Walk in the woods — Savanna Ridge Trail at Bennett Spring

It finally stopped raining today.    It’s a darned good thing too; the grass was starting to look more like a hay field than a lawn.   We were really starting to think that we might have to bale it if the weather didn’t cooperate and give us a few dry days.

Not that we are complaining.   After last year’s droughty conditions, all water from the sky is welcome.   But a little moderation once in a while isn’t a bad thing.

In spite of the fact that the weather guessers were SURE that it was going to be a sunny day, the early morning was grey and cloudy.   I decided to go to Bennet Spring and  enjoy the Savanna Ridge Trail anyway.   I figured I would be largely undisturbed since it HAS been raining and all the creeks are up.   I contemplated taking my rubber boots with me, but I didn’t want to carry them along and I knew I didn’t wish to walk three miles in them either.   I thought maybe the water at the slab that is at the beginning of the trail might have gone down during the night.

Not so much:

I had prepared myself by donning my spectacular high tech army socks, so I waded across and proceeded on my way.   Although my trainers were very wet, my feet became more or less dry in short order due to the wicking action of the above mentioned socks, which showed me quickly that they were well worth the $10 a pair we forked over for them.   I completed my walk with no chafing or discomfort, thanks to these items of apparel.

The path was beautiful.   It wound up the hill, spangled with buttercups.

Later on, higher up the ridge, the gold spangles changed to blue, almost as if the sky had broken and fallen to the path.   The Bird-foot violets (some folks call them Johnny jump-ups)(Viola pedata) were blooming profusely.

Off to the side of the path a fern was unfolding its fronds.

Behind it, the Rue Anemonne (Anemonella thalictroides) was blooming profusely.   It made me think of flecks of foam on the sea of last year’s leaves as they broke against the tree trunks.

As I rounded the top of the ridge, I could hear the creek chuckling along merrily.    Most of last summer its voice was silent, but today it was vociferous behind the fog of redbud blossoms obscuring it from view.

It didn’t take us long to descend below the pink fog and discover just how full the little creek was.   No wonder it was talking so loudly.  My favorite waterfall was actually a waterfall rather than a trickle of drops.

Nearby Mother Nature’s graffiti artist had painted all over a log.

I discovered another shy spring beauty (Uvularia sessifolia) hiding below the waterfall.   This is called “Wild oats”, which is a misnomer indeed, as it is not even a member of the grass family but a lily instead.   The other thing people call it is “Sessile bellwort”.

At this point, my camera started telling me that its batteries were getting low.   Hoping that letting it rest would allow it to find some more juice in the depths of the batteries, I turned it off and continued on my way.

The clouds burned off as we walked and it turned into a spectacular day, all blue sky and bird song.  The whitened skull of one of last year’s deer casualties enticed me from the path, and led me to a woodland pond that included frogs in its decor.   We saw a live deer moving through the woods; I was hoping for a new fawn but was disappointed.

As we continued on our way over the ridge I heard a sound in the valley below that I was so rare I almost couldn’t believe it.   The wash of dry gravel bars where I find so many wonderful rocks while walking along them was full of water.

Above the creek bank a lone dogwood bloomed.

I was very glad to see it.  Dogwood blossoms are few and far between this spring.   The heat of the summer and the long dry fall caused most of the dogwood trees in our area to drop their flower buds in order to conserve their strength.   The only ones I saw today were in the cooler north-facing hollows where the water runs when it rains.  Usually they make drifts of white all through the woods, a magical thing that is nearly impossible to capture in a photograph.

I turned back to retrace my steps, rejoicing in the creek valley floor.  It was covered with millions of chickweed flowers forming a lacy back drop for the red trillium, yellow violets, Jacob’s ladder and other woodland flowers.   I refrained from turning the camera on in case something really cool showed up.

