Spring wet Woods

After a week of wet weather with 4 inches of good rain, Thursday was our first good drying day. I went to the NW Gate at 5 to see the Woods. The Woods is rapidly becoming its annual spring jungle.
Smilax greenbrier vines' new tendrils were encroaching on the trails, as were Symphoricarpos, buckbrush and Acer negundo box elder.
I'll need to clear trails with swing blade to keep them open.
Fungi should be growing well with the rain, and I found a patch of Auricularia jew's ear jelly fungus well fleshed out and a few agarics. There should be more in a week.
Multiflora rose was out in full white bloom perfuming the Woods with a sweet smell, here and there. The East Pond and NW Pond were both well-filled. I did not see any aquatic insect predators (odonates etc) there; and did not find any mosquitoes.
One white-tailed deer ran splashing through the shallow water to the south side of the NW Pond and then stood browsing and watching me. I sang and waved to it as it browsed, then I headed back east.
The old pecan log across the East West Trail, has decayed enough now so that it is breaking up. I found a large white scarab grub in the soft rotten wood and thought it might be Dynastes, our Hercules beetle. Not many other insects.
Tapping the Lindgren beetle trap with a long stick, I disturbed a Polistes wasp (nesting, no doubt) and I quickly stepped back 30 feet or so.
I watched one bumble bee as it searched the ground beside me, as though it was looking for its nest.
All looked beautiful and in good shape in the northern Woods.