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Snaggy Saturdays

After my last post about the purpose of snags, I've been paying more to these natural structures whenever I find them in the forest or in landscaped areas. As anyone who's been hiking recently with me knows, I just can't help getting excited about interesting snags, stumps, and nursery logs. So I'm making it a thing now, because...of course I would.

Found this beauty in Saint Edward State Park on April 26. Bonus: hairy woodpecker at the top!

What's Your Snag?

Until recently, my wife and I had a dilemma that was stalling the preliminary landscape work on our property. There were seven really large alder trees that I reluctantly had to admit were a safety liability. For one, they were directly next to our drain field. After we moved in, Envirotek (the septic company) and Housing Hope (the house-building program facilitating the whole project) gave conflicting information about what to do with these trees. In general, they stated that large trees should not be anywhere close to the drain field (Envirotek specifically states that trees should be at least 30 feet away), since the roots will seek out moisture and interfere with the tubing in the drain field. However, despite their strong recommendation, they kept the trees in place, and have not wanted to acknowledge that they should have been removed to ensure the proper functioning of the septic system. It’s only logical that the roots will continue growing toward the water and wrap around the tubing (even if the inside of the tubes are coated with material to prevent them from getting inside).

Even besides that, alder trees are short-lived and weak-wooded to begin with. My wife and I had observed these trees swaying and cracking in the wind, and lots of branches were dropping in the yard, often impaling the septic field. There weren’t any stronger trees immediately nearby to provide a windbreak. A few of the alders were leaning significantly, and it was only a matter of time before the trees themselves cracked or got uprooted. They were tall enough that, depending on which way they fell, they would either damage a house, damage our septic system, or fall across the street.

I say all this because despite these clear problems, I wanted to keep them, and I agonized a while about whether or not they needed to go. The birds loved perching in these tall trees, and I hated the thought of disturbing more of the local wildlife in addition to what already had to be removed for the house. Yes, I was being sentimental about alders, even though I'm fully aware they are a short-lived pioneer species. It wasn't an easy decision, but after observing them for a year, it was obvious they needed to be cut down.

In March we went forward with the removal, but we did something a little unexpected. We purposefully kept several feet of each tree trunk, which admittedly looks a little odd. These trunks of dead or dying trees are called "snags," and they have an important role in forest ecology. This is a good summary from Wikipedia:

Snags are an important structural component in forest communities, making up 10–20% of all trees present in old-growth tropical, temperate, and boreal forests. Snags and downed coarse woody debris represent a large portion of the woody biomass in a healthy forest. 

In temperate forests, snags provide critical habitat for more than 100 species of bird and mammal, and snags are often called 'wildlife trees' by foresters. Dead, decaying wood supports a rich community of decomposers like bacteria and fungi, insects, and other invertebrates. These organisms and their consumers, along with the structural complexity of cavities, hollows, and broken tops make snags important habitat for birds, bats, and small mammals, which in turn feed larger mammalian predators. 

Snags are optimal habitat for primary cavity nesters such as woodpeckers which create the majority of cavities used by secondary cavity users in forest ecosystems. Woodpeckers excavate cavities for more than 80 other species and the health of their populations relies on snags. Most snag-dependent birds and mammals are insectivorous and represent a major portion of the insectivorous forest fauna, and are important factors in controlling forest insect populations. 

Frequent visitors on our snags. It's a good place to keep an eye out for cats and other predators.

It's a simple yet important concept, and that's why we chose to keep them. Snags are encouraged by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife as one part of creating backyard wildlife sanctuaries (https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/living/backyard#improving-property). In addition to the snags, we also had the arborists chip most of the wood onsite, and we're keeping the larger pieces for future landscaping projects (logs for hügelkultur, bordering garden beds, etc.). It's not the prettiest sight to behold, but there is a long-term plan in the works. Eventually we'll plant trees and shrubs close to the snags (but still a good distance from the septic field), and these columns of decaying wood won't look quite as startling as plant life starts to fill in around them. Don't overlook the creative potential in these natural habitats.

Here are some other examples of snags that have caught my attention lately:

A snag right next to a camper cabin in North Bend, WA.

