Disassembling the bench

I dissambled one of the benches I had built for the benefit of visitors after one or more of the visitors repeatedly vandalized it. I moved it somewhere where it may be appreciated more.

Unbenched

During the lupine tour the other day I found that vandals had dug up one of the benches I installed and partially dismantled it. I'd try to understand it, but vandalism is by definition senseless.

Planning for scrub lupine

I conducted a tour today of reps from FWC, FWS and Historic Bok Sanctuary to look at candidate sites for the scrub lupine test plots. We settled on a site in the north tract. The plan is to bring in 500 plants this fall and see what happens.

Sifting through the broken glass

I've begun working on one of the small piles of buried household garbage that dot the preserve. Broken glass is the dominant haul, though I have found a few miraculously unbroken bottles, which I'm recycling. The stuff has been there a while (think pop tops) and who knows what the dig will reveal. When I'm done with this one, another one nearby awaits.

Rare FWC visit planned

Couple of folks from FWC are coming by next week to look around, perhaps in response to my nagging about the state of the fire lanes and partly to become more familiar with the property. That's good. They've got a lot of sites to deal with and this one is the farthest from their office in Lake Placid. No, I don't know why they decided to locate an office at one end of the network instead of in the middle of it.

Clearing the boundary

Did another Great American Cleanup today, this time on the section along Hobbs Road on the south tract. We collected 30 bags of trash, half a dozen tires etc. It obviously hadn't been touched in a while. I even found a 1971 Michigan license plate. Interesting..

LUPINE IS COMING!

This is some of the best news ever. I have been informed that work is planned to develop a test plot at Lake Blue to introduce scrub lupine. This had been recommended because the only protected site is over by Lake McLeod and if something zaps that site, we've lost a significant portion of the world's scrub lupine population. I can hardly wait.