Happy New Year!

Happy Sustainable New Year! I hope you all have friends or family to celebrate the end of 2009 and the beginning of a whole new 2010. If not, please join me at Princeton Country Dancers' New Years' Eve Dance at 8:00 (instruction at 7:30) on December 31 at Suzanne Paterson Center in Princeton, for an evening of English country dancing and contra dancing with live music. Admission is $20, $15 for seniors, and $10 for students. Make new friends, get some exercise, share a dessert potluck and help sustain two crowd-pleasing, centuries-old dance traditions! For details see: http://www.princetoncountrydancers.org/events/PCD-NYEdance09.pdf

Sustainable Montgomery has accomplished plenty this year. We have worked with Montgomery Township to pass resolutions and ordinances and produce events that will make Montgomery a more sustainable place, and Lauren Wasilauski, our intrepid coordinator, documented these actions in an application for certification to Sustainable Jersey. We are proud that these efforts have resulted in certification, and we are all determined to keep up the momentum. 2010 will see a Sustainable Montgomery web page on the Montgomery Township website, an anti-idling initiative, and many more new projects. We all hope you will join us in supporting and participating in many of them. Why not make it a New Year's resolution?

Here's a great way to start a sustainable new year: check out the Princeton Environmental Film Festival at the Princeton Public Library: http://www.princetonlibrary.org/peff/
I have seen a few of their offerings in past years and loved them. Among the films are some children's and family films (on Saturday mornings) and some short films, plus live music and other presentations.

Sustainable Holidays!

Whatever holidays you celebrate, you can make them more sustainable. You can save energy by decorating with fewer lights this year, and try to make your purchases organic, all natural, local or fair trade or recycled. Remember to reduce, reuse and recycle, too!

Look for farms and stores in this area that sell locally-produced, sometimes organic, grass-fed or free range meat and poultry. There may even be fresh local vegetables, too. Kale and collards are alive in our garden (along with leeks and parsnips), undamaged by frost and snow (see first two photos). Some say freezing makes the flavor sweeter. Winter squash will keep for the whole winter in a cool place, and I already invented a recipe for some of those extra pumpkins we didn't use for Halloween. I took pumpkin/tomato/rice casserole to a holiday potluck before a dance, and it was well-received.

You could buy a locally grown Christmas tree and support a local farmer and local open space. You could also prune your evergreen trees and shrubs right now and use the trimmings for decorations on your door or porch instead of paying for the electricity for a lot of lights.

Have you ever heard of Fair Trade? It is a category of goods that are made by people who need jobs, who are paid a decent wage for making them. There are charitable and religious organizations that produce or certify food, gifts, clothing etc. as fair trade. The items come from Asia, Africa, Europe, North or South America, from farmers and craftspeople. Here in the USA some fair trade items are produced in inner cities and some by native Americans. Often the organization provides loans, sponsors cooperative production facilities, bypasses exploitative middlemen, or teaches marketable skills. Sometimes they build a clinic, a school or sanitation facilities, or teach classes. To be certified fair trade, a product must use materials that are sustainably harvested.

There are plenty of fair trade items available: gifts; holiday treats; and holiday decorations. You can find them in some local shops, in catalogs and on the internet.

You may also give the gift of a charitable contribution, or buy holiday greeting cards from a charity.

One of my favorite ways to reduce waste for the holidays is to make gift bags (third photo). I sewed them from fabric scraps from my own sewing or found at rummage sales. Mostly I use them for gifts for my own family, because I know we will reuse them next year. They make the holiday gift wrapping go very fast.

To make your own gift bags, you should know how to sew. Start with a square of fabric, not too thick or see-through. Fold the square in half into a rectangle, with the right side of the fabric inside and the wrong side outside. The rectangle should have one edge folded and the other three will be cut edges. Sew an L-shaped seam joining back and front along two of the cut edges (fourth photo). This should make a bag, but it is not yet a gift bag. Before you turn it right-side out, you will have to clip the seam allowance (see fifth photo). Be careful not to cut the stitching. Turn the bag right-side out, and hem the remaining edge of the bag, preferably turning it under twice. Now take a cloth ribbon or cord, and sew it by its middle to the outside of the bag, on the seam, an inch or two from the hem (sixth photo). Now your gift bag is ready. Put a gift inside, scrunch up the top of the bag and tie the ribbon around it in a bow (seventh photo) .

You may make bags in many shapes and sizes, but they should always be deeper than they are wide (eighth photo). If you are lucky, you can find a piece of fabric with selvedge, the woven edge of the fabric that won't ravel, and use that for the edge of the bag so you don't have to hem. While you are sewing the seam, you may insert the ribbon or cord, and save yourself sewing it on later. If the ribbon or cord is narrow enough you may add a gift tag. If the ribbon or cord is too wide, you might like to add another ribbon, shorter and narrower, to tie the gift tag (ninth photo).

