It is Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) time! In this house, we love berries of all sorts and if there is a chance to pick them, we love them even more! Wineberries are the non-native invasive that just about everyone turns a blind eye to. Their ruby, semi-tart fruits are prolific and even the most fervent of invasive species eradicators will just idle on by these canes, pretending not to notice. I will not tell a lie. I, too, willfully disregarded these non-natives in my backyard. Whenever I see a new cane pop up, I just let it be and I rip out some Japanese Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), instead. It is easy to commit purposeful oversights when we will be rewarded with delicious berries.
When wineberries reach their full ripeness, they turn a deep ruby, almost purple color. I am not known for patience and I usually start eating them when they become “STOP Sign” red. I have eaten them at full ripeness, and they are a bit sweeter. However, that would require 2 more weeks more of ripening time and I just can’t wait that long! My husband and I decided it would be fun to take the boys berry-picking after work, so we picked them up from school, stopped for a slice of pizza and then headed out into the Sourlands!
My Big Dude picked the first berry of the hike.
Kerplink!
My husband showed Littlest which berries were ripe for picking.
I love the pincer grasp that young children use when picking berries. Their careful and slow reach and those little fingers pinching is adorable. 
“Hurry up! There are more berries up here!” my Big Dude shouted. He was our scout and he pointed out all of the big and best patches.
Berry baskets for the win! Two handed picking at its best.
Berry picking was traded in for some rock climbing.
We took a well-deserved break at the top of the mountain and enjoyed watching the sun as it began to set over the Delaware river.
This was about two-thirds of our harvest. We picked a bunch more on our way down to our car. 
I combined our family-picked berries with about 4 more cups of berries which I had picked from the bushes outside of my office. I cooked them all down with 1.5 cups of water.
I bought a jelly strainer and strained out all of the juices that I could.
Cooking the preserves, adding sugar and pectin and sterilizing all of my equipment! I have never canned anything before (or made preserves for that matter!) so I boiled everything a lot longer than I needed to because I wanted to make sure I killed all the bacteria and fungi.
My boys worked hard making labels for our preserves. 
My Big Dude knew the most important part of “Wineberry Preserves”.
All done!
My preserves came out a little runny, but they tasted great! We are going to make picking wineberries and turning them into preserves a family tradition. It was so nice to go out as a family and even though the canning part was a little tedious, I love the fact that we did it together.
Our shirts and pants are tucked in and we are ready for an adventure!
It looks like one tree fell over and then another tree fell on top of the first. Trees knocked over by wind are often referred to as “wind thrown” and these thrown trees can have many different effects on the ecosystem. Fallen trees change the ecological community because the organisms that depend on an upright tree generally cannot survive on a horizontal one. Also, when a tree falls it causes a physical disturbances on the ground where it fell and in the hole that the roots used to occupy. Uprooted trees destabilize the soil making it easier for the next tree to fall. When a tree falls it also creates a gap in the canopy, allowing a lot more light to reach the forest floor. Often when you see large canopy gaps you will also see a flush of invasive species like Japanese Stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum. 
“These are ferns!” My little botanist in training 🙂
Littlest working on his fire starting skills.
A Jill-in-the-pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum.
Jack-in-the-pulpit/Jill-in-the-pulpit seeds. They will turn a bright red when they are ripe.
I love the curves of this Sweet Cherry, Prunus serotina. At the top of the photo you can see the Sweet Cherry growing into the bark of what appears to be a Black Gum, Nyssa sylvatica. The Sweet Cherry probably had damage on that branch and as the branch healed, the new wood started to grow around the bark of the Black Gum. This is an example of a natural graft. Grafting is a horticultural technique often used to combine two different species of plant. For example, many of the grape vines grown in Europe use a rock stock from the American Concord grape which is resistant to Phylloxera, which is an insect pest that was introduced to Europe and killed a large percentage grape vines across the continent. A piece of the vine from the desired grape variety (lets go with Chardonnay) will be sliced on an angle producing a “scion”. This will be aligned with an identical but mirrored cut on a Phylloxera-resistant root stock (Concord) and then the two pieces will be wrapped to hold them in place. The vines will heal around each other making the two plants into one. This method is used in many different plant species, but particularly for fruiting trees.
The Wild Boys playing nature’s version of hop scotch.
