Weeds are just plants someone thinks are out of place. As the season arrives, we can all get some pleasure from these signs of a diverse ecosystem in your yard. Take the time to look down and closely!
snowdrops, an early bulbous wildflower
March 19, 2009
March 2, 2009
March Mad Beauty
A late snow and a schoolday off to blog about it! It didn’t take long to find a snow paradise. The Oakwood Inn’s block sported the lacy treetops above. But I was headed to the greenway. I decided to check out an old favorite – the east end of Buckeye Trail.
This wonderful view is the edge of the meadow at Buckeye Trail’s east end off Milburnie. Down this oldest section of Raleigh’s greenways is a vista that provoked one of the first thoughts that originated this project – and it was a book project long before I ever knew what a blog was. The scene used to look like a cathedral of treetops – but the loss of a huge red oak several years ago changed the look. What’s left is seen below.
The missing tree was on the right, and when it was there, I was ready to write a book partly to tell people to come here and take a deep breath. It is still a very nice section of greenway. I got to see the baby beeches of a couple of posts ago in a new light, literally. The gentle snow provided a chance to see water moving across the greenway: in a freshet, and being blocked by the asphalt. The creek was medium high, which I documented with a current shot of my favorite log-sitting spot. Once I had done that, I knew I should head over to Hodge Road and take shots of my water level standard spots, which I’m documenting over on the nature projects blog.
The March snow was mighty pretty!
January 5, 2009
Favorite Raleigh spots – 2008
Well, Raleigh Nature is a year old – and haven’t we been through a lot, and boy, have I learned a lot! This blog is just getting started in ways – more broad coverage of ALL of Raleigh ITBL, pages on invasive species, turtles and record trees, and addressing concerns and questions from readers, are all on my list. But it was a good year and I’m very happy with the blog and most grateful for the responses.
Above is a Google Earth snapshot of what this blog is really all about – lost in wilderness inside the beltline – in this case, the woodlot off the greenway at Atlantic Ave and Hodge Road, which was recently destroyed. Let’s enjoy them while they’re here! Below are my Raleigh Nature favorites for 2008.
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My favorite place to sit on a log.
Amidst the large tree stands that line Buckeye Trail, the oldest and easternmost section of Raleigh’s greenways threads its way beside the deep meandering banks of Crabtree. Here we are looking at the spot where Marsh Creek marsh spills over into Crabtree after a heavy rain. Nice spot for animals to come down for a drink, and above is the marsh skyline to scour for hawks and herons.
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My favorite spots to drown worms.
Lassiter Mill, above and below the dam, is a wonderful place to fish with children, for turtle food, or even to fool around with your flyrod.
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My favorite place to take a guest.
Yates Mill, with the old millworks, the gorgeously built new center displaying its history, a marked tree i.d. walk, a high ridge, a marshy meadow, and a fishing deck, has all anyone could desire from a nature outing. It’s well outside the beltline but I love it too much to exclude it.
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My favorite place to meadow tramp.
The privately owned section of the old pecan farm surrounding Jones Lake is eventually doomed but is the best spot for seeing foxes, deer and footprints of those and more in the same trip. Once it’s developed, I’ll have to settle for the county park across the highway.
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My favorite place to jump rocks.
Dix and the greenway that connects it to Centennial and Washington School represents a fantastic dog walk, frisbee throw, pecan pick, or walk of any length you desire. Rocky Branch, displaced by the Western Boulevard extension, has retained some of its good character.
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My favorite place to watch birds
Raleigh Swamp, which used to be irregular but has been made permanent by the damming effects of Raleigh Boulevard, has a large consistent and varied population of breeding and visiting birds.
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My favorite place to listen to water.
Jaycee park has a rock waterfall that, at two feet, is perhaps the largest inside the beltline. It certainly is the prettiest of which I know.
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My favorite place to photograph.
This must be it, because this is my favorite photograph so far. This creek borders the greenway which runs south beside Longstreet off Sawmill in north Raleigh. I’ll keep working on finding, and shooting, one even better. Ya’ll have a great new year!! Love, John
November 22, 2008
Pigeon House Branch
A great blue heron browses Pigeon House Branch where it crosses over a granite outcrop. The scene is tucked away in a very industrial part of central Raleigh – Capital Boulevard’s warehouse district, where the creek flows through huge kudzu-covered ditches on alternating sides of the thoroughfare. Pigeon House is the most prominent waterway in central Raleigh, but also its most abused. (last text link is info, all others are pictures).
The streamwatch station denotes a creek under these storm sewers at the SE edge of Cameron Village.
