He shuffles through December rain that is waiting to be snow, waiting to be darkness. The river winds and bubbles, today its power more a rumble than a roar. He stands before the remnants of the lock that lifted the canal boats high across the river’s coils.
If he were not alone, someone might hear him whisper “The river is a path, the canal is a path, and then the water’s voices, too.” All paths that lead to last night’s dream, with his question to a cloud above his bed: How am I to love all things laid before me at this age of counting losses, in such a world as this? Lovers, friends and creatures—all consigned to memories. Hopefulness has always been his answer, but now the favored scripture passes from his lips like a habit worn out from its use. Lord I believe…
They built this canal to tame the waters,
but no water is ever tamed for good.
The canals fell to the rails, that fell to roads,
that swelled to highways. Each chance buried in another’s hope.
In any case he is standing here alone, once the hope of two,
waiting at the mossy lock as if it were a sepulcher.
Long ago, in a time of sorrow, a country pastor told him “Think of the present imperfect. Be emptying your hopes of everythingbut hope. Figure it out. You will be okay.”
He remembers two years ago exactly, Driving back down Riverview, dazzled by sunlight slanting through a stand of cedars Like a fold of angels. But that was then. Now the rain has found its temperature. In the darkness graupel dances on his hood and in his lights, sparking in the darkness. He is drifting to the boy in the back seat of a Mercury, staring at the Christmas lights, his breath a halo on the glass, the soft voices of assurance. The snow becoming fire, becoming stars. He is thinking he will be okay.
A note to my distant friends: Lock 29 on the old Ohio & Erie Canal was actually an aqueduct that raised the canal boats above the bending stretch of the Cuyahoga River at the village of Peninsula, Ohio. Remnants of the old lock remain, and I have visited many times. For some reason, Lock 29 called to me as a site for this year’s poem. You might think it an odd place to seek hopefulness, but I have found all such places to appear odd choices, at least at first.
by Garrett Ormiston, GIS and Stewardship Specialist, Natural Areas Division, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
The Museum’s Natural Areas Program
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History is home to a unique conservation program which has protected some of the highest-quality natural sites in Northeast Ohio. This program, known as the Museum’s ‘Natural Areas Division’ was formally created in 1956 with the purchase of a portion of a small bog in Geauga County known as ‘Fern Lake Bog’. This preserve acquisition was conducted under the leadership of Museum Director William Scheele. The natural areas program has since grown to include more than 10,000 acres of land that have been conserved through either direct land purchase by the Museum, or through the purchase of conservation easements held over privately-owned land.
In total, the Museum has conserved 58 distinct nature preserves that are as far-flung as Kelleys Island and the Huron River watershed to the west, the Ohio-Pennsylvania line to the east, and the Akron-Canton metropolitan area to the south. These preserves contain a plethora of different habitat types that are wide-ranging and include peat bogs and fens, glacial alvar, forested wetlands, and sand barrens. Indeed, each preserve is a unique example of a particular habitat with distinct plant communities that existed naturally within our region before European settlement.
Natural Areas of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. Map by Garrett Ormiston.
The Museum is very focused in its mission to conserve sites that contain unique habitat or that harbor rare species. In Ohio, rare species are listed as endangered, threatened, or potentially-threatened based on the number of populations in the State. The Museum’s program is unique in that its conservation efforts are largely steered by the research and inventory work conducted by the Museum’s staff. For instance, inventory data that is collected from field surveys conducted by the Museum’s various departments is compiled in Ohio’s Heritage Database which is managed by the Ohio Division of Wildlife. It is the data from this Heritage Database that helps determine which species are considered ‘rare’ in the State, as opposed to species that might simply be overlooked or not studied. Indeed, a rare species list is only as good as the data that is fed in to it, and the Museum is the main contributor in Northeast Ohio to the State’s Heritage Database. It is true that the Museum’s collections and research are literally driving its conservation efforts in Northeast Ohio.
The Museum ramped up its conservation efforts significantly around 1980 under the leadership of its Curator of Botany and Director of Natural Areas, Dr. James Bissell. Between 1980 and 2005, The natural areas program more than doubled in size. And between 2006 and the present, the program has more than doubled a second time. Over the last year, the Museum has seen the acquisition of several important tracts of land, which are described in detail below.
