Grow Native Plants

These are plants that have grown successfully in my Monroeville garden.

Perennials

Sun
Baptisia, False indigo

Butterfly weed (rather difficult to get established) Asclepias tuberosa

Canadian Columbine, Aquilegia canadensis (reseeds itself)

Canadian Windflower, Anemone canadensis

Common Milkweed, Asclepias syriaca (spreads aggressively by rhizomes)
Goldenrod, Solidago rugosa 'Fireworks' (This cultivar clumps instead of invading with rhizomes.)
Monarda didyma (common beebalm)
Obedient Plant, Physostegia virginiana
Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea (the common variety reseeds itself)
Swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata (spreads by seeds)
Wild Senna or partridge tree, Senna hebecarpa (flowers covered with bees)

Shade
Allegheny Foamflower, Tiarella cordifolia
Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis
Mayapple, Podophyllum peltatum (once established they spread aggressively)
Northern maidenhair fern, Adiantum pedatum
Wild Ginger, Asarum canadense
Wood poppy or Celandine Poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum (reseeds all over)

Shrubs and Trees
Fringe Tree, Chionanthus virginicus (fragrant flowers)

Ninebark, Physocarpus opulifolius

Serviceberry, Amelanchier arborea

Winterberry,  Ilex verticillata (male & female plants required for berries)

Comida Colombiana

Videos

Video de  Sutamarchán sobre el cocido boyacense que utiliza chuguas y cubios.

Sabores y Saberes Tradicionales de Boyacá (18 minutes)
Sweet y Salado (videos en YouTube sobre como hacer la cocina colombiana).  Tambien tiene un blog con las recetas.

Paloquemao, el mercado mas colorido de Colombia

Señal Colombia Los Puros Criollos (TV documentarios de 25 minutos)
RTVCPlay.co

• Fritanga (Temp 5,  Cap 1)
• Pan (Temp 5, Cap 12)
• Plazas de Mercado (Temp 4 Cap 10)
• Desayuno Criollo (Temp 4 Cap 3)
• Bocadillo Veleño (Temp 3 Cap 3)
• Amasijos (todo hecho de masa) (Temp 3 Cap 1)
• El Corrientazo (almuerzo fuera de la casa) (Temp3)
• La Gallina Criolla (Temp 3 Cap 8)
• La Lechona (Temporada 2, Capitulo 4)
• La Chicha (Temp 2, Cap 10)
• Empanadas (Temp 2, Cap 12)
• El Café (Temp 2, Cap 2)
• La Arepa (Temp 2, Cap 1)
• El Sancocho (Temp 2, Cap 22)
• La Panela (Temp 1, Cap 6)
• La Papa
• El Tamal

TVAgro: AgroPlay
Muchos videos sobre la agricultura, las artesanías y los animales.

Raices de los Andes

Hay algunas verduras, particularment las raices o los tubérculos, que no se encuentran en los Estados Unidos.  Aun en las ciudades grandes de Colombia, los ibias, cubios, y chuguas no son muy populares excepto en la région de Boyacá.  Esos tres tuberculos se encuentran tambien en Perú, Ecuador y Bolivia bajo nombres differentes.

Ibias  (Oxalis tuberosa)

Variedades de Ibia (Oca) 

En Peru la ibia se llama oca de la lenguaje Quechua.
Cultivariable: How to grow Oca
Wikipedia: Oxalis tuberosa

Cubios (Tropaeolum tuberosum)

Variedades de cubio

Cubios son de la misma familia de los Nasturtiums, la flor del jardín, y también tienen una flor bonita.  En Perú el cubio se llama mashua.

Más información:
Wikipedia: Tropaeolum tuberosum
Cultivariable: How to grow mashua
Southern Illinois University Ethnobotanical Leaflets: Mashua

Chuguas (Ullucus tuberosus)

Variedades de Chugua

Chuguas se conocen también como rubias en Colombia, como ullucos en Perú y como rubas en Venezuela.
Cultivariable: Ulluco

Hoy Cocinas Tú: Cocido boyacense y salsa criolla
Lo tipico de esta receta es en las raices usadas: ibias, cubios y chuguas, ninguno de los cuales se puede conseguir en los Estados Unidos.

