Category Archives: PERTINENT

Bumblebee on yellow flowers

Welcome back, gardeners!

Life has been complicated for all of us over the past three years, but we’re hoping to create some new content for our readers.

Until we can share some original insights, here are a few links from other sites.

First, Holden Arboretum is hiring! The Horticulture & Collections department seeks a Director of Land & Collections Management. The Director of Land & Collections Management is primarily responsible for performing a variety of functions related to proper land care and environmental management of Holden Arboretum’s Living Collection trees, grassland & meadows, trails & fence, waterbodies & irrigation. This role combines practical hands-on groundwork and core safety values while also providing management and supervision to teams to achieve agreed goals. Other positions include seasonal and garden positions, as well as several internships. View the full list here.

Next, we wanted to share some information BUGS! ODNR recently published an article asking arborists, gardeners, and hikers to report sightings of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid. HWA poses a significant threat to eastern hemlocks forests as feeding by HWA at the base of hemlock needles depletes the trees’ stored energy, causing decline and eventual mortality after several years. Elsa also wanted to warn readers that the Baslsam Woolly Adelgid may be moving into our area due to climate change.

Finally, we came across this Permaculture To-Do List and thought our readers would also appreciate it. There’s a Stewardship through the Seasons chapter in Dani Baker’s book Home-Scale Forest Garden excerpted on Practical Self Reliance. It breaks down what gardeners should do each season. Hint: Winter includes more than sitting by the fire, watching it snow!

If you’re missing warmer weather, we’ll soon be sharing a piece by Elsa about her September trip to Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina. We hope you stay tuned!

Bumblebee on yellow flowers

GardenWalk Cleveland Heights 2021

GardenWalk Cleveland Heights is a free, self-guided tour of 60 gardens throughout Cleveland Heights on the weekend of July 17 and 18 from 12 to 5 pm each day.

A guide to the gardens and access to a map, you can download, can be found in the July edition of the Heights Observer or on the website www.GardenWalkClevelandHeights.com starting July 7.

GardenWalk Cleveland Heights is free, no reservations or tickets needed.

Gardens on the tour range from large, landscaped vistas to small pockets. You can rest in an adult treehouse, explore the concept of a co-housing cooperative, see a permaculture edible garden or marvel at the variety of perennials, yard art, water features, vegetables and child friendly spaces in the gardens.

We hope to see you (and/or your gardens) there!

Laura Dempsey – photography & graphic design

Thinning Your Plants? Donate Them!

by Steve Cagan

This spring the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes will be holding their 39th annual plant sale. It’s a major fund-raiser for the center, and every year there’s a stronger emphasis on native plants. This year the catalog will be only online, and you can find it here. Orders can be placed until April 17, or until their inventory is sold.

One of the popular activities in the sale has been the “homegrown” section. Local gardeners contribute plants from their own gardens. Last year, and this year, because of conditions imposed by the pandemic, we have offered this as a separate event. This year it will be on Sunday, June 13, from 11 AM to 3 PM, at the center. Sale day will be conducted according to US and Ohio public health social distancing guidelines.

We’d love to see you all there that day. In addition, we invite you to join other area gardeners in dividing and donating some successful perennials from your own garden for this year’s homegrown sale! 

We particularly seek donations of plants that have done well in your yard without being invasive, including:

  • Native or non-native flowering perennials
  • Ferns and other foliage plants that do well in shade

as well as:

  • Small shrubs or trees
  • Edibles
  • Houseplants

The Nature Center reserves the right to discard plants known to be invasive.

Donated plants should be potted up far enough in advance of the Sale to avoid transplanting shock.  A supply of empty pots is available for your use behind the Pavilion at the Nature Center.  Potted-up, sale-ready plants can be dropped off at the Nature Center Pavilion on Friday June 11 & Saturday June 12, from 9AM to 6PM.

We encourage you to contact us beforehand to discuss your donations.  It would be most helpful if you could provide us with an emailed or written list of what you plan to donate, so that we can prepare appropriate labels.  Please contact Dick Obermanns at 216-752-9776 or obermanns@aol.com.  Thanks for your support! 

Plant sale at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes
Plant sale at the Nature Center at Shaker Lakes

Steve is a local photographer and birder. His work can be found at his website: http://www.stevecagan.com

Climate Change Visualizer

The Audubon Society published a Survival by Degrees report in 2019, and recently reminded Gardenopolis of its Birds and Climate Visualizer component. Type in your zip code and see how climate change is predicted to affect your area and the birds that visit your backyard.

