Wet and Green Woods

My goodness what a change in the Woods.. It has been striking to see the greening of the Woods; but today I decided to go for a walk in the rain.. wonderful!
By 2 PM we had had 0.4 inches with more slow gentle spring rain falling. I entered via the SW gate. The Woods looked verdant.. more shaded by new leaf-out from trees.. the leaves were all their bright early spring green.

I decided to take the main SW trail which has been inundated for much of the past four months and was happy to see it was emerging from its sodden state. The forest floor was soft and still wet; but the upper organic layer had drained. Last autumn's fallen leaves were covered with an odd looking dried scum of algae.. a dry greenish brown.

All along the south side of the trail, fifty feet distant, there was a bright blanket of fresh green annuals and other understory..like a bath tub ring.. at the base of the slight sandy rise to the foot of the dune along its western end. Abruptly down "slope", a matter of an inch or two; the forest floor was still entirely brown, devoid of herbaceous vegetation. Any growing there would have been drowned. On the north side of the trail slightly raised areas with better light were islands of bright green new bottlebrush sedge.

There were still pools remaining along the trail; but the deepest locations were just over ankle deep and ninety percent of the trail was drained. There was no water near the dam.

On the north side of the trail by the big grandfather cottonwood I disturbed a herd of six deer who trotted off a short hundred feet and then stopped and peered through the vegetation at me and my bright yellow rain coat.

I headed north into the central Woods and was happy to see that the trail we had cleared in the winter was still moderately clear. I found several patches of poison ivy along the trail with freshly emerged leaves and was able to clear all of that. I am sure that I will need to clear resprouts from some of these plants again..but for now it looks pretty well absent from the trailside.

Arriving at Fence Corner and the big cedar that blew down in the Christmas blizzard, I noticed that all the Gymnosporangium cedar apple gall rust on the branches were full hydrated, with gelatinous telial masses like a rich burnt orange marmelade. I was surprised how much there was on all the junipers.. particularly the large juniper at the junction of the pipeline trail and the NE Escarpment trail.

Crossing the Elm Bridge the creek was in good full flow and I was happy for boots. Westward on the E-W Fence Line trail past the first big old pecan (looks like a snag but still alive) on the north side of the trail there was a large grapevine with what looked like a large 10 inch orange paint blaze..but it wasn't paint. I will have to return and study it to see if it is a fungus, slime mold or whatever. From that grapevine, I found and partially roughed out a useful new trail up the west side of the stream connecting to the Trans OWP trail. This will need some work to establish. The new trail follows some old orange flagging for the northern ~ 100 feet to the Trans OWP.

Along the Trans OWP I walked to the East Pond and took the spur to the Biggest Cottonwood now tagged #200 and then eastward again to the triple split mulberry and cotton rat nest. A couple of feet from the nest in the open center where the split tree left a sheltered hollow there was an odd piece of litter that ended up being the remnants of a red party balloon. I wondered if the cotton rat had brought it there to decorate like a bowerbird.

From the split mulberry thence east to Hackberry Alley, south back to the dam, across the dune and west along the South Border trail back to the gate and an exit. The walk was so wonderful.. no ticks, no mosquitoes.. beautiful colors, fresh leaf out.. I want to do most of my summer walks there actually during the rain. Great time to be there.