Up to 100 F this afternoon. I drove the southern service road eastward from the transfer station and stopped at the end of the N-S trail by Heather's solar cell. The giant ragweed there is now 7-8 feet high. I pushed open a path from the hot grassy road to the shaded forest. The ragweed shed its loads of yellow pollen from each cupped flower as I pushed the tall stems aside and pressed them down. The air was minty with fragrant plant aromas until abruptly stepping into the dry open basin shaded by the willows. Large black carpenter ants were busy there along a dead stub of one prostrate big willow. North there were some small branches and debris across the trail; but mostly the trail was in good shape despite my absence. At the EW trail jct someone (squirrel?) had been eating green pecans and their bright white-yellow fragments were littering the trail. Lots of dried curled dead leaves are down.. shed during the heat of the past two weeks. But these represent surely less than 5 % of the leaves that will come down this year.
Up to Barney Jct and NW to Tall Stump and then to the East Pond. It was mostly dry but still held 0.86 ft of water by the gauge. From there south through the Big Tree grove to the Main SW Trail. Passing the big cottonwood (#200) and a little farther south a big leaning green ash and a sudden alcoholic sweet smell of a tree wound with flux. Twenty feet up the tree a foot long old wound and flux streak extending to the ground was attracting a busy group of nymphalids (mostly hackberry emperors).. some green bottle Lucilla calliphorids and a few others.
Leaving the Woods I took the W. Dune trail and was impressed again at the Cnidoscolus bull nettle flourishing there above the Opuntia.
I stopped to refresh several blue paint blazes on my way out.
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