Kings of the mud mound!
Jump!
We used roots and rocks to navigate through the mud.
My Big dude found a slug and wanted to make sure I took a picture.
“Rock Island”.
Surveying the stream and looking for the best place to throw rocks.
He asked if he could cross the stream. I said, “No”, and as soon as I turned my back to help Littlest, he crossed the stream anyway. It was one of those situations where you must pick and choose your battles. I chose to let it (and him) go.
Enjoying his independence and the view from the other side!
The Japanese Stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum, was like a carpet in the forest.
These Wild Boys loved all of the stream crossings at the preserve. There were so many opportunities to hop, skip and jump!
My big dude walked off again while I was helping Littlest cross the stream. I found him upstream quietly sitting on a rock.
I asked him what he was doing and he told me, “I am just enjoying a quiet moment”. My oldest continues to amaze and silence me every day. He asks me the questions that I have never even considered and has much more patience than I have ever had. I love watching him think and puzzle over things. He picks things apart and then slowly and carefully puts them back together in a way that makes sense to him. He is tenacious in his quest for knowledge and will never accept the easy response of, “because that is the way it is”. He constantly requires me to reflect on what I think I “know” and to not just accept things as truth without understanding them from top to bottom. 
I am trying to give both of my children space and time to explore on their own. While guided instruction is important, I believe children need to play and self direct their playtime. I sat back on my rock and enjoyed some quiet time myself while watching my Wild Boys play and explore on their own time and terms.
Nature’s balance beam.
Searching for waterfalls.
The only time they are allowed to throw rocks!
This tree had what looked like a wire wrapped around it and over time, the tree grew over the wire. I have seen trees “swallow” fences before, but I have never seen a tree grow around a wire in this fashion.
Post-hike car picnic! The women that work at our favorite sandwich shop know these Wild Boys well and when they see them in their Sourland Conservancy shirts, they always asks them “Are you going to help Mommy save the trees today?” And the Wild Boys shout, “YES!”.
We measured water depth across different portions of the stream.
Stream monitors are supposed to work in pairs, so one person collects the measurement while the other person writes it down.
Ready, set, go!
Go ducky go!
Big helpers taking a turn with the measuring tape.
Littlest finding the perfect rock to throw.
My big dude could not wait to get into the stream and look for Macros.
My big dude found a Mayfly! Mayflies are in the order Ephemeroptera. The root of the word means “for a day” in Greek, which hints at the short life span of Mayflies.
Watershed Ambassador, Fairfax Hutter, showing volunteers how to sample along streams with overhanging vegetation.
I love how unique each of these Sourland streams are!
Volunteers were eager to check out their D-nets and see what macros they found!
Whenever someone found something new everyone would crowd around to get a good look.
Inspecting his find!
Volunteers sampled along the riffles, from the top of this section all the way to the bottom.
Reaching into the D-nets to look around felt like reaching into a goody bag (at least for us nerdy folks!).
Volunteers chatted and sampled and had a lot of fun working (playing!) in the stream.
It looks like this Crayfish is holding back a sneeze!
A Hellgrammite, in the order Megaloptera!!! This has been on my life of macro invertebrates to see since I took Limnology when I was an undergraduate. I am talking 11 years in the making! I saw it in my D-net, but was cautiously optimistic because I didn’t want to be too excited and then upon closer inspection find out that I was mistaken. However, I let out a huge WAHOO when I got it on my hand. Isn’t she magnificent?!?! Hellgrammites turn into Dobsonflies, which I have not seen either. Now that I have the larval stage checked off, I know need to see an adult!
A dragonfly, in the order Odonata. I feel like this is one of the easier species to identify in their larval stage because it looks pretty similar to the adult stage, except it doesn’t have wings.
We all worked together to identify, sort and count our macro invertebrates together.
We found three crayfish! I always get excited to find one (in the water, not on the trail like last time!).
A Mayfly!
A Water Penny, in the order Coleoptera (beetle). Finding Water Pennies is a good indicator that your water is clean!
A Damselfly, in the order Odonata. Their paddle-like tails are actually gills!
A stonefly, in the order Plecoptera! Stoneflies have gills right where their appendages meet their body, so it looks sort of like they have hairy armpits… or hairy legpits?
SourlandNiche 
