Hi, everybody. This is Joe Lample, the Joe behind Joe Gardner, and welcome to The Joe Gardner Show. Today, I am very excited to be joined by Paula Wyman, the author of The Bad Naturalist. One Woman's Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop. What an intriguing title. That certainly hooked me right from the start, and I'm glad it did. This, her latest book, chronicles her efforts to restore
200 acres of former farmland in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's part memoir, natural history and conservation science. In this deeply personal and reflective journey. Paula examines what it truly means to coexist harmoniously with the land, drawing lessons from both its resilience and its resistance. Now, with recognition to the fact that a 200-acre mountaintop property is more than most of us can relate to,
Many of her challenges are still very relevant to those of us trying to tame and naturalize even a small urban backyard. Paula's book takes us deep into her struggle. chronicling her efforts to tame her land in an environmentally responsible way while working to remove invasives and restore that land with natives. But, as she soon discovered, nature doesn't always cooperate.
And being a good naturalist isn't as simple as it sounds. And we'll talk about what inspired Paula to write this book, the hurdles that she faced along the way, and what lessons she learned, both from the land and from herself. And of course, we'll explore... where she stands today, and what work remains unfinished. I found it to be a fascinating, thought-provoking conversation, so let's get into it. And as we do, thanks to our sponsors for today's episode, Soil Cubed and Milorganite.
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Well, Paula, I have to say I've had a lot of fun reading your book. And the compliment here, in addition to that, is when I have it on my nightstand as my... Last thing I do before I go to bed, it's not to help me fall asleep, but it's my treat to myself to get that time to really enjoy a good read for that, you know, 30 minutes or so before I sign off for the day.
So that's the cherry on the ice cream sundae or the icing on the cake to my day when I get to do that. And your book was what I was able to do that with over the past week or two. And I love it. It's such a fun book. And your story is incredible. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. So before we get into my questions, thank you for being here, for writing the book. And I'm really looking forward to our talk today.
Well, thank you so much. That is obviously so wonderful to hear. I'm glad you're enjoying it, and I'm really glad to be here talking with you. Thank you. When you started off the book, I think you had been working on another writing project. You had a change in plans and you decided that what you were going through in the moment really was probably a really good idea that you should capitalize on with a book. Is that how that went down? Yes, I was working on a novel.
that I'd been working on for a while. But I was so preoccupied with this mountaintop project. And in a way that I have to be when I'm writing, I have to be completely obsessed with whatever it is I'm, I'm writing. And that's how I was with the meadow restoration. I was so into that. I completely forgot. I couldn't even tell you now what.
I was writing before what that novel was about. And I thought, okay, this clearly, it was a few months into the work on the mountain. And clearly this has to be what I'm writing about because I can't think about anything else. There's just nothing else.
is going to be possible. I don't know how you could have thought about anything else. And we'll get into your story now because it's so interesting what you took on. You didn't know what you were in for. There's no way you could have known what you were in for.
But that's a big part of the story, which I really love. But then you have some very good takeaways we're going to get into too, based on some things that you had to deal with and confront and how you were going to manage those challenges. And that's all part of the book. So those are some of the pages I want to kind of turn and unfold as we get there. But before we do, Paula, your background, your story of how you ended up on this mountain.
You can start where you want, but it's always fun to learn a little bit about the person that we're listening to and conversing with as we get to that essence of what we're talking about today. Well, sure. What happened was my husband and I had been searching for a place in the country, the proverbial place in the country for many years. It was a plan and a fantasy at the same time. You know, we had kids. We were raising our kids.
It just never seemed like exactly the right time until maybe six years ago, around 2018, 2019, we started looking again in earnest. And we especially liked this area, this part of Virginia. the northern Blue Ridge. So we were focused on that area. And we were looking for a small farmhouse.
My husband's an Eagle Scout. He loves hiking and fishing and all of that. And he wanted a place where he could do that. And he also loves gardening. So he was very interested in doing that wherever we ended up. And I wanted to... raise a few sheep, have a small field. And I wanted to plant a vegetable garden, a raised bed garden. And so we were looking in this area, we were looking for a small property.
With a farmhouse. And at the same time, I had started reading about the importance of native plants. And especially for, you know, pollinators, for bees and birds and... Butterflies in general for wildlife. I had read Isabella Tree's book, Wilding, about how she allowed her farm, her 3,000 plus acre farm in England to go back to nature.
And I had read Doug Tallamy's Nature's Best Hope and learned about his homegrown national park movement, about bringing native plants back to your suburban lawn. And of course, I was living in the suburbs for most of this time. I've lived in the city. uh, for many years. And then I lived in the suburbs for many years. And so I had all that in mind and I thought, well, wherever we go, I'm going to do my part. I'm going to plant a small native meadow wherever we end up.
you know, there with my vegetable garden and I'll put my little writing shed in the middle of this meadow. And I'll watch, you know, the flowers shifting in the breeze and the birds flying, singing around me. And it'll just be very like ridiculously delusional. Yeah, perfect. Romantic, right? So then we we were looking for this farmhouse and someone said.
you've got to go see the view on this mountain while you're in the area. You really need to see this view. It's not like anything else in the area. You need to come up there and see it. So we're like, okay, okay. So we were looking at some other things in the area, and it was the middle of August.
