Chris Belleau | I Am The Buckthorn Man

I always wondered what it would be like to capsize a canoe in the middle of a windswept lake and I recently got to experience it on Lake Nokomis with my good friend, Todd Nelson. I saved my tevas and backpack but lost my Canon G15 camera. Todd saved his guitar but lost his funky hat and iPhone. The thing I liked about it was that neither of us got upset in any way; we made it to shore, emptied the canoe and finished our voyage. It was almost a pleasure to deal with the adversity, together, in a calm way.

Todd playing his song Sleeping Man in his inimitable style

I’ve been super busy this last month helping my friend Scott Finch break down his recording studio and move to North Carolina…

Velvet Sky Studio http://scottfinch.com/

… and doing two art fairs with my friend Chris Belleau, but there is some good news and progress to share from The Buckthorn Man.

Chris Belleau at the Morning Glory Art Fair in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Summer is the season to attack weeds and in years past I focused on pulling spotted knapweed on the sand prairie. That is until August of 2014, when I introduced both flower (Larinus minutus) and root (Clyphocleonus achates) weevils to munch on the knapweed. This is their third year feasting at the sand prairie and they are really getting the job done! Now, when are they going to find an effective biocontrol for garlic mustard?

I’ve been concentrating on other weeds this summer and feeling sanguine about the prospect of significantly reducing the exotic, invasive plants, at The Springs and the Ottawa Lake Fen SNA. One of the weeds I’ve been working on is narrow-leaved cattail — in cases where it is dominating springs or blocking the main channel down the river. There are many springs on the east/right side of the observation deck at the Emerald Spring that were totally covered in cattails. Here are before and after views.

And just last week I dug out cattails and reed canary grass from the main river channel all the way from the Hotel Springs upstream to the Hatching House Springs (map here). I’ve been sprucing up the river in anticipation of meeting Tracy Hames, executive director of the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, and his entire staff, for a tour of the wetlands in the Scuppernong River Nature Preserve. We had an excellent visit a few weeks ago exploring the wetlands that we opened up on the north end of the loop trail, and wading upstream from the gaging station bridge all the way to the Hotel Springs. Tracy suggested we cut the narrow-leaved cattails as low as possible prior to the tentatively scheduled fall prescribed burn (hopefully DNR burn boss, Don Dane, can pull this off). Not only will this put more dried fuel on the ground it will increase the chances that the burned tips of the cattails will be submerged under water next spring, which would significantly diminish their regrowth. Tracy also pointed out that purple loosestrife was popping up all over the place. I explained that biocontrol agents for the loosestrife had been released at The Springs more than 5 years ago and that they had made a dramatic impact on the southwest border of the nature preserve. We speculated that the loosestrife beetles would find the newly emerging plants, but I’m probably going to pull all the isolated purple loosestrife I can find before they set seed — to be on the safe side.

It was a real pleasure to share The Springs with such an enthusiastic and supportive group!

After the meeting with Tracy and the WWA staff, I visited the Indian Springs to pull creeping bentgrass that was spreading like crazy and setting loads of seed. Here is a gallery of before and after images.

The root system of this grass is very dense and hard to remove

I didn’t want to see all of that seed drifting downstream!

After images…

I took a couple days off from pulling and collecting seed heads from canada thistle, bull thistle, sow thistle, white sweet clover and yellow sweet clover at The Springs to hang out with Lindsay Knudsvig at the Hardscrabble Prairie State Natural Area, near Hazel Green, Wisconsin. Lindsay is currently working in nearby Dubuque, Iowa and he has adopted the Hardscrabble Prairie SNA as his own. We need more people like Lindsay who care about the land, see what needs to be done, and simply do it.

Hardscrabble Creek

There are a three different prairie areas in this SNA

We cut buckthorn, honeysuckle and sumac on a sweltering hot day

View from Eagle Point

I managed to squeeze in 5 days of camping at My Shangri-La (campsite #335 at Ottawa Lake), and took advantage of the proximity to get some work done at the Ottawa Lake Fen SNA. I had not been there since May and I was amazed at how overgrown the trail from the campsite north around the fen had become. Numerous box elder and black locust trees that we girdled a few years back had fallen across the trail and black locust seedlings and weeds of every stripe had made the trail nearly impassable. Jared Urban, conservation biologist with the DNR and the main force behind the State Natural Areas volunteer program, was planning to visit so I spent two days clearing the trail and pulling weeds.

We explored the east shoreline of Ottawa Lake and took the freshly cleared trail around the north side of the fen, celebrating the progress that has been made. Jared pointed out a few weeds like Japanese hedgeparsley and teasel that were just starting to make inroads and, needless to say, I pulled all I could find. There is still a lot more weed pulling and weed seed collecting to do at both the Ottawa Lake Fen SNA and at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail. I started on the queen anne’s lace near the Hotel Springs and Jared tells me I’m way ahead of the DNR on this one.

Well, this has been a rambling recap of the adventures of The Buckthorn Man in the Garden of Weed’in. You know, ever since he tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and learned the difference between right and wrong, he has been a missionary: shining the light of truth into the darkness; pulling out the weeds to reveal the magnificence of The Creator.

In 2013 I ran into the DNR water quality team doing a fish count on the Scuppernong River and it was fascinating. Then in 2014 I coincidentally ran into them again and documented it on my old website here. I wasn’t able to join them in 2015 or 2016, but I got the latest counts from 2016.

