Mowing Strip

This has been a busy week, largely away from blogging.  On Tuesday I was all excited about spring, picturing an Eastern Redbud tree and a wren house, saying:

Well, the three essential ingredients of spring have hit here: the Eastern Redbuds are in full bloom, and I think the House Wrens have returned from their winter down south somewhere.  Oh, and number 3 is spring work projects, not pictured here.

Well, here's one of many spring projects:

Image credits Gary

I do a lot of dry stone walls on our estate, owing  to an abundance of both limestone and slope.  Another application is what I call a "mowing strip," pictured above, in which I edge a flower bed with flat stones sunk to ground level.  The stones are 4" to 6" wide, and the depth doesn't matter since you sink them flat.  

You could use bricks, too (or anything flat) if you have them.  The objective is to create a barrier so your grass cannot creep into the flower bed.  In the bed pictured above, the grass could not execute a vertical leap of a couple feet to reach the bed, but I do mowing strips around all my ground-level beds as well, with good results.

When cutting grass you simply put the wheels of the mower on the mowing strip and can largely avoid having to weedwhack the edges.  I weedwhack perhaps once a month during the summer, and occasionally do a judicious application of Roundup to suppress any weeds that do creep into the mowing strip.

Spring Harbingers...and Ultrarunnning

Image credit Gary

Well, the three essential ingredients of spring have hit here: the Eastern Redbuds are in full bloom, and I think the House Wrens have returned from their winter down south somewhere.  Oh, and number 3 is spring work projects, not pictured here.

I thought I heard one (a house wren) singing yesterday but have not confirmed that today...yet.  If not today, any day now.  We have a number of houses like the one pictured scattered around the estate, so they'll have their pick.  I like this one because the license plate roof came from my dear departed co-worker Dottie, and I always think of here whenever I walk by this particular wren house.

I wonder how they compete with the Carolina Wren, which we had overwinter here in 2014-15?

The connection to Ultrarunning is that I gotta get out for a backcountry run soon to see how the woodland flora are coming on.

First Iris in my Water Garden

Yesterday my first iris bloomed in my water garden. And the house wrens arrived (see previous anticipatory post, here).

Later when Mister Tristan heads off with Mommy, I’ll go for a run.

What a wonderful day!

Pappy's License Plate

I built this wren house from old chestnut boards from my grandfather-in-law's farm, and used his 1958 Pennsylvania license plate as the roof. (photo by Gary)


The house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) should be arriving any day now from their winter stay. They are a critter of edges, so I will encounter them along my typical rural road runs, along the C+O Canal, but not usually along the Appalachian Trail. They are not a deep woods critter.

One of the reAsons I love this tiny dynamo of feathers is that the males and the females are indistinguishable from one another, and share nest duties equally.  And can they ever sing—a sweet, melodic burst of sound that seems too large to come from this tiny little bird. My Audubon Society field guide calls it “…a gurgling, bubbling, exuberant song….”

The bride and I eagerly await this time of year, to see who will be the first to say, "The wrens are back."  Then we know that the earth, and us upon it, have sucessfully turned another year.

Photo credit here