Gentle Power

This is the somewhat challenging story 

in which great violence and tenderness worked hand in hand.

We restore the ecosystem on weekends all year long. But when we head out in spring, 

we worry about trampling the emerging flora.

Indeed, in a rich area like the one shown here,
that we started restoring years ago,
we stay on paths whenever possible. 

But in another area, we had a challenge. 
Though the delicate spring flora was up, we still had this one last seeded area 
where we needed to cut pole trees to let in the light. 
Could we do the needed good without committing a lot of bad? 

Here's a sort of a before and after in one photo. 
The "before" is the all-dried-leaves foreground - a "dead-zone" where we needed to work.
The "after" is all that healthy green, where we cleared and seeded a year ago.

In the foreground, as in most of Somme East before we began, the oak woods had been so degraded and shaded by invasive trees that the grasses and wildflowers were gone. Grasses and wildflowers support (and, vegetation-wise, are) most of the diversity of the woods. The keystone oaks depend on a healthy open turf for their reproduction, and that turf is home to hundreds of species of herbaceous plants, which then support most of the species of animals (from mice to frogs to butterflies to indigo buntings to coyotes to beetles) that make a thriving woods. In other words, in the area we were going to work - the nolthing-but-dead-leaves-on-the-ground area - most of the plant and wildlife diversity is gone. Here dense buckthorn was cut years ago, but the pole trees weren't. Just cutting the buckthorn hadn't done much good. The understory was still just dead leaves. But in the green area (in the top part of this photo) two years ago we thinned the pole trees and planted rare, local seed. See the difference, above? That rich success of some of our first Somme East work inspired us throughout the day. 

A month ago, Eriko and a few others had raked the leaves away and seeded the mix of rare and uncommon open woods seeds we had gathered last fall and summer. 

If we don't cut those invasive trees, the seeds would just germinate and die of darkness. We know this. We've seen it happen. 

Our raked and seeded patches were marked with red flags, so we could avoid them as much as possible.

Our challenge is that little bits of rare flora do survive here and there in our work area.
Can we slash and burn and lug wood to the bonfires without smashing these beauties?

Keep in mind that the trilliums and wood anemones (as above) are a lot harder to restore than much of the summer and fall flora in our seed mixes. We want the survivors to continue to Thrive and spread, with all this new light we're giving them.

So, as with the seeded areas, we marked the sensitive flora with red flags.
Would the boots of busy chain-sawyers and brush haulers remember and avoid them?

Throughout the morning, we were impressed that the little flags seemed like bullet-proof protection. Yes! It was working.

This day was also our Earth Day celebration. We celebrate with food.
We also celebrate with work. It was indeed a happy day. 

Does this look any good? We try to appeal to every taste.
Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of the Amazing Indian Vegetable Bean and Fruit Salad
that Padmini brought. Kids roasted marshmallows on the fire.
This is a community of many tastes. 

Cecil and Eriko did the planning for the day. They're probably planning more, here, as they enjoy it.
Our community works that way. We often plan next week while we're being happy this week. 

One unexpected surprise was Bob's quiet chainsaw.

We have agonized over this quandary:

Chainsaws get so much more work done so much faster than our hand saws.

But their infernal roar wrecks our appreciation of being in nature - and makes the work more dangerous because it's harder to communicate.

Bob's electric saw solves the problem. We hope to see a lot more of it.

Toward the end of the day we realized we had time to do an experiment that might help us
in the future. Not everyone will be interested in this part.
Feel free to skip to less nerdy photos if you want. 

We wanted to compare seeds planted in the fall with seeds planted in early and late spring. For us late April is late for planting wild seed. We also wanted to compare seed that was simply broadcast with seed that was "raked in" - so the soil would shallowly cover the seeds. The map above records how we can find the three types of experimental patches here.

Here's how some of the patches looked after the raking. 

Was this trillium a casualty? It does look a little worse for the wear.

But later in the day, we noticed that someone had brushed off the chain-saw crumbs
and even installed a little vole cage.

Really? Metal cage? Yet another indignity? 

But the tender-hearted person removed the "intensive care ward" treatment 

after trampling feet had left. 

Satisfaction.

Indeed, when we checked the delicate flagged areas at the end of the day,

every patch of original surviving flora seemed fine.

Miraculously.

We had celebrated. 

We had worked sensitively with fire and chainsaw.

We wrought a new and wonderful kind of good.

Somme Woods is healthier and happier,

day after day, week after week, month after year. Praise be.