It was very hot. You know what it's, I mean, it's Virginia in the middle of August and the, uh, road which i'm doing air quotes right now the road was um not finished it was gravel at the bottom and as you got further along it was just rocks and roots it just hadn't been maintained in a very long time so it was not
a road anymore it was a trail yeah so we walked up this steep um i always get confused between like 20 grade or 20 20 degree i don't know it was very steep yeah and and We walked up about a mile and we got to this open area. But it wasn't really open because it was just this, we were on this narrow mode path that wound its way amid all of these six foot plus tall.
flowers and this dense growth that surrounded us all along this path, these yellow flowers that I didn't know what they were. And we got up to this high point and looked out and there was rolling hills, steep slopes. open meadow as far as I could see with all of these six foot tall yellow flowers and so much else and the bees are buzzing by you know hitting me in the head just ignoring me and I thought I had a
tiny meadow in mind. And now I'm looking out at what turned out to be 75, 80 acres of open meadow on top of a mountain. And the whole property is around 200 acres. And, you know, it was about... 130 acres of forested slopes, and then the rest of this very unusual open meadow. And I thought, what, you know, I was feeling like my small meadow plan was just too small. And what could I do with a place like this? Even though I forgot in the moment that...
I'd always been really passionate about nature. I'd been the kid, you know, digging holes, looking for insects, letting them crawl on me and collecting them and watching ants with a magnifier and all that. But I didn't really know much about plants. I had, you know, really bad experiences gardening. I was bad at it. My husband was the partner. Yeah, you got him. So, yeah. And I didn't even know where to start. But meanwhile, in the moment, I thought...
I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do this. And my husband was over there thinking for his own reasons, wow, this landscape, I'm never going to see anything like this. I can make trails in the woods. I can hike. I can blah, blah. So he was coming at it from a totally different perspective. We both came to the same conclusion, which was, this is where we want to be. But there's no house. There's no water. There's no power. One minor detail.
Yeah. That's your first visit. And both of you are on the same page and you're like, let's do this. And next thing you know, you're the proud owner of 200 acres of crazy mountaintop with meadows. Tall six foot yellow flowers. Yeah. And I think probably both of us thinking on many occasions.
uh, this was a crazy thing to do. What were we thinking? And the question there, did you have any moments where sort of panic attacks are like, Oh, I mean, second guessing yourself before you close on the deal. second, third, fourth, lots of guessing. In fact, it took about six months for the deal to close and not because, I mean, we were ready. We were ready.
we were we were going to do it we had decided even despite the second guessing but there were just all kinds of logistical issues and it was the middle of the pandemic so yes that was part of it but uh but yeah so it was about six months before we actually took
possession of the property. All right. So now you have the property, but you're obviously, unless you're camping full-time, you're living somewhere else. At that point, yes. Yes. You've closed, you own the property now, and your vision is... turning in your head, I would imagine. What do you do first? Take us through the steps of how this all went down once you owned it and you're trying to make your dream a reality. Well, the very first thing.
that I thought I needed to do was to figure out what was here, to understand the place. And the very first question I had started that first day. when we walked up and I saw all of these gigantic yellow flowers. I didn't know what they were. The person who brought us up there said they were weeds and called them stickweed.
So I went home, I did all this research, and all of the research I came up with agreed with what he said, that there were weeds. And then at some point, something made me question my question. Like the way I was asking the question was somehow wrong. And I thought, well, how is it that these are all growing?
so well here. This used to be a cattle pasture. It had been a cow pasture for about 40 years. Before that, it was an orchard for about 150 years. So it had all the plants that were left from those endeavors, plus some native plants, plus... invasive plants. So how do I know, you know, no one's, nothing's telling me this is an invasive flower. So how is it? A weed, exactly. So that's when I decided to look up native plants, and I understood.
that it was a native wildflower, and that, yes, if you have cattle, you don't want it in the middle of your pasture because they can't eat it, but if you have... a meadow that you want to make into a native meadow and you want to encourage native plants. It's good for native bees. It's good for birds. It's good for all kinds of pollinators.
and all kinds of wildlife. So it's not a bad thing to have. You might not want it in a small garden because it's an aggressive plant, but in a place like this, it's great. Um, so that was the first thing that happened. I sort of, I'm a deep diver. I've always been that way. I sort of latch onto something and I won't let go until I learn as much as I can about it. And the first thing was that plant yellow crown beard. Okay.
flower. I don't know Latin names of things. This is one way you know that I'm a terrible gardener. That was the first thing that I learned about. And, you know, all my life I've had these deep dive things like everything from horseshoe crabs to lizards to carpenter bees. I've become sort of obsessed with at times. And my deep dive.
for the rest of my life is going to be this mountain. So that was where I started. And there's an organization, well, the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute here in Virginia has... a state organization called Virginia Working Landscapes, and they are interested in finding out what species, plant and bird species, what's living in the area, so that they can sort of...