It was tragic when we discovered this magnificent old Doug fir starting to uproot next to a house in Lake Sammamish, WA. Thankfully they chose to keep this snag here, and birds and other critters are still able to perch on the remains.

A snag in an urban Seattle forest.

Getting Back into Community Gardening

I miss being a part of a community garden. Red Barn was an incredible experience, though it was extra challenging because it was almost 25 minutes away from the place we had been living at the time. Now that we're in Arlington, I'd really like to find a way to get to know people here, and it just so happens that they're relocating their local community garden this year, so it feels like a good time to get started. So I'll be volunteering with their food bank patch, in which we'll be growing corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and more. Stay tuned for more details.

Come Play in My Yard

When I was in school, we learned the proper way to describe the tools and components of the horticulture trade. For example, "dirt" is something you clean up with a vacuum or wipe off your shoes; "soil" is the medium for growing healthy plants. When you talk about putting plants in dirt, it connotes the wrong idea, and that isn't immediately obvious if you haven't thought about it. Soil is more appropriate because it better signifies the rich ecosystem of minerals and organisms and fungi and decaying matter and water and air that provide the ideal medium for plant growth.

Another example that sticks out is "whacking," be it weed whacking, or whacking limbs off a tree. Just like talking about dirt, it doesn't sound professional. A word like "whack" implies sloppiness and unskilled labor, that someone isn't taking the work seriously or doesn't care about the health of those plants. When you have professional training in landscaping, or even just in general, it's simply more accurate to refer to these terms by their proper names -- a line/string trimmer, or pruning a limb from a tree.

The above instances are good things to keep in mind, and my point is not to get overly pedantic about semantics. Being a little more precise with our language is always a good goal, especially in skilled trades.

But there are phrases commonly directed at me and my colleagues that I find more frustrating than a pet peeve. "Would you like to come play in my yard?" "You can practice in my garden." "You've been playing in the dirt all day." I'm talking specifically about people who are requesting me to work on their property, or acknowledging that I've been at work all day. I know that in some cases it's said innocently, that it's just something that hasn't occurred to most people to use more precise and respectful language. That's why I'm taking a moment to write about this. If you call a plumber to fix something, you don't ask, "Hey, wanna come play with my toilet?" If your roof has a leak, you wouldn't ask the professional, "Would you like to practice on my roof?"

I want to address the inherent disrespect in that kind of language, and I want to challenge people to think differently about this kind of outdoor work. There unfortunately exists a lot of conscious and unconscious judgment against those who work in labor-intensive outdoor jobs like landscaping. People expect a lot of free or next-to-free services when it comes to the garden (or worse, food production). If people use devaluing language like "playing in my yard," they can justify paying us less, or nothing at all. For the people who've bothered to educate themselves in the field, this is insulting. This is still a job, even if I happen to enjoy it. I'm not coming over to socialize at a BBQ. Even if a person didn't have any knowledge whatsoever about horticulture, their time, their labor, and the wear and tear on their body is still worth respect, appropriate payment, and proper language. That's an important point, because landscaping work is brutal to the body. If you doubt just how hard it is, I invite you to come play in my yard.

I'm not saying that a person shouldn't ever ask for free help in the garden. I have volunteer horticulture projects that I work on, and I do help friends as I'm able to. But the casual language and attitude is something that could be improved when it comes to paying for services. I recognize that I feel even more strongly about this because my body has not been cooperative since my surgery, and the pain and other physical and psychological issues have made going back into the field full time nearly impossible. So if someone is requesting that I work for them, using cutesy phrases like "playing in the yard," I get a little annoyed. It has a demeaning impact, whether or not that was the intention. Now you know.

So unless you're inviting me over to play a game of badminton or to practice my aim at archery, please retire these disrespectful phrases, and help promote professionalism in the field.

Recycling Is a Business, and It's Past Time We Acknowledge It

I wish it weren't so, but we can't keep pretending we're doing a good job dealing with our waste when we put a giant bin of recycling on the curb every two weeks. Yes, I know the truth is downright depressing to hear, but we've got to do better. Ultimately, drastic change needs to happen on a federal/corporate scale, because the problem of plastic especially is out of control. On an individual level, I'll keep recycling, but the best option still remains to reduce the amount of stuff we throw away. 

