Winter Kill

Cold arctic air over the Central Plains with light north wind. I went to the Woods yesterday to see its quiet bare, winter face. I entered via the NW Pond - not frozen, although it was below 0 C. I think it may be frozen in a couple of days with the -14 C forecast for tomorrow. Just up slope from the pond I noticed an adult opossum lying on the leaves. It looked life-like as though just sleeping. I suspect it had been dead less than a day. First thought was distemper or some other disease, combined with the cold. There was a burrow just up slope 5 feet from it, may have been its home. Cold tough weather here will likely kill many animals over the next few days.
Up the N Ravine path, the trunk of a substantial sugarberry had broken and blocked the trail. I took the saw and cut through the large log, hoping it would not seize and bind the saw. Was lucky. Need to freshen trail paint blazes on this section. Should update data on Tree Loop and finish remaining numbered metal tags there.
I walked most of the trails and did not see the three dogs. Maybe Mark Bechtel, the new Norman Shelter manager, had some success in removing them. Saw one small ruby-crowned kinglet playing/ foraging in front of me (day before). Wonder how they survive, if they do, in the deeper cold. Need to roll up vinyl rolls and close and tidy-up old herp traps. The Woods are quiet now. Life has retreated underground, under bud scales, into deepest shelter.

Gentle Rain returns

Yesterday the two month drought in the Woods came to an end with a long slow rain.  It began very gently for hours and lasted until almost midnight. The total was a good solid inch of rain. This afternoon at 4:30 I walked along the Tree Loop to see how the Woods had changed. There was a wonderful new smell of wet fallen leaves. The forest floor that had been crinkly dry for so long was now getting on with decomposition. The rich, earthy, hay-like smell was slightly sweet in the mix of oaks, elms, sugarberries, pecans, hickories and juniper at the northern beginning of the Loop. West across the Woods in the pure stands of green ash, the smell was sharper, a clean acidic smell. Because the rain had been so gradual, most of it soaked into the parched ground. The Wash was filled, but it did not look like there had been overland flow.
I am delighted to find another blackjack oak a bit off the Tree Loop trail, only the third in all of the Woods. It is the same size and age as the other two. It is located about 50 feet east of the juniper #91. A large dead oak(?) fell on it and has bent the top; but the tree looks like it is surviving well enough and should go on and grow.

Green Ash and Southwest Woods are Falling Down

All through the WSW section of the Woods, there are a large number of old trees coming down.  Long-dead bur oaks, big green ash and sugarberries. Windstorms have brought down an unusual number. I remember entering the southwest gate, and hearing the crash of a big tree falling a hundred yards north. Late this summer we also had many large canopy dominants snapped in half by strong winds. These seem to mostly have been big green ash and some big pecan. Their broken crowns filled with dead leaves, stand out in the bare forest of late November. Some will provide an extra bit of shelter on a cold winter night. I am curious how many of these will sprout new adventitious branches and new leaves. Trees that have been crushed by the falling larger trees and have lost their crowns have sprouted new leaves late this summer and these are now a fresh green while all the surrounding deciduous leaves are withering and falling.
Little bit smaller scale, the Oncideres twig girdlers have brought down an unusually large crop of branch tips this fall. I am curious what might emerge if I collected 40-50. Short science project. They seem to be mostly on pecan and elm, with a few of other species.

After an unusually wet, mild late summer, the past 50 days we've had no rain. The leaves in the Woods are crackling dry underfoot. The two ponds are still surprisingly well filled. By the East Pond, and by the second largest cottonwood south of there in the Big Tree Grove there are two unusual Euonymus bungeanus (?) wintergreen shrubs with leaves still green as the Woods becomes bare.
I took a saw to a couple equally large Lonicera maackii Amur honeysuckle shrubs growing in the dense brush along the West Dune Trail.

I have encountered two dogs running free in the Woods this autumn, the same two dogs on two different occasions. Both times in the east and southeast Woods. I have chased them off but I need to watch and see if they are coming back to the Woods. One is like the Budweiser dog, a bull terrier and its following companion is a lighter brown longer-legged dog.