base their research around those numbers and figure out what's happening with various species and what's in decline and so on. So I found out about that program and I contacted them to see if they would want to do a study on the mountain. And sure enough, they came out that first spring. I think we settled in March.
on the place and i think they were out here before the end of march it was really quick they did a plant survey and a bird survey so then i had lists like a foundation list so i could know you know what the dominant native plants were, what the non-native plants were, what birds were here that were It wasn't an exhaustive list, but it was a great start. And the next thing I did was the person who did the plant survey is...
to me, like a plant guru. She's one of those people who just, she can recognize any plant even when it's dead. I love those people. Yeah. So she came out. and walked the meadow with me several times and pointed things out to me. And I would text her photographs and she would say, oh, that's such and such.
She got really excited when she found native field thistle in the meadow here, which now we have a lot of it. So that was how I started to learn about what was here. I love that. And you were so fortunate to have that resource.
So jumping on that opportunity for you, and then you're the benefactor of that to learn so much. And just, I want to say two things. One's a question. One's a comment. You said, because you didn't know the botanical names of these plants, that's why I'm not a good gardener. That's a disqualifier. You can't worry about knowing typical Latin to define your ability to be a gardener. So just put that.
in your head there. Thank you. I feel better. Yeah, no, that's okay. But I just want to make sure you know that and anybody listening thinking that whatever. But the question part of this was, I meant to ask you on the title of your book, Bad Naturalist. How did you arrive at that title? Well, in all honesty, my publisher chose that title. But the thing was, I had a title, my working title was pointed at the land.
And even though I knew this was a memoir, I was uncomfortable with writing about myself and really with the focus being on me. And their title, which was, it's really a great title. It's very apt. Their title points it at, you know, the person in a way before the land. I mean, I always say I'm trying to take the me out of memoir. I was uncomfortable with like having that attention on me. But at the same time, Bad Naturalist is so apt because when I started out, I...
Like I said, I really knew very little. I knew I had done a lot of reading in ecology and conservation. I had worked in various volunteer aspects all my life. I didn't know anything about plants, really. And for that reason, and also because of what I learned as I went along about conservation, about this process of...
encouraging native meadows, that everything is a trade-off. And that wasn't something that I knew before. And that sort of made me feel like, again, with the air quotes, a bad naturalist, because... I'm doing something good at the same time I might sort of be doing something bad. And I have to choose. I hear you. And I think the title is very intriguing.
It's a hook. You want to read the book because what is a bad, who is this? Bad naturalist, what is that? And then the subtitle, One Woman's Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop. I mean, it makes you want to read the book. at least personally speaking. And I'm glad I did. But to that point about trying to consider the appropriateness of that title to you as a air quote, bad naturalist.
You know, I think in reading through this book, I think it would have been more appropriate to say good naturalist because you, before you acted on anything, as you said, you're a deep diver and you really resourced. every option you had to learn as much as you could before you made the decision on what you ended up doing. And you also weighed the unintended consequences of each of those actions is what I drew from this.
I tried. I tried very hard to do that. I didn't always succeed in making the right choice, apparently. But I did really try to do that. And I think this was an arena where I'm a person who tends to ask a lot of questions. And this is an arena where I was allowed to ask a lot of questions. I was encouraged and nobody got tired. of my questions, so that was nice. And what would happen when Virginia Working Landscapes came out and I met them.
then they would recommend that I speak with someone at another organization. And that's how I had this sort of domino effect or web of organizations that I discovered were all here to help people like me. were looking for that kind of information and it was really really wonderful the number of people who I felt like I really got an education on the ground because I had conservation biologists, ornithologists, foresters, farmers, arborists, every expert you can think of.
botanists, horticulturists, and coming out and walking on the land with me. For free. Yeah, exactly. Now, no one wanted to treat invasive plants for me for free, unfortunately. Well, yeah. That was one of the big things that seemed to be the common... which is what I wanted to ask you about anyway. So as far as the flow of this conversation, that really is the point I wanted to go to next. As you had this cadre of academic resources showing up on your property and walking the land with you.
which I'm so jealous of, but I'm glad that worked out for you. It seemed as though from many pages in your book that you had... major challenges your uh your idea of just throwing out seed and having that meadow show up the next spring wasn't going to be until you did some groundwork literally and they were all telling you
or recognizing that you had a major invasive issue to deal with, but then the recommendations became a little bit varied and now it's up to you to try to understand your options and how to approach them. Yes. So I had a conservation biologist from NRCS who came out and sort of gave me a plan. And I was told that we had... native plants in the seed bank.
You could tell because we had native plants growing. And there were probably a lot of things that I wasn't seeing because they couldn't get to the light. They couldn't get the water. They were competing with all of these dense hay grasses, non-native fescue. and other grasses and these invasive plants. And so on the one hand, they would say, well, if you mow repeatedly, you could exhaust.
you know, maybe this kind of invasive plant. But you'd have to do it over a long period of time because there are annuals and there are a lot of seeds and they're going to keep coming back. Or you could spray the whole field. You know, which seemed a little, you know, I wasn't on board with that, at least initially. I wasn't ruling anything out, but I wanted to hear all the options.