Of course it did, and I was glad I had saved the batteries.  An amazing blue flower caught my eye, begging to be photographed.   It was even bluer than the Bird’s-foot violets that had so captivated me earlier.   I had no idea what it was, but I made its portrait anyway,

When I got home, I looked it up.   This is “Blue-eyed Mary” (Collinsia verna), a member of the snapdragon family.  She is an annual flower, and I suppose that accounts for the fact that I had never met her before.   I know where she is blooming, and I intend to go back there and collect a few seeds in a few weeks.   I think this would make a splendid addition to the gardens.

On the way back home I discovered goldenseal (Hydrastis candensis) blooming in the creek bottom.

By this time, the newly holy church goers had made it out into the woods, and I started meeting groups of people as I neared the car park.   None of them surprised me at all, as I could hear them long before I could see them.   I was glad I had started off early, so I got to see deer and hear many birds, which tend to shut up and become very quiet when the chatting hordes of hikers take over my usual haunts.   This is why I usually go out in the middle of the week, when they are all at work.

But I was glad the promise of clouds burning off had enticed me out early to enjoy the beauty around me undisturbed.

Hope you enjoyed the tour….

Read Full Post »

Beautiful pond

After nearly killing ourselves last week getting the weeds out of the pond, I sort of let the next phase of the job stay on hold for a while.   Let me refresh your memory:

As you can see, I have the pavement area partially clear of grass and weeds.   When I originally laid it, all I did was put in a bed of sand.   Needless to say, this was an open invitation to the ants, bermuda grass, dock, clover, etc. etc. etc. to move in and take over, which they did most thoroughly.

It was a slow process scraping the vegetative cover off of the pavers.  This was not made any easier by the fact that that the ants living there did their little earthmoving activities undisturbed for 17 years, which led to the paving blocks heaving and shifting in a most amazing manner.   I decided that filling the wheelbarrow with grass mats once a day was plenty of work of that sort.    There were plenty of other things to occupy me too, like pruning the espalier, the rugosa rose in front of the barn and I don’t know what all.    Needless to say, I also had to walk Ruby.

Anyway, when the grass was finally cleaned away, a job I finished yesterday morning, the paving looked like this:

There were plenty of grass roots left sticking up, and after a few seconds I decided I really needed to move the paving and do some restoration to the pad.   So I did.

I was so careful when I moved the blocks, having the insane idea that I would be able to replace them the same way they came out.   What I neglected to take into consideration was the fact that the far edge had had some blocks break, and so the tiles were not fitted together properly over there.  Also, some of my tiles had broken while the shifting sands were under them.

While I was working, the first house wren returned, flying in from the south in a flurry of announcements.  ”This is my house.”   “This is my garden.” “This area is mine, mine, mine, what are you doing here?”   “Where are the girls anyway, slowpokes, don’t they know there are plenty of bugs to eat we need to get busy and start a family post haste.”   I was glad to see him back, nosy bossy busybody that he is.

After I had the pavers moved, I grubbed out the grass roots and rhizomes that had invaded.   Then I “leveled” the mud and spread sand over it to make a nice base for the pavers.   No one can say that I do not learn from my mistakes, so it was off to the Big Box store to  purchase a pond liner to go under the tiles.   That item was not cheap, but I was armored with Jim’s statement “It is a one time expense” so I plopped down several twenty dollar bills, managed to avoid the temptation of half price perennial plants, and came on home.

There I spread the new liner, tucking it neatly under the pond’s pond liner at the edge, and trimming it to fit my tile area.   Then it was jig saw puzzle time as I fit the tile blocks back into their space.   This required a lot of running back and forth to the pile of tile behind the barn in the search for blocks that were “just right” for holes that needed filling.   By the end I was reduced to taking a piece of rock and smacking it with my hammer in the hopes that one of the resulting pieces would be right for the hole that needed filling.   This actually worked quite well several times, much to my amazement.

Jim mixed me up a small batch of mortar, and I got into the waterfall area and mended the cracks so that when we finally get the new pond pump the water will fall rather than dribble.   That was just a short little episode in the long slog of work I was involved in.

Finally, I hauled a couple of three gallon buckets of sand over to fill in the cracks, and swept it clear.   I was finishing that up when I was called to dinner.   I left the area changed:

After dinner, I took Ruby for her walk, and for some reason it was a very slow pace around the mile and half path I generally take her on.   Frequently I make it 3.5 miles, but it simply wasn’t in the cards last night.   I came home and took a nice long, badly needed epsom salt soak.

