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.'