Waiting for the Weather

End of October and it was a mild (60-70 F) day with morning fog early and solid overcast the rest of the day. I went out to the Woods' NW Ponds entrance at 6:15 for a twilight walk. The forest seemed like it was on hold, waiting for the rain forecast for tonight and the next two days. The NW pond was quiet.. no turtles or odonates at the end of the day. Maybe 0.6 feet in depth. I have to clean the post. I found three deer, one yearling leaping away; and two older does by the Big Tree grove. The older does were more curious than skittish. I wondered if they were yearlings I saw with their mother in the Woods in previous years.. and if so, if they have any memory of me and my grey woods coat. The big cottonwoods still have 80-90% of their leaves; but in the small-diameter, crowded green ash stands, 90% of the leaves are down. Walking southwest from the Big Tree Grove in summer, I would come into denser shade, approaching the thick green ash. Now the canopy brightened with open sky. Through the Woods, tree crickets are trilling. Circling back north along the West Trail, I love the band of green woods light from the western boundary, coming through the forest at sunset or later. It silhouettes the dark trunks of the larger elms, ash and oaks in the woods for a brief time before night falls.

Big Tree Falls

On a familiar trail, walking NE towards Tall Stump the trail looked very different. I did a double-take and realized the big pecan snag had fallen. This was one of the largest trees in the Woods. I first encountered it about seven years ago. I had used it for navigation many times walking in the near dark; it was a column that showed me the way. 117 cm in diameter but only twenty feet high, big bark slabs falling off the decaying wood. It did not lean. How did it fall spontaneously to the south? Metaphor for those around us.. folks who have helped guide and shape us. It must have been this past ten days. It has fallen on and crushed a younger hackberry and elm. Their cracked stems are still fairly fresh.

This Saturday morning early at 8 we had had a very light rain .01 inch, with more expected this afternoon. I went to the NE Gate and walked down along the Tree Loop to Elm Bridge and across to the west. One small white-tail ran from me near the junction with the Pipeline Trail and one large doe ran tentatively but then stopped and watched curiously as I walked by singing to the doe thirty feet away by the western camera tree.

The old deer carcass SW of the East Pond is mostly gone now.. the skull and intact vertebrae remain in the middle of a patch of fallen leaves darkened by decomposition. The smell of decay is gone too, from all but the immediate 1-2 m from the skull.

The Woods are lovely now. The big trees like the Grandfather cottonwood still have 95% + of their leaves, still vigorous green. Smaller diameter trees (green ash old saplings, elms etc.. have lost most of their leaves leaving the understory of the forest greatly thinned out. Beautiful day.

NIce Autumn Day in the Woods

After recent 1.5 inch and 0.13 inch rains, the Woods today were fine and fall-ish. I took a swing blade and a chain saw to the North gate at 9:30 to work on clearing trails overgrown with healthy summer growth of Symphoricarpos, Verbesina, Chasmanthium and Smilax. In the upper plateau west of the North Gate I encountered a small herd of a half dozen deer. First herd of that size I'd seen in the Woods in many months. They usually start coming into the Woods in larger numbers about this time of the year as hunting season approaches. In the lower Woods along the Main SW trail under elms killed by dutch elm disease I cleared a path through large patches of Polygonum knot weed.
The East Pond depth was 0.62 feet. Through the Woods, the canopy is still green and 70% there; but many leaves of hackberry and elm and others have fallen. No colors in any of the fallen leaves, just brown. No turtles today, or mosquitoes.. few insects of any sort. First frost (light) last night. Spotted a large barred owl flying low in the Woods near the Grandfather cottonwood. I must have disturbed it from its perch. Ripe mushy persimmons are beginning to fall along the Tree Loop.

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.

Wonderful Glorious Rain and Lion?

