Islands

Morning of Wednesday 12 May, I returned to the Woods to check on the status of the main SW trail. It was delightful, dry and green. The water was gone. Where the forest had been flooded or soggy there was now a light sparse mantle of inch high verdure from the rounded cotyledons.. now in the hundred's of thousands, if not more. The slightly raised areas of forest floor were noticeably more green with a greater density of the new sprouts. Along the trail where water had been an inch or two deeper, there was a contrasting darker brown with less growth.

Scattered through the Woods here and there were small islands of white on the ground; shed catalpa flowers lighting the understory, like graceful skirts around their trees. A great time to walk through the woods and locate every mature catalpa, maybe a dozen trees in 70 acres.. if that many.

At the crest of the Dune Trail there was a broken bumelia blocking the trail. I cleared enough with just the loppers but the hanging broken snag will fall and need a saw to clear.

The next day rain began..a half inch followed by another full inch over night.
I returned to the Woods Saturday afternoon and the water had fully retaken the southwest quarter. There were standing pools 20 feet beyond the tilted burr oak along the SW trail. There was water flowing through the dam in the lower Woods at a pretty good pace. I entered the NE gate and walked down to the Pipeline Trail stopping to clear a patch of poison ivy there. Then across the wash over to the Northern Loop.
All the leaves of trees and shrubs along the path were wet with the previous rain and bending low over the path. I cleared more snags and branches and new green shoots where they narrowed or blocked the trail.
In the south Woods below the dam I followed the main flow of the current and pulled aside the logs that blocked the flow. The water sped up briefly but likely returned to the same initial flow rate thirty minutes after .. a new equilibrium. If the level of the remaining water west of the dam drops a quarter inch, I will have had a useful effect.