Scuppernong River Fish Counts
Fish	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Brook Trout	121	213	92	66	46	113	27
Brook Stickleback	59	25	11	1	4	93	94
Central Mudminnow	69	72	15	5	58	69	2
Fantail Darter	2	10	8	9	0	36	58
Grass Pickerel	0	1	1	1	10	1	1
Green Sunfish	0	1	0	4	0	0	0
Johnny Darter	0	2	1	0	0	2	7
Largemouth Bass	0	0	0	0	0	0	3
Mottled Sculpin	240	169	211	86	107	212	168
Northern Pike	0	0	0	3	0	0	0

The DNR always counts fish in the same stretch of river between the gaging station bridge and the Hotel Springs and I always see 6-8 brook trout hanging out just below the bridge that is upstream of the Hotel Springs. It is possible that all of the stream remediation work we have been doing has prompted a natural redistribution of the brook trout upstream of their old haunts. The DNR has stocked brown trout and lately, brook trout, in the Scuppernong River, so that is another factor to consider.

Here are some parting shots…

Looking upstream from the gaging station bridge

The Scuppernong Spring

The Sand Prairie

View downstream from the marl pit bridge

Ottawa Lake

See you at The Springs!

In case you were wondering why The Buckthorn Man got so upset about the sweetheart deal the Village of Hartland secretly gave to JD McCormick, LLC to develop the Riverwalk apartment complex that I reported on last time, it’s because I happened to be reading Gustavus Myers’ fantastic History of the Great American Fortunes. In the fine tradition of John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Marshal Field, Jay Gould, J. Pierpont Morgan and Edward H. Harriman, Joe McCormick is getting rich at the taxpayer’s expense and that bugs me. I had hoped to work with the Village of Hartland to help them formulate a plan to restore, preserve and protect their environmental corridor but I found that Village Administrator and Board have no integrity and cannot be trusted. The taxpayers of Hartland gave “Poor Joe” $1,615,000 to acquire the land for the Riverwalk development and they don’t know or care, or they don’t care to know, or they know and don’t care — I don’t know.

I’ve been trying to carry on at the Scuppernong Springs, but with a heavy heart, and I even organized a workday with the Ice Age Trail Alliance at the Hartland Marsh despite my disgust and disillusionment with the Village leadership. Here are a few recent pages from The Buckthorn Man‘s diary .

June 23, 2016

A large patch of poison hemlock had sprung up out of nowhere near the old hotel site and I carefully mowed it down with my brush cutter.

It’s been three years since I became enlightened with “organic consciousness” and I don’t spray weeds with herbicide anymore. Now I just mow and pull and try to stop the weeds from going to seed. I mowed this patch of crown vetch near the Hotel Springs.

The Emerald Springs are a lovely little pool of springs but half of them were hidden under a blanket of watercress. Here is a gallery of before and after shots of my weed pulling exercise. I’m not done here and plan to open up this pool and make it more accessible to ducks in the dead of winter.

Before

After

June 25, 2016

Last February we got a big assist from the DNR when Don Dane and Mike Spaight donated two days of forestry mowing to our restoration project at the Hartland Marsh. The Friends of the Hartland Marsh and members of the Waukesha/Milwaukee chapter of the Ice Age Trail Alliance joined forces in hand to hand combat with buckthorn seedlings on a very hot and steamy summer day.

June 27, 2016

Back at the Scuppernong Springs, there was one last area of springs called The Hillside Springs that really needed some attention. The springs were choked with watercress.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

The nearby Hidden Springs before

And after

I spent the afternoon pulling Canada Thistle and I really appreciated DNR Conservation Biologist, Jared Urban, sharing the following information about native and invasive thistles.

One thing that makes working at The Springs so much fun is when other people appreciate it. The Keepers of the Springs, John and Sue Hrobar sent me these fantastic dragonfly pictures that Sue took there.

Swamp Darner

Mature Whitetail

Immature Whitetail

June 29, 2016

Back at the Hillside Springs there were 4, 8′ deck sections laying directly on the ground near the springs blocking the natural flow of water down the hillside. One of the decks had been damaged by fire and they were not arranged in a way that provided the best view of the springs. I had a general plan to reuse 40′ of boardwalk that had been high and dry on the main trail nearby for years, and bring the 5, 8′ deck sections over to the Hillside Springs and use them to build a better viewing platform. This would require pedestals to support the decks, like we have done in other locations, and there was a handy large dead aspen tree nearby that I planned to take down and cut up into building material. Listen as The Buckthorn Man explains his plan.

Big dead aspen in the center of the picture

felled across the river

cut up into sections

I spent the afternoon pulling Canada thistle.

July 2, 2016

I mentioned to Ben Johnson that I had one goal for the year and that was to fix the decks at the Hillside Springs and he immediately responded and suggested we get after it pronto — so we did. Thanks Ben! Lindsay Knudsvig joined in the fun and we had a deck raising party!

Ben came up with the design and we laid out the first section of decking.

I don’t know how long these aspen logs will hold up before they start breaking down.

Looks good so far!

The end of the deck makes a fine viewing platform for the surrounding springs.

I stopped at the tower at Lapham Peak on the way home.

July 5, 2016

I spent a peaceful and meditative day pulling thistles. It was a very satisfying feeling to weed gardens of bee balm, aster and goldenrod of their prickly invaders.