Expansion of the Mentor Marsh Preserve
One of the Museum’s oldest natural areas is the Mentor Marsh Preserve which is dedicated as a State Nature Preserve in Ohio. This 780-acre preserve was once a sprawling swamp forest system. Rich silver maple-dominated swamp flats and vernal pools covered the landscape, interspersed with small areas of open water, and emergent wetlands dominated by Greater bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum), a species that was likely one of the largest components of emergent wetlands in our region before invasive species like narrow-leaf cattail and canary grass became dominant.
The Museum took ownership of Mentor Marsh in 1965 after a grassroots effort to conserve the site was carried out between 1960 and 1965. The Museum owns the site through a combination of a land transfer and a long-term leasing arrangement with the State of Ohio.
Unfortunately, the biological integrity of Mentor Marsh was dramatically altered in 1966 with the influx of salt contamination from an adjacent site. The water in Mentor Marsh became excessively saline, and caused the trees within the swamp forest to perish and to be replaced by a nearly 800-acre monoculture of giant reed grass (Phragmites australis), a non-native invasive grass that is salt tolerant, spreads quickly and aggressively, and can reach heights of more than 15 feet in a single season, displacing all manner of native vegetation. What was once a diverse ecosystem was transformed in to a landscape dominated by a single invasive species.
Since 2015, the Museum has been engaged in an ambitious project to rid Mentor Marsh of the invasive Phragmites, and to restore the site to native vegetation. This effort has been led by Museum Restoration Specialist, Dr. David Kriska, and has involved the aggressive treatment and removal of the Phragmites at the site, as well as the planting of native plant plugs and seed mixes to re-establish native vegetation. While the site may never return to the swamp forest it once was, the Museum envisions the 800-acre marsh basin returning to a rich diversity of native wetland plants including swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata), and Greater bur-reed (Sparganium eurycarpum), among other species.
Native plants being planted at Mentor Marsh after Phragmites removal. Photo by Dr. David Kriska.
At the start of the restoration project at Mentor Marsh, the Museum did not own the entire marsh basin. This created a problem in that large swaths of the marsh were still under private ownership. Those areas would not have been able to be included in the Phragmites removal efforts. The Museum addressed this problem through a combination of land acquisitions and management agreements with private owners within the marsh that allowed for invasive species treatment of the entire Mentor Marsh basin.
Sections of the marsh were seeded by a helicopter with a mix of native plant species. Photo by Dr. David Kriska.
In July 2018, the Museum purchased the 25-acre Fredebaugh Property in the southeast section of the marsh basin, a site that extended out in to the Mentor Marsh basin. This property purchase was funded through a grant from the State of Ohio’s Clean Ohio program. At the same time the Museum acquired a 20-acre conservation easement in the far-western section of the Marsh basin.
Consolidating the Museum’s land ownership of the marsh basin through such acquisitions is the best way to insure that the Museum is able to manage the site in the long-term. If isolated stands of invasive Phragmites are allowed to persist in the marsh basin, they will remain a seed source that will allow continued invasion in to the preserve.
The Windsor Woods Preserve
In August 2018, the Museum purchased an additional 572 acres of land at its Windsor Woods Preserve, creating a sprawling 643-acre preserve nestled in the heart of the Grand River lowlands region. This purchase was funded through two grants, one from the State’s Water Resource Restoration Sponsorship Program (WRRSP), and a second grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission through the Clean Ohio program. The WRRSP grant was utilized as matching funds towards the Clean Ohio grant. The Museum had worked to protect Windsor Woods for more than 10 years, and had engaged in discussions with various landowners over the years before finally sealing the deal this year.
Large beaver-flooded open water wetland at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.
The ‘lowlands’ region of the Grand River watershed is a wild place, where the Grand River and its many tributaries weave in great arcs within the flat valley. Historic meanders of the Grand River eventually transform in to ‘oxbow’ channel ponds, which provide outstanding breeding habitat for many amphibian species. The preserve is home to at least 11 different species of salamanders and frogs. Some of the old channels of the Grand River are now high-quality peat wetlands and the preserve harbors a population of the native wild calla (Calla palustris) that grows within one of these peat systems. Beavers have also exerted a heavy influence on the landscape at Windsor Woods. Through the building of dams, beavers have engineered expansive open water wetland areas, and have contributed to the habitat diversity at the site.
Wild Calla at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.
The Grand River frequently breaches its banks in this part of the Grand River lowlands which can lead to large sections of the preserve being temporarily inundated with flood waters, and can even necessitate the closing of certain roads in the area due to flooding. Visiting the preserve at different times of year can therefore provide very different landscape views.
