Not meeting expectations

Beavers have dammed up the creek, so we moved the game camera to the path that had been worn between there and the pond. After a couple of weeks, I was sure we'd have lots of mug shots of the little orange-toothed destructivores.



But there were only masked bandits! Wet ones. Coming...



... and going.

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Raccoon, Procyon lotor.

For more on the game camera, click the "Game cam" label below.

Dry creek

Even though it rained (yay!) one whole inch (yay! yay!) the day before yesterday, the creek still looks like this... mostly rocks.



The ground was so dry that it sucked up all the excess water like a sponge. Nothing left over to trickle down into the creek. Fish, crawfish, snails, etc., survive only in places where the water pools.

One of the ponds is so low as to be practically non-existent. The Great Blue and Green Herons are constant visitors -- to them it's a treasure trove of little fish with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. (And Red-shouldered hawks seem happy the creek is so low, since they seem to love crawfish dinners.)

The garden loved the rain. I can water and water and water with the hose, but it's just not the same as getting rain. The garden and I had been pretty miffed lately... it was getting on our last nerve to hear the thunder and see the many dark clouds, only to have it all pass by just out of reach. Day after day after day.

But now I have to go pull weeds, or rather, grass, before it gets too hot. Always trade-offs!

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Alabama's governor has asked everyone to pray for rain. I had to roll my eyes. Call me cynical, but I don't see him asking people to pray for our dysfunctional state constitution. (Or to end poverty, stop the pedophiles, achieve world peace, etc.) So why pray for rain?

Those three words (pray for rain, not our dysfunctional constitution) always make me think of Guadalcanal Diary.

Don't call for love
Don't ask for gold
our daily bread
or no more pain
pray for rain

Thinking about Guadalcanal Diary always makes me feel better. Highly recommended for washing the bad taste of politicians out of your mouth.

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Visit the Friday Ark for your weekly dose of crittery goodness.

And don't forget the fantastic latest edition of I and the Bird. (It's Frodo-licious!)

Summer camp

Away freeway trolls
and skull poison



Away chainsaw dogs
and anything downloadable



Welcome butterfly people and snake elves



unfamous artists
and freeform laughing



dark and beautiful
names that mean shadow



and drowsy bee biographers



Stand still long enough



Measure the angles of coyote eyes



Change your mind about
what is highly collectible



Get broken spiders back in love

Playing Jenga with beavers

A recent light but steady rain raised the creek level a bit:



The sound of rushing water made tiny light bulbs appear over the heads of several beavers:



This is a bad, bad, bad location for a dam. Flooding here could affect the neighbor's property, and would likely damage the gate that (sometimes) keeps their cows from visiting.

So one beautiful day last week I decided to do some deconstruction:



When I told my husband what I'd been doing he had a "Are you insane?!" sort of reaction, since I'd been having so many back problems lately. And especially since it was beaver-dam removal that had initiated his need for $25,000 worth of back surgery a few years ago.

But this partially completed dam was in such an open area that I really was able to approach it just like playing Jenga: slide the sticks out, rather than lift. No back pain at all.

In fact, it felt so nice outside that I went back in the afternoon and worked some more:



You can see at lower right that I conveniently left all the sticks just lying there for easy retrieval by the beavers. But no attempts were made to rebuild, since (as I suspected) this dam had already been abandoned... they must have switched all their labors to that mammoth 8-foot tall one downstream.

And I was right, it didn't cause any more back pain. What I hadn't counted on though, was the fact that I was doing a lot more bending from the waist than normal. Using leg muscles that did not normally get so much of a workout... those sadly neglected muscles screamed at me about that for about 3 days straight.

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One of my tracking books said that you rarely find beaver scat, since it's almost always left underwater. The beavers left me an educational exhibit, but just in case not everyone is interested in examining beaver poo, I've linked the picture here.

I want to save some of these nice straight sticks to use in the garden. The shorter ones will go to a neighbor of my sister's, who uses them in her artwork.

What else has been going on

Some of these¹



have been doing some of this,



while nearby, this² was found:



Toothwort³ mania began in earnest.



We had visitors⁴.



This



gave way to this⁵.



There was also this⁶, which is not the same.



And neither is this⁷.



Some excavation⁸ was going on.



But was apparently not satisfactory.



Ahhh it's almost trillium time⁹.



Tiny snails were observed, and also something else¹⁰ that I'm still pondering.