Remember to donate to the food pantry for those people who are out of work or otherwise in need, and don't forget to recycle and compost.

Have happy and sustainable holidays!

Recycle an old refrigerator

If you have an old refrigerator or freezer, it is probably wasting energy. Through New Jersey's Clean Energy program (njcleanenergy.com or 1-877-270-3520), sponsored by the Board of Public Utilities, you can arrange to have your old fridge or freezer picked up and hauled away for recycling. This type of old appliance costs on average $150 a year in utility bills, and to sweeten the deal you get a $30 rebate. Please mention that you heard about this program through Sustainable Montgomery, and the town will get something out of the deal, too. If we refer twenty people to this program Montgomery gets $300.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday with family and friends.

Today I am especially thankful for my husband, who made cranberry sauce and stuffing and bought a local all-natural free-range heritage breed turkey and stuffed it and put it in the oven. Admittedly I do not eat either turkey or stuffing due to dietary restrictions, but I would still want to make them for my family if he didn't. We will round out the feast with gravy and organic kale, sweet potatoes, and mashed potatoes, plus mushrooms and olives. For dessert we will have a choice of homemade pie from homegrown berries or persimmon pudding from locally-gathered native American persimmons.

I am also thankful to have my children to share the holiday with us, and thankful to know that my other relatives have friends and family with them to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner together where they are.

I am thankful that we were able to donate to a couple of canned food drives for holiday dinners for other people less fortunate than we are.

This morning I read that here in the USA we waste 40 percent of the food that we have. Much of that is wasted in processing, but more than half is wasted by consumers. That is an average of 1400 calories wasted per person.

Producing this wasted food takes one quarter of America's freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year, about four percent of our total oil consumption.

At the same time, 6.7 million homes in the US sometimes run short of food due to financial problems.

At a minimum we need to "reduce, reuse and recycle" a lot more in our kitchens. After the turkey sandwiches are finished, put those bones in the freezer so you can make turkey soup on some cold winter day.

Streambank Restoration

I hope you are wondering how the stream bank restoration planting went on October 24th at the Village Elementary School in Skillman Village. A small band of dedicated volunteers worked for about two and a half hours in intermittent light rain and planted most of the plants, covering all of the area in the plan. Fortunately, Alyssa Gartenberg (the girl scout who has made this her gold award project) took advantage of the beautiful weather the previous Thursday and Friday to get some planting done after school with a few volunteers who were not available Saturday. Stakes were also placed around the edge of the area to keep lawn mowers and pedestrians from accidentally damaging the plants.

Right after we planted, it rained about three inches, and there has been some erosion. This occurred mostly in the area that was already eroded: a narrow strip where all the water from the parking area and driveway comes pouring down to the stream (see first photo). I recently drove over to the school and placed chunks of sod, which we had removed when we put in the plants, in the eroded spots. I hope they will prevent erosion during the winter and that in the spring the new plants will fill in any remaining bare spots.

I wish I could show you photos of a beautiful stream bank covered with flowering plants, but it is the wrong time of year for that. The photos I have posted show what some of the plants will look like when they bloom. Next spring and summer the stream bank should start to look beautiful. It is unfortunate that some of the plants will bloom during the summer, when there are no students in the school, but a few will flower during spring and fall. Next year I will post photos, and I hope some of you will drive through Skillman Village and stop and take a look.

I want to thank the volunteers who planted and the businesses and friends who donated plants. Thank you! You've helped a girl scout, beautified a school, provided food for caterpillars, butterflies, and birds, and cleaned the stream. And especially, thank you Alyssa, for all your hard work and your vision!

One Person Can Make a Difference

My friend Kim Giles is moving away, and I will miss her. Even if you don't know her, you will miss her too, because she did so much for Montgomery Township. Kim Giles was on the Environmental Commission and she chaired their subcommittee, the Steering Committee for the Sustainable Montgomery Initiative. She was an incredibly devoted volunteer, keeping us all organized and on track and doing all sorts of work behind the scenes. She also hosted most of the meetings and provided lovely refreshments.

Here is a picture of Kim recycling in the town where she now lives.

Kim was especially inspired by the issue of recycling, which became a focus of a lot of the work of our subcommittee. We all had stories about businesses that didn't recycle, but it turns out that recycling is required for all businesses in New Jersey. In Somerset County some small businesses have been able to get permission to use the County's recycling pickup, but other businesses must arrange recycling with their private waste haulers. They are then required to report to Montgomery Township how many tons of materials they recycle each year. Hardly any businesses reported this information, and the municipal employee in charge was too busy to pursue the matter because that office was shortstaffed (to keep taxes down, Township employees who leave are not being replaced). Kim discovered that towns receive money (state funds distributed by the county), proportional to the tonnage that they report is annually recycled by businesses. This gave her a great incentive to investigate recycling at businesses and work out a procedure for the municipal Recycling Coordinator to get the tonnage reports from the haulers instead of the businesses, and report the results to Somerset County. The procedure that she started has made many thousands of dollars for Montgomery Township, and proved that becoming more sustainable doesn't have to cost money; it can make money!

