Open Woods

This Saturday morning, after a heavy one-inch thunderstorm rain at 6 AM, I went to the Woods at 9:30 to see what changes the rain had brought. I found the flood water I expected, moving 50 m west of the beaver dam, gradually sinking into the soil, and gradually creeping farther west. The green ash, cottonwoods, elms and others along that southern section of the Woods will get a good deep drink, that will last through the winter. I wonder if there is an impact of the pollutants carried in this water, washed from the Lloyd Noble parking lot.
Across the Woods, the leaves are 95% down. The Woods have opened up to almost their winter-time appearance. Still lots of blonde-brown leaves hanging from box elder. Leaves killed in early snow did not form a normal abscission layer before dropping. Other trees, willows, pecan some elm and sugar berry were caught with late leaves still green as the snow began to fall. They have dropped the leaves now. It should make for a richer leaf litter this autumn, more minerals and nutrients left in leaves by the trees without time for the normal leaf senescence process.
Northwest of the beaver dam there were four large white-tail deer, three older does and one large buck with a good set of antlers. I could smell a rich wet mammal smell farther along the trail where they had been standing. The dung they left looked like tight clusters of small grapes.
The east pond was now 2/10ths of a foot in depth and the northwest pond had a good half of its basin filled with water, although still shallow.
Green in the Woods now are the fresh new Ligustrum privet shrub leaves, the old remaining leaves of Quercus macrocarpa bur oak and Sideroxylon chittamwood.. also fresh dark green Geum avens marked with light green veins and the anachronistic bright green Elephantopus leaves. The leaves of the scattered Viburnum rusty black haw shrubs are turning a bruised purple green brown, but have not fallen. The cottonwoods have shed all their golden leaves.
Fresh fungi were sprouting fruiting bodies: red-brown ruffles of Auricularia jew's ear common up the stems of dead elms and walnut, or bright lacquered Ganoderma beefsteak polypores abundant on the pecan stump at the north end of the Two Pecan trail, and fresh new Agaricus at the base of old trees.