Community of Trees

Walking into the SW corner of the forest, leaving traffic noise along the road behind the protective wall of vines and junipers, stepping into the peace of the real forest. The real forest trees are young and old: stately old giant bur oaks and sprightly young sugarberries. They are straight and tall as a green ash or gracefully bowed as an elm. It is a diverse community. The trees talk to one another. Ethylene and other compounds are the language. Roots and mycorrhizae are the internet. They respond when a neighbor has been attacked by elm disease or armillaria. They witness the short floods that come and drown the soil for a day or a week. They feel the fall of the old neighbor. They witness the play and gambol of smaller creatures around their base: deer, raccoon, squirrel, opossum, rabbit, skunk, box turtle. They stand, in the cold and ice of winter, against the night winds. They are there when storm winds come and break the branches and trunks of the tallest.

Walking into the forest, you can see the neighborhood, the community, if you let your eyes go un-focused, and wide, to see all the young trees and old, tall and straight or bent and broken.                                                    

Their silhouettes in the half hour before dark against a darkening gold sky, reveals the individual forms, grown and created by the particular interplay of species and the genes of individual trees, a neighborhood of competing canopies and the accidents of windfalls.

Its Late Autumn What's Green in the Woods.

Lovely, unusual Friday 17 Nov. in Norman OK. 82 F. Tomorrow high will be 59F. I went for a walk in from the NW Entrance by the NW Pond at 5 PM. Soft warm Woods. Funny and noticeable to catch the first small currents of evening cool and note where they come, down the ravine, down from the top of the tall tree. This is when the secrets of the forest come out.. when the cool air saturated with scents of the forest, vines, leaves, boughs and soil, the rich scents come out on the cooler air in laminar flow.
The trail and all the Woods was crinkly dry with fresh fallen dry leaves. No rain for several days. The leaves from the pecans were the most noisy underfoot. I wonder about the noise different kinds of leaves make in the woods, under a group of big catalpa or bur oak or pecan or willow or sugarberry and elm. The sounds are very different to me and I think the animals in the Woods, white-tailed deer, raccoon, rabbits, skunks, mice, opossum, owls etc.  they must know this too.. and maybe it helps them know where a walker is.
Last week as I was exiting the Woods just west of the NW pond in the evening, I saw a raccoon-sized animal running scurrying to the right in front of me to take cover. I caught enough of a view to recognize the armadillo; and a moment later walking at a regular pace I was standing in a roughly 40 foot diameter circle the armadillo had overturned, searching the leaf litter for worms, snails, millipedes and other dinner items.
I love being out in the Woods in the evening. Tonight after sunset all the western perimeter was orange with light. As the sky grew darker and darker the irregular massed orange clouds grew more intense orange.. finally a rich dark orange invaded with lenses of black before dark.
The wind today especially but really over the past week has fairly suddenly brought down almost all the leaves. The biggest cottonwoods are bare to their tops. It has been a good year for them.

There are the evergreens in the understory: Ligustrum privet, Lonicera honey-suckle - Japanese and Amur, Liriope monkey grass, Juniper cedar, Geum Avens, Verbesina Frostweed  (fading yellow from late summer flowers), Smilax greenbrier, Rosa, multiflora rose, Euonymus strawberry bush, Symphoricarpos deerbush, Elaeagnus autumn olive (fading yellow), a few Ilex holly, Viola spring violets, Allium spring onions,  Chasmanthium fish-on-a-line.

The two ponds were both well up, at 2.4 ft in depth. The NW pond still fills out over the swamp to the western wetland.

Walking along the paths this time of the year there are scores of twig branches cut by twig girdlers and dropped to the forest floor. Each of these has been cut off from defensive resins of its tree and eggs from the cerambycid have been placed along the stem. Fun to collect a bunch of these short branchlets and see what emerges next year.