Cubio, ibia y ruba, tubérculos marginados en lista de la FAO
Zoom's Edible Plants: Papalisa/Ulloco/Ullucus tuberosus

Arracacha (Arracacia xanthorrhiza)

La arracacha es una planta de los Andes que es muy parecida al apio, inclusive se llama también "apio criollo".  Es usada en sopas como la papa.

Cuando llegué a Colombia en 1973, no me gustaba la arracacha pero dentro de un año estaba usandola en una crema de arracacha.

Videos:

Aromas y Sabores del Tolima (Cajamarca): Arracacha (26 minutos)

Un Tubérculo Ancestral

Wikipedia: Arracacia xanthorrhiza

Raíz de la selva tropical

En Colombia las regiones andinas y selváticas están muy juntas y por eso se puede encontrar frutas tropicales y raices andinas en el mismo mercado.  Hay algunas raices tropicales que son muy comunes en cualquier mercado.

Yuca (Manihot esculenta)

Esta raíz se escribe yuca y no yucca lo cual es una mata completamente distinta de la familia Agave.  La yuca se llama tambien manioca y casava y es la planta que nos da la tapioca.  En Colombia la gente ponen yuca en sopas como ajiaco y sancocho y también la fritan como papas fritas.  En los Estados Unidos se puede conseguir la raíz fresca cubierta con cera pero es mejor conseguirla congelada porque es menos trabajo (ya está pelada) y la calidad es mejor.

Wikipedia: Manihot esculenta

Frutas de la familia Solanacea

Lulo (Solanum quitoense)

El lulo es una fruta parecida al tomate, y crece en una planta perenne subtropical del noroeste de América del Sur. En Colombia el lulo es usado en jugos, helados y postres.

Planta de lulo

Lulos

Wikipedia: Solanum quitoense

Tomate de Arbol (Solanum betaceum)

Tomate de arbol es una fruta que cresca en un arbol y es nativo a los Andes de Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia y Chile.  Nueva Zelandia ha cambiada el nombre a "tamarillo".  Se usa para jugos.

Más información:

Wikipedia: Tamarillo

Uchuva (Physalis peruviana)

En los Estados Unidos se conoce como "ground cherry" y recentemente como "golden berry"; en Sud Africa se conoce como "cape gooseberry".  Se puede comerla fresca or en conservas y hoy tambien se encuetra seca.

Más información:

Wikipedia: Physalis peruviana

Frutas de la Pasión

Todas son enredaderes pero son de climas diferentes.

Maracuyá

El maracuyá es muy ácido pero tiene mucho sabor y olor.  Se usa mucho en jugos con bastante azúcar.  Dicen que el maracuyá morado es originalmente de las selvas de Brasil per no conocen exactamente de donde en América del Sur viene el amarillo.

Más Información:

TVAgro Video: Cultivo de Maracuyá (23 minutos)
Wikipedia: Passiflora edulis

Granadilla (Passiflora ligularis)

La granadilla es muy dulce y se puede comer sin azúcar, comiendo las semillas tanto como la pulpa.  Es una fruta originaria de los Andes centrales de Perú pero hoy Colombia es el principal productor a nivel mundial.

Más información:

Gastronomic Fruits: Granadilla

Wikipedia: Passiflora ligularis

TVAgro video: Cómo Cultivar Granadilla

Curuba (Passiflora mollissima o P. tarminiana)

La curuba (banana passionfruit) crece en los valles de los Andes y no tiene una cáscara dura como el maracuyá y la granadilla.  Como la maracuyá se usa para hacer bebidas porque es un poco ácida.

Más información:

Purdue: Banana Passionfruit

Wikipedia: Banana passionfruit

Chobani Passion Fruit Greek Yogurt

This stuff is good enough for dessert! I don't usually buy the individual yogurt containers but it looks like I'll have to run out and get 10 more of these for $10 at Giant Eagle. I was really impressed that the maracuya pulp at the bottom actually contained seeds! (Hm. I wonder if I could plant them...)

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex

Slayers, Saviors, Servants, and Sex: An Expose of Kingdom Fungi by David Moore.

