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.'

Green Bumelia and Winter Snow Beginning

At 3:30 with a stiff NNW wind bringing the first dry flakes of light snow, I went to the Woods. The SW gate and southern boundary trail I thought would let me find shelter from the wind. Just into the Woods past the three big bur oaks, I was struck by the green leaves of the Sideroxylon chittamwood standing there. They sometimes keep their green well past the other species. Tomorrow this will have a bole and branches with all its green bedecked with white. All along the southern edge of the woods the wind was coursing through the open stand.
I walked out to the large excavation on the southern edge of the woods where two giant excavators had dug a crater 20 feet deep, exposing the large municipal pipe line buried there. The crews had spread gravel more or less along the route of the old grassy road bed from the east and shoved up a new small mountain of dirt at the SE corner of the delta. Smashed a few large willows at the edge of the delta.
I walked north from there into the heart and shelter of the center of the Woods. Cold! 18 F and windy and growing colder each quarter of an hour as the front moves in.
The sensible northern species are ready.. the walnut, elm, oak, hickory, persimmon, locust, sugarberry, cottonwoods, box elder, the red bud, ash, mulberry, even the big pecan, have shed their leaves, protected their growing buds with thick scales and filled the vital meristems with sugary cryo-protectant chemicals. Ready to take the cold, and it is coming. But still green (although not looking happy) are the Ligustrum privet, Elaeagnus autumn olive, and Euonymus vine. The succulent green mistletoe seems perky and unperturbed. Its leaves were not drooping or darkening. The animals in the Woods were preparing too. Two larger herds of deer were foraging on the last bit of green before it turns white. The yearlings may not have seen snow before and I wondered if it was a sight that made them skittish, a little worried, or wanting to stay close with the others. I sang to them and the older larger does stopped and looked at me curiously for a moment before moving off. The chickadees, cardinals and other small passerines were actively flitting about.. also trying to stock up on their last good meal and find the best shelter before the cold night coming.
Snow starting to blow in a little more thickly and I recalled the lines of Robert Frost 

"Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow."

North Rim Trail, Early and Late Trees and Leaves

Returned to the Woods' North Rim Trail on this Thanksgiving morning for the first time this year. Cool morning 45F. Saw two groups of three large deer each running away south.  The trail segments are in reasonable shape, if somewhat overgrown from lack of use.. No massive blockage or saw required. The north portion of the Woods is the wilder part, less visited and more homes for animals of the woods. Many burrows in active use. I used my cedar walking stick as a scythe to cut old asters and a short clippers to clear greenbrier.
Most (97%) of canopy leaves are down now. But a curious thing, some individual trees and some branches still hold their leaves. Why? Is there an advantage to holding leaves a bit later? What are the species, apart from Sideroxylon Chittamwood,  that are likely to do this? What are the trees that put out their leaves before everyone else? It continues to be very dry..