Raleigh Nature

 I remember the day in my high school years when they closed Lassiter Mill bridge.  It was old time rickety but somehow made it to modern Raleigh - the 1970s- before being closed and then destroyed.  I had conscientiously driven my 68 VW carefully over the twin tracks several times, fully aware I was testing out a soon-to-be piece of history.  The iron on the right is part of the original bridge structure - iron and wood, and a thing of beauty it was.  That bridge gave off an air of classic American architecture of a century past, and was fun to drive across as well, following old Lassiter Mill Road off of the new one.

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The site was originally called the “Great Falls of Crabtree” and was used by succesive mills starting about 1780, a decade before Raleigh’s creation.  Cornelius Lassiter purchased it in 1908 and built two 40-horse turbine wheels to mill grain and lumber.  It burned in 1959, but the family continued to make use of the property until current times.

Well-heeled homes now surround the entire site, but the area south of dam and lower pool, and downstream to (the new) Lassiter Mill Road, constitutes a small city park.  There are picnic tables, a canoe put-in, and truly fine fishing - I have watched fly fisherman work below and above the dam many times.  This is the spot where the city animal control folks bring misplaced snapping turtles for release - I’ve seen them wrestle some real monsters out of their truck.  The fishing is also perfect for young ones, as my own can attest.  Dorian’s first small-mouth bass came from just below the tailrace, and he had the enormous satisfaction, not only of helping to clean, cook, and eat it, but make his sister sick to her stomach as well.  Below is his lucky fishing hole.

You can also put a boat in very easily just off the cul-de-sac, and paddle your way as far upstream toward Crabtree Valley as the downed trees and water levels will let you. The deep water above the dam is like a linear lake right through the backyards of million dollar homes. As the water get shallower, you start to see some really nice slate deposits on the banks and realize you have climbed  out of East Raleigh’s muddy ditch sections of Crabtree and gotten into some cool Raleigh Belt geology. This reminds us that Lassiter Mill literally and precisely marks the Fall Line in central Raleigh. I’ll run pictures of that trip this summer.

This is the deep water above the dam.  Dams like Lassiter Mill present a problem for migrating fish and the mussels dependent on them for reproduction (a long story we’ll get into sometime).  Someday we may make an ecological choice to remove the dam.  I will miss the easy canoe trip, but I understand the value of unencumbered stretches of water.  Amazing to think of all the gristmills (and dams) that used to dot the Raleigh area - road names alone give you some idea - Lassiter, Edwards, Yates, Ligon, etc.  A future gem of a post will explore the remains of the small mill still visible in Fallon Park.  We used to live closer to nature - but we also exploited nature in ways we have given up.

 A sitarist at downtown’s Earth Day festivities and Sunday night’s rainbow.

Flower Power!!  Here are some local beauties to follow up on the Asheville post.

 Henbit at Lassiter Mill.  Leaves can be just as pretty as petals.

front yard volunteers. bluebells of a sort? 

Lady Banks blossom on ferns

Buttercups beside Hodges Road

Atamasca Lily stand on Buckeye Trail.

Happy Spring, Katie & Russ!

  Spring flowers have a great strategy.  They produce blooms and reproduce before the trees grow back their leaves.  At risk for late frosts, they usually can survive them and take advantage of the light coming through still bare trees.  After the greening in, they use their green foliage to gather dappled light the rest of the summer.

Above, roadside beauties. Below are specimen flowers from the Botanical Gardens at Asheville, which is adjacent to the UNC-A campus. It provides a wonderful spot for students and faculty, but also a haven for 700 plant species, and a myriad of micro habitats, from old growth forest to rocky outcrops and a natural seep.  It is open year-round from sunrise to sunset and includes a Botany Center.

                                                       Virginia Bluebells        Mayapples at seep        Skunk cabbage

The campus itself is a wonderland of blossoming trees in April.

