The new year started off with an unseasonal day – almost 40 degrees and sunshine. By now we would be expecting things to be encased in ice or some amount of snow, and the garden thoughts would be reserved for browsing seed catalogs and planning the spring.
Not that there is a lack of yard work to tend to – the yard is a mess with leaves and downed branches everywhere still. On a positive note all trees and shrubs were planted (I usually end up overwintering many plants as I don’t get them in the soil before first frost), but additional work was needed to secure the saplings from rabbits, and I have been wrapping them in wire cages. There has been no shortage of these grazing herbivores all of this past year, but the real damage is being done now as the feeding options are reduced to young bark and stems.
While the nesting season is a few months out for most bird species, there is some activity already with a tufted titmouse pair investigating housing options by visiting some of the several nesting boxes I have throughout the garden. Some are occupied with mice and in one box, flying squirrels, but there are plenty of empty ones that never saw activity last year. I guess optimizing nest box utilization is something I still need to figure out – at most 25-30% of the nest boxes are being used by song birds, year to year.
Rather than catching up on the many yard related tasks, we kicked off the new year with a walk around Cliff Pond in Nickerson Park in Brewster. We had not done this since last winter and it is a beautiful part of the Cape. This time of year you don’t run into crowds, and you can easily observe the many highbush blueberry and winterberry shrubs, which would be missed when everything else is in leaf. I was surprised to see the water being so low, despite there being plenty of rain this year. The shoreline has extended another 30 feet or so and is 3-5 feet below what I have observed in the past. I have visited and fished this kettle pond for at least 20 years and while there are always some changes, this seems to be a drastic difference from past visits. I wonder if the continued (and accelerated) development on Cape Cod is starting to affect the water table – we all share one aquifer after all.
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