Windsor Woods is also unique in that it is situated in a large block of land that is absent of any major roadways. The Museum’s preserve is located in the interior areas of this swamp forest block and is largely buffered from the influx of invasive species that often invade preserves from roadways. The Museum certainly envisions continued expansion of this preserve in the future if the opportunity should present itself.
Swamp Forest at the Windsor Woods Preserve. Photo by Trish Fox.
The Minshall Alvar Preserve on Kelleys Island
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History has a long history of conservation work on Kelleys Island, located in the western basin of Lake Erie. The Museum has a total of nine nature preserves on Kelleys Island presently, including several preserves with frontage on Lake Erie. Kelleys Island is essentially a large limestone block in the middle of the lake, and it is home to many limestone-loving plant species that are not common in the Cleveland area, and are typically more prevalent in areas west of our region. The topsoil layer on Kelleys Island is very thin, with a limestone rock substrate very close to the surface.
Alvar plant communities on the shore of Lake Erie at the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.
Limestone erratic on the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.
The Museum has long considered the Minshall Alvar property, located in a less-developed area in the northwest corner of the Island to be an important conservation target. Through a partnership with the Trust for Public Land, the Museum finally acquired the Minshall Alvar Preserve in October 2018. The Trust for Public Land (TPL) and the Museum secured funding from the Clean Ohio Conservation fund to purchase the property. The Minshall family generously provided the matching funds that were needed to be eligible for Clean Ohio funding in the form of a bargain sale of the land. The site harbors two globally-rare snakes including the Fox Snake and the Globally-imperiled Lake Erie Water Snake. The preserve’s plant communities are very diverse. Wave-splash alvar wetlands are present along the Lake Erie shoreline at the preserve, and unique microhabitats are perched atop large limestone blocks on the shoreline. The rare mountain rice (Piptatherum racemosum) is among the unique plants that are found on these limestone blocks at the preserve.
Sunken forest area in historically-quarried section of the Minshall Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.
Limestone Blocks on the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.
The preserve also protects the most mature forest present on Kelleys Island, a noteworthy forest dominated by hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), blue ash (Fraxinus quadrangulata), and honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos). And the honey locust at the preserve are not the thornless cultivars that we are used to seeing in our gardens! They are fully-adorned with long painful thorns that can be both ornamental and agonizing to the touch.
The Minshall Alvar Preserve also contains a formerly quarried area in the center of the property that is home to the State-endangered lakeside daisy (Tetraneuris herbacea). The Kelleys Island State Nature Preserve is located next to the Museum’s Minshall Alvar Preserve, and the lakeside daisy was re-introduced to the State-owned property in 1995, and it subsequently naturalized and spread to the Minshall property over time. More than 200 individual lakeside daisy plants were counted by Museum staff on the Minshall property in 2017. Unique switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) meadows and even shallow buttonbush wetlands are also present in the former quarry area, creating a diverse matrix of different plant communities. And shrublands dominated by Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) are also abundant at the preserve.
Lakeside Daisy (Tetraneuris heteracea) which has naturalized at the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Judy Semroc.
Switch-grass meadow in a historically-quarried section of the Minshall Alvar Preserve. Photo by Dave Vasarhelyi.
Saw Whet Owl in a Red Cedar on Kelleys Island. Photo by Judy Semroc.
Conclusion
The Museum is actively growing its network of nature preserves in Northeast Ohio. Its focus is on expanding existing preserves, especially when it results in the protection of entire wetland systems or other natural features, or when additional acquisitions can be useful from a preserve management perspective. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the Museum’s conservation work is encouraged to sign up for a field trip through the Museum’s website, www.cmnh.org. Several trips to Museum preserves are offered every month.
Sustainable Suburbia. It seems like an oxymoron. Yes, there are a few gem homes in the lower latitudes that have achieved just that, zeroing out their lives’ inputs and outputs without retreating to the remote country side.
Just think: how lavish and sustainable would the world be if everyone could live such a life? Yet I could find no model for this in northern climates: urban farms – yes, zero energy living – yes, but no combinations mooshed into the size of a suburban lot. I guess we can blame the cold.
It is a seemingly impossible challenge, therefore, naturally, I have to try with my small suburban home. First: as any good planner would do, I calculated the possibility. This is in order to keep God laughing (as the saying goes: Man plans, God laughs). Stark Brothers has a chart on fruit tree yields and, with some quick conversions from bushels to units I recognize in a grocery store, a semi-dwarf apple tree can yield approximately 1,000 apples.
