Arboretum Diary

"By September, the day breaks with little help from birds. A song sparrow may give a single half-hearted song, a woodcock may twitter overhead en route to his daytime thicket...but few other birds have anything to say or sing about."  – Sand County Almanac, "September"








8/31

We spend the frigid deep months of February through March waiting for the silent coliseum of air to thrive again with song.  The first days of raw spring, when the sun sets out patches of warmth in among the new forming buds and the last of the snow has receded into memory, the blast of song

comes from every direction – the backyard house swallows duck and weave across the panorama chasing crows in their own slooping gate back up into the castles of oaks where they belong.  If lucky, bluebirds nest and chirp somewhere close enough to consider behavior; hawks, above it all, circle in secret societies waiting for the field mouse to forget his place in the tunneled holes.  And then, before we can quite catch the days back in our fists, the songs thin out and the last of the lush green limbs replace them as they catch the fall wind.  Before the changing colors, the Arboretum is just that for now;

two bluejays flit about under the canopy of crabapple and the turkeys shyly shuffle about, but here in late summer it is the lush of the last of the green not the songbirds that dominate.  Longinecker Woods is

a well maintained field of tagged species, each tree, shrub, lilac, given its exclusive little piece of earth, which the mosquitos have come to be spoiled by as any child in the candy aisle.  In a month, the first of the sunburst colors will take hold in the canopies, the mosquitos, all thankful, retreating back to some elm stump den, and only the silent hawk will still set out the contours of the upward reaches of the sky.

On the Yahara A-Z

O.

Oysters on the menu at Gates and Brovi, Monroe Street.  As the description to one of our favorite new places in Madison describes, Gates and Brovi, a creation from from the same partners as

Marigold Kitchen, and Sardine, is East Coast fish house meets Midwest supper club.  And so the interior of this gem, way down past Lake Wingra on Monroe Street, is a modern Cape Cod style open

fish shack concept but decorated with great memorabilia from midwestern lodge icons like Leinenkugels, an ancient spinning Schlitz globe above the bar, and a trophied pan fish above one of the tables.  As a fish shack, here you can get a good batch of fresh Blue Point oysters, the first thing

item advertised on the menu.  Dovetailing right along with the whole food movement, salads here include oil packed Italian artichokes, radichio, green cabbage, kalamata olives and parmesan in a cider mustard vinaigrette; fine, gourmet style pizzas, include clams, roasted fennel, cream basil,

mozzerella and pinches of parmesan, topped with over easy eggs.  My own favorite is un upward trending fixture on menus in Madison, a version of the salmon burger, with Napa cabbage slaw, cucumbers and spicy mayonnaise.  Lodge style beer taps at a bar that looks like purposefully

designed happy hour neighborhood bar round out this little masterpiece of combined styles.  Easily bikeable, walkable and even boatable from Lake Wingra, it feels a little like the lake lodge restaurant in the middle of the west town hubbub.

Arboretum Journal

For the hundreds and thousands who call the arboretum their special place in the city of Madison to walk, bike, study or certainly learn genus and species of flora and fauna, it is known that its creation was nothing to take for granted.  Unlike most other cities in the country, Madison grew in a particular time and position and under a unique leadership among community leaders to become an abundantly green city.  The UW Arboretum itself, much like the long anticipated creation of the Monona Terrace

under the vision of Frank Lloyd Wright, had been a dream in the mind of many for many years, the most prominent early pioneers Michael Olbrich, who also spearheaded the cross town natural mecca of Olbrich Gardens.  He took seriously many of the dictums set out by Thoreau and saw that Madison was still in an open position to be developed, either by industry, which is always naturally occurring

anyway, or by a new American sense that nature itself needs designation and that people need open green space in order for their lives to be fully whole. At one early city meeting in the 1930's, lobbying for the creation of a visitable green space along the shores of Lake Wingra, Olbrich was bold enough to use the words of Thoreau, which eventually landed on the ears of Aldo Leopold, "Hope and the

future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps...a township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below–such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages." These words of nature designation were taken seriously and put to action, the arboretum eventually becoming a purchased tract of land to be studied and also rehabilitated to its more natural state before city population incursion.  The arboretum land, located on the west side of Lake Wingra, is connected to the same tract of forest as Edgewood school and only a short ride away.  Bike trails run along the shoreline behind the school and towards the Arboretum entrance where, after

a short drive along McCaffrey Drive, is the parking lot to the Nature Center and then the Longenecker Woods, an experimental patch of woods in which each species of tree and shrub has been tagged described for the sake of observation.  Turkeys run wild throughout; narrow trails run throughout the swamp like woods, and the Curtis Prairie a world renown experiment in calculated prairie restoration.  The Arboretum, then, serves multiple groups at once – it is an open garden, forest, and prairie for all city dwellers, but it also a natural science learning and research center connected to the university, a place to enjoy and learn at the same time, a photographer's paradise.

"Wonders as of those countries, the soil, trees, cities, inhabitants, whatever they may be, Splendid suns, the moons and rings...That containing the start of each and all, the virtue, the germs of all" – Whitman, from "Germs"












Dredger

And under it all only the dredger of waters knows,
the watergrass spindling up like wild strands of chemistry,
that twisting life that lives in the silence of green
whose short tufts feed the silver guppies who themselves
get gulped by the pike and the marauding musky.
Wild oaks rise up on the other side where air is the show but also
digs down into the deep of the black bank soil for breath,
rises up each day to warm the cheek of each limb leaf by leaf
then leans, when winter comes, back down to water,
like the dredger of water comes to know as he swings his paddle
that the virtues the sun the water the leaf is what he is.

