raleighnaturalist

August 9, 2009

David Spain, steward of moss

Filed under: About & reflection, Central Raleigh, Crabtree Creek, Raleigh History, Raleigh mills — Tags: birding, Crabtree Creek, floodplains, great blue heron, Lassiter Mill, trees — raleighnaturalist @ 1:26 am

David Spain tends the Urquhart moss garden

I recently had an opportunity to document the Southern Living photo shoot of one of Raleigh’s most interesting residential landscapes. The Southern Living article about the moss garden at the Urquhart residence on Marlowe Drive will come out in about a year – we’ll return to that incredible piece of landscaping, and promote the article, closer to the publication date. In the meantime, I wanted to introduce Raleigh Nature readers to David Spain, Richard Urquhart’s son-in-law, who has cared for the property since Urquhart’s passing in 2008. David follows Raleigh Nature and has been very encouraging of my efforts to portray the Lassiter Mill section of Crabtree Creek, which adjoins the Urquhart property. This post shares some of his photography and offers a sneak peek at the moss garden, which senior writer Steve Bender at Southern Living describes as the finest he’s ever seen.

photograph by David Spain

The landscape of the Urquhart residence is unique in several respects, and David Spain is keenly aware of the ecological and geological wonders of the place. The property slopes down steeply to the deep stretch of Crabtree Creek just northwest of the dam. There is a rich stand of mountain laurel on the slope, and above the moss garden and water park of large pools, waterfalls, and huge rocks. The rocks were unearthed by creek erosion out of the slope, and the Urquhart family has pried them out, hauled them up the hill, and used them to create a magnificent setting for the plants and water.

Urquhart backyard area with landscape boulder

David's newest addition with landscape boulder

David puts into Crabtree in his canoe about as often as I THINK about doing it – which is pretty often- and gets some great pictures, which he has shared and consented to have on the site. Enjoy some great sights of Raleigh Nature courtesy of David Spain, whose hard work and dedication is maintaining one of the most interesting and valuable residential natural areas in central Raleigh.

photograph by David Spain

photograph by David Spain

photograph by David Spain

What a brave poplar tree! David can walk the creekside and offer endless lore and history about the area. His contributions and friendship have been a big reward for my work on Raleigh Nature. Below is his picture of the Urquhart front yard. I’ll share my own photography of the site when it’s time to celebrate the Southern Living shoot, which was arranged by local super-gardener Helen Yoest, whose acquaintance I made at the shoot. Her Metro feature on the Urquhart garden is a great introduction to the site, and it will be fun to see how Southern Living shows off the garden and David’s meticulous work with the moss.

photograph by David Spain

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A related fun tidbit: I received a while back the photo below, which depicts what the senders states are gears from Lassiter Mill. He asked for advice about who might be interested or what might be done with them. I thought I would post the picture and give my contacts at the Raleigh History Museum and Yates Mill Park a heads-up. Any ideas?

mill equipment- photo by Jimmy Gordon

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July 13, 2009

Maine Course, Thoreau on the side

Filed under: About & reflection, Exotica, Gems & Surprises — Tags: Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, Mount Desert Island, Thoreau, travel, trees — raleighnaturalist @ 8:55 pm

Cara and I stayed in Bar Harbor, Maine the last week in June, exploring Acadia National Park and the coast of Mount Desert Island. We had some wonderful nature adventures, and I made use of a unique opportunity to read about Thoreau’s Maine travels while in the context of that landscape. He traveled there 3 times 1846-57, and wrote essays collected as The Maine Woods. I purchased a sumptuous guide book based on his trips in Central Maine , and though Thoreau’s travels were inland (mostly traveling by canoe over lake water), he was a great spiritual companion for my Maine experience, especially when I returned home and read my copy of the original Thoreau book.

It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted with insipid, small red berries and strewn with damp and overgrown rocks, – a country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams. H.D. Thoreau, Ktaadn

We experienced terrain much like he describes on our visit to the Blagden Nature Preserve at Indian Point, pictured above. The Nature Conservancy holds a strip of land that stretches past private properties down to Indian Point, an outcrop jutting into the Western bay that is home to the largest population of harbor seals north of Boston. We went at high tide and couldn’t see the seals, but we could hear their grunting and jostling through the foggy bay waters.

Indian Point, Mount Desert Island

Most of our time in the island’s interior was spent in Acadia National Park itself, which was founded by George Dorr with huge support from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Rockefeller loved designing and building roads and bridges, but he didn’t like automobiles much. The covenant he set on the 47 miles of carriage roads he built and donated still protects the park today.