Square foot gardening and permaculture also make high claims for sustainable living. Integrating those techniques and performing a cross- check between my comprehensive grocery list and their yield potential seems promising. Despite the north’s limitations on growing, my home landscape could produce almost everything I need except some very important staples: cinnamon, coffee, cocoa, beef, dairy, and cumin. Ok, maybe not very important, but those we are not willing to give up—yet anyway.
As for the rest of our home being sustainable, the calculations were simpler. Insulate the house, add window treatments, compost, recycle, redirect water for multiple uses and keep it on the property; investigate and balance solar, wind, and other types of electrical energy; reduce and refine our use patterns for low waste.
The biggest problem with the structural changes, such as the gobs of insulation that need to fill our attic is either money, time, or both The money can, I reason, be saved from the garden. I can generally expect an annual savings of at least $200 off of my annual veggies and berries. The time to install will come in winter when it is too cold to garden.
As my skill improves, my seed selections are refined, and my perennials begin to fruit, my savings increase.
In fact, it’s the rate of return that led me to the garden first. Rarely are investments found to have as high a gain as a garden managed by a knowledgeable gardener. Fertilizer can be free, if you know where to look. Because I have a low fertility soil I demand a lot from, I would need to do a lot of hustling to get enough free fertilizer to meet my demand. Since I already have a plate full of hustle, I supplement my free fertilizers with organic fertilizers.
Seed and plant stock can also be free. Look no further than your trash bin or compost pile. However, there are plants you may never meet at your grocery store that would fill both a niche in your diet and landscape. Thus, in order as much as possible, I decided to order some plants via catalog.
Most seed and plant sellers are happy to send you a free catalog. These are great antidepressants for bored gardeners frozen out of their hobby during winter and great learning tools for new gardeners about variety, timing, and the abundance of species available to us humans in a global world. Such plants as Hardy Kiwi, super sweet wild tomatoes, flowering bush cherries, currants, and more are all available to be mailed to your doorstep in spring.
I figured the $5/bareroot hazelnut bush was worth the $25 of fruit it would yield per year upon maturity. This reinvesting helps increase my annual gains in the garden, as long as a niche needs filling, and it is amazing how many niches there are! I guesstimate that by filling such niches I can save $200 more per year.
This is similar to building a business. The business is our food bill, utility bills, and our health. All which are monetized in our society and at rates that make this a “lucrative business.” The starting pay for any new business is, however very bad. There are one-time efforts and purchases that cost a lot with returns only to be seen years down the line. This being a sustainable business is no different. Fruit trees average three to five years to yield anything substantial, but require TLC every year.
The calculations I described thus far are about what is needed for a homestead outside the city. In the city there is another factor – aesthetics. Some cities require lawns or tell you “no vegetable gardens in your front yard”, or even more commonly, “no chickens.” We chose to live in a city without those rules, but we do not feel that gives us license to annoy our neighbors. Plus, the nicer sustainable gardening looks, the more likely it is to be adopted, making the whole city more sustainable, not just our backyard.
More research was needed on foliage color and shape, flower color, bloom time, fall foliage color, etc. As it turns out, since fruit come from flowers, most plants have an aesthetic element that makes them compatible with the average flower garden, accept maybe the tomato. Those small yellow flowers and well known fruit just shout “veggies here!” A maypop or echinacea, on the other hand, would camouflage into even the most stringent suburban landscape. All this research led me into the business of garden design and my Facebook page “Imitating Eden Garden Design.”
With the calculations complete, it was time to get cracking. That was four seasons ago, when we started turning a typical suburban lot to a food forest paradise. The transition continues with some good early results. We are sustainable in or nearly sustainable in: most herbs, onions, garlic, squash, wine, fresh tomatoes, salad greens, snap peas, rhubarb, and most berries. Our diet has changed. After 3 frustrating years trying to grow poppies, I found out broad leaf plantain has small edible seeds that could be used to decorate bread, like poppies or sesame. My celery always turned out stunted at best, so I substituted the more attractive—and still quite edible—prolific rhubarb.
My cooking now more resembles the show Chopped, than following Tollhouse’s chocolate chip cookie recipe.
The conclusion of this study is so far unknown. The data gathered has many positive indications. This recent harvest season has dropped our food bill, despite our growing family. Certainly, if nothing else, there are many lessons to be applied to a general northern city living which reduce the suburbanite foot print. I try to share these lessons on my Facebook page, through the volunteer-led gardens I run, my business, Permies.com and the occasional article or talk. I hope to publish more as the data arrives. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. My Facebook page has the details.