Elsewhere in the yard, spring is progressing nicely.   Here are a couple of images of the species tulips and one of my very fancy daffodils as they bloomed beautifully and largely un-noticed on the other side of the yard from where my attention was focused.

In front, I did manage a clean up during the week, which revealed the peony sprouting very optimistically.   There are plenty of daffodils and tulips keeping it company.   One of the irises already has a flower stalk coming up.

Now that the pond is finished, I can rest easy in the knowledge that it will never be that hard to maintain again.   Hopefully, anyway.   And that is a good thing, as I am not getting any younger.   In another ten years I’m not sure I would have been able to do the herculean job that I accomplished this past week and a half.  And I do not wish to minimize Jim’s help during it, although most of the work was done by me while he was busy mowing and mowing and cooking and working at the Commissary.

Now all I have to do is help Jim replace all the carpet in the house with flooring, paint all the walls that have cracks from the beam replacement job, remove the cannas from the areas that I don’t want them, get the henbit out of the day lilies, finish planting the vegetable garden, and …..

Did I mention I am going on a cruise vacation to Alaska in about a month?

Read Full Post »

Garden magic

A while ago I was walking a client out to her car and as I returned to the house I noticed a big fat caterpillar hanging about on my rue plant.

“I must get a picture of that caterpillar, it is so interesting,” I said to myself.  ”I wonder what kind it is?”   So I went to Google to figure it out, and found out it was the caterpillar of the Giant Swallowtail butterfly.

Then my client came for her massage, so no image was acquired, and when she left I went to get a picture and the caterpillar was GONE.   Disappeared.   I accused the grackles in the area of eating it.

This is what it looked like.   I found this image using Google and borrowed it from Bugfolks.

A while later, one of my observant clients pointed to something hanging right by the front door and wondered what it was.

“Oh!”  I replied, quite pleased.    ”That is the chrysalis of a giant swallowtail butterfly.”   Mentally I apologized to the grackles for the murder accusation I had leveled their way previously.   I also congratulated my client on spotting the thing, as it really was quite well camouflaged.

I had no trouble identifying it, since it looked exactly like the caterpillar only it was all folded up.   It even shared the “bird dropping” coloration the caterpillar was notable for.   I was very impressed by how much the caterpillar shrank itself in order to form the chrysalis.

Really, I have a lot to thank my clients for, because this morning when my client arrived her first words were,  ”There’s a butterfly out here.   I think it might be hurt.”

I looked out the door, and there on the wall right under the chrysalis was a giant swallowtail butterfly in the process of pumping fluid into its wings, having just freshly emerged from the now empty chrysalis.   I quickly let my client know exactly what she was seeing, called my mother from the living room (she had stopped by to visit me) to come admire, and left her explaining to my client about how butterflies have to move fluid into their new wings, which is why she was pumping them back and forth in the manner which made my client think perhaps she was wounded while I went and grabbed my camera.

One minute later:   Notice how the left tail has already gotten bigger in this image, and how much the lower wings have expanded.

“Would you care to step up onto my finger?”    ”Yes, I believe I would.”

Meanwhile, I had sent my client into the room to prepare for the massage and my mother had bid me adieu and gone off to finish her errands in town.

The butterfly liked being on my hand.   It walked all over it, flexing its brand new wings all the while, and proceeded to promenade up my arm almost to my shoulder.    I had to do a massage, my client (bless her heart) was patiently waiting in the massage room while I disported myself in the garden with the butterfly.  It didn’t want to leave my hand, but I finally convinced it to dismount onto my aster plant.

Here is another little magic.   This is her ventral side.   How such a black butterfly can have such a pale “other” side is just magical to me.

After the massage was over, I went out to see how she was doing.   She was still resting on the aster, and I thought maybe I’d get another shot.   But as soon as she saw me moving down the steps, she flew away.   Our transitory connection was over, but I shall treasure the feeling of her feet clinging to my fingers as she walked all over my hand.

