In this month’s entry:

Draining the Swamp: Recipe for Annihilation

Garden Update: Frost Is Past, Plants Take Hold

Cherry Blossoms and Honoring Real Heroes

The April 2025 Gallery: Remember Earth Day? Nature Keeps Fighting

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Draining the Swamp: Recipe for Annihilation

Whenever I hear the President’s rallying cry of “Drain the swamp!”–by which he refers to the ongoing mass firings in federal agencies since he took office on January 20–I wonder if he at all appreciates what “Drain the swamp” really means. Failing to value what swamps are and what they accomplish can doom all life.

Given his long history as a speculative builder of hotels and other urban properties, he perhaps thinks of swamps as messy, smelly, icky, treacherous places that get in the way of steel and concrete foundations, can thwart builders’ dreams, and often contain creatures like snakes, alligators, and disease-bearing mosquitoes. His hatred of swamps is part of his incessant campaign to destroy the environmental protections (see Newsweek, March 13, “What Comes Next?”) enacted since 1970 by a succession of Presidents, starting with Republican Richard Nixon, who founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  It’s likely that the current President resents the term “wetlands,” and especially the phrase “protect wetlands,” applied to those swampy places that impede two of his favorite ventures: turning public lands over to fossil fuel drillers and enabling so-called “developers” to turn natural environments into more and more commercial districts of concrete and steel.

The Cradle of Life

What he certainly does not sufficiently value when he thinks of swamps (like Virginia’s Great Dismal Swamp pictured above) is that they have been and continue to be the cradle of life on this planet, the purifier of all fresh water, and the essential meeting and mixing place between land and sea. Without swamps, bogs, mires, fens, marshlands, lakeshores, wetlands, coral reefs, vernal pools, or whatever you want to call them, all life will die out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetland

Planting Easter eggs: Mallard pair builds their nest along the north shore of our little lake at Easter sunrise. The drastic, ongoing decline (30% lost) of birds since 1970 has been caused in part by the erasure of these precious water/land interfaces across the globe.

Drought, Wildfires, and the Loss of “Swamps”

The photo of the New Jersey wildfire at the top of this section seems a strange juxtaposition with the pleasant video of the Mallard nesting pair, but they are closely related. Global warming (another term our President despises and refuses to acknowledge) is making the Earth steadily drier, including the U.S., as the regularly-updated U.S. Drought Monitor https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu shows:

You’ll note that the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states–including both New Jersey and Northern Virginia–have been in a long-term (SL on the map) period of what the map labels severe drought, though local officials (at least in our region) rarely mention that there might be a problem, because we are not yet at a stage of having to restrict water usage. But those of us who garden (see the “garden update” section, below) are already very aware of the shortage of rain.

Not only does drought intensify the chances for wildfires, but lack of rain steadily erodes wetlands, as I see each day when I walk around the lake and notice the slow exposure of more dry shoreline. More dry shoreline means fewer nesting spots for Mallards and other waterfowl, as well as turtles, such as the Northern Red-bellied Cooters that adorn this blog most months of the year.

Flood control. And just as wetlands reduce wildfire risk, so they also help control floods, by capturing excessive rain that would otherwise flow unimpeded through streets, over rock-hard drought lands, and into rapidly swelling streams during flash floods events. Soft wetlands allow excess floodwater to percolate into the aquifer underground, where it is saved for future use, rather than be propelled down rushing streams destroying anyone and anything in its path.

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Garden Update: Frost is Past, Sun Abounds, Plants Take Hold

We’re slowly learning the lessons of the Northern Virginia climate as we nurture our small plot in the community garden in our town. Twice in the past month we learned the hard way about planting too early here. Even though the average low temps from late March to mid April were in the 40s, all it took were two nights when the temp dipped to 32 or below (27!) for us to lose tomato, squash, and pepper seedlings. Note to self: Northern Virginia is definitely not Northern California, where we could safely grow year round.

Still, those two setbacks aside, we’ve now had two solid weeks of steadily warming temps for our assemblage of veggies, fruits, herbs, and flowers to thrive in our little patch (225 sq. feet) in the community collection of small gardens.