The carriage ride showed us 5 of the 14 stone bridges in the park. Our driver was a horseman from Pennsylvania who uses these horses for logging in the winter and hauls eight of them to Acadia each summer for some productive exercise!

We did use our car to travel to the top of Cadillac Mountain, the highest point on the huge, glacier-scraped slab of granite that is Mount Desert Island. We caught a brief respite in the cloudy mists that enveloped us much of the week and were able to see upper Frenchman’s Bay, the location of our cottage, the town of Bar Harbor and it’s namesake island, whose sandbar constitutes an extension of Bridge Street, accessible on foot or by vehicle during low tides, and Otter Point, whose cliffs make the beautiful scene photographed by Cara below.

Cara and I are both point-n-shoot folks, but we both had some luck on this trip, displayed in the photo albums linked at the end of this post. Below is my shot of upper Frenchman’s Bay. The triangular protrusion just to the right of center is Sand Point, where we stayed. We could walk at low tide and see all kinds of barnacles, clams and sometimes starfish.

The geology available right below our cottage was also amazing. We saw smaller versions of the caves and natural bridges to be seen on the bay islands from our nature cruise boat.

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Mount Desert Rock, 25 miles out to sea

The two boat trips we took showed us no whales (thus the double trip) but lots of interesting sights and tales. The official (and unsuccessful) whale watch took us all the way out to an amazing outpost on the continental shelf, Mount Desert Rock, whose intrepid lightkeepers maintained their residental post until the late sixties. We saw lots of harbor seals and some gray seals there. Our bonus nature cruise was just as foggy, but lightened by the salacious gossip of our nature guide, a grizzled native who had taught biology for 30 years but seemed much more interested in talking about the various owners of mainland and island properties than locating wildlife. Bar Harbor history and the development and donation of Acadia represents a fascinating portrait of big money, monster money, and the economies of land use. Pre-income tax money built an large array of mansions, styled (50 room) “cottages” by their wealthy summer inhabitants, but almost all burned in a massive 1947 fire and were never re-built. Modern billionares still have summer homes, but are likely to cooperate with the nature groups in maintaining the natural habitat around them. Acadia, the first national park east of the Mississippi, was founded by George Dorr, a wealthy wilderness lover whose namesake mountain we half-climbed. He, Rockefeller and others bought the many thousands of park acres one farm at a time. The pristine, forested small islands we saw on this trip were bare, sheep-mown homesteads well into the twentieth century, and modern conservation acquisitions focus on these . As commerce disappeared from the coastal waters and tourism rose as the leading industry, the island transformed from fishing and boat-building villages into Acadia-aligned restaurants, campgrounds, motels and services. There are still plenty of boats and a healthy lobster fishery, which history we explored at a local nature museum and lobster hatchery.

pregnant lobster at Oceanarium

The main respite we got from tourist crowds ourselves was on the state highways that follow the southwestern portion of the island. Indian Point was off this road, and we found the prettiest rocky coast at the farthest tip of the island. Bass Harbor and its historic lighthouse are shown below.

Mount Desert Island is a remnant of mountains that may have been as tall as the Alps, extending 80 miles beyond the current coastline. The shore is built of granite and metamorphic materials carved and deposited by glaciers up to a mile thick. The numerous bodies of freshwater are all long, narrow and aligned with the path of the glacier. We canoed on Long Pond, one of these, and took the pictures below.

Somes Sound is another of these long bodies of water but opens to the sea, splitting Mount Desert Island up the middle. Somes Sound is the only fjord on the Atlantic coastline. A waterfall that feeds it is shown below.

The trip was adventurous and contemplative, invigorating and still soothing to our teacher souls. I’ll end with one of the more thrilling sights – a bald eagle perched on the edge of an uninhabited island. A close-up is at the top of the post. Please do check the photo albums – many more beautiful sights of Maine.

Maine photo album Part One

Maine photo album Part Two

a wonderful professional set is at sueannhodges.com

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Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant , is too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills. Thoreau, Ktaadn

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June 18, 2009

News, Notes and Another Promise

Filed under: About & reflection, Central Raleigh, Greenways & Parks, Raleigh History, Southwest Raleigh, waterways — Tags: Centennial Campus, Fletcher Park, floodplains, golf courses, Walnut Creek, wetlands, Yates Mill — raleighnaturalist @ 11:18 pm

The Natural View

Why I have posted just once a month for 3 months:

Best reason – my new column on nature and environment at Raleigh Public Record.