Night and the Woods

Beautiful night for the Woods. Full moon floating high in a sky filled with clouds, mild night temp, low 60's and moderate wind, enough to stir the trees but not chill. I went for a walk at 9:40, three hours after sunset.
I started in at the NE Gate ascending the Tree Loop trail heading south and wondering about the sound. The sound of highway traffic permeated all through the Woods, growling, thundering, roaring almost non-stop. Until the light turns red and drivers slow their cars and wait a minute to again unleash their roaring engines.
I wondered how far I would need to walk away from the road until the sound of the crickets trilling was as loud as the sound of the cars. I was surprised. I walked all the way to the south end of the Tree Loop, down the slope to the Wash across westward to the North South Trail and south along it to the far southern side of the Woods. Traffic was becoming more distant and somewhat quieter but still each pulse of traffic was easily discernible. I walked SW behind the shelter of a low long tree-covered dune and sat on a comfortable old branch from the big bur oak fallen there. There the trilling crickets were almost as loud as the highway.. almost.
The trees along the south boundary were impacted by the tornado-like wind moving along the southern boundary.

Tornado Notes

Saturday night at 8:30 the tornado watch turned into a warning with a tornado at the Riverwind Casino that tracked along Highway 9 past the Weather Center and Oliver's Woods.
Saturday morning the storm was forecast for that evening; the Woods had had a good week or two to dry the flood water in the SW; so I decided to go walk the Woods in the morning. I took along blue paint to refresh the trail blazes for the year. I entered the SW Gate and could walk everywhere. The flood water was gone, although the ponds, East and North West were still fairly high.
There were a pair of box turtles mating, one small white-tailed deer that kept 50 meters away from me, and lots of small to medium sized branches down from the big windstorm a week earlier.
The big cottonwood east of the NW Pond is tilting more and more and it looked to me that the windstorm had pushed it a bit more. I think it will come down in the next year..and that will be a huge change in the surrounding woods. Through the Woods there were lots of small to medium branches down from the windstorm but no big trees across trails. Then Saturday night the approaching storm front produced a crackling lightning sky and eventually a brief EF-1 tornado.
Sunday I went early to look and see what had happened. Not much. Along S Chautauqua by the Woods small leafy branches had been ripped off the tops of tree and thrown on to the road.. but not so many. At the NE Tree Loop there were one or two old dead small trees that had blown over. Apart from that there was not much. The Woods suddenly lost about 20% of its leaves with the wind; but there are still 75-80% remaining.. many still green. Mosquitoes were moderately persistent and annoying even with DEET.  Sunday the cold front came in with the storm. The western wash was full of flowing turbid water. The old Elm Bridge crossing is no more.

Back to the Woods

Early September. I've been away from the Woods most all summer.
Saturday morning at the NW Gate. Brief, two hundredths of an inch of rain at dawn has wet leaf surfaces glinting in the eastern light but left the ground below largely undampened. Sun illuminated perfect orb webs spun here and there across the trail, mostly the white-backed Micrathena. The trail to the NW pond all looked well and untrammeled, not many visitors recently. Trees looked  like they had done well this growth year, mildest and wettest August in 10-15 years. NW Pond was covered with a good healthy growth of scum, good organic matter, lots for aquatic herbivores to eat. Eastern Pond is about one third full with dark water.. almost black prob. from leached tannin.
A few flowers blooming: some Elephantopus elephant's foot and yellow asters along the eastern Tree Loop.
Mosquitoes were fairly abundant, but not pests with a little DEET. Much of the floor of the NE Woods, west of the Wash had been scoured by flooding in the recent heavy rain Tuesday Aug 22. The water must have breached the western levee north of Island Crossing and flowed SW across the Woods, pushing leaves, branches, logs with it and leaving bare soil - soon to be recovered with autumn leaves. Leaf litter and debris pushed all the way along N Loop Trail to near the Eastern Pond.
  Nice growth of fresh mushrooms, clump of Coprinus deliquescing east of the Eastern pond. Various round puff ball spheres soft orange. Beautiful fresh white shelf fungi.
  Around the tree loop there were 20-30 full fresh plums down below the Mexican plum, fairly sweet with considerable tannin to pucker the mouth. Down along the main East west trail there were fresh green pecans clipped and dropped by squirrels. The green shells with a wonderful lemony tannin pungency.
  South end of the Tree Loop the oldest red bud had fallen across the trail. I thought about trees I had seen alive in the Woods, growing, blooming; had seen die; had watched decay; that are now fallen. Some years gone by. I thought about friends at home, high school classmates, recently passed. Nice to see vigorous trees here old and middle aged and know they will be standing here after I am gone.