I had to learn to choose my battles. I had to decide what was the worst problem and how was I going to approach it. And the mowing thing was... was one of the examples of things where experts would tell me different things because it depends on, it always depends. It depends. It depends on what you're trying to save. Like the recommendation was always Moen.
March, and when I say mow, I really mean bush hog, which is a tractor with an attachment that can attack vegetation that's much larger and denser than a normal lawnmower could handle. But you don't want to mow when there are ground nesting birds. You know, in season, you don't want to mow the whole meadow in winter because then...
The creatures that overwinter in the meadow don't have a place to go. They don't have food. And so then it was mow in March. And then a scientist who specializes in grasslands came here and said, well, you really want to mow in February because you've got all these. these woodcocks and they start nesting in the early March. So I was like, Oh, okay. I was like, how do you know we have woodcocks? And then literally a couple of weeks later I saw them.
So it was very confusing. And with the invasive plants, you can mechanically control them. You can control them with herbicides. You can hand pull them. And I don't know if you want me to list the invasive plants we have here. I mean, there were some that you mentioned a lot. Yeah. Oh, well, mile a minute. Yeah. Tree of heaven. Yeah. Autumn olive. Yeah. Those are some of the big ones. Spotted knapweed, which is a flower that came from Europe. Stilt grass, garlic mustard, multiflora rose.
I mean, the whole, we don't have kudzu, which I'm very happy. That's amazing. I don't know how you don't have kudzu. You're in the area where kudzu is, is there. We probably will. Yeah. I have it in my. Yeah, I found a few vines of it, and I wonder how it gets there, but I'm right on top of it when I see it, so it's never gotten anywhere. And you probably know that it was planted intentionally.
Yeah, I learned about that. It was introduced at the Philadelphia Flower Show in the late 1800s as an ornamental for fast-growing ground cover. And then the government paid people. I think it was maybe... The former Soil Conservation Service paid farmers to plant it all over the South. Yeah, and I have a farm. This used to be a farm, so I have no doubt that was paid to plant.
Oh my gosh. Similarly, the autumn olive, which is an invasive shrub, was planted intentionally. Yeah, it was planted intentionally for windbreaks and erosion control. Here at the Department of Forestry, a forester told me that they had planted it. you know, decades ago. And in fact, they chose the variety that produces the most fruit. Which produces the most flowers, which produces the most seed, which is why we have a problem.
Yeah. And the fruit is sweet. It tastes good. Yeah. So birds will eat it, which unlike a lot of invasive plants, which, you know. local wildlife aren't interested in eating. They will eat the berries on the autumn olive and then spread them all over the place. But it's like... I think in the book I say it's like eating a Twinkie. It tastes good, but it's not giving them any, not the nutritive value that they need, which they would get from the native.
plants that they normally eat. I mean that's a problem with a lot of native plants. A lot of people may see certain invasive plants and know that they have a tendency to take over and you don't want them taking over the yard because you want other things to grow. to extend that to why that's bad for the natural community is because...
the native wildlife, native pollinators can't really use those plants. So when those plants proliferate, they push out the native plants that the creatures that live here need. And they proliferate because they don't have any predators here. Their predators are all back home. And they developed all these great ways to reproduce in order to defeat.
you know, those predators so that they could keep, you know, keep growing. Just like our native plants here, you know, here they have predators and, and some of them have, you know, various ways of reproducing in order to get around the fact of the. those predators, but Invasive plants have all those ways of reproducing without any predators, so they have a real advantage over native plants. They often don't care what kind of soil they're in. A lot of them are allelopathic. They release...
toxins into the soil that prevent other plants from going around them. And that helps them create a monoculture of just that kind of plant. I like the example of stiltgrass because it seeds at the top. and it seeds lower down, people tend to like mow it. And all it does then is seed lower and lower. It can seed almost at the soil. So if you're going to cut it, you have to almost use a string trimmer and cut it.
at the ground. And then what you're doing obviously is creating disturbed more invasive plants can come in so then you just have to really keep an eye on it and of course the seeds have a long life in the seed bank they can last for like seven years or So you're going to keep doing that every year. And the other way that still grass can reproduce, which I found out the hard way.
Because I had an area where silk grass was like three or four feet tall. It flops over and then it can root from where it touches the ground. Opportunistic. Well, yeah, I have to admire the ingenuity. Okay, we're going to take a break for this message from Proven Winners Color Choice.
And when we return in one minute, we learn more about what Paula's decisions were as she learned to manage that land. All of that and more just ahead. We'll be right back. You know, whenever you're in your local garden center and you see those distinctive white containers,
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And they're constantly working on new varieties that outperform conventional ones, such as the unique El Nino Chitalpa, or improvements on old favorites, like Limelight Prime Hydrangea, and true classics, like Sonic Bloom Reblooming Wygela. Suffice it to say, there's something for every taste in every space. Visit ProvenWintersColorChoice.com to learn more, and you can find them at your local garden center. I remember in reading your book and then...
