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Beech trees look cool as they grow in the spring.

4-29-26, added 4 shrubs cages to locust lane in Neshaminy State Park. These cages prevent the wildlife from browsing the shrubs daily so that they can grow berries and propagate the native shrubs in the park.

Also tended the other Trees and Shrubs along the trail in our Locust Lane project.

https://www.excelevents.org/projects/locust-lane-neshaminy-state-park

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4-28-26, Shrub Day. w**ded 15 shrubs in 3 hours. Black Chokeberry, Arrow Wood, Ninebark, maybe Silky dogwood. Some of the larger shrubs are showing buds, then they will flower, then berry time. The birds will spread the native plants in the area for us now.

Many of our native shrubs come from the same Genus, Viburnum and different specific epithet.
They also have similar characteristics, clusters of white little flowers, maybe some leaves are a different shape, maybe the fruit different, but similar clusters of white flowers on them all.

Shrubs planted on the property:
Arrowwood is Viburnum dentatum
BlackHaw Viburnum prunifolium
Ninebark is Physocarpus opulifolius
Red Osier Dogwood is Cornus sericea
Winterberry is Ilex verticillata

Edible shrubs on property:
American Plum is Prunus americana
Hazelnut is Corylus americana
Black Chokeberry, which is an edible native is Aronia melanocarpa.
Allegheny blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) it felt good leaving big bushes of black berry while removing the stickerbushes and HUGE porcelain berry vine roots.

Edible Trees on the property
Black Cherry, Service berry, persimmon, Burr oak, Beech, Hickory, Pin Oak, Maple

4-27-26, 4 cages w**ded White Spruce, Red Bud, Swamp White Oak, and Sycamore.

Sycamores and Chestnut Oaks have early spring fungus that stresses them so their leaves haven't grown while the other trees around them have full leaves. In June, in the warmer weather, the white fungi inundating the leaves die and the Sycamore thrive again. IT has to stress the tree.

4-26-26, 3 hours to w**d 8 cages.
White spruce, Basswood, Red bud, Hop Hornbeam, American Sycamore

Five caterpillars most gardeners remove on sight. Every one becomes a butterfly or moth worth more alive than the leaf it's eating.

The same organism appears in two books — beauty and pest — and most gardeners never make the connection.

- Tomato hornworm — becomes the five-lined sphinx moth, a hummingbird-sized pollinator that works the night shift. If it's covered in tiny white cocoons, leave it — those are parasitic wasps that handle next year's population for you
- Parsley worm — the green-black-yellow caterpillar on your dill and fennel is a black swallowtail. One parsley plant yields five to eight adult butterflies. The parsley costs two dollars
- Eastern tent caterpillar — the silk web tents in cherry and apple trees feed over 60 species of songbirds during the exact window when they're raising nestlings
- Gulf fritillary — bright orange with spines that look dangerous but are soft and harmless. Strips passionflower vine to bare stems. The vine regrows in a week
- Woolly bear — the fuzzy one crossing roads in October. Eats w**ds. Threatens nothing you planted. Survives winter by freezing solid

The garden that protects the larva gets the butterfly. The one that removes it gets neither.

4-25-2026, 3 hours w**ding and wood chipping some over grown trees in cages. The Beech and American Plums are now w**ded and wood chipped.

One of the Beech Trees looked stressed and blackened, but the portion of the tree that was under the grass was not affected. See if w**ding helps or hurts it.

Many of these mantis nests are on many trees in our Neshaminy State park - river trail project.

Sometime between November and April, while you were tidying garden beds and cutting back dead stems, you found a weird lump. Light brown, about an inch long, stuck to a twig or the side of your shed. It looked like dried spray foam. It looked like debris.

That was a praying mantis egg case.

The mother produced it in late summer — a layer of protein foam that hardens into insulation strong enough to survive months of freezing. The eggs inside stay viable through winter. When spring temperatures hold warm long enough, the nymphs emerge — tiny, translucent, already shaped like the adult, and hunting within hours of hatching.

One egg case can put dozens of predators into a single garden section. Mantises eat moths, flies, crickets, beetles, caterpillars, and grasshoppers through the full growing season. They're generalist hunters — they catch what's available, which sometimes includes other beneficial insects. But a garden with mantises has broad pest suppression running from spring through first frost with no chemical input.

The case is the only part of the mantis lifecycle that survives winter. It looks like nothing. That's why it gets removed most often — during fall cleanup, during pruning, during the exact season when anything dead-looking on a branch gets cut and discarded.

🌿 What to do if you find one:

- A hard, tan, foam-textured lump on a stem or fence between October and April is likely a mantis egg case — leave it in place
- If you need to prune that branch, clip it and tie it to another shrub about a foot off the ground
- They're most commonly found on woody stems, fence posts, and the sides of sheds or garages
- One case per garden section is enough — the nymphs spread out quickly after hatching

That lump is next spring's pest control. It just doesn't look like it yet 🌿

4-22-26
First Paw Paws, from the 100 paw paws planted in Neshaminy state park. Red to deep purple flowers pollinated by beetles. Turn into paw paws, they kind of look like an avacado, size and color.

Many of the sycamores are affected by an early spring fungus that stresses them until its warmer around June when they thrive because the fungus cannot survive in the warmer climate. Half of the sycamores are still dormant which is probably less stressful for them.

Red buds, chokeberry, and some paw paws look stressed where half of the new growth is black, possibly from the recent cold nights after spring.

Much of the project is awake and growing, I am just pointing out some notable spring anomalies.