First Flight

I'm pretty certain this is one of the young house sparrows who was raised in our blue bird boxes. He can only fly a few dozen feet before having to land and rest.

This weekend I am putting in a concerted effort to get the garden planted. Between having had lots of rain and being away last weekend and feeling very fatigued in general, the garden has been sorely neglected. Other then 2 rows of raspberries, a dozen rhubarb plants, and a handful of kale plants (which the chickens seem to think I planted just for them!), I haven't gotten anything planted yet. I ended up canceling my order for fruit trees and strawberry plants due to the fatigue I have been feeling. I didn't want them to sit and die since I haven't been feeling up to heavy duty work. Hopefully this fall I will get places prepared for them so when I get my order next spring I can just stick them in ground.

The other reason I haven't really touched the garden is because, what energy I have has been used to pull garlic mustard. Our woods are full of that invasive plant. I've always known that it chokes out native wild flowers and isn't something you want to have around, but after reading about it here, my husband I and went into full attack mode on the garlic mustard. We are combing every inch of the woods and pulling every single blooming plant. We have one more section of woods to work on. Hopefully that will be done this week.

It is going to be a battle waged over several years though as there is no way we can pull every tiny seedling this spring. In some places the forest floor is thickly carpeted with the seedlings. Also the seeds can live in the soil for up to 5 years, so even if we don't let a single plant go to seed (which is our goal), we will still be pulling plants for the next five years.

From the MSU website...
Garlic mustard impacts
Sites invaded by garlic mustard tend to have low diversity of plants growing on the forest floor and it is widely believed that garlic mustard infestations displace native plants. Researchers in Ohio experimentally removed garlic mustard from a forest understory and documented subsequent increases in the richness and abundance of annuals and woody perennials including tree seedlings. Garlic mustard out-competes some tree seedlings, including chestnut oak (Quercus prinus), which could affect forest regeneration over time. Several compounds isolated from garlic mustard were shown to depress growth of both grasses and herbs in laboratory experiments. Researchers concluded that release of these compounds from garlic mustard root systems might account for its dominance in forest ecosystems. Others have suggested that such compounds might also disrupt mutually beneficial relationships between plant roots and certain fungi in the soil, known as mycorrhizal associations. Like many of its close relatives, garlic mustard does not establish mycorrhizal associations. These fungi are used by most North American forest ground layer plants and are critical for nutrient and water uptake in many trees.

Garlic mustard appears to alter habitat quality for several species of salamanders and molluscs through changes in forest litter layer depth and composition. Insect communities are also impacted by the presence of garlic mustard. The native woodland butterfly Pieris napi oleraceae, utilizes the native toothworts Cardamine concatenata [Dentaria laciniata] and C. [Dentaria] diphylla, which produce the chemical attractant sinigrin. This compound is also present in garlic mustard. Because garlic mustard grows taller than the native hosts, in mixed stands the butterflies can mistakenly lay their eggs on garlic mustard where their larvae are unable to develop. The impacts of garlic mustard on vertebrates are largely unknown, however, ground foraging birds, amphibians and reptiles may be impacted by changes in habitat quality.

Garlic mustard smells delicious--just like its name. I read that it was brought over as a culinary herb from Europe. I tried cooking with it once, but have to say that is smells a better than it tastes. I found even the very young plants to be very bitter, even with repeated boiling in fresh water. (And I'm someone who love the bitterness of the endive, dandelions, and even yellow rocket.)