 Photo tour of Asheville in spring

         60 gallon                  80 gallon                overflow hose           grateful garden frog

I mentioned this upcoming post in the last one and got a welcome comment from Barry whose website seems to show excellent, enlightened (and educational) work in the field.  There has been a LOT of local stir about rain barrels for obvious reasons.  I’m glad the stage 2 restriction annoyances finally prodded me to go pick up a couple on my spring break.  I am NOT handy and always too busy, so I eschewed the various kits I had heard about and drove 3 minutes down the road to buy them from the city at old Devereux Meadows. This large site at Capital Boulevard and Peace Street (the scene of minor league baseball games in my youth), which holds the trash truck parking and the salt barn, also has the Solid Waste Services office, where you can buy rain barrels in 2 sizes as seen above.  We like these green monsters but want a more narrow and elegant version to go at the base of our back steps, where we now catch a few gallons with a big blue tub.

   Like sun-dried laundry  and comfortable lawn chairs, you can’t let “funky” worry you when you are trying to catch some rain water.  Heck , before we bought these babies - you can see I haven’t even hooked them up to the gutters yet ( they have filled mostly up just with the splashy overflow)- I was setting out empty papermaking buckets on the steps below our leaky gutter.  It has been a challenging few months for gardeners.

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Raleigh City make-your-own workshops:

http://www.raleigh-nc.org/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_415_209_0_43/http%3B/pt03/DIG_Web_Content/news/public/News-PubAff-Parks_and_Recreation_Off-20080313-16193542.html

Rain Water Solutions, Inc.
919.835.1699   http://www.rainwatersolutions.com/

$50 barrels offered (how to get I’m not sure) from this interesting but apparently inactive Raleigh ecological weblog: http://greenerhabitsforraleigh.blogspot.com/

starter info on larger systems: http://www.triangle.com/185/story/20095.html

Hey, let me know the info and we’ll post it!  Happy showers!

I believe the parent/predecessors of this green frog came to us in a large potted water plant from that amazing aquarium store on west Hillsborough.  We have bullfrogs in the turtle pond at the top of the yard (see below), but these smaller, more active individuals inhabit the unfenced pond at the bottom of our garden. Although we do bring in a few tadpoles each year as live treats for the turtles or general pondwater/biota  additions, I consider these frogs to be voluntary residents and a compliment to the micro-ecosystems we try to maintain in our sloped Oakwood backyard.  Below is this frog’s view of our garden.

Below is a bullfrog peering into the ivy that rings our pond turtle grotto.  Bullfrogs have larger ear spots and usually green noses and no small spots.  But you get such furtive looks at them they are hard to identify with total confidence. One reference I use a lot is Dorothy Hugh’s wonderful nature website.  She is honest about the difficulty and ambiguity of amateur sitings, and yet goes ahead and provides excellent information in a beautiful format.  Her page on frogs is a great example of comprehensive, efficient tools for comparision of the surprisingly varied but similar species present in the area.

Below are more garden images from this rainy spring break. I didn’t go canoeing above Lassiter Mill with my buddy Clyde as I had planned.  You can check out some preliminary photos, but the mill post will have to wait.  Our brand new rain barrels are definitely up next! Buy yours soon.

The equinox on Thursday and the warm weather have us all thinking about getting out into the dirt - right?  Maybe your kid doesn’t like to get out and garden with you.  Consider sending them to the Green River Preserve this summer.  This environmental camp for rising second through ninth graders, with expedition programs for all high schoolers, is located on several thousand acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  They have an outstanding program.  They also promote a book, Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv, which centers on a concept to consider: nature-deficit disorder, which can affect any of us if we’re not careful.  Plant those seeds, take that walk, mount that expedition!  Have a great one!

 The flowery driveway of a street that edges Fletcher Park. This time of year, it’s one of the prettiest sights in central Raleigh. You can glimpse the new construction on the right.  More about that below.

The Fletcher water garden project is really moving along and needs more coverage. One of the primary functions of the water garden will be to capture, slow and filter the water from this drainage as it makes its way down to Pigeon House Creek, across the railroad tracks by Capital Boulevard.  There are plenty of other tributaries to that troubled creek that need help more than this heavily wooded glen, but it definitely will provide some much-needed quality control.  We will watch this project carefully, and use it as an entrance to the many issues surrounding Pigeon House Creek.