Kim also organized the Steering Committee in various fun activities involving recycling: we visited the Somerset County Recycling facility; we arranged for mixed plastics recycling at the Public Works Facility on Harlingen Road for a few months; and we produced an exhibit on recycling that has been seen at the Mary Jacobs Library, the Montgomery Township Schools, and the Hillsborough Library. We also attended films on sustainability.

Kim worked with the High School Environmental Science classes and the teachers and administrators in their efforts to become more sustainable. She gave talks at the Otto Kaufmann Senior Center on various aspects of sustainability.

As our Steering Committee worked together, we shared our successes and failures, frustrations and motivations. We became friends, and when Kim announced that she and her husband were moving out of town to pursue new jobs, we all felt bereft. Kim, our loss is Connecticut's gain. We hope you will visit often and continue to inspire us with stories of your recycling exploits.

Happy Halloween!

Pawpaws

The pawpaw tree is a small native tree that produces the largest fruit of any that is native to North America. It is now very rare in the wild here in New Jersey, but it is such a valuable plant that we should have more of it.

About twenty years ago my husband ordered four seedling pawpaw trees from a garden catalog and planted them near the edge of our woods. Only two of them survived (turns out that's typical), but they are now mature and they bear fruit every fall. I like the fruit so much that I plant more little pawpaw trees every year (first photo).

The fruit is the most obvious great feature of the pawpaw tree (second photo). Pawpaw fruit was a favorite of the Native Americans. It is approximately fist-sized, but full of large seeds, so we eat it with a spoon. It is sweet and custardy, with a flavor similar to banana and mango. There are some recipes using pawpaws, but I haven't tried any. On the internet it is possible to order pawpaw jam and some other products, and sometimes a farmer's market or specialty store in this area will sell the fresh fruit for a few weeks in the fall.

Some other valuable aspects of pawpaw trees are that they grow in shade or partial shade, though they will grow faster with a bit more sun. They grow well next to black walnut trees. They like moist or average soil, not dry or swampy. And they are gloriously deer-proof, after the first season. All you have to do is protect the trunks against buck rubbing.

If you are worried about global warming, pawpaw trees are native all the way to northern Florida, so climate change holds no dangers for them. They are attractive trees, with dark red flowers in spring and leaves up to a foot long that turn yellow in fall (third photo). Pawpaw trees average about 25 feet tall and have a pyramidal shape.

Pawpaw trees are host plant to the caterpillar of the beautiful zebra swallowtail butterfly. That butterfly is not often found in New Jersey, but maybe if we plant enough pawpaw trees its numbers will increase.

The pawpaw tree has some challenges for its owners, though. You need two trees that are not clones to produce fruit. The trees send up root sprouts, a mixed blessing that may be controlled by mowing, though we intend to keep every one of ours. We have six small trees from root sprouts so far, the largest of which flowered for the first time this year. The pawpaw tree has a long, fragile taproot, so they should ideally be planted as small seedlings, container-grown. If you want pawpaw trees, try to find a nursery that offers seedlings grown from seeds from pawpaws native to New Jersey.

The last pawpaw fell off our tree a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, we missed it; the fruits are delicious, and we are always competing with the animals to see who gets them first!

Work session postponed

Due to predicted rain and cold weather, the work session Saturday, October 17 for the stream bank restoration at the Village Elementary School, described in my previous post, is canceled. The rain date is also canceled. The work is being rescheduled for Saturday, October 24, at 10:00 am, rain date Sunday, October 25 at 1:00 pm. I hope to see you there.

Volunteer opportunity

On September 19th I wrote about Alyssa Gartenberg, a Girl Scout who has undertaken the restoration of the stream corridor at the Village Elementary School in Skillman Village for her Gold Award Project. After a lot of hard work, she is ready to plant on Saturday, and she needs volunteers. If you would like to help a Girl Scout or help the Village Elementary School or do something for the environment, this is your chance! The work party is scheduled for this Saturday, October 17, at 10:00 am, with a rain date of Sunday, October 18 at 1:00 pm. Meet in front of the Village Elementary School, dress in old clothes, bring work gloves, trowels and shovels, a water bottle in case you get thirsty, and be prepared to plant! If the event is canceled due to rain I will post that as soon as I find out.

Solar power

Recently I attended the groundbreaking ceremony for a new solar array. A non-profit institution, concerned about its energy costs and interested in sustainability, is building a 12-acre, 1.6-megawatt ground-mounted facility. The panels are manufactured in Ohio, creating many local green tech jobs.