When I really like a book, I get the Audible version too. And I did that with your book. And I remember hearing all of the different things you were talking about related to the consequences of having invasive plants. And I remember thinking...
What great information you provided, because so often we hear about, we're all well aware of the, you know, don't bring in invasive plants, don't buy them, and some of the basic reasons why. But you gave a really... comprehensive list and specific examples in your book that really made me think I'm going to steal some of those for my presentations because they're really pertinent to helping people relate more than just.
Don't plant invasives, but it's why and what are the consequences of that? And you did a great job of that. And I had mentioned allopathic in my list to ask to talk to you about just because that was a big one because. The chemicals that are put out by many of those invasive plants prevent other plants from taking root or seeding and surviving because of that. And one of the things that you said in your book that I really thought was...
kind of hit me between the eyes, is that invasive species play a key role in 60% of global plant and animal extinction. That's right. That statistic came from IPBES, which is an international body that studies ecosystems, ecology. And in this country alone, invasive plants contribute to the decline of 42% of endangered and threatened species and are directly the main cause of 18% of extinctions. And they cost...
the US, about $34 billion a year. Yeah. And we don't know really even how many invasive plants there are. There are thousands. Nobody can count them all. And the other thing I would say is that... Native wildlife and insects need the plants they evolved with. The plants and the wildlife in an ecosystem evolved together. They support each other. They keep each other in balance. So when you introduce plants that don't support the local wildlife, they can't. I mean, after 500 years...
I think there's one caterpillar that will eat kudzu. So it's not, I mean, it takes thousands, tens of thousands of years for these relationships to establish. There are bees. I mean, you think of native bees. Most people think of bumblebees, but there are many more solitary bees that are native, and they can only eat maybe one plant or one family of plants. And when that's gone, they're gone.
Yeah, there's so much happening that we never are aware of. One of the things that I think about to what you just spoke of with the extinction or the diminishment of a lot of these... of the wildlife that's dependent on the plants. We don't, we don't notice necessarily from year to year that they're declining. You know, like, like for me with the monarch butterflies, I remember.
Most of my adult life in Atlanta and, you know, they were everywhere all the time, but I didn't notice that each year there were less, there were fewer and fewer. And so it's gotten to the point now and here on five acres in a pretty wooded part of Atlanta, it's a big deal for me to even see one or two in a year. And there are years where I haven't seen any lately.
Then it hits you. It's like, gosh, oh, I remember when I used to see them everywhere. They were like any other butterfly. And then you're reminded. When it's a big deal that you actually saw one, that you start realizing, you know, when was the last time I did see one? And that's the thing that gets biased because we're not noticing the small declines, relatively small declines year to year until it's a big thing.
That's so true. And I mean, I've had the same experience of when I was a kid, seeing monarch butterflies all over the place. And now... Not so much. And even milkweed is one of the dominant native plants here on the mountaintop. But a couple of years ago, I was worried because suddenly I wasn't seeing as much milkweed. And we also have... a lot of goldenrod and aster which is important for the adult butterflies
I think sometimes people get confused about that. They need the milkweed to lay their eggs. The caterpillars can only eat the milkweed. The adult butterflies need flowers like goldenrod and aster for nectar, for their migration. Yeah, a long five. generations or so coming back to Mexico from way up north. Gosh, I don't know how they, and they've never been to where they're going to end up to overwinter. It always amazes me how nature does nature like that. It's very cool.
We can't make it harder on them by bringing in these invasives, which goes back a long way. But anyway, I'm almost feeling overwhelmed thinking. What it would be like to be in your shoes and being told, you know, all of these options and you have 200 acres, not two or even a quarter of an acre. It's daunting to me, but you've taken it on. So bring us up to more current day on.
on what you've decided to do and why you made the decisions that the way you ended up going and what's it like now? Well, first of all, I will say that one thing that made me feel really good is that the, um, The person from the Smithsonian organization who did the bird survey almost four years ago was out here again recently, and they're going to be doing another formal survey this spring, which I'm very excited about because then I'll really be able to see what impact.
impact I've had in that sense. But she said, oh my gosh, you know, things look really different here. You've really made a difference here. And that made me feel so good because I didn't, I mean, I wasn't thinking that way. see are the problems you know everywhere i look i see another alanthus tree or we had spotted lanternflies for the first time this year and
That was not, yeah. And the Alanthus tree was my nemesis long before. You wrote about that a lot. Yeah, I got kind of obsessed with that. But that made me feel really good to know that somebody. who hadn't seen the place in a few years who was you know a bird specialist was out here saying oh
You know, things look much better now and you really made a difference. I was like, yes, yes, I did something good. And so now I'm right now I'm waiting. You'll see in the book I talk about waiting for a prescribed burn. Yeah. And one of the things I learned about the mountaintop here is that it was likely open Savannah for a very long time, far longer. You know, it probably wasn't all closed canopy forests like we assume in the East. Everything is. The scientists who specialize in grasslands.
pointed out some reasons why that was the case. And he said it would have been maintained by lightning-induced fires about every five years. Prescribed burns can be important in a place like this because they encourage native plants to grow. Native plants are fire adapted here. They will seed more prolifically. They'll grow better. And so one of the things that I'm really trying to use here as a tool is fire. I'd much rather do that than spray a lot of herbicide.