Hope there is something magical going on in your life today, too.

Read Full Post »

The Apple Mint Dance

I was supposed to be canning pickles (both dill and my sweet gherkins), plus I had apple sauce that was hot and waiting for the canner to heat up.  But before I got started packing the pint jars, I thought I would run out to the garden once more to look through the cucumber vines and see if I missed any.   I had.  So I picked them, and noticed that there were some tomatoes that also needed to be picked.   I needed a basket for that, so I started back to the house to get it.

As I scurried past the pond, I noticed that the apple mint was in full bloom.   It is taking full advantage of the lapse in memory I had a few weeks ago when I started the water running into the pond to fill it up, went inside and promptly forgot all about it.  In the morning as I was waiting for my teapot to fill so I could make coffee, I thought idly to myself,  ”Gosh, the water pressure sure doesn’t seem to be as high as usual … OH SHOOT (expurgated for the blog)!!!  Whereupon I crashed out of the house, scaring the dog away from her breakfast, ran out to the garden to turn the spigot off and observed that the pond was approximately 5 inches over flood stage.  Further investigation showed that the water had flowed all the way down to the Petite Prairie, watering the day lily bed quite throughly.  The drain pipe at the other side of the vineyard was also trying to deal with the overflow.   I still have a green circle down there, where everything else is sere and brown.

But I digress.   The apple mint was blooming furiously, having been so well watered previously.   I just deviated from my course a bit to see if perhaps my honey bees were availing themselves of the pollen source.  They were.

The honeybees had lots of company out there.    I forgot all about pickles and apple sauce and went to get my camera.  I spent quite a while out there, standing quietly just inside the border of the mint patch.  When I first arrived with my camera, everyone got very excited and nervous about the big thing that had just disturbed the feeding frenzy.   But as I stood quietly, things settled down.   Here is a group of four different sorts of wasps, all intent on their food source.

 

The variety of pollinators present was impressive.

There were yellow jackets, of course.

 

 

Several different types of wasps were in attendance.

 

That big black wasp was at the large end of the size spectrum.   But there were teensy wasps too.

 

Some of the wasps were overcome with optimism for the future by the large quantity of food available.   The sudden onset of a good energy source put them in the mood, I guess.

The female went about the business of flying and eating as if the male wasn’t even present.

There were also several female bumblebees at the buffet.

 

A tachnid fly — one of several different varieties flitting about.

 

Butterflies –a buckeye and a little blue.   The little blue has a mud dauber wasp sharing the frame with her.

 

I saw a beautiful bright green sweat bee, but it didn’t stick around long enough to get photographed.   You can see what it looked like here.

There was an interesting beetle.

I’m not positive, but that may be an assassin bug, which means it isn’t strictly a pollinator, but more a pollinator eater.   They wait in flowers for the pollinators to come along, grab them and then suck the juices out of them.

Here’s another predator.   Probably not big enough to be a danger to anyone other than that tiny wasp above, or possibly a gnat or aphid.

That’s my finger holding the flower apart because the little crab spider wasn’t anxious to be photographed and kept hiding from me.   No escape from the paparazzi, I’m afraid.

There were a couple of dragonflies around too.   This is a rather small red one.

Just a few feet away is the pond, and this big blue dragonfly was hovering around there.

It was heartening to see all that life burgeoning in the yard, since it has been scorchingly hot for three weeks.    I mean really hot, too.   The temperatures have been over 100°F every day for three weeks, only cooling off into the low 80s at night.   (That would be 38° C for all the rest of the world.)   This heat has been accompanied by a complete absence of rain of any measurable amount.   We had a respite today, a line of storms came across the plains.   We got about 1mm of moisture out of that, enough to settle the dust (barely) and raise the humidity to about 90%.   Ergh.

This is what the garden along the back of the house looks like.   All those burned hostas are not dead, they are just conserving their energy and protecting their roots.   Still, it is a little depressing.   The Hosta Dell exhibits similar damage.