Storms and the Woods

Five days ago the Woods had a good 0.7 inch of rain followed by a storm three days ago with strong 80 mph wind gusts and another 0.9 inch.  Yesterday, Saturday afternoon I went for a walk in the Woods from the NW entrance.

I was impressed with the amount of fresh blow down - very interesting. The cottonwoods seem to have lost the most - small branches with clusters of green leaves and larger diameter limbs. One of the largest cottonwoods  (#123) by Carpenter's post now looks like it will fall. The roots on the west side are lifted and the massive tree looks more tilted. (Thoughts of the 'Home Tree' from the film 'Avatar'.) Box elder, green ash and catalpa also lost lots of green canopy. I was surprised how light catalpa branches are. Interesting time to walk around and examine leaf clusters fresh on the ground. Some interesting galling and other herbivory.

  The trail loop I walked (NW entrance to East Pond, Northern Loop to Island Crossing up to the Tree Loop, around that clockwise down to the Elm Bridge Crossing, then back west via the East West Trail) - is blocked in several places by blow down, but you can get around easily enough.

  An interesting time to go see and think about disturbance giving new forest structure. There are a lot of broken trees and new rich resources on the ground. 

The rain produced a crop of small bronze-colored agarics through the Woods. Caps the size of half dollars.

Oliver's Woods is Falling Down

Wow, what a lot of change in the Woods! First time in there in a few weeks.
The western central Woods has had a half dozen of it largest old bur oak snags fall this past month, taking down middle-aged elms and green ash with them.  In more than a decade of visiting the Woods, I've never seen this much windfall and change. The big bur oaks have been dead from flooding in this section for many years. Their roots have finally rotted away. The wet soil from many 2017 spring rains and the moderately gusty wind storms 20-40 mph have brought many dead trees down and broken, decapitated or crushed the young/ middle-aged elm, green ash and others growing around them. (Potential dendrochronology co-occurrence of good wide ring width intervals from abundant rain and stormy weather, with more scars from falling trees wounding survivors?)
Western trails blocked in two places by one massive bur oak and one other.
Under the big persimmon trees, small urn-shaped off-white flowers are falling. The sound is like the beginning of a light rain shower. Faint pleasant smell of melon.
Around the big pecan trees, there are temporary carpets of spent catkins. Near the cottonwoods, there are small tufts of white cotton drifted to ground. The dark soft organic soil in the west is covered here and there with thousands and thousands of new bright green seeds dropped from green ash. So much effort is spent in reproduction. Now spent and done. Trees are devoting their time and resources toward growth now.
I notice all the abundant animal digging along the west side of the Tree Loop (armadillo?).
The Wash from the Elm Bridge southward is layered in new blonde sand. There must have been a new construction project washout somewhere upstream.

