Soundscaping By Landscaping
Wednesday, June 15th, 2022 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioembed at the bottom, of last year's lazy brood of crickets, as described in the entry.
The earliest and best cricket recordings I did in the back yard on Jackson were on cassette tape... in 1994.
I was in my twenties, and took for granted how well groomed my parents had kept the yard... mowing and pruning and pulling weeds every spring and summer for decades. I had no appreciation for the fact that, here in northern Illinois, plants require NO help to grow wildly out of control.
Especially not in an older neighborhood full of huge trees where the whole biome is firmly established. Because not only do we get plenty of rain, and plenty of blast furnace heat, which plants love, but under the soil, in an established biome, the root systems are storing up energy, and exchanging resources with one another. Meaning, if you cut down a sapling, or pull out a weed... it's not dead! They'll send up a new shoot tomorrow, no problem!
As I lied on my back in the grass, looking up at the stars, listening to a perfect symphony with plenty of field crickets, but not too many bush crickets, I did not realize that it was me... who had already sown the seeds of that soundscape's destruction.
Just a year earlier, I'd had the idea to fence-in the back yard with cheep wire fence. It made sense at the time, because we had two dogs, and several young nephews & neices coming to visit on the regular.
But by 1996 I'd moved out, and my parents had both retired. The nephews and neices were growing up. Their parents, my siblings, were moving out of state one by one. Family gatherings became fewer and further between. Mom & Dad gradually got too old to keep up with the yard like they had in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. And there was less motivation to do so.
Meanwhile, those wire fences of mine were fostering all kinds of new plant growth... because the mower couldn't mow there, and the weed wacker would get snarled up on the wires, and so was useless. So over the 2000s, and the 2010s, all kinds of unchecked saplings took root on all three borders, north, west, and south, and grew up, with their trunks all swallowing right into the fence wires.
Mom died in early 2015, at which point I moved back home to look after Dad, who was all alone, and too old now to even keep up with the house mantenance, much less the yard.
And those three fence lines around the back yard... had become WALLS of vegetation! Countless junk wood trees, all fifteen to twenty feet tall, with their branches arching down so low you had to duck to get close to them... and interwoven with weeds, vines, and wild thorny bramble.
You couldn't see the neighboring yards anymore! And you could barely see the sky!
------------{=0=}------------
I was too busy repairing the house, the first few years, all kinds of plumbing, electrical, carpentry, and even mortaring. But eventually I got around to thinking about the crickets, and how it would be fun to record them again, with a modern, digital device.
But when I did, I was shocked to find the yard absolutely SCREAMING with bush crickets! There were so many, screaming so loudly, that they not only drowned out every other sound, but they actually distorted the microphones!
So I knew I had to do something... but I didn't realize it was gonna take me three years to get that yard back under control.
In 2019, the goal was to get rid of the wire fence on the north line, and cut down the trees that had grown there. The fence had to be clipped out, section by section, because the trees had grown through it. And this made cutting them down tricky too, because the chainsaw chain would hit the wires embedded in the wood and get snagged.
One tree actually grew around a whole steel fencepost! So for that, I had to cut what I could with a chainsaw, and then cut through the fencepost part with a saws-all!
I did eliminate that one fence, but there were still trees on that line to cut down by the time winter came.
------------{=0=}------------
In 2020, I went at it again... cutting down more trees on that north line, and getting a few in other spots, while pulling up a lot of weeds and bramble all over the place. And it did make a difference... it did tone down the bush crickets a notch that August. But there was still a lot more to do, and everything I'd cut down was already trying to grow back!
So in 2021, I declared war!
I started in early March, armed with my chainsaw, three different sized clippers, and a bottle of Tordon RTU... which is a poison, basically, that you apply to fresh cuts on plants or wood, that works its way down into the roots and kills them from the inside.
You don't need much, so the bottle lasted a long time... but it was empty by the end of the summer.
March, April, May, June, July, August, and September... I was back there several times a week, cutting... killing... pruning... weeding.... and mowing. I removed the wire fence from the south line, and cleared it. I couldn't remove the chainlink fence on the west line, because that's not ours, but I still cut down and killed almost everything growing through it.
A few of the old stumps on the north line that continued to stubbornly regrow saplings, I couldn't kill, for fear of killing nearby trees of the same species that I wanted to stay, so instead, I just kept cutting them back and forcing them to regrow newer, thinner, more numerous shoots... turning them from trees, into shrubs.
All the Tordon took it's toll, however. The huge hackberry in the front yard got sick and started dropping leaves in May. It stayed alive, but it continued to lose leaves all summer.
The birds and squirrels were upset with me. It got so every time I went back there, the crows and squirrels would scold me, and then run for cover. Song birds abandoned the area. I remember afternoons and sunsets where I didn't hear a single bird chirp!