Once completed, the solar facility will supply half of their electrical needs. On the ground below the panels, slow-growing grass, which can grow in part shade and part sun, will be planted. Since the panels are tilted and have small gaps between them, rainwater will trickle through to water the grass and soak into the ground. Even on a cloudy day, the panels can generate electricity.

This project is being built and paid for by a company that invests in solar power, which then sells it back to the owner of the site at a small discount. The builder takes advantage of government rebates and tax breaks, and also invests their own capital. They do not focus on small projects, but you can take advantage of some of the same government incentives to install solar panels on your own property. Many homes have roofs that are suitable for solar panels, and others can install free-standing solar panels (though this may require municipal approval as a structure--check with your local government planning office). If you install solar panels, you will pay less for electricity, reduce pollution, reduce global climate change, and contribute to America's energy independence.

Several homeowners in Montgomery have solar panels on their roofs, and the Montgomery Board of Education has a solar array. In fact, New Jersey has more solar power than any other state except California, which is amazing when we consider how many states are farther south or have less rain than New Jersey. Our outstanding solar statistics may be partly due to environmentally aware residents, but they are also due to state policy, the decision to offer rebates and tax breaks for installing solar panels. For both reasons, I am proud of New Jersey!

White oaks

Last weekend I went to a dance camp in New York state. I danced English country dances that date back as far as 1695, and some written in the 21st century. I also danced some New England contra dances for the first time in five years. I had a wonderful time (see photo by Michael Zumoff)!

The camp is located in the area of Newburgh, New York, a two-and-a-half hour drive north of Montgomery, on the shore of a small lake (see photo). Beautiful old white oak trees (trees native from Canada to Florida and Maine to Texas) dot the lawns where the land slopes down to the lake. The ground was littered with their acorns, and I started gathering them to bring home. To my surprise, many were already germinating, sending out roots (see photo). My husband and I have some white oak trees growing in the woods at the back of our property, but I have never seen their acorns (I think the squirrels get them first), and white oak seedlings there are few and far between.

Oak trees are very important to our ecosystem here in central New Jersey. Oak is a climax forest species. Every land-based plant community here in our area constantly changes and evolves until it becomes a climax forest, which is self-perpetuating. This process is called succession. We've all seen cedar trees coming up in fields. They are a "pioneer species." Cedar trees won't grow up in the shade, so some other trees take over once the cedars grow tall and thick. Eventually, oak and hickory trees dominate the forest, and that's a climax forest. Oak trees produce acorns which are eaten by a wide variety of wildlife. They produce thick, leathery leaves full of tanin, which decompose slowly, protecting the forest floor from erosion. And oak trees support more moths and butterflies than any other type of tree.

Oak trees are divided into white oak trees, which have rounded tips on their leaves, and red oaks, which have pointed leaves with bristle tips. White and red oak are also names of two individual species of trees. The acorns I found were from the white oak tree, Quercus alba, which is one of many oak trees with rounded leaves (see photo). Unfortunately, a disease known as bacterial leaf scorch (BLS) is slowly killing red oaks (but not white oaks). Because I would like to have more trees growing on my property that are resistant to this devastating disease, I collected almost two hundred of the white oak acorns and brought them home. They are in ziplock bags with moist paper towels in my refrigerator. Now I have to plant them before their little roots die, and find a way to protect them from squirrels. If our area loses its red oak trees to BLS, we will all need more white oak trees .

Rummage Sale

Today I shopped at a rummage sale, and I intend to visit at least two more this fall. Rummage sales are one of my favorite ways to reuse, from the great trilogy of "reduce, reuse and recycle." I know some people who prefer garage sales, and some swear by flea markets or thrift shops. I prefer rummage sales because everything is already sorted for you, and if you are looking for children's books or men's shirts they will probably all be at one table or rack. Also at the end of the sale everything unsold has to be packed up, so there are further markdowns.

In general, I try to avoid buying new things except food and toiletries. Mining, logging, drilling for oil, farming and manufacturing all use lots of energy and create lots of waste. Most of these impacts are far away where I never see them, but I am still responsible for my share. If I object to the number of trucks on the road and the pollution from diesel engines, the exploitation of workers around the globe, or destruction of the earth's natural resources, I should just buy less stuff. So I try to take good care of what I have, repair what is broken, share and borrow, find someone to use what I can't use anymore, and buy secondhand.

Here's why I try to avoid buying new clothes. Synthetic fibers are usually made from petroleum, take a lot of energy to produce, and aren't biodegradable. I used to think that because cotton was a natural fiber it was good for the earth, but I have since learned that growing conventional cotton is very bad for the environment. I remembered from American history that cotton is a crop that depletes the soil, and it turns out that cotton uses more pesticides than any other crop in the world, an outrageous amount. The pesticides used on food are regulated to make sure that they break down quickly or aren't too toxic, but we don't eat cotton, so more toxic or longer-lasting pesticides are used on it. As a result, it turns out that cotton is anything but natural or kind to the earth. There is organic cotton, and I try to buy sheets and towels made from organic cotton. I've read that all Egyptian cotton is organic, but during harvest season the children in the farming areas are taken out of school and pick cotton for a month or two, so I avoid Egyptian cotton. I get a couple of catalogs that carry organic cotton and hemp clothing, but I rarely find anything I like and need in my size.