I have too many what I would consider sensitive species here to want to take the risk. I don't want to kill everything and then see what grows, even though I know that sometimes that is an approach that people take, especially in an... old field where you have a lot of hay grasses it can be hard to do it the other way but i've had some success with just spot treating invasive plants when they come up Doing that with things like Japanese honeysuckle.
if you can pull Japanese honeysuckle, great, but I've got it through acres of, you know, it's, it's weaving its way through all of these plants and it's really hard to do it here. Um, so spot spraying things like mile a minute vine as it. comes up if it's not already surrounded by other plants you can you can do that so i'm planning to do more of that, just targeted stuff like trees and shrubs, like the autumn olive, the polonia, the tree of heaven, I'll be targeting. And we now also have two.
American kestrel nest boxes here. Also from a program called the Grassland Bird Initiative. The American Kestrel is a small raptor. It's in decline. It likes meadows. And it hunts, especially likes voles, I think. Bring them over to my house. We have tons of voles, which in the book I talk about how voles are actually good in a place like this, how voles actually encourage the regeneration of the white oak, which is a very important tree.
We got those nest boxes put in by the Smithsonian folks, and they told me to watch out for kestrels who would be... hunting for nesting grounds around this time. And last week I saw one. I saw one flying right past my office window. And the nesting box were in place. And the nesting boxes are in place. And so they, so now I just need to wait and see if they actually decide to nest here. Last year I added for bluebird.
nest boxes. And I had nesting pairs of bluebirds. So that was pretty exciting. Yeah. Also had tree swallows nesting in some of the bluebird boxes, which is fine. I want to just go back and ask you a quick question for the other people that listened to what you said a second ago and were wondering how voles are responsible in their disturbance for helping regenerate white oak.
Ah, okay. Well, in a couple of ways. First of all, when they make their tunnels, they interfere with the fungi that help... the trees grow. And they can actually help decide what trees grow where by the way their tunnels interfere with those. And now the long word is escaping me, what they're called. The name of the fun. The mycorrhizae? Yes, thank you. But the other thing that they do directly, there is a weevil that will lay its egg in an acorn bud.
And when the acorn is, you know, fully developed. the weevil will hatch and the larva will eat the inside of the acorn, it will drop off the tree, and that larva will then be in the acorn waiting to become an adult. And if you look at an acorn, it has a little hole in it. That's that weevil baby coming out of the acorn. So before that can happen, the voles are going around.
gathering acorns because they love, like so many other creatures, they love eating white oak acorns. But they especially like the ones with the larva. They save them for extra protein in the winter. So they move them away from the tree. And whether they remember to eat them or not, they have removed the threat of this weevil because it's no longer right close to the tree. The other thing that they do is
They will take good acorns and hoard them and bury them in various places. And like the blue jay, I think Doug Tallamy talks about this. Yes. They forget where they bury them. and then you have white oak seedlings growing. So even though the voles might actually be responsible for killing some of the white oaks by girdling the seedlings, they also plant them.
Well, thanks for doing your homework on that. You did not know I was going to ask that question, but wow, what an answer. Thank you very much for that. And there's a lot of those interesting tidbits that you go on to write about. So I like that. In our audience, a lot of us, we like that kind of detail, kind of that geeky side that gets into the weeds a little bit more. So thank you for that. So we've come from...
Standing on top of the mountaintop with your husband and you're both coming to the same conclusion at the same time, a few years have transpired. I'm speaking on your behalf, but I would have felt overwhelmed with all that I just took on. And you've gotten affirmation from some specialists a few years later that, wow, what a difference and things look great. And that's a tribute to your hard work and trying to make the right decisions in the midst of multiple choices.
Where are we now compared? And what are you, I mean, do we have a place to live now? I mean, are you living there? And what's going to happen next? What are we continuing to work on? Yes, I am. My house was finished a few months ago. Yay. Power. We have working well. Excellent. All of the good things. And obviously, internet.
Yes, I'm here now, somewhat snowed in because the mountain road is covered with snow and very steep. But yes, it makes it a lot easier to do the work here because before I was coming here a couple of times a week. just doing day trips and going, you know, driving back home exhausted to the suburbs at the end of the day. My husband would occasionally camp out, but I'm not so great at that. Despite my interest in nature, sleeping on the ground is not great for me.
So I'm very happy to be able to wake up in the morning, be here, and go out into the environment here and just continue to make these discoveries. That's one of the most fun things and the most engaging things. for me here is just constantly discovering the interconnections among the plants and the creatures that live here. I'll tell you something. There's this little hillside outside of my window and It was full of ragweed, which by the way
birds love, right? And bobwhite quail, they love ragweed seeds. But I was told, no, you have to get rid of that and plant grass so that this hill doesn't erode. And I was like, this is a plant too. It's not going to erode. It has roots. And I'm so glad. So when we had like six, seven inches of snow and the ragweed sticking up above the snow, every morning I'm watching.
