Waiting for the Weather

End of October and it was a mild (60-70 F) day with morning fog early and solid overcast the rest of the day. I went out to the Woods' NW Ponds entrance at 6:15 for a twilight walk. The forest seemed like it was on hold, waiting for the rain forecast for tonight and the next two days. The NW pond was quiet.. no turtles or odonates at the end of the day. Maybe 0.6 feet in depth. I have to clean the post. I found three deer, one yearling leaping away; and two older does by the Big Tree grove. The older does were more curious than skittish. I wondered if they were yearlings I saw with their mother in the Woods in previous years.. and if so, if they have any memory of me and my grey woods coat. The big cottonwoods still have 80-90% of their leaves; but in the small-diameter, crowded green ash stands, 90% of the leaves are down. Walking southwest from the Big Tree Grove in summer, I would come into denser shade, approaching the thick green ash. Now the canopy brightened with open sky. Through the Woods, tree crickets are trilling. Circling back north along the West Trail, I love the band of green woods light from the western boundary, coming through the forest at sunset or later. It silhouettes the dark trunks of the larger elms, ash and oaks in the woods for a brief time before night falls.

Big Tree Falls

On a familiar trail, walking NE towards Tall Stump the trail looked very different. I did a double-take and realized the big pecan snag had fallen. This was one of the largest trees in the Woods. I first encountered it about seven years ago. I had used it for navigation many times walking in the near dark; it was a column that showed me the way. 117 cm in diameter but only twenty feet high, big bark slabs falling off the decaying wood. It did not lean. How did it fall spontaneously to the south? Metaphor for those around us.. folks who have helped guide and shape us. It must have been this past ten days. It has fallen on and crushed a younger hackberry and elm. Their cracked stems are still fairly fresh.

This Saturday morning early at 8 we had had a very light rain .01 inch, with more expected this afternoon. I went to the NE Gate and walked down along the Tree Loop to Elm Bridge and across to the west. One small white-tail ran from me near the junction with the Pipeline Trail and one large doe ran tentatively but then stopped and watched curiously as I walked by singing to the doe thirty feet away by the western camera tree.

The old deer carcass SW of the East Pond is mostly gone now.. the skull and intact vertebrae remain in the middle of a patch of fallen leaves darkened by decomposition. The smell of decay is gone too, from all but the immediate 1-2 m from the skull.

The Woods are lovely now. The big trees like the Grandfather cottonwood still have 95% + of their leaves, still vigorous green. Smaller diameter trees (green ash old saplings, elms etc.. have lost most of their leaves leaving the understory of the forest greatly thinned out. Beautiful day.

NIce Autumn Day in the Woods

After recent 1.5 inch and 0.13 inch rains, the Woods today were fine and fall-ish. I took a swing blade and a chain saw to the North gate at 9:30 to work on clearing trails overgrown with healthy summer growth of Symphoricarpos, Verbesina, Chasmanthium and Smilax. In the upper plateau west of the North Gate I encountered a small herd of a half dozen deer. First herd of that size I'd seen in the Woods in many months. They usually start coming into the Woods in larger numbers about this time of the year as hunting season approaches. In the lower Woods along the Main SW trail under elms killed by dutch elm disease I cleared a path through large patches of Polygonum knot weed.
The East Pond depth was 0.62 feet. Through the Woods, the canopy is still green and 70% there; but many leaves of hackberry and elm and others have fallen. No colors in any of the fallen leaves, just brown. No turtles today, or mosquitoes.. few insects of any sort. First frost (light) last night. Spotted a large barred owl flying low in the Woods near the Grandfather cottonwood. I must have disturbed it from its perch. Ripe mushy persimmons are beginning to fall along the Tree Loop.

Cool fall coming in to the Woods

Late summer's lingering heat was suddenly broken last night just before midnight with a slow moving cold front and two thirds inch of rain. This added to the four thirds inch a week ago Friday night. The trees and shrubs in the Woods will have a good drink now before winter.
After weeks away, I went to the Woods to walk all the trails and see what had changed. At 9:30 I entered the North Gate with a set of loppers and some paint to refresh blazes. A marvelous day to be in the woods. Cool enough for a sweater under a work parka. Fifty feet along the trail there was a box turtle. Oddly, over the next 4-5 hours I saw no other wildlife except one squirrel burying food along Hackberry Alley and assorted robins, crows and beetles. No deer, rabbits, other turtles etc. I wonder if dogs have been suppressing wildlife activity. Nate reports a pregnant dog several days ago along the southwest trail.
The Woods are beginning to thin out and open up again. The dense understory of summer is mostly gone. The canopy leaves are 95% still there although they will be falling soon. The flowers of Elephantopus are all converted to seed and white Verbesina frost weed is in full flower at intervals along the trails.

http://www.floridahorsebacktrailrides.com/images/Flowers/Frostweed.jpg

The East Pond depth was 0.40 feet. The NW Pond was refilled maybe 70% of the way to its regular shoreline.. although volume was probably less than 35-40% of capacity. Water was flowing in the Wash at Island Crossing. There was water at Beaver Dam and a short 100 feet west of there, but no water flowing. The southern end of the SE trail was flooded with standing water 2-3 inches deep. I walked the logs to cross.
For three or four hours I cleared many stems of Smilax greenbrier, Symphoricarpos deer brush and other perennials grown up in the trails during the summer. Along the Ravine Trail a mid sized live hackberry had broken and blocked the trail. Interesting to consider why the stem had broken when and where it did.. wind exposure and some wound with a rot fungus in the stem probably; but it was not an old tree. I hauled the top and branches off to the side. Another large dead hackberry trunk had fallen across the other end of the Northern Rim trail, crushing some young trees down to block the way. I freed the young trees and left the large old trunk across the trail to step over. Several other small trees across different trail sections but none required a chainsaw.
The Woods are in much better shape now than they were in October 2012 or 2011. They have had good summer rains and far less extreme summer heat. No mosquitoes and I did not see any ticks.