No, it's not an exciting romance or adventure thriller but a nonfiction book about fungi by a mycologist from The University of Manchester.  It's an easy, short (152pp), often humorous read that will get you thinking about fungi and maybe a little more interested in them.  I've loved mushrooms for a long time.  I used to collect boletus up at the lake in summer and was thrilled with all the mushrooms at UC Santa Cruz.  Moore doesn't just talk about mushrooms but about molds like penicillin and other members of the kingdom, about its very long history, and about fungi as offering a solution for many of our problems today.  Fungi are the ultimate cleaner uppers, the decayers, so that they should be looked to for bioremediation, rather than the bacteria. 

Bon appetit's Italy issue

So I picked up the latest issue of Bon Appetit and I said, oh great! Italian food! So I start paging through it and I read "how to drink like an Italian", which was interesting. I'll have to pick up some Campari. Then there was an article on a bacon burger (Italian?), and another on boiled peanuts and hummus and Japanese pubs, then one on hollandaise sauce; then one on Houston -- at which point I'm asking myself where is this Italian food?? Then one on salmon, and then finally a little reminisence on an Italian mother-in-law; then one on cinco de mayo; then a huge ad on botox; another ad on Turkey; then a cucumber, mint and basil soda recipe; a big ad on Frei Brothers California wine; an ad on tuna; an article on new jersey asparagus -- I'm beginning to dispair!

Finally on page 102 there's "30 reasons we love Italy" followed by Italian dolce (reworked by American chefs of course) and the rest of the articles on Italy. Fortunately there are few ads here so maybe it really was worth the wait! At least they make it easy to tear out all the ads!

Sausage Recipes

This is as good a place as any to jot down sausage ingredients. Here are also some tips:
1. Keep the meat cold.
2. Cut the meat in long thin strips to grind it.

Emeril Lagasse's Homemade Mild Italian Sausage
Ingredients
3 pounds well-marbled pork butt, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons toasted fennel seeds
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon freshly cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground anise
2 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian parsley leaves
3 tablespoons dry red wine
Pork casings, optional

Le gourmet TV Hot Sicilian Style Italian Sausage Recipe
Ingredients:
5 feet medium hog casing
4 1/2 lbs lean pork butt
1/2 lbs pork fat
2 tbsp coarse salt
1 tbsp whole fennel seed (sometimes we grind it, sometimes we don't...)
1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
Crushed red pepper to taste - 2 teaspoons is a good starting point for your first time making this


Homemade Wisconsin-Style Bratwurst
•4 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 1-inch cubes and stored in the freezer for 30 minutes
•1 pound Pork back fat, chopped and stored in the freezer for 30 minutes
•3 tablespoons kosher salt
•1 tablespoon sugar
•1 1/2 teaspoons grated nutmeg
•1/2 teaspoon coriander
•1/4 teaspoon celery seed
•2 teaspoons ground black pepper
•1/8 teaspoon ground marjoram
•1 1/2 teaspoons dried ginger

Sausages

So Saturday I finally made home-made sausages. I had bought 13.5 pounds of pork shoulder at Costco and I picked up sausage casings at McGinnis's so I was ready. For a long time I had had the equipment: my KitchenAid mixer, the food grinder attachment and the sausage stuffing accessory. I'm not sure what I was waiting for. Maybe inspiration from a simple recipe, which I found in Rosetta Constantino's My Calabria.
It was very simple with sweet paprika, hot paprika, salt, fennel seeds and ground pork. Constantino's mother says that if your hands aren't red after mixing the sausage meat, you don't have enough paprika.


Our first attempt at stuffing wasn't so great, we were using a little funnel for stuffing them and they resulted in rather wimpy sausages. So we compacted the sausage meat so they looked decent and then changed the funnel to the wider one so that more stuffing would be extruded. It was always difficult to find the opening for the casing since they were really thin. But if you fill the 3 foot casing with water, it's easier to gather it up around the funnel mouth.





These are the hog casings soaking in cold water. They came in 3 foot lengths, tied together. You gather the hog casing up around the funnel mouth, turn the mixer on high speed, and start pushing the sausage meat through the grinder.

You need two people to fill the sausages. One to push the meat through the grinder and the other to gradually pull out the casing. After the first string of sausages, we were almost experts!

And yes, we were very proud!

Belly of Paris

I downloaded the kindle application to my new macbook air so that I could download a copy of Emile Zola's The Belly of Paris to read on the flight to Paris. The version I bought is translated by Mark Kurlansky of Cod fame and he provides a nice little introduction. I haven't started reading it yet but will let you know more when I do.