The juncos and the sparrows all over this hillside climbing on the ragweed and picking the seeds off. And I'm so glad. Yes. That's, yeah, that is still there. What I do this time of year is really go around because it's much easier to see the landscape when you don't have six foot tall. plants covering it and you don't have to worry about rattlesnakes yeah um i i can wander around in the meadow and see what i've got you know what's going on
And there are things that are still green now, like the Japanese honeysuckle that I can deal with now. You can do some basil bark treatments on autumn olive, you know, some of the invasives at this time of year. But overall, what I'm hoping, and each thing is dependent on the other thing, right? If I can get...
prescribed burns this year. I'm going to burn a whole new field that hasn't been burned before. And I'm hoping that I can bring back... a greater variety of native plants in that field by doing that because one field I burned that had a lot of native plants in it And I was excited to see those native plants coming back. I was excited to see that it did not get taken over by invasives because if you miss an invasive, some invasives are burn friendly.
And if you miss the fact that they're in the field and you burn it, you could end up with a very unpleasant surprise after when everything grows back. But in this one field, I was out there walking with... a friend of mine who specializes in, who's a plant specialist. And she found an orchid. She found ladies' tresses. amid all of these tall grasses in this burned field. She found this tiny little beautiful flower. And I had never seen one here before. And that was just this past fall.
So that was really exciting. So I'm hoping that I can get more burns so that... I can make more things happen like that. At the same time, I'm going to be out there treating invasives. And I'm going to be out there with, you know, I heard you talking with Margaret Roach about the weed wrench. And I have one of those. I have a polar bear.
And I've used it to pull up young autumn olive shrubs. And so I'm going to be out there when it warms up a bit. Yes, I'm sure. I'm going to be out there with the weed ranch looking for things. to pull up. And on the burn, when you were being educated about controlled burns and that as a strategy, was that when you were asking about, I think it was when they were talking about bushwhacking, but at some point you were asking about, well, what about the...
Box turtles. What happens to them? Was that on the bushwhacking or the controlled burn? I think that was when they were advising me about how to get rid of some of the bramble. Because the turtles will... The turtles will go underground during a burn. They shouldn't be bothered by a burn. But they can be bothered by, they can definitely be bothered by mowing. And I was being advised to mow the bramble in season.
which puts a lot of creatures at a disadvantage. So I didn't end up doing that. I waited until the winter. But that's one of those trade-offs. Yes, I was just thinking. I mean, I hear in your voice, it's like... You obviously had to process the most optimal time for you based on what your priorities were. Yeah, I'd be the same way. I chuckled when I...
read that part in your book when you're asking about the turtles, because I've asked people the same thing when we're talking about controlled burns or something like that. Well, what, what happens to the turtles? I have a real soft spot for box turtles. Oh yeah, absolutely. It might have also been about spraying, now that I'm thinking about it. There was the conservation biologist who was telling me that I had to break a few eggs to make a cake, you know? And deciding which eggs to break is...
I know. Yeah, there's no easy... I don't envy you in having to make some of those decisions. In the big picture, you are... and have and are doing incredible things to restore that land and bring it back and promote the native species both flora and fauna and i mean for that you should be very proud
Oh, thank you. You know, it's hard when you can identify all those invasive plants. It's hard to ignore them. It's hard not to feel like they're just like I'm not doing enough. But when something good happens. Like, I don't know, a month or so ago, I pulled a hillside full of Jimson weed. I just pulled all of it.
I put it in these big contractor bags and then I couldn't lift them. Oh, wow. So I basically left them there to solarize. Yeah. And I felt so good about that. Yes. Because I was like, here is one thing I stopped from happening. That's one of. One of the things I should say on a task level, I'm trying to keep invasives from getting into new places.
They're established in certain places. I have to work on that in a bigger way. I can't do it myself necessarily. But when I see it getting into new places, I can work hand-pulling, weed wrench. to get that under control. So are you out there kind of almost every day that it's not so cold you can't bear it or so hot?
I would be, yeah. It has been cold for a bit. Yeah, for sure right now. But yeah, I'm always doing something, even if it's the discovering part, which is really a large part of it and I have to say is my favorite part. At least I enjoy it more than being, you know, you have to pull stilt grass at the end of August. Who wants to be, you know, I'm out there sweating through my clothes. Who wants to do that?
And it feels good having done it until you turn around and see that it's already in another place or till I pull it up and there's garlic mustard all underneath it, which is also. Oh, you're tenacious. Patient too, which is a couple of virtues that a lot of us. I am not patient. I have had to learn. I've had to learn to be much more Zen. Well, that's not a bad thing either. I think we could all use a little more of that too.
I am very sorry that I didn't stick with the botany class that I was taking in college. Well, you know, they have these online courses now that you can take it from the universities that include botany. I should absolutely do something. You should. You should go back in your free time when you're not walking 200 acres every day. You should go back and get online now that you've got great internet.
