Another Earth Day. What have I done so far this year to make my little corner of the Earth better than I found it? I cleaned trash out of the roadside ditches adjoining my residence, recycling the plastic, aluminum, and glass. I cut invasive brush species and planted three kinds of native tree species that weren't present on the place: sugar maple, flowering dogwood, and northern white cedar. I will also soon be planting two kinds of native prairie plants (purple headed coneflower and little bluestem grass) in the meadows. To cap off the project, I installed a bluebird nesting house. I'm certainly not done for the year, but it's a great start. It's fun, it gets me outside for longer periods than I might otherwise be, and it keeps me looking and thinking about the world around me.

Let's see, that's two species of hardwood (deciduous) trees and one conifer (evergreen), two meadow species and a bird nesting box. A pretty nice mix. All that's left for now is to provide for bird watering and bathing for the drier times -- a bird bath. The brush from the invasive shrub species (bush honeysuckle) gets piled in out of the way spots to provide additional cover for cottontail rabbits. A large hollow fallen maple limb will be under one of those piles, possibly to be a den for a small predator such as a weasel.

In short, I practiced land stewardship on my little acre. Land stewardship is about making choices, based on a knowledge of ecology. It's not about doing nothing. It's about observing what's going on, then taking action to make things better. It's about the future, which you can enjoy immediately through your dreams (planning), short term (watching things grow this season), and long term.

A friend of mine spurred me to act now through an email about the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat program. He send it in late winter, the perfect time to plan such things, and to dream of spring. Also to order very affordable seedlings from my local Soil and Water Conservation District.

There is a lot more invasive brush to be cut here, and additional seedlings to be planted next year. And the one after that. On and on. It's a very satisfying way to celebrate spring.

If you plant flowers, shrubs, and trees on your own property, I urge you to find out which species are invasive and can get away into the wild and make for potentially serious environmental problems. Avoid those. It's easy to instead choose native species that fit your desires and actually increase native plant diversity, since so many native species have been eliminated over the years through development and cultivation. It's not hard to get the information over the Web, and it's fun to learn while you're doing land stewardship on your own little corner of the planet.
 

It had been a light snowfall, several inches or so. Light snow cover on the ground reveals much about the form of the landscape. It can drift into ravines, swales, and other creases in the land, while more exposed areas might be bare. When the sun hits it, anything darker than pure white absorbs the heat and radiates it, melting the snow immediately next to it. In this photo we see the exposed ridges of the canyon wall where the snow melted in the sun, as well as areas that were too steep for the snow to stick to. The patterns of ridges and snow and sunlight and shadow, along with the ponderosa pine trees growing vertically from spots where they managed to take root and thrive, give this photograph its distinction.

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The first snow of the oncoming winter had fallen the day before. It wasn't a heavy snow, and only stuck on the rims, not down in the inner gorge. In this photo, you can see some on a rock ledge at lower left. A lot more is on the North Rim on the horizon. The North Rim is 1,000 feet higher than the South Rim.

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