Storm from the East by Milton Viorst

This is the audiobook that George W. Bush should have listened to! It gives the history of the Middle East from the beginning of the 20th century and covers the colonial era of Great Britain and France. After listening to these six CDs I understand why the Arabs dislike the West so much, including the United States. We haven't supported their secular nationalism, which has gotten them nowhere. So it is no wonder that they have embraced a religious nationalism. If more Americans knew the history of the Middle East, they would be more understanding of the Arab rage.

El Juego del Angel by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

We listened to this 16 disc audiobook in Spanish and after 16 discs, my listening ability has definitely improved, although the book itself can be very confusing at times. David Martin is a writer who sells his soul to the "Patron", Andrea Corelli, who is supposed to get a monumental religious history in return. Love, intrigue, the supernatural and mystery are involved so that one must keep listening to the very end. The narrator, Francisco Rivela, was very good - and that is often what makes or breaks an audio book.

Four Beers

Last night my son picked up 6 beers from the local 6-pack store so we are back to food as a subject for the blog. The first one, "White Lightning" from the Full Pint Brewing Company here in North Versailles, was a nice light heffeweisen with a good coriander flavor. This was the first time I had heard of the Full Pint Brewing Company which, Will says, was started by the brewmasters from the old John Harvard's Brew pub in Wilkins. On their website, which is currently just a blog, you can see them moving the equipment from John Harvard's to their new warehouse. If we got the Tribune-Review, perhaps I would know about it: Full Pint Brewery makes splash in Pittsburgh beer scene. I'm going to have to see if the Trib has a headlines by email.

Then there was Stone Levitation Ale, which was nice and hoppy with a beautiful bottle, and Flying Dog's Dogtoberfest (from Frederick, Maryland - we'll have to stop by sometime on our way to DC). Will says the when we are in San Diego we'll have to visit the Stone Brewery, which really impressed him.

The best beer last night was He'Brew's Bittersweet Lenny's R.I.P.A. - A double india pale ale with rye malt, which was rich, hoppy, malty, sweet and strong at 10%. It really filled your mouth: "a whole meal" as Will put it. Fortunately we were splitting the beers into 3 so that it was only an appetizer!

Estrella Distante by Roberto Bolaño

It looks like this Chile Relleno blog is going to be books rather than cooking!
This is our first book on CD in Spanish from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh (we had listened to a couple many years ago from the Stark Listening Center at Pitt). Maybe the blog name is appropriate since the author is Chilean. It's a short book (only 5 discs, 5.25 hours) and rather confusing at the beginning without a clear plot. The last chapter, where they introduce Detective Romero becomes much more interesting, particularly for the dialog. The reader, Walter Krochmal, was very good at Romero's Chilean accent (the ones without the esses).

The Elephant and the Dragon : The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us

Yet another book review. We listened to the Elephant and the Dragon by Robyn Meredith, a reporter for Forbes Magazine, as an audiobook during our commute. Although it was published in 2007 before the financial crisis caused by the subprime lending fiasco, most of the data is still useful. Meredith covers the recent economic and political histories of India and China to explain why the two countries have developed so differently, why India is the back office while China is the factory to the world. It was really amazing to listen to how rapidly China changed and is catching up with the rest of the world. Because it was able to, the Chinese government put a huge amount of money into infrastructure (roads, factories, power supply). The democratic and bureaucratic Indian government is way behind China in this respect. However, because India has a huge population of children, Meredith sees that there is a real possibility for immense economic growth in India if jobs can be provided for these up and coming workers. It's a good book for learning a lot about these two countries and how they will continue to challenge the economies of the West.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

I also just finished Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham, who is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University so I hope that means he isn't some quack. The thesis of the book, which I find very interesting and very plausible, is that it was the use of fire to cook food that led to the development of the human species, allowing them time away from chewing. He emphasizes that digestion of raw foods is quite time and energy consuming and that raw foods cannot provide the calories that cooked food does. Cooking makes both plant and animal foods more digestible. Because humans did not have to have large jaws and guts for digesting raw foods, our mouths, teeth and intestines became smaller, while our brain capacity increased. It's a good thesis and explains why we have an obesity epidemic today: we are naturally attracted to refined foods.