I guess the other thing I would say, this is my big takeaway, I think, because I've lived in the city. I've lived, I lived in the suburbs for many years and now I live on a mountain. And one thing that I didn't do when I was in the city in the suburbs, nature was places I would go to away from home. I didn't pay as much attention to the natural world right where I was. And in the suburbs, especially, it was more like everything is a pest.
You know, what do I do about the mosquitoes? What do I do about the mice or the rats? Oh, there's a bumblebee nest in the ground in my son's sandbox. You know, all of these things that you're trying to control. So when I came to this mountain, suddenly I started to pay attention. And I thought, you know, I could have done that in the suburbs. And so that's what I would say to people. Don't make the mistake I made.
Notice, start being a person who notices things wherever you are, you know, in the city park, along the sidewalk in the city, the birds that are sitting in the... you know, in the trees or on the roof.
in the suburbs, what is that odd plant that suddenly, you know, the volunteer that grew in the corner of my yard? Is it a good plant? Is it desirable? Do I want to encourage it? What comes to it? All of these questions that I could have asked when I was in those places, because I think for me, at least attention like that breeds curiosity and that leads to, you know, those deep dives that, that I was talking about.
just wanting to know more and also feeling more connected. And when you feel more connected, I think it leads you to want to do something, even if it's just planting that one little native plant. in your window box, and seeing the birds eat the seeds in the fall, or seeing them eat the berries, seeing the butterflies come. If you do that, you made something happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise. And I think it all starts with attention.
After reading her book and speaking with Paula at length about this project, I still don't know how she found the energy and the tenacity to take on such a daunting task. So impressive. And the rewards that she is experiencing now certainly are a result from the fruits of her labor. And they continue to only get better.
If you'd like to re-listen to this episode again or read the show notes that we write from this recording, you can do that from our website at joegardner.com. Look for the podcast tab. And this is episode number 409. Now, of course, you can re-listen to this episode wherever you consume your podcast, but from our show notes, we're able to include pictures that Paula's provided of her property and how it looks today, as well as other relevant links.
well worth your time to go take a look there and take advantage of that unique information. During the week, you can keep up with all the action going on here on social media and YouTube. You can find me on Instagram at Joe Gardner and on YouTube at Joe Gardner TV. The big news, as I reported last week, is still the big news and now one week closer to happening as we are closing in on the free organic vegetable gardening summit happening March 26th through the 29th.
That's Wednesday through Saturday. Each session starts at 12 noon Eastern time and runs for about an hour. They're all live and each session builds on the previous day's information. With the final day dedicated to answering your questions. Plus, I share 10 of my favorite gardening hacks to make your gardening life easier as you're out there doing what you do. And even if you can't attend one or any of the sessions, as long as you've registered,
We will send you the replay links so that you can watch the entire series at your convenience. March 26th through the 31st is also launch week for one of our most popular courses in the online gardening academy, organic vegetable gardening. This course guides you through video lessons from my garden, taught by me, on how to grow over 30 of the most popular warm and cool season crops all the way through the entire process, from seed to harvest, one crop at a time.
The course also includes video lessons that help you become a more knowledgeable organic gardener, of course, from soil building to the organic management of insect pests and diseases, crop rotation, cover cropping, and a lot more. And here's the other thing. If you've been paying attention to what's going on with farming right now, along with the uncertainty of food prices and availability, this may be the best time to really up your organic vegetable gardening skills to grow your own food.
And we have the course to take you there during the webinar. Not only will you have an opportunity to enroll at a very deep discount, but in recognition of tightening our budgets right now, this time. The organic vegetable gardening course will be available at the lowest price we've ever offered. So this is going to be a big week of learning and opportunity. Again, the four-session webinar is all live and completely free March 26th through the 29th.
at 12 noon Eastern time, and each session lasts about an hour. To learn more and reserve your seat for the webinar, just head over to joegardner.com slash gardensummit, all one word. That's joegardner.com slash gardensummit. And take advantage of this great learning opportunity just in time to have your best gardening season yet. Shout out to Laura Nest, a podcast listener who left a very nice review on Apple Podcasts recently when she wrote...
This is the best podcast to listen to if you want to learn all things about gardening, hands down. Appreciate you, Joe. Well, I appreciate you too, Laura, for writing that review and the very nice things that you said. And speaking of thanks, as we wrap up for today.
Thanks to my podcast production team, Amy Prentiss, Brendan O'Reilly, and Christine LaFond. And thank you for joining me today. If you're a regular listener, I so appreciate that you do that. And if you just found us, welcome and thanks for being here.
My goal for every episode is to help you take the guesswork out of gardening by teaching you the why do behind the how-to so that you can become a better, smarter, more confident gardener. I'll be back here again next Thursday for another episode of The Joe Gardner Show. And I look forward to having you right back here to join me for that. Until then, have a great week, everybody. Take care, and I'll see you back here really soon. Thanks for listening to The Joe Gardner Show.
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