Green growth and destruction

At 3 I stopped in to see the Woods at the SW Chautauqua Gate. A strong 30-40 mph SW storm wind was tossing the tops of the big bur oaks, elms and Celtis sugarberries there. A short 50 feet north on the Main SW trail I stopped, as the trail was flooded into a large swamp extending all the way north to the NW Pond. With Saturday's 1.25 inch rain on top of the previous big rains from last week, the W and SW Woods is under a shallow flood. As I stood there, I heard the crash of a big tree coming down, maybe 200 feet north of me. I could not see it, but it sounded like one of the dead bur oaks falling and crashing on younger small diameter trees.
I drove around to the higher, dry NE Gate and walked in on a 1 mile loop. The ponds (East and West) are brim full and over full. A small heron, with bright orange legs, flew away as I walked toward the NW Pond. Across the middle of the woods I discovered two green tops of big trees blown out by the winds. A large green ash top, loaded with new, fully-flushed green leaves, had snapped out of a tall tree just south of Carpenter's big Cottonwood. West of the northern end of Hackberry Alley a big Celtis sugarberry top was ripped out of the crown and lay with its heavy branch partly stripped, exposing the fresh wet surface of the phloem. The elm of Damocles, with its broken top hanging for years directly over the East West Trail, surprised me. The long-healthy big tree is now fading in what looks like a rapid, massive, elm disease wilt. I expect the entire tree to be dead a year from now.
The Woods trail sides and understory are bursting with fresh new green life. The grove of 4-5 catalpas had scattered sweet white blossoms on the ground all around the trees. The small white flowers of some of the early-blooming privet lay on the ground like small white crosses or stars below the shrubs. I was thinking about the odd poignancy of massive focused destruction at a time of abundant rapid green growth.. when I noticed one more piece of destruction. The old blue trash transfer building is completely gone. Nothing left but the cement pad of the huge old ramshackle building where I had once set my bug lights and captured moths and insects near the Woods.

Wet soaking soggy sweet Woods

(From Sunday 23 April)

Wet soaking soggy Woods this morning. At the NE Gate a fresh, clean, sweet scent of new privet blossoms, opening fresh white and faintly lemon scented. At the SW Gate, a sweeter Japanese Honeysuckle smell with yellow and white tubular flowers all along the southwestern boundary.

A quick sharp half inch rain fell Friday morning, followed by another two thirds of an inch over the next ten hours. It was enough to flood the SW Woods and leave standing water in pools and across large areas, all through the south and southwest of the Woods. Cool fresh temps and bright sunshine and a zillion mosquitoes. Cool enough so that as I walk the paths, they rise up in clouds, but are not quick enough to come up to my head or face. Who eats mosquitoes? Dragonflies? Who else?

There are numerous spider webs freshly spun, just some silver strands in the sunlight across the trails. I think spiders don't like mosquitoes. I think they cut mosquitoes out of their silk.

The great big dead bur oak that has fallen and blocked the Main SW Trail at 100 m is surrounded on all sides by water. I will wait until the pools and forest dries.

Sweet Woods with Arthropods

Last 2-3 days I've enjoyed late afternoon and evening walks in the Woods. There is a sweet odor permeating much of the Woods and I am not sure if it is from the invasive Elaeagnus Autumn olive in bloom, or the invasive multiflora rose.

The Wash is still full of (non-flowing) water and the SW Woods' Main Trail and SW quarter is still under water from the 4 inch rain a couple of weeks ago. The water has been there long enough now that a few mosquitoes are showing up. If the water remains for another week, there may be a large population of mosquitoes. Ticks are becoming abundant again. I have seen 2-3 dozen in the past four days. Tiny young ticks, probably first instar < 1 mm in length are most abundant, but larger mature ticks are present and active.

On the positive side of the arthropod ledger, there have been surprising early arriving monarchs (2-3), tiger swallowtails and red admirals. And bright flashing green Cicindela sexguttata tiger beetle.

Turtles and Woods Waking Up

Walking along the main E-W Trail a small young box turtle was just emerging from its over-wintering den, one of those anonymous holes along the trail by the biggest old pecan tree.
Up above the Northern Loop Trail, four Ailanthus Tree of Heaven have sprouted new leaves. The very newest are still purple green. The smell of the leaves is different from the nearby young pecan. Tree of heaven leaves are more nutty. A multiflora rose is coming in to full bloom down by the previous Elm Bridge. Water is still full in the wash, although not moving. Walking down from the Tree Loop, a larger animal moved in the water leaving ripples - a garter snake? crayfish snake? turtle? I didn't see it.
Amur honeysuckle Lonicera maackii in bloom on the Dune Trail, and across the wash from the old mimosa stump. A few dozen spider webs are strung across the trail, young small spiders, probably young Micrathena. One good rattlesnake fern is up and growing by the trio of cottonwoods along the wash. Much of the SW levee there has been scoured and covered in blonde sand in the the flood last week. New pink paint has been applied to the trees along the former 'white' trail (Hackberry Alley down to Beaver Dam). I need to find out about this.

