I decided I needed to get off my butt, and take a break from being on my butt forever over the last three weeks - correcting, making up finals, and outlines, etc. So today, Cocoa and I went down to the river.
Several trees that have been debarked by beavers - BIG trees, too - are ready to fall. I’m surprised they haven’t already - I got a little peak of adrenalin standing under one before I realized it was really, really dead and I’d better move. Moved away pretty fast.
Mainly, I went down to see the spring flowers. Wake Robins (Trilliums) are all over the place - hundreds of them with nodding deep red flowers. I also have May Apples all over as well - the flowers aren’t up yet, but they’re a pretty off white-pink and hide under their umbrella of a leaf. There’s another three-leaved something-or-other that I don’t know, and one had a bud on it. Skunk cabbage is huge, but I didn’t see any of their “jack-in-the-pulpit on steroids” flowers - maybe too early or too late. Poison ivy galore with it’s pretty red leaves poking their heads up as if to say “touch me, please” - HA! A lot of violets and forget-me-nots. Some pretty nice things are popping up, but I don’t know what they are or will be, so I want to go back down tomorrow, weather permitting, to scout around and bring back a few trilliums. I have to find out if it’s too early to transplant trilliums - I’ll look on line.
I saw lots of deer tracks (some are pretty big!), and coyote tracks. I also saw what looked like a big paw print. It wasn’t Cocoa’s b/c she hadn’t been there with me, yet, and she never goes that far away from the house. It was a paw print with pads - I didn’t see claw marks, just pads, and it was as large as the palm of my hand. My palm is 3″ wide, and my book says coyotes are 2.5″ wide, so I suppose it was a coyote print I saw. In the mud, they tend to be bigger than on dry dirt. I also saw lots of little deep holes. At first I thought they were deer prints that had sunk deeply into the mud - now dried out and hard, but I wonder - it looked to little and too deep. Snake? Amphibian? I Do Not Know - and have no idea. It’s a bit early for snakes, but we had lots of warm, wet weather, so maybe.
The old apple tree is in bloom - so more apples this fall - I’ll have to remember this time, and gather a few for our enjoyment - if I can get by the poison ivy to reach the fruit. There were three barn swallows zooming over the fields, and having no problem with the fact that Cocoa and I were there. They flew very close to me, and I got to see how really gorgeous their bright blue backs and creamy white breasts were. Other than that I only saw many robins and heard woodpeckers, and other normal birds I see every day. We have a cardinal nesting in the euonymus (fire) bush, and he or she rushed off both times I went by.
I’ll be going down every day for about an hour or two scouting around for things I can bring up to my woodland garden - trying not to take anything there’s only a few of - leaving them there. I also won’t take anything I don’t know since I know a lot of things are endangered or need to be left alone in this beautiful woodland area we are so lucky to own.