Please notice the lawn to the right of the path.   Our whole place looks just like that except around the landscape shrubs and trees, which we have been pampering with regular water.   This also encourages the grass, which gives the rabbits something other to eat than the fruit tree bark.   The rabbits out browsing gives the owls something to eat.

There is a note of hope in the middle of all that devastation.    The naked ladies have made their appearance.   I just love them, their combination of hardiness and delicacy is inspirational.

The pickles have been put through the canner and are cooling on the counter.   They are accompanied by 6 pints of apple sauce.

Now I believe I’ll get that basket and go out and investigate the tomato situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

For the birds

It has been a while since I made a bird report about activity at the Havens.   I feel a trifle derelict in my duty, since the stated purpose of my land is to provide me (and my family and friends) with organic food while also providing a  suburban wildlife habitat.  We’ve been pretty successful as habitat landlords, with a few notable exceptions.

One was the great skunk escapade.   I can report that we have reliably excluded them from our crawl space.   Finally.   They still live around here, and I find their modest grub foraging holes around the yard regularly.

Last summer we had a ground hog move into the pile of dirt the covers our root/storm/wine cellar.   I don’t think I wrote about that little episode.   I was happy to have him live there, there was lots of clover and stuff for him to eat, but he decided that the vegetable garden was far superior in the gourmet offerings, and spent no considerable effort digging under the fence to get to it.   We countered his efforts with a trap, which he rather insolently reacted to by digging in at another place.   So we got a second trap and he dug a third tunnel.   It didn’t take us long to figure out that this whole exercise was one in futility, and so our next gambit was to buy chicken wire (much cheaper than live traps) and install it along the back fence where he was digging through.   Attached to the board of the fence, it extended out along the ground about two feet.   So, he figured out he could weasel his way under it anyway.

We were on the point of the next escalation, which involved electric fence installation, when I went out to the garden one fine morning and found Sir Ground Hog busily eating my beans.   Of course, Ruby was with me, and when the ground hog saw her he went bustling off to his tunnel, and exited the garden precipitously.   Ruby was in hot pursuit, of course, but she couldn’t go through the tunnel so she dashed out the gate and around the fence.   Meanwhile, the panicked and bean fattened rodent had gotten himself entangled in the chicken wire in his haste to leave the premises.   He managed to get free before Ruby got there — not that she would had done anything other than bounce and bark at him, but he didn’t know that.  Anyway, that very morning he packed his bags and left for a less exciting neighborhood, much to my and the beans’ relief.

I believe that the skunk has appropriated that abandoned burrow.    This suits me just fine.

Of course we have tons of rabbits, which has resulted in great horned owls and barred owls hunting in the yard.   This is partly why my cats live inside.  The other part is that I did not go to a lot of trouble to create a wildlife habitat just so I could introduce an exotic predator.   Domestic cats are one of the major predators of song birds, and my cats do not need that food source in their diet, they are plenty well fed as is.

Yesterday morning as we arose at the crack of dawn, we heard a most lovely bird song right under our bedroom window, one that we did not recognize.   Very melodic and sweet, it rang out a couple of times, and was answered from the redbud tree.

“Who is that?” we asked each other in unison.   We moved to the window and gently raised the shades so we could get a better view.   Imagine our astonishment to observe the the birds that were singing this beautiful dawn song were a pair of catbirds.    I have only heard their “Cat! cat! cat!” call, and the plaintive meowing call that always makes me want to look for the lost kitten until I realize I have been fooled by bird song.  What a nice surprise to learn they have a beautiful courting song.   I must investigate those shrubs to see if they have taken up residence there.

We have brown thrashers raising a couple of youngsters in the yard, as well as cardinals.   The grackles are being followed by importunate chicks, who would much rather have their parents stuff bugs in their maws than find food for themselves.   Yesterday I observed a mama grackle demonstrating how one gets a drink at the bird bath, after which she showed her youngster the benefits of bathing as well.    Neither process impressed the young grackle in the slightest, and in disgust the mother hopped down onto the ground and began foraging again, assiduosly ignoring the brat following her around making demands for more dinner.  ”I’ve done my best,” she seemed to be communicating.   “Find it yourself, I’m busy.”