Big Flood Big Sweep

This evening I went to the NW entrance to the Woods at 8 PM to see what the heavy flood rains had done. On April 1st a crew of Big Event OU students and faculty hit the Woods to mark trails, label/tag trees on the Tree Loop and clean up debris washed into the Woods from north of Hwy 9. Two or three days earlier, the heaviest rains in a year began to fall. Four and a half inches of rain built a flood, washing out across the central and southern Woods. A week later, the water has largely receded. As the flood pushed across the Woods, it shoved tons of leaf litter ahead of it. Trails now are oddly clean as though they have been power-washed, down to the soil. Rafts of leaf litter, bits of branches and old decomposing logs are pushed into deposits here and there.
The early spring warm March and this spring rain have changed the Woods. They have gone from their late winter openness or bareness, to the mid spring flush with green leaves of box elder, sugar berry, elm and others filling the under story, cushioning, absorbing the sound of traffic from the highway and obscuring line of sight across the Woods. I like this time.
This evening there is water filling the Wash at Elm Bridge and at the Beaver Dam (barely moving). The East Pond and NW Pond are both well-filled.
I walked a mile and a half of looping trails that seemed in fairly good shape, no big trees down. In the western woods the water is slowly seeping down into the ground. The land serving as a sponge to slowly recharge the ground water table.

Redbuds, Chickasaw Plums and Snapping Turtle

Catching up with several spring visits to the Woods over the past 2-3 weeks. Today cool misty, light rain by noon, I entered the Woods via the SW Gate and walked towards the center of the Woods to enjoy the sheltered buffer there from wind and traffic noise. The Woods is developing an early premonition of the green-up coming. Boxelder leaves are beginning to open. Cercis Redbuds have early beautiful flowers as do Prunus mexicanus Chickasaw plums. A few Elaeagnus Russian olive have white and yellow flowers open. The invasives are greening up: Ligustrum privet (nearly full leaf flush), Liriope monkey grass (just beginning to send new dark green leaves up from the soil), Lonicera honeysuckle (never really not green, now producing fresh leaves), Ailanthus tree of heaven (first few leaves just a cm or 2 long). Along the trails there are also herbaceous Geum (green almost all winter), Polygonum (pink ladies thumb), Viola (two violets with purple bloom) and early Galium cleavers.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a few days at 80F and many in the 70's. Elms have flushed their flowers and produced their green samara winged seeds.
The two ponds are in good shape, 75+% full, filling with groundwater.

Today there were two groups of deer, three and five deer. All looked young(ish).. just one year old.

Two weeks ago on a sunny warm afternoon I was delighted to see a snapper turtle back in the NW Pond up close by the N shore. In there feeding on Gambusia, mosquito fish?

All the trails I visited were in good shape with mostly small branch ends 1-2 inch DBH blown down by the strong winds of the 3-4 dry spring storms.

Birth of the Spring

Friday I left my office at 3 and headed for the Woods. The day was too inescapable. Warm soft sun, 65 degrees F. I propped up the fence in the NW and then walked in past the NW Pond. After a good slow soaking inch and a third of rain earlier in the week, the tops of the leaves in the litter had just dried again with the soft warmth. All through the Woods, the trees were waking. Rain, mild warmth, enough previous winter cold to start the clock fresh for the new season, and now mid February daylight hours growing rapidly. At home the silver maples out front have swelling and opening flower buds. In the Woods the elm flowers are beginning to open. By the East Pond I disturbed a whitetail doe and 3 yearlings who sprinted and bounded away east.. but not far. The doe stared curiously at me as I sang my deer song and waved. The green in the delta is not much more developed than weeks ago. The Eastern Wash had plenty of water at the Elm Bridge. I could see where the flow had spilled out of the Wash and pushed west and south clearing the leaves. Here and there, there were winding tracks of armadillos nosing through the leaf litter hunting for invertebrates.