Furthermore, dying is very bad for the environment. Even if the dye is natural, and they rarely are, the chemicals used to set the dye cause pollution. Organic cotton or hemp clothing, which are usually made by environmentally responsible companies, sometimes feature low-impact dyes, but once again the selection is not vast.

All of which brings me to rummage sales.

Today I arrived in time for the last hour of the rummage sale, and I missed lots of the best items. At that point in the sale the shopper must buy a bag (a paper grocery bag) for $3 and then may fill it with whatever fits in the bag. I bought three bags and filled them with: a covered plastic coffee cup that says "reduce, reuse and recycle" on it, a wine glass, six flower vases, two picture frames (for a dollar extra), 12 cloth napkins, a coat with a removable lining, one skirt, one dress, one linen jacket, and 27 blouses and tops. I didn't get to try anything on at the sale except the coat, and I couldn't even see myself in the mirror. However, the staff or other shoppers will usually give an opinion if asked. I even have friends I see at every rummage sale, who give me advice and point out clothes that they think will suit me. I am lucky because if those 27 blouses and tops don't fit me, they might fit my daughter. And if not, I can always donate them to another rummage sale!

I only picked up those six flower vases at the last minute when the staff called out "everything is free!" When I got home I found that one of the free vases is stamped on the bottom with the words "Coors Golden Colorado Pottery." I searched the internet and found similar vases selling for $50 to $60, so mine is a pretty good bargain and a nice addition to my pottery collection (see photo). My daughter wants three of the tops and the dress, and I think I will be able to wear fourteen of the tops. That leaves ten to donate to another sale.

One friend of mine from time to time gives a party, a women's clothing exchange. She sets up some racks and a mirror, and invites her (female) friends to bring all the clothes they no longer want and something to eat. We hang up the clothes we have brought and try on everyone else's contributions. Then we eat. We all go home with new clothes. One year I was surprised to find two new dresses that fit me that had previously belonged to women who were eleven inches shorter than I am. You never know! So, try giving a clothing exchange party or attend one if you are invited. It is one of the most fun ways I can think of to reuse.

The First Day of Autumn

Today is the first day of Autumn, and I feel that I should write something to mark the change of the seasons. It was warm today and the ground is dry enough for July or August, but lots of plants are putting on a show. Maybe the various migrations have already begun, but I haven't seen any signs of them yet. I'll bet that the birds are fattening themselves up as fast as they can.

My friend Marie, whom I mentioned in my last post, plants flowers that attract hummingbirds to her property (red, bright pink, orange or purple tubular flowers), and she is still seeing hummingbirds in mid-September. The green herons haven't left yet. Today I saw one of the green herons that visit our pond, and as I watched, it caught a frog. I caught a photo! I hope you'll forgive the poor quality.

Today I went out walking and took a camera, so I have a few pictures of early fall to show you. One is a monarch caterpillar that has eaten all the leaves on its milkweed plant and is eating the seed pod. I hope it has enough to eat and enough time to pupate before it has to fly to Mexico to its wintering ground in the mountain forests.

Most of the trees have not begun to change the color of their leaves yet, but many native shrubs and vines are covered with ripe berries. It is an advantage for the plant if birds eat its berries because they spread the seeds in their droppings. The shrubs often have berries that are a contrasting color to their leaves so the birds can find them. Sometimes the leaves are green or yellow and the berries red or orange, such as Euonymus americanus, also known as hearts-a-busting (see photo); sometimes the berries are blue or black and the leaves red, such as Virginia creeper (see photo). One shrub, the red panicle dogwood, has dark leaves, with white berries on bright red stems (see photo).

Other native plants are blooming now, and the bees are busy. I saw several varieties of goldenrod, a white wood aster, and the violet New England aster (see photos). In my husband's garden, I saw false dragonhead (Physostegia virginiana) with some of the largest bumblebees I have ever seen diligently poking their heads into the little blossoms (see photo). Bees don't migrate, but soon there will be no more flowers, so they are busy taking advantage of what is here now. Native bees are important pollinators of farm crops as well as wildflowers.

Stream Corridor Restoration

I have taken on a long-term project, probably longer term than this blog. I am going to watch over the restoration of a small stretch of stream bank at the Village Elementary School (VES) in Montgomery Township (first two photos).