I have been amused by the robins.   First they made a nest in the crotch of the wisteria, successfully raising three babies.    This was the most disturbed robin’s nest I’ve seen in a while, since the owner thought that our regular use of the path just 4 feet from the nest was excessive and just plain wrong.   So their next nest was in the elm tree by the garden shed.   Fine.

Now we have new construction, again in the wisteria.  Apparently, the first nest wasn’t close enough to the path.   Can you spot the nest in this picture?

Here, let me give you a clue.

Yes, that is it, right there on the corner of the arbor, where the mama robin feels compelled to flee every time I go out to the garden, or carry laundry to the line, or come back from one of those excursions.   Then she and her husband sit over on the wood shed and scold me.   Like I wasn’t using that path on a regular basis the whole time they were building that nest.

Apparently the disturbance hasn’t been so great that it precluded some successful mating activity.  Nosy neighbor that I am, I got out my kitchen step stool and climbed up there to investigate the situation.   Needless to say, my activities were NOT approved of by the parents.

Lets see, the wren chicks have fledged both on the back porch and in the garden, and now that they are successfully out on their own, their parents have embarked on a new clutch.   One of the sets of babies met each other and evicted the english house sparrows from the next box out by the vineyard and have been discussing housing arrangements quite vociferously.

We netted the last of the rows of grapes yesterday.   While we were doing it, a robin left the vicinity.   I distinctly heard him damning us as he left.  They know how effective the net is, and don’t like us for excluding us from such a delicious and convenient food supply.

In other bird news, both the rock doves and ring necked doves have increased their populations to the point where they are flocks rather than small groups.   That is just fine with me.   I also have a large group of cardinals using the area.   The gold finches and house finches are all around the place right now, enjoying echinacea and liatris seeds in addition to the niger seed I have in the feeder.

In addition to the chickadees, we have sparrows flitting about the place:  song, field, fox, white throated, white crowned and chipping.   A few years ago I would not have been able to tell the difference, but practice has made me a better bird watcher.

Blue jays are ubiquitous.  Right now they are keeping the yard cleared of June bugs, a hunt that amuses me as I watch them pursue the flying beetles until they catch them.   Then they take them to a branch and pound on them to open their hard carapace.

I found some of their moulted feathers the other day, and was fascinated to realize how different the colors are on their wings as opposed to their bodies.   The first image is a small chest feather.   The second is a wing feather next to the same chest feather.

The red tailed hawk dropped a wing feather the other day.   I found it while I was walking Ruby out at the conservation area.   A couple of days later I saw her hunting, and noticed the gap in her wing where the feather had been lost.  She’ll grow another soon enough.

I was captivated by the grass shadows cast by the rising sun on the white part of the feather.

Another denizen of the Havens habitat is the Cooper’s hawk.   She hunts here on a regular basis, and last year I even got to witness a hunting lesson for her fledgling which resulted in the demise of one of the house finches.   Success for the young hawk; not such a great outcome for the finch.   I’m not too sorry; I have know for years that I have a multi-tiered bird feeder.   I feed the seed eaters which are prey for the small hawks.   It’s all good.

I haven’t seen the hawk lately, but I know she has been around.  I have seen several meal sites in the area, scattered with tossed feathers.  She lost a tail feather just last week.    I imagine she either caught it on a branch has she was jinking and turning in pursuit of breakfast, or it was time for it to be moulted and she yanked it out while perched.  Anyway, it was on the ground under the elm where the niger seed feeder is.  I moved it for a better shot.

Right this minute I hear a hummingbird scolding out by my hostas.   As I jump up to look out the window, I see it is a mama with a baby, showing it the ropes of foraging.

How cool.

I believe I shall go out to the garden and see what’s happening out there.   Maybe the ants will have left.   Ha ha ha ha ha ha.  As if.  Maybe a flock of flickers will have come by and eaten them all.     Hahahahahaha.

I can dream, though, right?

Read Full Post »