Recycling Is Broken:

Most of us think of recycling as a service our city provides, but in reality it’s a business. There are no national laws governing the industry, which is frequently financed by municipalities. Many cities, like Philly, work with private contractors to collect recyclables and get them sorted and cleaned at material recovery facilities. From there, the paper, cardboard, plastic, glass, and aluminum are sold as commodities to various manufacturers.

All told, U.S. recyclers process about 61 million metric tons of material a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Until recently, China was a huge buyer, taking in about 16 million tons of American scrap commodities in 2016, including 60 percent of U.S. waste-paper exports. That all changed last year, when the country started rolling out strict import bans as part of a national campaign to combat pollution. In January 2018, China banned importing 24 foreign materials including mixed paper and post-consumer plastic. Two months later, it tightened its contamination thresholds for recyclable paper products not covered by the ban, including corrugated cardboard, to 0.5 percent.

The effect on the U.S. recycling business was, as one industry expert put it, like an “earthquake.” Mixed paper and plastic exports to China plunged more than 90 percent between January 2017 and January 2018, according to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. International Trade Commission. As the industry scrambled to find new buyers, prices went through the floor. Anne Germain, Vice President of Technical and Regulatory Affairs at the National Waste and Recycling Association, an industry trade group, told me that mixed paper went from selling for about $100 a ton to a high of about $3 a ton.

For products that weren’t outright banned, China’s new 0.5 percent contamination standard posed a daunting challenge. Today, the average U.S. recyclable load is about 25 percent contaminated. To make their commodities saleable, material recovery facilities started hiring more “pickers” and buying more equipment to remove items that shouldn’t be in the recycling, in addition to slowing down their processing lines.

“If you slow down the line, your entire throughput is gonna go down,” Germain said. “So you’re gonna process fewer tons of material. You’re getting less money [and] your costs are going up.”

Because they enjoy lower shipping costs, coastal regions were more dependent on China for their recycling, and that’s where the impacts of the new policies were felt first. But as New Yorkers and Californians scrambled to find new buyers for bales of plastic scrap and cardboard, including the domestic recyclers favored by middle America, “it became a bidding war” to get manufacturers to take inventory, Germain said. “Eventually, the whole country was impacted.”
(Read the whole article here.)

Mystery Slime

While I was at a client's house on the Lake Sammamish beachfront on January 24, I was pruning rose bushes and noticed a weird clear goop hanging off the plants. It had the viscosity of runny snot, and when I inspected it closely, I could see lots of whitish specks suspended in the snot-gel. As I was pruning, this substance got all over me, and it felt like I had snot all over my skin and clothes. Pretty gross, right? But so fascinating.

I tried to guess what it could possibly be. A fungus? A collection of bacteria? Something produced by an insect or a frog? Is it even life? At the same time that I discovered all this mystery goop, the whole property was swarming with its annual infestation of non-biting midges (annoying buggers that at first blush might be mistaken for mosquitoes, but they don't actually bite), and I did find lots of midges stuck to the substance. However, I don't know if they accidentally flew into it, or if the substance is in some way related to the insects' life cycle.

Completely stumped, I posted to iNaturalist and also asked some naturalist friends on Facebook, but nobody could come up with a satisfying answer. The most compelling hypothesis was unfertilized frogspawn, though that doesn't make much sense up in the air, splattered all over the thorny rose bushes. Perhaps an animal ate the frogspawn, then vomited on the plants?? But that would be a lot of puking.

Oh, and it gets weirder. I learned that there's even folklore about substances called "star jelly," which seems to be the translucent-slime equivalent of a UFO. People have been reporting sightings of strange gelatinous goop as far back as the 14th century, and some believe that it falls from the sky during a meteor shower.

What do you think? Have you seen this kind of substance before? When I returned to the property a week later, there was no trace of the stuff. Also, most of the short-lived midges were dead, if those insects had any relation to the goop. It remains a mystery. Maybe I'll see it again next year and get a sample.