I got the idea from an expert who has consulted on managing Montgomery's Open Space. Her name is Leslie Sauer, and she has written a very interesting book about restoring native landscapes called "The Once and Future Forest." She suggested that all the streambanks in Skillman Village should be restored, and since other parts of the site may be developed or changed, she suggested we start with the VES. My husband was there when she made the suggestion, and he passed it on to Mr. Al Hadinger, the vice principal, who liked the idea. Mr. Hadinger found a girl scout troop that was interested in a project and we got together. They planted some native plants along the edge of the stream last spring, including bee balm (third photo), and now that area is not mowed, so the plants can grow. As the roots get stronger, they can hold the soil and soak up the rainwater, cleaning pollutants out of the runoff and infiltrating the rain into the groundwater. They also provide food for birds and butterflies.

This summer Lauren Wasilauski, the Township's Open Space Coordinator, put me in touch with Alyssa Gartenberg, a Montgomery High School student is wanted to do a Girl Scout Gold Award project. She decided to create a rain garden, and since the Village School stream corridor is very similar to a rain garden but a different shape, she was interested. She has been busy getting permission from the Village School, the Board of Education, and the Girl Scouts. Alyssa is almost ready to plant, and is now buying the plants that her research has indicated would be right for the stream corridor. I am also donating some native plants that I dug up from my yard.

Recently my friend Marie offered me some of her Liatris spicata. I know Marie because we both love English and American country dancing. The American dancing we do is mostly contra dance, and it is so much fun. It has evolved over the generations so that almost any able-bodied adult who can find the beat of the music (and even many who can't) can do this dancing. Like square dancing, there are callers, and at our weekly dance in Princeton, every dance is taught. There is always live music, which sounds a lot like traditional Irish music, and it makes you want to dance! English country dancing is less vigorous and more graceful, and the music is more like the composer Purcell. You've seen English country dancing if you've ever seen a film of a Jane Austen novel. You can probably find Purcell's music and contra dance and English country dance on the internet if you search. I think anything that has been around that long must be sustainable.

Marie is a great dancer, and it turns out that she is a great gardener, too. She lives near the Millstone River and is concerned about the effect that runoff from lawns has on flooding and water quality. One solution: more trees and gardens, less lawn. Marie has been planting lots of native plants in her yard, though she also has other plants. Now her gardens attract hummingbirds, butterflies and goldfinches. Liatris, also known as gayfeather, is a native plant here in Somerset County, with three-foot tall wands of lavender flowers. Marie's has spread, and now she wants to give some away. Today I was on my hands and knees on her front walk digging out Liatris. After a while I gave up and just cut the dried flower heads off the flowers so I can scatter them at the Village School, and she won't get so many new ones next year. I am going back tomorrow to get more. I wish I had some photos that do them justice, but they finished blooming months ago. She also gave me some purple coneflowers, though she doesn't have too many of them; she's just being generous. Thank you, Marie!

Marie also recommended a book that she knew I'd be interested in. It is called "Nature's Second Chance: Restoring the Ecology of Stone Prairie Farm," by Steven I. Apfelbaum. I would like to recommend it to you, too. It tells the story of the author, a restoration ecologist, and how he has restored the farm he bought in 1981 at age 26 and has been working on ever since. The prairie is a different ecosystem than we have around here, which is interesting to learn about, but they have many of the same issues we have. I don't have as many years to work on the Village School stream corridor as Steven Apfelbaum has had to work on his farm, but I'll stick with it as long as I can.

Native Plant Sale

Last weekend I went to a native plant sale. I would like to give you the name and directions, but I am not allowed to endorse any organization if I want a link on the Sustainable Montgomery webpage. Probably if you do an internet search for "native plant sale" or "native plant nursery" and New Jersey you could find a place to buy native plants.

Several years ago I noticed that the literature I got in the mail from environmental organizations recommended native plants. These sources advised that native plants provided food for native animals. I thought that we already provided enough food for deer, mice, rabbits, raccoons and woodchucks, so I didn't pay any attention. Eventually I learned that it is primarily insects, especially butterflies and moths, and birds who need native plants. Butterflies are beautiful, but you don't get butterflies without caterpillars, and most caterpillars can eat the leaves of only one plant or family of plants. Native caterpillars need native plants. Many birds eat seeds or berries, but they all feed insects to their babies, so birds need native plants, too.

I recommend a very informative book on the subject: "Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens" by Douglas W. Tallamy. The author is an entomologist who explains that we need insects to maintain the balance of nature. He recommends a variety of native plants to support a diversity of insects which will attract birds that will then keep all types of insects under control.