Some of our plants are varieties we had success with in California: cherry and grape tomatoes, hot and mild peppers, strawberries, zucchini, eggplant, Swiss chard, basil, mint, thyme, sage, lavender, and oregano.  One species, Blueberries (two bushes, in ground a month now), are thriving here in this cooler climate, and had no trouble with those 2 nights below freezing. They like the cold, as do the strawberries, but we’ll see how the blueberries hold up when it gets into the 90s in July.

One third of the plot we devote to flowers. The hearty Pansies, purple and yellow, have been thriving since March planting as have the pink Dianthus (one of our California favorites), and just this week we’ve added purple Petunias. One discovery here is the plethora of fast-spreading ground cover such as bright Blue Speedwell and pink Henbit, which will take over everything if we let it.

In drier, hotter California, the challenge was to provide enough water to grow what we’d planted. We rarely had to pull so-called “weeds”: by which people mean any plant that you don’t want to grow in a space where you want to grow something else. Here, the relatively wetter climate encourages less-wanted plants to thrive, so “weeding” of plants like Dandelions and “Creeping Charlie” are daily chores. So the task for us is to  judge the balance between what we’ve planted and the volunteers that already love our ground.

Stay watching for updates. One challenge will be providing enough watering to keep the plants thriving in our severely drought-affected new normal. As a neighbor gardener put it this week, “We’re not used to worrying about rain.”

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Cherry Blossom Tradition and Honoring Real U.S. Heroes

We made our annual visit to the D.C. Tidal Basin in late March, with the Yoshino Cherry Trees and Magnolias in full bloom and the entire Basin area teeming with students and adults visiting from many places. Not only were the trees magnificent, but we reveled in the joy of the crowds, particularly in the patriotic spirit of the thousands from diverse origins and backgrounds who took the opportunity to visit the three memorials that surround the Basin: the Jefferson Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial, and the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial. At each huge installation, the inspiring words of these authentic heroes of democracy and courage are emblazoned on the walls, and offer us who stand before them messages of hope and encouragement to persevere in our endeavors to respect one another, seek fellowship with the peoples of the world, and keep alive the idea of the U.S. as a friend in times of mutual need.

Rebuilding the Basin. We also wanted to see how work had progressed over the year since we had last visited the Tidal Basin. Since 2023, the Basin has been undergoing a massive reconstruction, because sea level rise in Chesapeake Bay, caused by global warming, was every day forcing the waters of the tidal Potomac to overflow the Basin’s walls. More than 150 of the precious cherry trees have been removed because of the worsening flooding.

Not a true wetland, the Basin had been built in the 19th century as part of the massive draining of swampland in the nation’s Capital to enable construction of many of the now iconic buildings of the federal city. Lacking a wetland’s actual resilience in changing conditions, it was inevitable that a massive reconstruction of the Basin’s stone walls and dredging of the bottom like that going on now would be eventually needed.  Fossil-fuel-caused climate change accelerated the need. See the March 2024 blog for a history of the 19th century “draining of the swamp” and its ongoing repercussions.

The project is expected to be completed next year, in time for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S.

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The April 2025 Photo/Video Gallery: Nature Keeps On Keepin’ On

Welcome to the Babies! And to more wetland rites of spring here and elsewhere in our region. (Oh, plus three kitchen treats. Would not forget those!)

Surprise, surprise! Despite this winter’s cold, the Canada Goose babies are here by our lake at the same time as in last year’s earlier spring. Congrats to the parents!

Watch this same Mallard female fly up to the broken branch in the Walnut tree while a Downy Woodpecker comments, April 19

The annual magnificent woodland display of Bluebells covers acres at nearby Riverbend Park on the Potomac. We visited on April 6.

Cardinal female and Yellow-rumped Warbler call from the Willow Oak beside the southeast cove, April 19

Song Sparrow calls from the leafing Persimmon on the east bank of the lakeshore, April 26. I’d never want to imagine a month without a Sparrow song.

First sighting of the year: Green Heron, usually a late summer bird, here now as another April surprise, in the Willow Oak on the east bank, rainy morning, April 26

The birds always seem their most ebullient on these warm, drizzly mornings after an overnight rain. The lakeshore, our local wetland, rejoices. And so we venture on to the marvelous month of May.