------------{=0=}------------
In August, the results were good, at least for toning down the bush crickets. I'd toned them down a little in 2020, but in 21, they were a lot better!
Unfortunately, the field crickets were not bringing it like they normally do. There seemed to be a lot fewer of them, and the ones we had were kinda sluggish, lazy singers. Their chirps were slower and more drawn out.
Instead of; chirp!.. chirp-chirp! These guys were more like; Chiiirrp?.. ... chiiirrp?..
I can think of a lot of factors that might have contributed to that, but I don't really know how many, or if any truly did.
1) It was a much rainier August than normal, and I know field crickets don't sing in heavy rain. So maybe they just don't like wet conditions in general.
2) I didn't leave any foliage at ground level, to try and eliminate as many bush crickets as I could. But it's possible that field crickets rely on some of that for cover, especially when it's rainy.
3) I eliminated bright lights in the back yard, because I'd read that lightning bugs don't like it. But it's possible that field crickets also don't like the deep dark, and prefer a bit of light. Because the few good ones I did hear were out by the street.
4) Maybe the Tordon had something to do with it... if they feed on roots or something as pupa, I don't know.
5) It's possible there are two alternating broods of field crickets that hatch every other year. Because all of my good recordings have been on even numbered years, like 1994, and then also 2018, and 2020. But I got poor recordings in both 2019, and 2021.
------------{=0=}------------
There's really not enough data to support the alternating brood hypothesis, and I don't even know if that's a thing with crickets. Cicadas famously have broods of every seven, eleven, and thirteen years... but Cicadas aren't in the same order as Crickets.
I suppose I'll find out in the years to come... now that the yard is back to a stable state.
------------{=0=}------------
What I'm doing this year, to prepare for August is the following:
1) I'm allowing some shrubbery and foliage to exist on the ground, though it's all being clipped to reasonable dimensions. And I've raised the blade on the mower to allow for taller grass.
2) I've gone the other way with lighting and have a nice LED floodlamp that lights up most of the back yard.
3) I'm no longer using the Tordon RTU, and it does seem like everything's rebounded this year. The hackberry tree isn't losing leaves. The birds are back. The squirrels have forgiven me. So that shouldn't be a factor?
As for the weather, it's beyond my control. And thanks to climate change, it's very difficult to predict... but that's a topic for another entry.
------------{=0=}------------
Suffice it to say, I've been doing my best for three years to tame the back yard, and create the conditions that are optimal for good cricket recordings... and now things are in a stable state back there... and because 2022 is an even numbered year, there may be a brood of lively crickets on the way.
But we'll see.
°¦}
The earliest and best cricket recordings I did in the back yard on Jackson were on cassette tape... in 1994.
I was in my twenties, and took for granted how well groomed my parents had kept the yard... mowing and pruning and pulling weeds every spring and summer for decades. I had no appreciation for the fact that, here in northern Illinois, plants require NO help to grow wildly out of control.
Especially not in an older neighborhood full of huge trees where the whole biome is firmly established. Because not only do we get plenty of rain, and plenty of blast furnace heat, which plants love, but under the soil, in an established biome, the root systems are storing up energy, and exchanging resources with one another. Meaning, if you cut down a sapling, or pull out a weed... it's not dead! They'll send up a new shoot tomorrow, no problem!
As I lied on my back in the grass, looking up at the stars, listening to a perfect symphony with plenty of field crickets, but not too many bush crickets, I did not realize that it was me... who had already sown the seeds of that soundscape's destruction.
Just a year earlier, I'd had the idea to fence-in the back yard with cheep wire fence. It made sense at the time, because we had two dogs, and several young nephews & neices coming to visit on the regular.
But by 1996 I'd moved out, and my parents had both retired. The nephews and neices were growing up. Their parents, my siblings, were moving out of state one by one. Family gatherings became fewer and further between. Mom & Dad gradually got too old to keep up with the yard like they had in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. And there was less motivation to do so.
Meanwhile, those wire fences of mine were fostering all kinds of new plant growth... because the mower couldn't mow there, and the weed wacker would get snarled up on the wires, and so was useless. So over the 2000s, and the 2010s, all kinds of unchecked saplings took root on all three borders, north, west, and south, and grew up, with their trunks all swallowing right into the fence wires.
Mom died in early 2015, at which point I moved back home to look after Dad, who was all alone, and too old now to even keep up with the house mantenance, much less the yard.
And those three fence lines around the back yard... had become WALLS of vegetation! Countless junk wood trees, all fifteen to twenty feet tall, with their branches arching down so low you had to duck to get close to them... and interwoven with weeds, vines, and wild thorny bramble.
You couldn't see the neighboring yards anymore! And you could barely see the sky!
I was too busy repairing the house, the first few years, all kinds of plumbing, electrical, carpentry, and even mortaring. But eventually I got around to thinking about the crickets, and how it would be fun to record them again, with a modern, digital device.