However, even if you don't want to read the book, you can still visit a native plant sale or nursery. If you do, you will probably find someone who can advise you on which native plants will be suited to your property: which are deer-resistant, which like average or wet soils, which like sun or shade. Allow me to recommend Monarda didyma, or scarlet beebalm, which thrives in full or partial sun and average soil, resists deer and attracts hummingbirds. Monarda fistulosa, its lavender relative, likes similar conditions and is just as deer-proof. Butterfly milkweed, Asclepias tuberosa, loves sun and dry soil, resists deer and attracts Monarch butterflies, which must lay their eggs on milkweed. I also recommend Physostegia virginiana, false dragonhead, which is usually deer-resistant and blooms in September (see photo). Bottle gentian (see photo), Gentiana andrewsii, a darker violet flower, is now finished blooming. All are native to New Jersey; look them up on the USDA website:
http://plants.usda.gov/checklist.html

I never saw a maple-leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerfolium) until I went to a native plant sale a few years ago and bought some because it was supposed to grow well in shade with average moisture and it is deer-resistant. It is not a huge shrub, only up to five feet tall, and it has the most beautiful fall color. They also have cream colored clusters of flowers in late spring or early summer. A local naturalist told me recently that maple-leaf viburnum was the most common shrub in New Jersey 30o years ago. Now you often have to go to a native plant sale to buy one.

Native plant sales are also good sources for other native shrubs, as well as native ferns and ornamental grasses, flowers, vines and trees. Some native plant sales have demonstration gardens so you can see the plants in their natural settings. Fall is the best time of year to plant many plants, because they have a chance to get established before the hot, dry summer. So go search out native plant sales and nurseries in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania.

The Worm Lady

Today I met a woman named Jane Coale, who had set up a table at an area nature preserve. She uses statistics and information to encourage people to compost. I spoke with her for a few minutes and took one of her handouts.

Jane lives fulltime in an RV and she is passionate about compost. She has been composting since 1965, with or without worms, and she has helped various institutions start composting programs or solve their composting problems. If you tell Jane what your compost is doing, such as smelling bad or not decomposing, she will have a pretty good idea of what is wrong and how to fix it. She recommends a balance of brown (dead leaves, straw, sawdust, paper napkins and cardboard, etc.) and green (fresh organic matter, such as kitchen scraps or weeds). Jane says to always cover your green stuff with brown stuff to prevent smells and fruitflies.

I have never composted with worms except those that make their way into the compost pile from the ground, and I was very interested in the red wigglers she had in a box on the table. She said that they are native worms, and if they escape they won't harm the environment, but they don't try to escape. She has had hers for years.

Jane told me that 70% of the trash we send to landfills can be fed to worms or composted: yard waste, manure, and kitchen waste. Worms eat their weight in kitchen scraps in two days, and they produce 60% of the weight they eat as fertilizer. They can live between the temperatures of 45 and 90 degrees, but thrive from 65 to 75 degrees, and in ideal conditions they double their numbers in two to three months.

The worms didn't look disgusting to me, and they sound easy to care for. If I didn't have room in my yard for several compost piles, I would definitely get a worm bin for my basement.

Jane Coale calls herself the Worm Lady. She says "Help the planet--small and simple deeds can make a huge difference if enough people do them."

Conserve water everyday

It has been raining today and I love rain. I love the sound of rain, and I love the clean feel of everything after rain. This year it has rained a lot, and I am always amazed to hear people complaining about the rain. If you have had flooding, I apologize, I don't mean you. You have a right to complain. Some farmers have poorly drained fields and their plants haven't done well, and they have my sympathy. I am sure, however, that in many other years those farmers needed more rain.

In the summer of 1999 we were in the third dry year here in central New Jersey. My part of Montgomery was especially hard-hit, and I remember times when it rained an inch or two in Princeton and not a drop here. Full-sized trees were losing their leaves, and many have never recovered. The reservoirs in northern New Jersey were running low and there was a drought emergency in effect. That summer I vowed that I would never complain about rain again.

Rain makes plants grow. I never understand when people complain about water standing in the back of their yard. Why not plant wetland plants there? I understand if they complain about water in their basements; that is not good. But there are all sorts of beautiful plants that need lots of water, for example, cardinal flowers and swamp milkweed (see photos), river birch and sycamore trees, and ferns.

The real problem is not enough water. That is where the world is heading--not enough fresh water. Not enough water to drink or to water crops. Not enough water in streams, rivers, lakes or underground. And especially not enough clean water.

I've read that there are 60 million automatic sprinkler systems across the United States. Some of them no doubt leak underground, undetected. Some have sensors to turn them on only when the ground is dry, but some of them don't work. I have seen sprinklers going in the rain. I have seen sprinklers spraying people's driveways, decks, and septic mounds. Meanwhile, the groundwater slowly drops. Many of us here in Montgomery have wells. Did you know that even the water we get from the water company includes some groundwater, too? Everyone here needs groundwater, let's conserve it. Even when it won't stop raining.