A mere 5/100ths of an inch of rain.. but at 5:30 this afternoon our late summer 3-week drought broke.
After 25 days of monotonous 95, 97, 94, 98, 96, 92, 93 etc.. highs everyday and no rain.. it is wonderful to have clouds and feel the down sweep of suddenly cool air.. even for this few hundredths of an inch. Hope more will come tonight. (Ultimately 0.3 inches fell before midnight.)
Yesterday, 11 Sept at 3:30 I walked with Emma in through the NE Gate of a thoroughly parched Woods.. not as deathly droughted as 2012.. the trees with deep roots were still drawing on abundant, record July rainfall.. but the Woods were very dry. The Main SW trail was broken along the way into small polygons of soil, cracked open by the long lack of rain. The tall trailside grasses were mostly gone from along the Tree Loop leaving the low green bunch grasses. There were thin tall stalks of white flowering Polygonum knot weed mixed with the light lavender blossoms of Elephantopus elephant foot.
We dropped down the Pipeline Trail and stopped at (dry) Island Crossing to look for tracks around the still soft drying mud where the small pool had been.. and saw a large track with no nails. It looked to me like a mountain lion. Exciting if true. I'll have to ask Nick to take a look. There are stories of lions in the Woods 10-15 years ago.. and there are deer for them.. and they are in the region (sightings and collisions with autos within 50 miles).. and the Canadian River provides a corridor. Still, must remain dubious until track is examined by someone more knowledgeable than me.
We passed by a Kentucky coffee tree Gymnocladus with Virginia creeper Parthenocissus and poison ivy Toxicodendron .. one of the few trail-side poison ivy vines I've left alone for education. The poison ivy had 3 small white slime mold plasmodia beginning to sporulate. We found big dry Auricularia jelly fungus crisp and whitened with drought at the base of an elm.
The East Pond was still there but down now to a small pool maybe fifteen feet long by 10 feet wide. We did not go to the West Pond but Ricky did not find the West Pond a few days ago, walking along the Ponds Trail for the first time. It is likely pretty small too.
Emma and I exited by the Elm Bridge (Wash there was dry).
I enjoyed talking with Emma about how the 'rambunctious garden' of Oliver's Woods with all its invasives was a valuable place for us to study. The abundant Ligustrum privet provides a good nectar source for hard-pressed honey bees. There is a prolific bloom in June. We did not get down to the areas where Lonicera japanese honeysuckle is abundant; but ecological studies are showing it to be  beneficial to many species. There is also Liriope monkey grass and a variety of other species of invasives finding footholds in the Woods.. creating novel ecosystems.. providing ecosystem services. I am removing the Albizia mimosa trees, Hedera english ivy and Lonicera maackii Amur honeysuckle when I find it. The trumpet vine Campsis and virgin's bower Clematis are still blooming along the Chautauqua fence line and attracting bright yellow cloudless sulphurs Phoebis.

September return to the Woods.

Nice 'cold front' rolled through and dropped temps to 80's and low 90's F.
I decided to catch up on deferred trail maintenance and started about 9 am at the SW Gate. I carried paint to refresh all the trail blazes. By 2 o'clock I'd finished walking 90% of all the trails. I cleared branches and fallen tops all along the way and did the blue blazes. Good to have the fresh paint for late evening navigation after sunset. More visible in low light or near darkness.
By the NW Pond I spotted one box turtle near the jct with the Ravine Trail. There was an immature great blue heron looking for lunch standing on the west side of the pond. Did not fly for several minutes with me watching. There were two groups of white tailed deer: three west of the beaver dam running north into the Woods; and one group of two west of the Wash near Island crossing. The pool above Island Crossing had dried to mud. There was still a pool of very muddy water in the Wash by the big mimosa tree; one buck ran from there as I approached. Mosquitoes not bad, a little annoying along the West Trail.
The sedges were all flattened along the Big Tree Grove trail by the leaning willow. It looked like this was where the deer were sleeping. Big green ash tree # 506 still has sweet fermenting flux down the trunk, today with a dozen green calliphorids, several Camponotus carpenter ants and one Polistes wasp.
I did not do the Northern Rim or the Ravine Trail. Another day..
Approaching the SW Gate as I was leaving, the air was perfumed with good sweet smell of Clematis, in full bloom along the edge of the Woods.
Only spotted two seed ticks when I got home and showered.

Hottest 2013 Day in the Woods

Up to 100 F this afternoon. I drove the southern service road eastward from the transfer station and stopped at the end of the N-S trail by Heather's solar cell. The giant ragweed there is now 7-8 feet high. I pushed open a path from the hot grassy road to the shaded forest. The ragweed shed its loads of yellow pollen from each cupped flower as I pushed the tall stems aside and pressed them down. The air was minty with fragrant plant aromas until abruptly stepping into the dry open basin shaded by the willows. Large black carpenter ants were busy there along a dead stub of one prostrate big willow. North there were some small branches and debris across the trail; but mostly the trail was in good shape despite my absence. At the EW trail jct someone (squirrel?) had been eating green pecans and their bright white-yellow fragments were littering the trail. Lots of dried curled dead leaves are down.. shed during the heat of the past two weeks. But these represent surely less than 5 % of the leaves that will come down this year.
Up to Barney Jct and NW to Tall Stump and then to the East Pond. It was mostly dry but still held 0.86 ft of water by the gauge. From there south through the Big Tree grove to the Main SW Trail. Passing the big cottonwood (#200) and a little farther south a big leaning green ash and a sudden alcoholic sweet smell of a tree wound with flux. Twenty feet up the tree a foot long old wound and flux streak extending to the ground was attracting a busy group of nymphalids (mostly hackberry emperors).. some green bottle Lucilla calliphorids and a few others.
Leaving the Woods I took the W. Dune trail and was impressed again at the Cnidoscolus bull nettle flourishing there above the Opuntia.
I stopped to refresh several blue paint blazes on my way out.