Windy

Friday's winds were the strongest prolonged, all-day winds I can remember in Norman. An hour before sunset I went to the NE Gate with the wind gusts still strong enough to wrench a car door out of grasp. A few hundred feet up the trail the shelter of the Woods was remarkable. I met Ana and Luke emerging with collections of flowering Viola, Rosa multiflora and others.
The NE and Central trails had many smaller branches down but no large trunks. The small pool above Island Crossing was now gone, just wet earth..no open water. One cottontail rabbit on the upper NE Escarpment trail.. several robins but no other large animals seen in my loop down to the south center and back up the southeast creek trail.
The Ragweed Delta is growing up with lush grass, Gallium bedstraw, Ambrosia giant ragweed and some other spp.... still just ankle high.
Sunday morning 17 April I took my saw to NW entrance by Rudy's and cleared a heavy hackberry trunk blocking the trail. The winds broke the top out of the tree 25(?) feet up. Farther east along the Trans OWP Trail a large walnut trunk had broken off and smashed into the vegetation along the trail but was not blocking. One squirrel in the Woods. I drove around to the NE Gate and walked in on the new trail (not completed) in the upper younger Woods. Lots of Symphoricarpos coralberry to clear from the southern half of the path. Noticed full new blooms of Lonicera honey suckle near the Bur Oak Bridge.. but a free standing bush with solid trunks.. not L. japonica I think. The blooms look identical. Not the January flowering L. fragrantissima. Noticed Ben & Angie jeep at gate.