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¹Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica
²See this earlier post if you're curious about the redrock fossils.
³Dentaria spp. Or is it all Cardamine now? I get confused.
⁴Canada Geese, Branta canadensis. I would say, "I know that you knew that already, I'm just trying to be consistent," but since there was a woman on a game show last night who did not know that the northern neighbor of the US is CANADA, for crying out loud, I'm not taking any chances.
⁵Hepatica or Liverleaf
⁶Rue Anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides
⁷Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans) with Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) flower
⁸I'm guessing Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), but I'm not sure.
⁹Trailing Trillium, Trillium decumbens
¹⁰Little groups of tiny, tiny rocks are held together and to the larger rock surface like glue. Is something alive in there?

Country life

Evidence of beavers upstream.


Evidence of people upstream.

Memorial Day adventure

My husband said his favorite part of the whole thing was the sight of me standing in the pouring rain, looking like a drowned rat, holding a dead fish in one hand and a large feather in the other...

Sorry I haven't written in a while. While I've gotten a lot of orders from the BH&G blurb about my soaps*, it hasn't been so overwhelming that I couldn't blog.

But that, in combination with many other things - volunteer commitments, planning for fall products, trying to screw up yet another veggie garden, a pressing Pride and Prejudice kick... well, all of it has added up to no time left to spend here.

After a period of so much rain that we couldn't get the garden in, it turned dry, dry, dry. The creek was down to the perfect level for wading, though.

Off we went in our old tennis shoes, and me in my floppy straw hat. The water was chilling at first, but before long I was edging towards the deeper spots, to cool my knees. (A few weeks earlier I'd tried to wade barefoot, but quickly realized I'd become a miserable old tenderfoot.)

There were many delights. We heard an Acadian Flycatcher in the branches above the creek - a new yard bird!** Found a few little red-rock fossils. Almost stepped on the perfectly intact shed exoskeleton of the largest crawdad we'd ever seen.*** Wild hydrangeas were in peak bloom at the creek's edge. (So many flowering things love edge. Why hadn't I brought the camera?!) Picked up a long feather from a Red-shouldered hawk in the pebbles near a clearing (he was probably doing some crawdad examinations too).

We heard distant thunder. There had already been a brief shower that afternoon. We spoke of turning back, but didn't. The bridge was the goal, and we hadn't reached it yet.

Despite the low creek level, tiny fish were everywhere, sometimes swimming right through our legs. I wished again for my camera - the footing wasn't as slippery as I'd feared it would be. We began to spot iridescent purple and green fish!

"I wish we could catch one," I said. "I'd take it back and get a picture." Two minutes later we saw one shining from the bottom of a deeper pool, on its side and clearly not doing very well.

After a little irrationality (had I wished it dead?) and a little panic (it didn't look ill - was the water that polluted?), I picked it up to carry back. It hadn't been dead long, but still I really wished I'd brought a baggie.

The thunder sounded closer. We had to turn back. The louder the thunder, the faster we slogged. Our feet sank deep into the sand. Grit seeped into our shoes.

It started raining.

As we reached the spot to climb onto the bank, the most active part of the storm seemed directly overhead. The thunder was incredibly loud, and lightning flashed much too close for comfort. We decided to wait it out there in the low area, rather than making a dash for home that would leave us exposed in the open too long.

It rained harder. And harder. I'd recently discovered that a floppy straw hat was better than a baseball cap at keeping gnats away from the face, but for keeping rain off of glasses it wasn't doing much good.

It is a constant comfort to me though, in times like those, that I'm able to say, "At least it's not as bad as that pelagic trip." I may have been soaked to the skin in a lightning storm... I may have been rediscovering just how unbelievably cold rain can be on such a hot day... but at least I wasn't seasick too. And, we'd seen some birds, which was more than I could say for that worst-day-of-my-life-and-we-didn't-even-see-any-birds deep sea birdwatching trip. Oh, and I wasn't hallucinating from an overdose of Dramamine either.

I was glad I hadn't brought my camera.


Even though I failed to get a better picture than this.

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* Everyone who's phoned their order in has called it my ad. I can only imagine that the cost of advertising in Better Homes and Gardens must equal that of buying several new cars. Hubby laughs and says I should tell them, "That's not an ad, that's a glowing endorsement!"

** We're kind of liberal in what we consider "the yard".

*** It was perfectly intact until I tried to pick it up, at which point it broke into several pieces. It was so large that I could not have contained it in my palm.

Warmer

I'm not sure what happened to spring. The days are consistently in the 80°s now. It's been over 90°.

(That's about 30°C and 33°C, respectively.)

I want to go wading.

I'll probably have to wear my shoes though, or buy some of those sock-shoe combos made to wear in the water. The creek looks idyllic, but a lot gets washed into it. More rusty metal and glass than you'd think.