Rising temperatures mean that many birds will lose habitat and struggle to survive. Gardenopolis supports efforts to slow climate change and preserve habitat for wildlife.

City Nature Challenge

Save the date! The City Nature Challenge will be held from April 30 – May 3, 2021.

Cities around the world compete to see who can document the most biodiversity in a single long weekend. The number of observations, the number of species identified and the number of people participating are shared and compared.

Mark your calendars and plan to join LEAP’s team on iNaturalist. Visit https://www.leapbio.org/events/city-nature-challenge for all the details.

USDA’s International Beech Leaf Disease Workshop

Registration is now open for the 2nd International Beech Leaf Disease Workshop. This will be a virtual meeting held on April 15th via Adobe Connect. We expect to have a wide variety of presenters, including University partners, State and Federal agencies, and private agencies. We will discuss current research results, recent survey and monitoring work, and future projects. 

This workshop gathers forest health experts from the United States and Canada to share information regarding Beech Leaf Disease (BLD), an emerging pest of American beech. Throughout the day, thirteen presentations will be shared on topics of BLD epidemiology, distribution, control, and research efforts. Registered attendees can earn continuing educations credits for the Society of American Foresters (SAF) and the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) for participating in the workshop.

View the list of speakers/presentations and register using this link:

Beech Leaf Disease Workshop Registration Page

Fire Ecology of the North Kingsville Sand Barrens

Update! Event has been postponed due to power outages. It has been rescheduled for December 10.

Join Dr. Jim Bissell, Director of Natural Areas and Curator of Botany at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, for a discussion on the North Kingsville Sand Barrens and the importance of wildfires to the ecology of the land. He will talk about the similarities between the sand barrens and the lodgepole pine forests in the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. View unique specimens; hear stories about Dr. Bissell’s work; and learn about the various plant species that have adapted to wildfires, including Bicknell’s geranium, racemed milkwort, and native lupine.

Talk is Wednesday, December 2, at 7 pm. Cost is $10 for Museum members, $20 for non-members.

Register here

Tree plantings and other events

Tree planting information by Laura Marks

The weather has turned autumn cool and moist, so many tree planting opportunities are coming up. Here are a few. Please lend a hand and your expertise if you are able and want your hands in the soil. Please remember to wear a mask to any events you attend.

Saturday, October 3
10:00AM Canterbury and Bradford, Cleveland Heights
Royal Heights neighbors are working to improve landscaping along the Bradford Rd cinder path. They are working from Canterbury towards the west while Peggy Spaeth and John Barber are working from Taylor Rd eastward. Trees will be planted this Saturday and the neighbors reached out asking for help from Heights Tree People. Check out the rebuilt historic WPA stone pillars that mark the pathway at each street!

Monday, October 19
1:30 PM Washington Blvd, CH
We have requests for 7 trees to be planted in the block of Washington Blvd from Lee to Cottage Grove. It seems like a great opportunity for a HTP to plant together. These trees will all be planted on private property, not treelawns.

We have begun planting! Last week Margy, Kathy, Bill, and I worked with Western Reserve Land Conservancy to plant 17 treelawn trees on E130 street between Shaker Blvd and Larchmere. In addition, Bill and I have planted several trees in Cleveland Heights in the past week.

Over the summer we accumulated a list of about 50 trees to plant this fall. In addition, I am working with the City of Cleveland Heights to get permission for us to plant a tree on vacant lots in the City; there are 177 vacant lots, not all are appropriate for a tree, however most are. If you want to join us to plant, please let me know your availability and we will welcome your help.

I could also use a second person to help do a tree inventory of Taylor Rd between Cedar and Fairmount. The Cleveland Heights Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC) is about to recommend that the speed limit on Taylor Rd be reduced and consistent at 25 MPH. One way to reduce actual car speed is to have fully planted treelawns. The TAC requested I count availability of treelawn tree planting sites.

If you know Heights friends and neighbors who want trees, please get them to sign up for one. The best way to do this is to have them contact me at this Heights Tree People email address. (heightstreepeople AT gmail DOT com)

Laura Marks

Other events, compiled by Elsa and Heather

Upcoming virtual events

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Discover-E
Fall Foraging with Jeremy Umansky of Larder: A Curated Delicatessen and Bakery
October 5, 7 pm
http://1023.blackbaudhosting.com/1023/DISCOVER-E-Fall-Foraging-with-Larders-Jeremy-Umansky

Kirtland Bird Club
How a CLE Birder-Photographer aids conservation efforts in Colombia
October 7, 7:30 pm
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/how-a-cle-birder-photographer-aids-conservation-efforts-in-colombia-tickets-112905912624