But when I did, I was shocked to find the yard absolutely SCREAMING with bush crickets! There were so many, screaming so loudly, that they not only drowned out every other sound, but they actually distorted the microphones!
So I knew I had to do something... but I didn't realize it was gonna take me three years to get that yard back under control.
In 2019, the goal was to get rid of the wire fence on the north line, and cut down the trees that had grown there. The fence had to be clipped out, section by section, because the trees had grown through it. And this made cutting them down tricky too, because the chainsaw chain would hit the wires embedded in the wood and get snagged.
One tree actually grew around a whole steel fencepost! So for that, I had to cut what I could with a chainsaw, and then cut through the fencepost part with a saws-all!
I did eliminate that one fence, but there were still trees on that line to cut down by the time winter came.
In 2020, I went at it again... cutting down more trees on that north line, and getting a few in other spots, while pulling up a lot of weeds and bramble all over the place. And it did make a difference... it did tone down the bush crickets a notch that August. But there was still a lot more to do, and everything I'd cut down was already trying to grow back!
So in 2021, I declared war!
I started in early March, armed with my chainsaw, three different sized clippers, and a bottle of Tordon RTU... which is a poison, basically, that you apply to fresh cuts on plants or wood, that works its way down into the roots and kills them from the inside.
You don't need much, so the bottle lasted a long time... but it was empty by the end of the summer.
March, April, May, June, July, August, and September... I was back there several times a week, cutting... killing... pruning... weeding.... and mowing. I removed the wire fence from the south line, and cleared it. I couldn't remove the chainlink fence on the west line, because that's not ours, but I still cut down and killed almost everything growing through it.
A few of the old stumps on the north line that continued to stubbornly regrow saplings, I couldn't kill, for fear of killing nearby trees of the same species that I wanted to stay, so instead, I just kept cutting them back and forcing them to regrow newer, thinner, more numerous shoots... turning them from trees, into shrubs.
All the Tordon took it's toll, however. The huge hackberry in the front yard got sick and started dropping leaves in May. It stayed alive, but it continued to lose leaves all summer.
The birds and squirrels were upset with me. It got so every time I went back there, the crows and squirrels would scold me, and then run for cover. Song birds abandoned the area. I remember afternoons and sunsets where I didn't hear a single bird chirp!
In August, the results were good, at least for toning down the bush crickets. I'd toned them down a little in 2020, but in 21, they were a lot better!
Unfortunately, the field crickets were not bringing it like they normally do. There seemed to be a lot fewer of them, and the ones we had were kinda sluggish, lazy singers. Their chirps were slower and more drawn out.
Instead of; chirp!.. chirp-chirp! These guys were more like; Chiiirrp?.. ... chiiirrp?..
I can think of a lot of factors that might have contributed to that, but I don't really know how many, or if any truly did.
1) It was a much rainier August than normal, and I know field crickets don't sing in heavy rain. So maybe they just don't like wet conditions in general.
2) I didn't leave any foliage at ground level, to try and eliminate as many bush crickets as I could. But it's possible that field crickets rely on some of that for cover, especially when it's rainy.
3) I eliminated bright lights in the back yard, because I'd read that lightning bugs don't like it. But it's possible that field crickets also don't like the deep dark, and prefer a bit of light. Because the few good ones I did hear were out by the street.
4) Maybe the Tordon had something to do with it... if they feed on roots or something as pupa, I don't know.
5) It's possible there are two alternating broods of field crickets that hatch every other year. Because all of my good recordings have been on even numbered years, like 1994, and then also 2018, and 2020. But I got poor recordings in both 2019, and 2021.
There's really not enough data to support the alternating brood hypothesis, and I don't even know if that's a thing with crickets. Cicadas famously have broods of every seven, eleven, and thirteen years... but Cicadas aren't in the same order as Crickets.
I suppose I'll find out in the years to come... now that the yard is back to a stable state.
What I'm doing this year, to prepare for August is the following:
1) I'm allowing some shrubbery and foliage to exist on the ground, though it's all being clipped to reasonable dimensions. And I've raised the blade on the mower to allow for taller grass.
2) I've gone the other way with lighting and have a nice LED floodlamp that lights up most of the back yard.
3) I'm no longer using the Tordon RTU, and it does seem like everything's rebounded this year. The hackberry tree isn't losing leaves. The birds are back. The squirrels have forgiven me. So that shouldn't be a factor?
As for the weather, it's beyond my control. And thanks to climate change, it's very difficult to predict... but that's a topic for another entry.
Suffice it to say, I've been doing my best for three years to tame the back yard, and create the conditions that are optimal for good cricket recordings... and now things are in a stable state back there... and because 2022 is an even numbered year, there may be a brood of lively crickets on the way.
But we'll see.
°¦}
