Nature Wants to Wiggle

Nature Wants to  Wiggle

This past Sunday into Monday, we got quite a deluge.  Over 3 inches of rain fell, accompanied by gusty winds.  On Monday morning as the system was pulling out, I walked out into the street in front of my house.  With all the wind and rain, my neighbor’s cherry tree had let loose many pinkish blossoms that the wind piled up along the street’s curbline into a sort of windrow.  The runoff from the street flowed down the curbline and created a wiggly pattern through the cherry blossom windrow.

Hmm, I thought, it looks just like a meandering stream valley.

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The The 61-mile Long Conveyor Belt, Butterflies and Megafauna, and a Tree Paradox

The The 61-mile Long Conveyor Belt, Butterflies and Megafauna, and a Tree Paradox

I have been pushing out blog posts for several years.  Occasionally, readers have sent me various comments and also additional resources on the blog topics.  I thought it would be timely to share some of the more interesting resources I have received on particular posts.  Thus, I bring you:

Peak Phosphorus and the 61-Mile Long Conveyor Belt

Pawpaws, Zebra Swallowtails, and Furry Megafauna

The Paradox of the Ubiquitous Red Maple

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Up Close in the Distance

Up Close in the Distance

Adhering to the social distancing mandate, Garnett and I decided to head up to the Blue Ridge this past weekend.  The weather was cold and foggy.  We headed to a spot called Humpback Rocks, which would normally be crawling with people on a fair weekend day, as its rocky escarpment offers spectacular views of the Piedmont to one side and Great Valley to the other.  But on this cold morning, the top of the ridge was shrouded in fog and mist, and the crowds had stayed away.

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An Environmental Restoration Workforce for the Future

An Environmental Restoration Workforce for the Future

by Lori Lilly, Howard EcoWorks

I lead an organization called Howard EcoWorks (EcoWorks) in Howard County, MD.  We empower communities and diverse workforces to respect and restore our natural systems for future generations.  For the first several years, we focused on one thing – building rain gardens.  As our relationship with the County, our primary funder, grew, we started performing maintenance on the County’s stormwater and stream restoration practices.  Our organization and its programs have been growing quickly and succeeding in many ways.  However, I have also witnessed our County seat, Ellicott City, devastated by a series of freak, high intensity storm events.  With each successive storm, my professional assumptions about how to restore a watershed, and my organization’s role in that, have changed.

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Canal Boats, Locomotives, Interstate Highways. . .A River Runs Along It

Canal Boats, Locomotives, Interstate Highways. . .A River Runs Along It

Last fall, I rode my bike along the C&O towpath and the Great Alleghany Passage, following rivers for most of the journey.  The C&O traces the banks of the Potomac River from Georgetown in Washington D.C. to Cumberland, MD.  Travelling at the “speed of bike” is suitably slow to allow one to ponder the landscape, how it got to be the way it is today, and how transportation infrastructure has intersected with the river corridor over the years.

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