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Explorer Series
Discovery… Technology… Hope
Lecture with Dr. Dawn Wright, Chief Scientist, Environmental Systems Research Institute
October 14, 7 pm
https://1023.blackbaudhosting.com/1023/Explorer-Lecture-Series-Virtual—DISCOVERY-TECHNOLOGY-HOPE

Living with the Anthropocene
October 14, 10 pm
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/living-with-the-anthropocene-webinar-tickets-120320171873

20th Annual NAPPC Conference
October 20-22, 2020​
https://www.pollinator.org/nappc/registration

LEAD for Pollinators Conference
October 24-25, 2020
https://leadforpollinators.org/registration/

Nature Underfoot by Dr. John Hainze
November 2, 10 pm EST
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nature-underfoot-by-dr-john-hainze-registration-117436976157

Streaming anytime

OSU ZoomBees Pollinator Webinar Recordings 2020
https://u.osu.edu/certify/zoombees-webinar-recordings-2020/​

Important Late Summer and Early Fall Plantings to Aid Pollinators and Migratory Species
Presentation given by Judy Semroc at the bi-monthly LEAP meeting
https://vimeo.com/458967411/a07cd72ee0

Kiss the Ground
Film about regenerative agriculture, available on Netflix
https://kisstheground.com/
https://www.netflix.com/title/81321999?

Rain Dance

by RC Wilson

Our 55-gallon rain barrel is my gauge for how long it has been since it rained. A good thunderstorm or two fills it. I dip out watering cans full as needed, when the container garden gets droopy, and to water my various recent transplants. It seems like lots of water for the first few days I use it, but after a week of dry weather, I start handling the watering can with care, trying not to spill too much. Nine or ten days and I am scrapping the bottom of the barrel.

This is a bit of a game, since we have city water and I could easily use that. I am no farmer, and, when the barrel runs dry, we are not in danger of starving or dying of thirst. Still, it is satisfying to get full use of our roof water, and it is good for us to remind ourselves how precious water is. My grandparents, and my wife’s grandparents, just a few generations back, experienced dry wells and needed cisterns, and prayed for rain to save crops. All over the world people live with extreme water anxiety, living where you can’t go down to the corner and buy a Slurpee when you get hot and thirsty.

When my son was in college, a couple decades back, he volunteered at a national monument in Arizona, where I visited him. We walked into the ruins of the Anasazi villages near Flagstaff. I remember an archaeologist telling me about their farming methods. Instead of one big field, they had little fields here and there, scattered over a wide area, so that some might catch one of the fickle scattered showers. This is a region where you can go a whole season without a drop while your neighbor gets flooded. The Anasazi also built tanks: rock cisterns in little mountain gullies to catch the rain off a hillside the way my rain barrel catches the water from our roof. It is easy to romanticize the past, but when you see the abandoned rock shelter and cornfields, like the played out farms of 1930’s American dust bowl, you get a sense of how marginal life can be, how much we humans, like all living things, are subject to chance variation and shifting long-term patterns of rainfall, snow, and temperature.

Ohio, where I am writing this, is blessed with plenty of rain, but it does not always fall when you want it to. In July, with the late spring soaking rains over, the thunderstorms can be fickle too. It clouds up for a few days, and you even hear thunder, then it rains just north of you, or just south. THis can be annoying at first, when you are hauling buckets of water to thirsty plants beyond the reach of the hose. But, when this goes on for days, you start to wish and gesture and pray and WILL the clouds to let loose above you.

The rain dance is, perhaps, part of that overly romanticized past, or worse, a racist trope, something done by primitive natives, ignorant of science and ruled by superstition. I think we hang on to the notion of dancing for rain because we all secretly believe it deep below our rational minds. We see clouds gather and pass us by and we try to bargain with them, pull them and influence them like ball players waving at a long foul ball, trying to make it fair, to wrap inside the foul pole for a home run. We may be lucky to have clean water piped into our homes, but we still feel that need to influence the heavens. If butterflies can start earthquakes, why can’t we bring home the rain?

Cleveland Botanical Garden in June

Text by Lois Rose, photos by Lois Rose unless otherwise noted

The Cleveland Botanical Garden is welcoming visitors again at last.  Making a reservation is easy, strolling the grounds is a reassuring pleasure. Think of this photo montage as a scavenger hunt:  name that plant.  Better still, catch the next moment in time as summer unfolds at CBG. 

by Elsa Johnson
by Elsa Johnson
by Elsa Johnson