Composting Workshop

I got an announcement for a composting workshop sponsored by Somerset County on September 15th. There are two sessions, 10:00 to 11:30 and 6:30 to 8:00 at the 4H Center in Bridgewater, and you must register by the 8th, this Tuesday. There is a $40 admission fee to either session, which includes a compost bin and literature. Here is a link: http://www.co.somerset.nj.us/spotlight.html

I am still trying to decide whether to attend. The cost of a compost bin is $35, so if you need one the workshop is a bargain, but I don't need a compost bin. My husband composts our kitchen waste in his vegetable garden, which has a fence that keeps animals out, so we don't really need a bin. We already successfully compost everything we can think of.

But if you don't compost, you should consider it. Composting saves landfill space, and it saves fossil fuels that the trash and recycling trucks would have to use to haul our organic waste away. It enriches the soil, and it actually reduces greenhouse gases. Doesn't that at least make you want to try composting? I have been used to composting since I was 12, when my parents decided that the soil in our new garden needed improving. I knew composting made sense and was good for the environment, but I never knew that it would become fashionable: recently I learned that Julia Roberts composts.

Here at our house we actually practice several types of composting. The first is kitchen waste, the obvious thing to compost. We also compost leaves in the fall, the easiest thing to compost. The leaves almost all decay in a year (oak leaves may last a little longer), and you don't need to worry about keeping the animals out of them.

We compost garden waste in three piles. The first year, we make a pile of weeds, clippings and flowers we dead-headed. The second year, we make another beside it and ignore the first pile. The third year we make a third pile, but by then the first pile is composted and ready to use. By the end of the third year it should be empty and ready for the next year's garden waste. We keep rotating the three spots.

We also have a couple of piles of sticks and branches that fall from trees. These take longer to decay, so they need to be separated from other compost piles. We also throw in wine corks. Christmas trees can go in this pile.

You don't have to do all these types of composting all at once. Try one kind and see how easy it is. When you get confidence, then try another kind. I think the secret of composting is in organisms that are found in the ground, that break down the organic matter. This is nature's way of handling waste; just let nature do it.

Hiking Trail

Today I took a hike with a young man named Jeff Mertz, a Montgomery High School student who is doing an Eagle Scout project to improve Montgomery Township open space. He is working on the pathway that starts at the end of Linton Drive (off of Cherry Valley Road) and leads through the Cherry Brook tract. He and the other volunteers he recruits are improving the pathway by filling in holes that could trip hikers or sprain an ankle, and he is also mapping the pathway and posting an informational sign. The volunteers will distribute flyers with information about the trails to all the homes in the nearby neighborhoods of Woods Edge and Yorkshire Woods. He asked me to help him identify some plants along the trail so he could mention them on the sign.

We walked around two fields full of beautiful fall flowers, passing small vernal pools which are the perfect amphibian-breeding habitat. We saw milkweed plants covered with brilliant orange milkweed bugs, New York ironweed with violet blossoms, goldenrod, and a flower that was new to me, the rose-pink. Above all there were dragonflies zooming around. Jeff told me that a couple of years ago he volunteered as part of a group that was planting trees and shrubs in those fields for a reforestation project that is supported by a grant from the Fish and Wildlife Division of the NJDEP. The goal is to eventually reforest those two fields, which are surrounded by forest, to create a tract of woods that is large enough to support migratory songbirds. These birds need a large area of uninterrupted forest to protect them from nest predators, birds whose habitat is wood edges, and who lay their eggs in other birds' nests.

The trail also leads into the forest, which felt ten degrees cooler than the field today. There were some large trees, but the places we walked were not climax forest. They contained mostly trees that grow up in sunny places. When they die they will be succeeded by climax forest trees, which grow in the shade. There was not much to be seen on the forest floor, partly because of over-browsing by deer. Spring is the time to see the forest floor in bloom: small plants, called spring ephemerals, come up before the trees leaf out, photosynthesize as much as they can, bloom and then die back after the tree leaves block the sun. Daffodils are a non-native example of a spring ephemeral; mayapple and trillium are native spring ephemerals.

This trail skirts an approximately 90-acre wooded wetland that has been identified as the largest contiguous special resource value wooded wetland in Central New Jersey. Special resource value means that it is home to endangered species. Wetlands are valuable to the unique plants and animals that live in them, and important for their role in the hydrologic cycle. They act as sponges, storing rainwater that would otherwise add to flooding after a rain, then releasing is slowly during dry periods. The plants in wetlands clean polluted rainwater runoff, and wetlands provide groundwater infiltration, giving us the well water we drink. Recently I learned another important function of wetlands: they sequester carbon not only in wetland plants but also in wetland soils.

The trails Jeff is working on will someday connect with other trails in the area, so that people who live in Woods' Edge and Yorkshire Woods can enjoy this beautiful place and walk to visit friends on Cherry Hill Road. Eventually, other trails will join them and we should be able to hike from the Millstone River (and the Delaware and Raritan Canal Towpath) to the Sourland Mountains. I hope they will be used to reduce driving as well as for recreation. Thank you, Jeff, for all your great ideas and hard work.