Very good one: I have been documenting The Bain Project, posting like a madman at Raleigh Rambles. The Bain Water Treatment Plant has plenty of relevance for Raleigh Nature, as it used nature’s own filtering process – gradations of rock and sand – to clean water drawn from Lakes Raleigh, Johnson, Benson, and Wheeler. It and the more ancient pumping station which served as the city’s first water facility sit beside Walnut Creek (more about Walnut Creek below). Just behind the Bain facility is a wonderful greenway deck that traverses wetlands strewn with swamp mallow, huge white blooms that startle in a sea of southern green.

Raleigh Naturalist presents at Bain

Good news: I have more time now, being a teacher, and I also hope to bring Raleigh Nature readers some neat photos from our anniversary weekend in Charleston and our upcoming trip to Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island. My promise is at the end of the post.

Walnut Creek greenway at Rose Lane

Lots of happenings around the greenways. The section that follows Walnut Creek parallel to Poole Road got flooded Tuesday June 16, along with Rose Lane and other roads near the creek. The NandO story about the flooding was being followed up the next day by Josh Shaffer, who I met walking Rose Lane when I went to photograph the high water on the greenway. He was hoping to chat with some of the folks who are stranded by high water once every year or so at this dead-end extension of Rose Lane across the creek. I remember quite well my teenage years when Rose Lane dead-ended into a meadow well short of the creek, because we used to drive down there to park in what seemed like deep country in the sixties. Whoever decided to build houses past a perennial wetland with no outlet is the real problem, but the curent residents are facing the consequences. Josh covers lots of interesting stuff for Nando, from Legos to beloved beer slingers to taking small children to play in cemeteries. His recent story on kayaking Crabtree Creek really struck a chord, with its realistic description of the grit, mud and smells encountered on the creek, but I prefer the much quieter section of Crabtree above Lassiter Mill for canoe jaunts. Getting back to poor Walnut Creek, the heavy rains that caused flooding also sent 15,000 gallons of untreated sewage into the creek upstream in Cary, but the Nando story said no fish kills had been reported.

Newsflash from NandO: the 4 inches or so of rain also did damage at Yates Mill Pond, pictured above, which has temporarily closed the millsite and trails. Repairs are expected soon.

The new Lonnie Poole Golf Course around Lake Raleigh is mostly finished and expected to open in July. I posted dismal views and comments about this project in February 08, but when I stopped by recently I felt a little better. There are lots of wooded buffers, especially next to Walnut Creek, and I must admit the course is looking pretty.

Raleigh skyline from Poole Golf Course

The Fletcher Park water garden is being fine tuned. Apparently the water level, though quite low down in the retention ponds, was too high for some of the plantings, so a crew came in and extended a kind of penisula of land into the lowest pool, as you can see below. The crew that explained this to me were taking survey sightings to appraise the work that had been done. Many of the original plantings had been shifted to higher ground.

The ponds still look pretty muddy to me, but I know time will do wonders. They had an opinion on one item that had been bugging me since the NandO article – springs. There are no active springs in Fletcher Park, just surface water from the neighborhoods and seep from the ball fields. Fletcher Park’s lilies are in full bloom!

There! All the nature news fit to post. I can’t promise any certain frequency of posts, but I promise to stay totally committed to getting fresh postings up about nature and wildlife inside or near the beltline. See you on the greenways!

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May 18, 2009

Grassy Branch Sees Daylight

Filed under: Central Raleigh, East Raleigh, green initiatives, Northeast Raleigh, waterways — Tags: Cedar Hills Park, daylighting creeks, Oakwood — raleighnaturalist @ 2:48 am

Many waterways in Raleigh travel unseen, as does Pigeon House Branch above. Recent years have seen efforts to rehabilitate – uncover and often “un-straighten” – creeks. The process is called daylighting. It helps with flood control and improves the ecosystem. It happened in Northeast Raleigh last year, and it’s set to happen for Rocky Branch on the NCSU campus(pdf). So Raleigh has recognized the process as valuable, but it is still an unusual occurrence. For one Oakwood resident, stymied in efforts to have the city uncover his backyard branch, the benefits were worth the huge personal effort of unearthing the waterway himself by hand.