My grandfather lived by a small creek when I was a kid. There were even concrete steps leading down to it, which I loved. You could sit on the steps and still dangle your feet in the water. Back then the biggest worry about wading was the slippery rock problem, which often led to a soggy backside problem.

Recent activities

New bass and catfish were added to the ponds.


If we'd known you were dropping by, we'd have cleaned the bucket.


Looking for a way out.

It's been stormy and has rained a lot.


The wind chimes have already been stored away twice due to tornado warnings.


Watch your step.

Life has been busy, but we always try to find time to sneak away for exploring.


Remains of what was the biggest tree in this area.


I wonder who lives here?


Flower time.

Rocks in my head

Sometimes we find rocks made of rocks.



I tried to get a snapshot showing how rocky it is near the top of the hill.



But maybe this closeup of the old logging road bank shows it better. It's limestone at the bottom of the hill and sandstone near the top.



Hubby has started building these little rock towers everywhere.



The creek bed has huge boulders in some places, but this pebbly area is better for wading.



I made a little rock collection near the edge. The red ones often have plant fossils in them.



When I was a kid I was convinced that these were moon rocks.

Watershed

Wayne at Niches wrote about his watershed, and invited his readers to do the same.

All the water on our place drains into a creek that runs through the property. We had a very dry fall, but the creek still flowed, at least a little.



Once it started raining again, it rained more than usual, and as a result the weathermen say we're back up to "normal" for the year. (Somewhere around 55 inches or 140 cm.)

Here's the creek yesterday, after several inches of rain the day before:



By today it'll probably be back somewhere between those two extremes.

Here's the big picture, showing all the major rivers in Alabama: I've somewhat shakily outlined our county in red. You can click on any of these for a larger view.



Here it is with only the Black Warrior River shown, including all its forks, tributaries and feeders. Most of the water in Blount County eventually drains into the Black Warrior. (Exceptions here.)



It's the Locust Fork that's our watershed. There are supposed to be 15 sub-watersheds, but I haven't been able to find a list online. Our little creek drains into the Blackburn Fork (a Locust Fork tributary).



Locate your watershed

The bigger picture:
South Atlantic-Gulf watershed

The really big picture:
Regional watersheds

I found a watershed lookup for Canada too, but it doesn't seem to be working. If you know of any good links feel free to post them in the comments section.

Local links:
Alabama Rivers Alliance
Friends of the Locust Fork
Beautiful photography of the Locust Fork from The Kingfisher Editions by Beth Maynor Young

The debate is over

I found this in the creek. A lively debate ensued concerning the origin.

Me: "It's an ancient Indian artifact!"

Hubby: "It's a rock."



Last weekend a chicken farmer/archaeologist gave a talk at the local museum. (Yes, in Alabama you can be a chicken farmer and an archaeologist at the same time.)

The newspaper had promised that after the presentation, he'd identify any local artifacts that people brought.

Most people had arrowheads. Except that we learned most were actually spear tips instead, and older than true arrowheads (which in this area apparently tend to be quite small). One kid had a particularly fine Clovis point. A man showed everyone a hematite atlatl weight (bannerstone) that his father had found.

There was a large crowd. I waited impatiently at the end of the line. And finally discovered that my curious artifact was... a rock.



A piece of chert. He told me the scientific name of the phenomenon that caused the groove. But in my crushing disappointment I've forgotten it.

Dry

It's been so dry. Jasmine thinks it's a treat, because she can go places that she normally can't. She likes to bark at fish.



Something eats the mussels and leaves these shells near the pond's edge. But we've never managed to see who's doing it. Bird? Muskrat? Raccoon?



The happy little creek is low too.



Today we're setting up at Homestead Hollow for the craft show this weekend.

So of course it's supposed to rain!

Happy little creek

Happy little creek at different times of the year, from the same vantage point (approximately):


Late March.


Mid-April.


Now. (Pre-Katrina.)


Flood stage, early April.

Soggy bottoms

We came through Hurricane Dennis just fine. In addition to weakening considerably, the storm took a more westerly route than expected. Our area was spared all but some heavy rain and gusty winds.

The rain gauge in our yard got knocked over - I believe there was a dog involved. But I don't believe totals reached those of the storm in the spring.

By comparison, Hurricane Ivan last year dropped about 7 inches (18 cm) of rain!

Just before the rain began yesterday, my husband came back from a walk and told me that the Bottlebrush Buckeye was blooming. Since it looked like the bottom was about to fall out, we drove there in the truck to snap a few pictures.


