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.