Grassy Branch in Oakwood

Chris Crew is a longtime Oakwood resident who co-authored the wonderful Oakwood nature essay I recently featured. He lives on Elm Street, almost at the bottom of Oakwood’s slope. Grassy Branch is a small but steady flow that passes under Elm Street and edges his backyard. Until a couple of years ago, it passed unseen in a large buried pipe.

Chris learned of the city daylighting program and tried to get Grassy Branch uncovered. During heavy rains, the water backed up and even spouted out vertically from broken places in the pipes. The city couldn’t or wouldn’t do the work because other contiguous neighbors would not enlist their properties. Tired of the geysers and wanting a healthier backyard creek, Chris decided to do the job himself. So he and his family hand-dug and wenched out two sections of the 42 inch pipes.

Grassy Branch re-exposed below Elm Street

I don’t have pictures of “the dig” – I just heard about Chris’ project recently. But there is one more section he can remove before Grassy Branch crosses his property line. I’m hoping he’ll invite me to help, and I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes!

Grassy Branch re-enters pipe

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Both Pigeon House and Rocky Branch involve daylighting projects that have or will be addressed in other posts. An interesting neighborhood daylighting project finished up a couple of years ago near my school, the Fletcher Academy. The picture below shows the view my students and I have on nature walks at the bottom of Cedar Hills Rotary Park. Three years ago we were looking at the creek disappear into a large pipe.

Today, the adjoining houses have less to fear from flooding, and the biological and geologic interactions missing from pipe existence have been restored to the creek. One slightly bizarre feature of the project was the city’s purchase and destruction of a house on Mapleridge which sat practically on top of the creek.

site of former house at Big Branch

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April 10, 2009

Marsh Creek Meanders

Filed under: Nature Lore, Northeast Raleigh, waterways — Tags: Brentwood Park, deer, Marsh Creek — raleighnaturalist @ 3:33 pm

I had the most nature fun OFF the greenway in a long time, searching the headwaters of Marsh Creek. This prototypical Piedmont creek – running due Southeast and carrying red clay hills down to sandy flats – ends up dumping its large steady flow of water into a huge wetland at the Yonkers Road section of the Beltline – thus its name. This lower section is full of treats, and will constitute part two of this post. Recently I browsed through North Raleigh sewer cuts and subdivisions, climbing up Marsh Creek as I did. My destination – the headwaters – came as a surprise, and emphasized the fascinating cross section of Northeast Raleigh this creek travels through on its way to Crabtree.

upper reaches of Marsh Creek on Google Maps

Marsh Creek actually starts just above the blue line showing the creek on this map – at Sutton Square of Falls of the Neuse, its twin springs cradling one of the busiest – and for pedestrians, one of the most dangerous – stretches of four lane in Raleigh. This major creek, which runs for just over five miles from Spring Forest to its intersection with Crabtree, begins on the west side of Falls of the Neuse as a tiny landscaped pond (next to Northbend), and on the east side as the rocky ditch seen below.

The little brook picks up size quickly as it travels downhill through Northeast Raleigh neighborhoods – alternating older large-lot subdivisions with newer townhouse projects. It reaches a large natural area just above Old Wake Forest Road, and that’s where I had such fun. A wide sewer cut gave access to a scrubby but rich haven tucked between neighborhoods, and I was able to see the deer tracks seen at the top of the post, a deer bedroom of crushed broomstraw, cute little coon prints on a sandbank, and a glimpse of a solemn woodchuck, who quickly scrambled into his hole.

Above, a mossy bank just north of Old Wake Forest Road. Below is the sewer cut, which travels through several acres of undeveloped lowland.

After crossing Atlantic Avenue, where I found another hillside natural area covered with large, iron-rich boulders, the creek parallels that thoroughfare southward for a couple of miles – once again, touching on large older homes and much denser new developments. Before crossing New Hope Church Road it accepts the run-off from Mini-City to the east, and then enters Brentwood. Here, the creek is the centerpiece of a long, narrow neighborhood park that runs down the center of the venerable and “transitioning” Brentwood subdivision. It accepts the water from a neighborhood pond on Huntleigh (doubtless called a lake by the residents), and dives under Capital Boulevard, where we will pick it up the next time we visit Marsh Creek.

upper stretch of Marsh Creek

Photo album of upper Marsh Creek

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March 19, 2009

Look down, look closely, at Spring’s lovely weeds

Filed under: Central Raleigh, Gems & Surprises, Nature Lore — Tags: wildflowers — raleighnaturalist @ 2:17 am

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!