I just wanted to see more of the brook. Down my back hill to the west runs one of the numerous Connecticut waterways named Cider Mill Brook (doesn’t every town have one?). To be honest, the valley view is half the reason I bought the property. You’ve been treated to some of my animal neighbors in previous posts; the list gets longer all the time. No bears yet. In winter the antics of deer and coyotes are exposed, the late afternoon light sparkles on ice, turning snow from blue to gold, and a somewhat cramped back yard seems panoramic. When summer explodes with life, the long view disappears behind vigorous green growth and my nature watching is compressed. Yep, less depth of field.
So over time I’ve replaced the previous owner’s forsythia with ferns, and the vigorous young maples and oaks with Jack-in-the-pulpits, aiming for shorter groundcover and a longer horizon. And expanded the pachysandra carpet. Most of this went well. Then a big hemlock (which was to the left here) became infested with wooly adelgids. I sprayed for a couple of years but had to sacrifice it. There’s a whole hedge of hemlocks between my house and the next and I treasure the privacy too much to take a chance. What I’ve relearned once again is that SHADE is a keystone component of an ecosystem. While all that flora is still there, with enhanced sunlight it now competes with poison ivy and bittersweet, and you can guess who’s winning. Last year there was even some goldenrod down there. What will happen to the pickerel frogs and the toads? The Barred owls and the bobcat?
While I like the view without the hemlock, I just dug in an arborvitae. Hopefully it’ll grow tall, block some sun but not block too much landscape. I’d hate to see barberry, which is not yet here, work its way up the brook faster in the increased light. To live in the world is to interact with it – ask the National Park Service or the DEEP. We at Joshua’s Trust work hard to hold back the tide of invasives. Like me, we’re now RE-acting. Perhaps thankfully, we can’t see too far in the future.
Even this little area of mine is a complex ecosystem, beyond my capacity to understand. I do try to consider the future, take the long view; my own depth of field is limited. Yes, I could just let it go. Then there might be a happy new population of warblers for a few years as the understory grows (there’s an optimistic guess!). Across the planet, many people less concerned than I make ecological choices without the ability to foresee the results. We are forced into many of those decisions too, flexibility limited by personal inability or impersonal forces. Too soon old, too late smart.
For now, I’m happy to see the brook. In any season.
George Jacobi