A Day Out of Time

This afternoon at 4 PM I went to the Woods to witness the strange day. 75F this afternoon (85F tomorrow) in the first half of February. The warmth in the Woods was like a startled waking at midnight to a blast of bright sun. It did not feel right. The Woods are still locked down.. tree buds are not opening, no creatures are moving from their burrows. Yet the warmth felt like a day in early April. There was one nymphalid butterfly flying away from the SW Gate as I entered.. maybe a half dozen small moths flying elsewhere across the Woods. I wonder what will be the fate of animals adapted to shutting down in the winter, pupating, burrowing, stopping development. If they wake and begin to move too soon, they will find nothing to eat and may be caught out in the winter weather that is returning in 3 days.
The leaf litter on the forest floor is now no longer new. It has decomposed under snow and been exposed to desiccation and decay for 3-4 months. Here and there around the woods snaking serpentine paths of armadillos or other creatures in the litter, are left as signs of their foraging on forest floor life, snails, isopods, beetles, millipeds, fungi. Interesting to see where the foragers go, in slightly deeper litter, near decomposing logs, near larger logs, not so much on the raised upper slopes with thin litter. The experts foragers know where to find life.
On Monday there will be significant rain. It has been a dry winter. The Eastern Wash still has some water to the Elm Bridge. It will flood into the southern Woods on Monday afternoon as the rain, that is not spring, falls on the soil and litter that should be in the middle of winter. Katie said it feels like the apocalypse.

Mushrooms and Onions Posts and Poles

Out today at 3:30 through NW entrance, past the NW pond. Beautiful January day,  clear blue skies and soft winds at 50 F. The Woods were quiet and dry after several days of buffeting wind. I expected more debris, maybe some large trees to be down but there were none. On the NW pond and the Eastern pond there was however, a light golden skim. The first bit of the juniper pollen season.

A fortnight past we had a several day cold spell with a delightful inch of snow at the end. The day after I went for a walk in the Woods and enjoyed seeing the tracks of the squirrels, deer and mice and the occasional rabbit. The rain before had come long and slow and gentle.. good for soaking, much needed.

It had been dry before that.

Today a nice snack of oyster mushroom harvested off a cottonwood and spring onions by the Elm Bridge.

Walking west on the E-W Trail and north on the Hackberry Alley trail I passed by the old wooden fence posts, split by Oliver out of locust (?) maybe 80-90 years ago and the sturdy steel posts placed by Carpenter in 1955, marks of people who knew and used the Woods in an earlier time.. and loved what it was for them.

After strong winds with the storm, a large side trunk of one of the largest green ash trees in the Woods (#46, 81 cm DBH)  fell across the Main SW trail bending to the ground and pinning an elm tree. I brought the saw and worked an hour to free the elm and clear the branch, then sat and rested. I thought how amazing the weight of that heavy branch 2-3 ft in diameter, live green wood but with a hidden rotting wound at its base that allowed the wind to rip it down from 30 feet up in the crown. The enormous weight that the big trees support.. multiplied by the leverage of the big branches reaching out away from the axis of the main supporting trunk.

Evening of New Years Day Tree Silhouettes

At 6 PM, with evening darkness coming on, I set out for a brief walk into the Woods via the NW Ponds. Past the big cottonwood, I paused and looked back to the west. The silhouettes of the trees were intriguing. Small and medium-sized elms, ash, sugar berry, box elder, willow, persimmon, coffee tree, pecan, mulberry, oak, cottonwood and walnut - a chaotic jumble of trunks and branches.. the interaction of genetic differences in species and individual form, with competition from neighbors and chance events, one tree falls against another, wounding or warping. How to interpret the puzzle? The architectural needs for strength setting bole diameter, branch angle and branch length. The exposure to wind shear, but also access to sunlight have their effect. Henry S. Horn at Princeton wrote about the 'Adaptive Geometry of Trees'. Halle, Oldeman and Tomlinson added their architectural analysis of tree form. To see and to understand tree form is another  way
'..with an eye made quiet by the power
of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.'