Grace Creek Almanac: Bradford Scourge, Orion, Musk’s Starlink and Frost

Springtime, as this week clearly illustrates, is a dynamic time on the Eastern Shore.

With temperatures fluctuating between the mid-70s and mid-30s, it makes me worry about the tender green sprouts of the Amish Snap Peas coming up in my garden.  I count on the afternoon sun to keep warming the soil and encouraging the peas.

Throughout the Eastern Shore landscape, Bradford pears are brightening hedgerows and roadsides, and residential yards. with their audacious white blossoms.  One of the first springtime bloomers in Maryland, they’re doing their best to outshine the more elegant and colorful redbuds also decorating the landscape.

Just about the time of the bicentennial of the American Revolution in 1976, Bradford Pears were a darling of landscape architects and urban planners. Many towns and cities used them to reinvigorate their downtown streets with plantings along sidewalks.  Now, however, like blue catfish, Bradford pears are strenuously labeled an invasive species, a rapidly growing and quickly spreading scourge.

They are infamous for their weak crotches – hardly a flattering characteristic – which can lead to branches splitting and falling on unwary pedestrians enjoying their shade.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service advises: “New hybrids produce viable seeds through cross-pollination with the Bradford cultivar. The descendants are aggressively invading natural and disturbed open areas, displacing native plant communities and disrupting natural succession.”

University of Maryland’s Cooperative Extension Service suggests the following natives as better choices for flowering spring trees:  “Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis), Fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), Serviceberry (Amelanchier sp.), and Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida).

In the meantime, these species are being crowded out by the bully Bradfords.

HERE ON THE CREEK, flocks of bluebill ducks, also known as scaup and blackheads, and a smattering of canvasbacks have been joining the perennial Canada geese in recent weeks.  They come and go with no particular pattern. I don’t expect them to stay around for long.

Loons, with their mournful swoonings have also been stopping by, sharing the soundscape with early ospreys checking out nesting sites and passing through in spring migration.

Above us, the warrior constellation Orion is swinging further around to the southwest and west before he  makes his warmer weather disappearance.

I hope Elon Musk’s train of Starlink satellites makes its appearance, going in the opposite direction, as the days keep lengthening.

Seeing them rings a sense of possibility into his goal of enabling humans to one day become a multi-planetary species. The Cristopher Columbus of our day.

I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Musk and his dizzying and transformational character. (Thanks for the recommendation Eric.) It’s great background material to be reading as so many world events of which he is playing a pivotal role unfold around us on a daily basis.

ON THE WATERFRONT, oystermen are closing out the wild commercial season which ends this year March 29. They’re switching out their dredging and tonging gear for the trotlining and potting rigs used for crabbing.  That seasons April 1

IN THE MEAN TIME, I’ll keep my eyes leveled mostly toward our own planet, greening more each day in our hemisphere. Dynamic spring offers such a feast for the eyes.

Robert Frost writes in his poem Swinger of Birches, perhaps presaging Musk’s restlessness:

“I’d like to get away from earth awhile,
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return.  Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”

Dennis Forney has been a publisher, journalist, and columnist on the Delmarva Peninsula since 1972.  He writes from his home on Grace Creek in Bozman.