The creek was already muddy from the rain we'd gotten the night before.


Bottlebrush buckeye close-up (Aesculus parviflora).

On the way back, we spotted a couple of small Sassafras trees (Sassafras albidum). There aren't many in the immediate area.


If you've ever bought Gumbo Filé (Filé powder), that's all it is: powdered dried Sassafras leaves.

I also found some Skullcap (Scutellaria sp.).


I need to go back and examine it more closely - I didn't realize there were so many species until I tried to look this one up.

Life's a ditch

There is a ditch in here somewhere.

But it's clogged with trees, sediment, and years of the neighbors' trash, so when it rains heavily our driveway washes out.



The previous tenants told us that the county worked the road for them, but in our moment of need it was pronounced a private road. All my "but the water is coming from your county road" reasoning did not prevail.



This was the other problem. A storm had washed some debris and huge dead trees to rest against some very large culverts. It did not enter our minds that industrious beavers would see this as a gift, and make the situation even worse.

But they did, and the neighbor's property began to flood. (It was putting some of my favorite wildflowers underwater too!)




Ahh.




Ahhhhhh. I feel better now.

When backhoe work starts at $70 an hour, it's easy to believe that time is money.

"He's been here $140 and it seems like he's just started," I fretted.

I was gone running errands for $210.

"My husband will be home in about $175," I realized at one point.

Actually we feel lucky to have had both problems fixed in just under ten hours. It could have been a lot worse.

Greening up

The happy little creek is greening up.

Walking around the ponds last week I had a possible encounter with a Bay-breasted warbler.

He hid among the crowd of new leaves, and wouldn't stay put long enough to be sure.

I have a strange track record with this species - I usually only see one per year. Hope that wasn't it.

This week the weather systems in the southeast are good for migrating birds, but bad for bird watchers. That's the way it goes.

Nowdays they can track some bird migrations with radar.

Postdiluvian (baby)

Just a smidge under 4 inches of rain. (I probably should have cleaned it a little.)


Happy little creek.


Engorged monstrosity that sweeps all the neighbors' trash onto our property. Or (eventually) into the Locust Fork.


Happy little spring-fed duck & frog playground.


Now including lots of runoff from further up the valley. The ducks were afraid and wouldn't go near it.


A beaver-chewed stick. The sound of rushing water turns on a switch in a beaver's brain that says, "build a dam". I think I heard hundreds of little switches being toggled yesterday.

As far as I'm concerned, they can build to their little hearts' content, as long as they're not flooding the driveway.

We collect the stray beaver sticks and give them to my sister's neighbor. She's an artist, and uses them in her framing. This pleases me more than I can say.


Redbud blossoms, after the rain. (Cercis canadensis.)

Deja vu today... more of the same.

Wild Critters

Today it's raining buckets, so here are some pictures from earlier in the week.


Male Falcate Orange Tip butterflies jousting for the attention of a female.


A green anole that kept a close watch on me. Like a chameleon, he can change color in the blink of an eye (from drab brown to bright green). This one was not willing to demonstrate.


Some tiny snails in the creek. I don't have a book that descibes snails but if anyone knows their name please leave a comment or email me.


These muskrats were too far away to get a good picture. I really should learn to tie up the dog if I'm going to try sneaking up on wild critters.

If you look closely you can see the very long tail of the one on the left - it's shining in the sun.

Interesting spider

I found this spider down by the creek. Judging by the way his legs were folded (and by the way he didn't budge when I poked him with a stick), I think he had recently met his end.

I was able to look him on up on this really cool spider site, and found out that he is a marbled orb weaver (Araneus marmoreus). Not a dangerous spider at all.

A word of warning, though. Do NOT look at the pictures of brown recluse spider bites on that page unless you have a strong constitution.

I don't have a strong constitution at all, at least not about medical stuff. I confess that I have felt a little faint ever since viewing the spider bite pictures.

The only time I ever really completely fainted was at a first-aid lecture. There was a drawing of a tourniquet and a chopped off leg involved.

People are usually sympathetic about this at first, and sputter satisfyingly, and agree what a horrible thing that was to be showing to impressionable young girl scouts.

Then they always start pressing me for details about the drawing.

When they find out that, well no, the drawing wasn't really all that graphic, it was just a simple line drawing... they start snickering.

It's hard to stop them from laughing long enough to properly explain about my very vivid imagination.

Anyway, it's probably not a bad idea to familiarize yourself with what the brown recluse spider looks like. The map shows that they are found in Alabama, but I've never seen one.

In general I am not superstitious, although at this point I feel obliged to say "knock on wood".