Weeknight Cooking: The New Egg Bake

The fine art of the artless egg bake is fast becoming an easy way to cook not only a breakfast or brunch but for any weeknight cooking.  Having the new so called list of super foods in the pantry or refrigerator is a great help and best start.  Simple, high protein, low gluten foods, such as quinoa or bean based foods, nuts and berries, or even unprocessed meats, especially fish are all the raw materials you need.  We had a pre-made container of quinoa and cranberry nut mixture, some lunch meat turkey,

cheese and plenty of eggs on hand.  How to turn these ingredients into an easy and simplified meal that looks good but is quite filling and good for you?  Whip up ten eggs with milk, fold in chopped turkey so that it free floats in the mixture, then, as that settles gently drop by hand the moist and sweet quinoa mixture over the top; some will settle down to the bottom and some will stay over the surface, giving the bake a nice look from the outside.  I used a relatively small and deep baking dish which presented a few problems of its own in the beginning, but was solvable.  At 350, the eggs begin to quickly cook

around the edges of the baking dish, but the middle stayed almost entirely uncooked.  At this point I turned the oven down to 325 for a slower bake, but the middle still stayed liquid.  Luckily, I had sprayed the sides of the baking dis with oil, so that when I pulled the dish out I was able to totally re-fold and mix the ingredients, scraping down the cooked sides and pulling the middle back out to the sides – the look of the egg bake become rougher and less smooth but within nothing more than another five minutes or so, with the hot and the cool quickly mixing together, the entire egg bake firmed and formed a perfect texture.  What was best about this simple throw together was that the ingredients – not following any pre-set recipe – ended up working very well together.  The light and frothy eggs matched the almost brittle quinoa and the cranberries added sweetness to an obvious otherwise not sweet egg mix.  Touches of turkey added a meat protein and cheese, if desired, would add another layer of flavor and texture.  When all else fails, as long as there are eggs there is a meal.  It's challenging to think of any main food type that wouldn't just toss into dish of eggs.  All veggies; grains; cheeses; virtually all meats; potatoes; rices; pasta?; sauces over the top…the list is endless.

On the Yahara A-Z

N.

Nueske's bacon on the 'Cultured Cob Salad' at Forage Restaurant. The Madison food scene is an open range where ideas that seem good often turn to reality.  Forage is another part of this food network that might go something like this: how can we serve good, whole, high protein, unprocessed food….fast!

We've seen salad bars before and many of them very good, but to turn the salad or the grain bowl purposefully into the main star and have it made right in front of you, on the go, is an upward moving trend.  Forage, then, isn't just concept but good high octain food, full of beans and grain and, as was the case with the

'Cultured Cob Salad,' full of chicken and bacon to round out this menu selection as a full-on meal for any time of day.  It's component parts are shredded romaine, lemon herb chicken, roasted tomatoes, fresh corn, avocado, chopped egg, chives, Nueske's bacon, gorgonzola and finally red wine vinaigrette.  So much for salad as rabbit food; this was one of the more filling meals I've had in some time.  As food culture

begins to shift back around to simple raw ingredients, it's dawning on us again, full circle, that primitive foods like beans, eggs, and avocado are clean, packed with proteins and cholesterols that are critical for us.  'The Power Bowl,' another order we made on this trip, is another raw powerhouse: lentils, roasted sweet potatoes, poblano slaw, guac, jerk chicken and goddess dressing.  Much like a dinner out to a steak fry, none of us finished our meals but had to take them along with us as we finished sipping our 'Lean Mean and Green' juices while thinking about the Forage sister restaurant Roasted across the street.

On the Yahara A-Z

M.

Michael's Custard.  It's well known fact in the realm of child rearing that the child might need ice cream

in order to willingly adventure about in the natural world.  Luckily it seems that Madison has constructed itself over the years for this very purpose -- surrounded at every turn by green space,

designated parks and water, and usually only a stone's throw away from the nearest ice cream, chocolate shop or bakery... a kid hardly has time to decide that a hike is not in her best interest.  Michael's is a Madison institution and planted conveniently adjacent to Lake Wingra located along

Monroe Street and part of the famous UW Arboretum.  We no sooner ordered our malts and cookie dough sundaes than we found ourselves down at the park bench under shade watching the kayak and SUP rentals at the dock system next to the lake service center.  The wind had stirred enough for a kite to work its way across the flat grass shore line as other cones and sundaes made their way down the similar path.  From here, we plotted out our next ice cream adventure on the eastside at Atwood st.

On the Yahara A-Z

L.

Little friends at Olbrich Gardens.  After a short pick-me-up chocolate tart at the Chocolaterian Cafe, a

short bike ride to the nationally recognized Olbrich Gardens was in order.  We dialed up our Google maps in order to check out the route and found that it was only a handful of right turns and quick trip

down to the designated bike path and we were there, cruising across the park grass and into a full parking lot, many of which were probably there for the temporary exhibit of the butterfly gardens.

It was a hot day and the sun was straight up at noon so we had to seek shade and some distraction so pulled out our pockets some little friends who wanted a tour of the enormous outdoor garden.

Carly's favorite little collectible people called gift'ems fit right into the scale and panorama of the gardens, and certainly knew better than we did where to find shade and where to find rest.

Olbrich is a seemingly never ending, well-manicured maze.  It was originally conceived by Michael Olbrich, a local standout student who went on to UW fame as a great debater and then a city attorney.  He wanted to build a garden that could be dedicated not just to the upper class who might have the time on their hands to follow various trends in urban gardening but "the worker confronted by the dismal industrial tangle, whose forces we all so little comprehend, something of the grace and beauty that nature intended us all to share.  For this park has not a passive, but an active function." His vision held true and today Olbrich is not just an east side city treasure holds acclaim worldwide as a model of a publicly held community garden as the consistently full parking lots year round attest.