Found Treasure

We have an interesting history with wintergreen, Gaultheria procumbens.  Early exploration of our newly purchased land revealed a large patch of this plant.  It was growing on a steep north facing slope.  Too steep to plow, the land had been used as pasture for dairy cows many decades ago.  Now wild berry briers made the area difficult to access.  Trying to do right by this native wildflower, I cleared the briers.  That winter hungry deer easily walked my newly cleared wild garden and feasted on the exposed wintergreen.  An occasional plant can still be found there but the briers returned with a vengeance.

Purchased plants have refused to grow for us.  Cuttings refused to root here.  Following our success transplanting arbutus, I have been thinking about giving wintergreen another go.  In the wild we have encountered the two plants growing in close proximity.

Taking advantage of our mild December weather, I have been clearing my side of the shared lane.  Today I discovered a large patch of wintergreen growing under the protective cover of black birch branches that had been thrown over my fence by a lane user.  I usually resent people throwing things over my fence but these branches appear to have provided protective cover for the wintergreen.  As I did a proper job of cutting back the brush, additional branches were carefully placed over the wintergreen.  Easy to drive to, we will make frequent trips here to see and record the life cycle of these wild plants.

Both Henry W. Art and William Cullina describe wintergreen as a suitable plant to introduce into the garden.  Stem and runner cuttings should be taken early in the year while the growth is still soft advises Art.  Perhaps my cuttings were taken a bit late.  Rather than trying to force these plants into cultivation, maybe I should be content to enjoy them where they are.  A native plant deserves a wild home.

In my readings I encountered a tale describing pioneer women as sipping wintergreen wine at quilting bees.  Unable to remember the author describing this practice, I cannot get the experience out of my head.  Wintergreen wine must be a real taste treat.  How could it be anything less?  Early in our history wintergreen must have been a common plant.  I cannot imagine a stand of this plant so vast  that would supply the buckets of leaves necessary to make wine.   Perhaps this is what they mean when referring to the good old days.

Winter Walk

With the garden frozen hard and covered with snow, Ed gets his required time outside by walking the perimeter of our thirty-six acres.  This moss covered glacial erratic lies near a neighbor's field.  Its companion tree is a black birch that is now large enough to tap.  Making birch syrup has long held a fascination for us.  We have reduced maple sap to syrup by boiling but have never tried the same process with birch trees.  An outdoors man friend of my father reported several unsuccessful attempts to tap birch trees.  He could never get the sap to run.  I have since read that the time to tap birch trees is after the taps are pulled from the maples.  Birch sap does not start to run as early as maple sap.  One tree does not a sap line make so this tree is likely safe from the tapping drill.

This rock always reminds me of Scott Nearing.  He built a woodland study atop a similar rock.  My rock is not large enough to support an office.  Peeling off the rough surface could be easily done but what would I do with the birch tree.  This tree will never see the rock cutting chisel attack its anchorage.
  

We have lost several trees that grew on the edge of our field adjacent to the bedrock ledge.  Here the trees roots were restricted to a few inches of soil overlaying the rock ledge.  Abundant water moving above the ledge also kept the tree roots shallow.  A strong wind has little difficulty throwing such trees to the ground.  Mother nature will have to clean up this mess.  We have neither the necessary tools nor the will to tackle a job of this proportion.

Here is a recent picture taken from almost the same location as the first picture in the last post.  When we first obtained the land I had serious reservations about placing our new house so that it looked into the raw edge of this glacial terrace.  Time without grazing livestock has allowed trees to grow here.  Now our house faces a wooded slope.  Some selective cutting would improve the developing structure of these trees.  Cutting some of these trees would make a decent winter task.