97 Orchard

I just finished reading 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman and just finished visiting the Tenement Museum on Saturday when we visited Penny. So I sent a book review of it off to the first floor:
Ziegelman uses five families that lived in the tenement at 97 Orchard Street in Manhattan (now the Tenement Museum) to tell the history of immigrant foodways between 1863 (when the tenement was built) and 1935 (when it was no longer used for residences). It is a very easy and interesting read since it gives a broad and entertaining history of food and social conditions in New York City during each period. Ziegelman begins with the Glockner family in the 1860s, a German family that built the tenement. Then come the Moore family from Ireland, the German Jewish Gompertz family from Prussia in the 1870s, the Russian Jewish Rogarshevsky family in the early 1900s, and finally the Italian Baldizzi family in the 1920-30s. Ziegelman describes the living conditions that each immigrant group experienced and the type of food they would have commonly eaten. The book gave me the final impetus I needed to visit the Tenement Museum (http://www.tenement.org/) on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, a followup that I would highly recommend to everyone, especially during this current era of anti-immigrant feeling. These immigrants came over during a period when immigration (except for the Chinese) was not curtailed.

Eggplant and Torta Verde

On Saturday morning I went to the Ventura Farmers Market and, as it is the harvest season, I bought more than we can use. I was a sucker for these 2 inch baby eggplants - bright shiney purple. I'll have to hurry and use them because they are getting duller. And then when I was browsing through Mother's cookbooks, I ran across a recipe for "Tiny Eggplants in Tomato Sauce" from the Periyali Greek cookbook. Perfect. I'll have to try to do it tonight.
And then I was browsing

Annual Post - Gala Applesauce

Oh, my goodness, how embarrassing. Google had to enter an annual bogus post for me so that 2009 wouldn't go missing.
I should use this blog for food and cooking. I have a third blog on wordpress (curuba) that I use for gardening but haven't been overly successful with it.
So here's a post on food: I'm cooking some old gala apples that Mother had in the refrigerator into applesauce. They aren't working like most apples I have thus cooked. They are too dry and hard and are not falling apart in their juice. I didn't peel and core them but just eighthed them and planned to send them through Mother's foodmill. Now I'm not sure what I'll do with them.
According to "Pick Your Own", you should choose apples that are sweet, like Gala and Red Delicious (how horrid). But they also apparently throw the cores and peels down the sink... No, they don't say that but they don't say: save them for the compost, either.

Annual post

Kushies

Yesterday I ran across some baby booties by Kushies in the Carnegie Museum of Art store (they are branching out and diversifying I suppose). They were very stretchy and so perfect for clothing babies. At two for $11 I didn't think they were too overpriced but since our splurge over the weekend at the Japanese store in DC, I was reticent to continue buying. Plus they were sized 0-3 months and yet had non-slip soles - what baby walks before 11-12 months? But there were cute enough for me to look up their website http://www.kushies.com/ and browse through it and their online catalog - which is very well done in Flash with turnable pages. That's the way online books should be and maybe in the near future they will be. Then will fingers get fat for lack of exercise? Hardly, since with typing at the computer, they already get more exercise than in the past. The only problem with the Kushies catalog is that you can't order directly from the catalog pages but have to go to a separate online buying site.

They have reusable fitted cloth diapers. I'm not sure how to convince Will and Jen to use cloth diapers rather than disposables. I did it for all 3 kids and was very dissatisfied with disposable diapers when I did use them on trips. Plus the Kushies diapers are so colorful and cute - ours were just plain white.

Skunk Cabbage

I went for a hike in Boyce Park this morning and towards the end of it, as I was forging Pearson's Run, I came across a patch of Skunk Cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) peeking through the oak leaf litter. Naturally I was tempted to pull one up and take it home but I didn't because basically I'm a good person. It has been a relatively cold winter with few warm days and so there are still no leafbuds out, except for the skunk cabbage and some nubs on the wild roses. Not even any mushrooms, no chipmunks or squirrels or deer but a lot of birds singing, especially cardinals, and a flock of about 30 Canada Geese flying north. More information on the skunk cabbage from the US Forest Service.
Although we were supposed to get sleet and freezing rain (what's the difference?) last night, we've only had light mist. The ski and tubing slopes at Boyce are still operating and they have torn up a lot of the land with the construction. They also have put in settling basins that look pretty stagnant so I wonder what their plan is for those and whether any environmentalist was consulted.