Summer Solstice Moon
Cleared buckthorn, again, from the area around the grandkid’s playhouse and the fire pit, leaving in serviceberry and small ash trees. Rejuvenating the understory is difficult to impossible with buckthorn present since it chokes out most things shrub size and below. In certain areas of our woods it’s a remediable problem, those areas not on the boundaries with the neighbors.
Sitting outside now in the evening, watching the fire, has me more tuned up to work in the woods, since up to this point the woods have been an amenity, but not a place where we spent much time or energy. This kind of work is hard labor, perfect as an alternative to the computer, the mind, the writing.
A local guy, biologist Mark Davis of Macalester College, has a different take on invasive species like buckthorn:
“Davis…believes it’s time to raise the white flag against non-native species. Most non-native species, he said, are harmless—or even helpful.
In a letter published in the journal Nature this past June, Davis and 18 other ecologists argued that these destructive invasive species—or those non-native species that cause ecological or economic harm—are only a tiny subset of non-native species, and that this tiny fraction has basically given all new arrivals a bad name.”
As may be. As may be. But I still don’t like the way buckthorn crowds out the serviceberry, ninebark, dogwood, columbine, trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit. Somehow it doesn’t seem to deter the poison ivy. If it did, well…