Transportation Plan map of Pigeon House creek
It gathers its headwaters in Edna Metz Park just off Cameron Village, and this upper part of the creek was shifted and ditched in order to build Cameron Village. From Edna Metz, concrete culverts carry it through Cameron Park and east down Johnson Street, where it crosses under Peace Street to be culverted again through the former Devereux Meadows, which is now a city facility for trash trucks and a salt barn.
Flowing north beside Capital Boulevard, the creek drains two railroad lines as well as a massive entertwining of concrete roadways. A highlight of this stretch is the Light+Time art tower, which presides over the union of Pigeon House with the waters from Fred Fletcher Park. As it borders the service road for the warehouse strip, it finds the rock outcrop frequented by the heron. It dives under Capital to emerge almost underneath the venerable Watkins Grill on Louisburg Road, then criss-crosses Capital back and forth again before heading east toward Crabtree Creek. We will pick it up at The Foxy Lady and follow it down to Raleigh Swamp another post soon.
The heron has found a beautiful spot in unlikely territory. As the city makes efforts to rehabilitate its tributaries, Pigeon House Creek continues to flow as naturally as it can through northwest downtown. We should notice it and help it out anyway we can.
Pigeon House Creek photo sequence
(from Cameron Village to Dennis Ave and Capital)
September 25, 2008
Fallon Park – a long, fine necklace in Raleigh’s greenway jewels
Fallon Park, just northeast of Five Points, and sloping with its long narrow shape down to Crabtree Creek at Anderson Drive, is a long necklace in Raleigh’s park jewels. The remains of a small mill structure lend even more interest to a wonderful rockfall along the creek that defines the park. Fallon Creek is short : its headwaters gather right in the front yards of the very well appointed houses along White Oak Road off Anderson Drive. The long skinny park has an unpaved path that is heavily used by joggers, walkers and doggers. I never go on the weekend, but I have such fond memories of going there on weekday afternoons with my small children, chasing crawfish in the rockpools and climbing around the old mill structure. It is a clean, rock-filled creek with a wide range of trees and plants arranged around its slopes. There are small grass meadows at the top and bottom. It serves a surrounding community that maintains rich, semi-organic plantings in its large yards, and it drains steep wooded slopes with older houses and little construction. The creek’s quality reflects all of that.
Rockpools where Lily and Dori and I fished many times.
Rockfall and brick mill structure.
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I posted at Raleigh Rambles about the Carolina Farm Stewardship’s farm tour. It was a fun couple of drives, and we saw plenty of nature to go along with the agriculture, as pictured below.
Above, a native plant area at the Piedmont Biofuel Lab Farm. Below a large bird, perhaps a raven , that swooped down toward the highway for some time in front of us. I suppose it’s probably a vulture, but it certainly didn’t act like one.
August 13, 2008
Ward Transformers – Crime Never Stops Hurting
A recent N&O story reminds us of the reason for these signs, posted all along the Crabtree system: our city’s water system is tainted by PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), a toxic chemical released over many years by the actions of Ward Transformers, a company whose name is etched in the annals of NC corporate crimes, a company STILL OPERATING next to the Superfund site next to RDU airport, where its buried load of poisons is slowly being incinerated through the process pictured below.
Ward Transformer site
Ward Transformers has a long history of environmental crimes in North Carolina. Long before the discovery that it’s open burning of materials on site to recover copper had applied PCBs to the soil surrounding its plant, Ward Transformers and its contractor, Robert Burns, were found guilty of dumping PCB-laced waste along miles of rural NC highways, using a specially designed dumping apparatus constructed at Ward Transformers. Burns and “Buck” Ward spent some time in jail, but at some point the EPA or someone in government realized that a bankrupt company couldn’t help pay clean-up costs, so Ward Transformers was left in business. The state of North Carolina had to scrape up the roadside deposits and figure out what to do with them – leading to a separate whole nightmare with the landfill in Warren County.
That was way back in 1978. The next year, EPA tests show contamination in the soil around the plant itself. In 1993, preliminary Superfund action was undertaken and in 2002 it was declared a Superfund site. Yet much local outcry and promotion took place before clean-up work was begun. Now, according to the newspaper report, the work is being done, and in a safe manner. Yet concerns remain about the process, as well described in this post at Raleigh Eco News. I went out to look at the site. The EPA’s clean-up incinerator really puts out a huge stream of white smoke – apparently almost all water vapor.
Thank you for listening to my rant. It just drives me crazy that ole Buck Ward spent a few months in jail and now his company rolls merrily along, though I presume they send a hefty check to the EPA each month. We will never fully recover from these actions in my lifetime. And we will never figure out the “best” way to punish such transgressors – justice and reparation are both so tough to achieve.
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As a balance to the above, please enjoy a juvenile box turtle living in our garden and a fawn Cara and I saw on a trip last weekend.
