Month: August 2017

The outermost bands of rain from Harvey reached the Hollow last night, but we aren’t expecting much rain here. It didn’t start raining during my walk until just as I reached the river. It rained for a few minutes as I walked back up, but the overhanging trees kept me from getting very wet. (I took this photo earlier in the week to try and show the steep slope of the walk.)

There hasn’t been too much new activity lately. The dog days of summer have passed, and things seem to have slowed as we wait for the cooler days of autumn. The fall wildflowers are blooming while the summer blossoms fade.

Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa)

Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)

Wingstem (Verbesina occidentalis)

I’m keeping an eye on the remaining pawpaw in the meadow and the persimmon tree along the road…

August 28

and, of course, feeding the deer and turkeys in the meadow at least once a day!

It looks (and sounds) like a much larger band of rain has arrived, which means I’ll be pulling on my “shrimper’s” boots when I head down to the meadow later.

As I noted in an earlier post, it’s hard for me to stay inside and write this blog when the weather is nice. However, I am making myself rest after working outside yesterday and then raking gravel back in the road this morning. (A neighbor scraped it with her tractor blade yesterday, but it needed to be “touched up” with the rake.)

It’s gorgeous outside right now—it’s about 80 degrees and sunny with a nice breeze from the west. A few leaves have begun to fall, and late summer/early autumn flowers are blooming. I’ll be posting more later, but here are a few. Clockwise from top left: Passionflower aka Maypop (Passiflora incarnata),  Wild Ageratum (Eupatorium coelestinum), Carolina Elephant’s Foot (Elephantopus carolinianus), and Wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) aka yellow ironweed with New York Ironweed aka Tall Ironweed  (Vernonia noveboracensis)

The butterflies are still plentiful. Some of them may be migrating, but these were busy creating the next generation. (I think these are Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae)).

The fawns continue to grow, as do Buttons’s antlers.

Pickin’ up pawpaws… Well, I didn’t put them in my pocket, but today I picked up two pawpaws that fell from one of the three pawpaw trees in my meadow.

Then I cut one open and ate it!

I wasn’t sure what to expect. The texture has been described as custard-like, and it was indeed smooth, but not overly so. It tasted sort of like papaya (maybe) and was not overly sweet. I have one in the refrigerator and found another one (larger) still on the tree. Now I can try to grow more trees from the seeds! (I grew several persimmon trees from seeds I collected last fall and will plant them soon.)

Since this post is about fruit from the Hollow, here is a photo showing 60% of the harvest from my two small apple trees:

For the last month or so, the roads and driveways in the Hollow have been populated with thousands of orange-striped oakworms. Some are crawling, some have been squashed, and some are dead for some reason unknown to me. (If you follow me on Facebook, you may remember remember when I posted photos and a video of the adult moths all over my porch last year.)

On my porch right now is a writing spider (Argiope aurantia, I think).

She is beautiful and has plenty to eat, as she has built her web under my porch light. Unfortunately, she attaches part of it to the screen door every night, and it comes loose when the door is opened n the morning.

And then there are these beauties that were once caterpillars.

After I saw the scat Thursday morning, I happened to look out that evening in time to see this bear walking across my meadow; it appears to be a yearling. Bear sightings are common in nearby areas, and I am happy not to see more around my hollow. Nonetheless, I will be more watchful when I feed the deer and turkeys in the meadow. (I took a short video but can’t post videos here unless I upgrade the blog, and I’m not ready to do that. However, I finally figured out how to get rid of the “featured” post.)

No scat along the ridge today, but this tree was down, blocking some of the neighbors from getting out. (They cleared the road soon after I took this.)

I see lots of dead and dying trees on my rambles. I have seen trees downed after windstorms, thunderstorms, and too much rain. Sometimes they seem to fall for no apparent reason. I have actually watched a couple come down and heard others crash, and I sometimes hurry by some that are leaning and wonder which way I would run if they started to go.

Let me begin by noting that almost all my walking is on private gravel roads, and I generally stay on the roadway—especially during the summer—to avoid being attacked by brambles, poison ivy, and/or stinging insects. I usually begin my ramble by walking up a short stretch of my neighbor’s very steep concrete driveway with Jet to near the top of the ridge, continuing down a gravel road that intersects with “my” road below my meadow, then back up my shared driveway. (We call this the loop.) I leave Jet at the house, then walk down to the river and back and wherever else the spirit moves me. Often I walk back to the top and then over the ridge (more on this in another post).

Today I found this bear scat in the road at the top of the ridge. I didn’t examine the scat closely, but it looks like it had been eating persimmons, although I haven’t noticed any ripe ones yet.

I noticed the triplet fawns, their mom, another doe, and several turkeys in my meadow a little while ago and took this photo from my deck. You can try to spot them below!

I think I have figured out how to have these blog posts upload to Facebook automatically and will soon find out.

I am trying to use my tablet today, and it has been a bit frustrating. I’ll try to clean things up tomorrow. Please excuse the many updates you may have received.

Here is today’s photo of the river and a shot of Jet on one of the few flat-ish stretches of our walk.

We have reached the middle of August, and the weather has been humid with rain showers or brief downpours almost daily. As you can see, the French Broad is up, as it generally rains more in the mountains (south of us on this north-flowing river).

Several different mushrooms grow in the hollow, including in my yard

and along the road.

Buttons’s antlers are growing larger, too, and he was rubbing a tree this morning to remove the “antler velvet” (which I just learned is a drug in traditional Chinese medicine).

You know you have a reputation when neighbors contact you to let you know about a dead deer by the highway and to offer their sympathy. That happened today. I had noticed deer tracks leading from the highway up our road earlier this week; there is water in the “creek” that runs by our road, but sometimes deer cross the highway to go to the river. And sometimes they don’t cross successfully. (There was no sign that the vehicle had crashed.) The death of the doe saddens me, but I know this year’s fawns are all eating on their own now.

The circle of life has been all too evident this summer. I enjoy seeing the fawns and poults (young wild turkeys), but it makes me sad when I encounter the other side of the circle. In addition to the doe on the highway, within the last month I have seen the bodies of a raccoon, a garter snake, and one of the box turtles that was a regular in the Hollow; all of them had apparently been hit and killed on our narrow gravel road. And one of the neighbors found the body of a tiny fawn with no clue as to how it died.

On the brighter side, one of this year’s fawns seems to admire Buttons (who began eating apple from my hand as a yearling last year) and often follows him around.

And then there is Lippy, one of the triplet fawns. I don’t know if it is her(?)  lip or jaw, but her bottom lip seems to droop. I can’t usually tell the deer apart, but she is distinctive.

Walking around the Hollow is great exercise, but it also gives me a chance to enjoy nature. For several years I have noticed this “chicken of the woods” mushroom on the side of the road near the top of the ridge.

And we have plenty of wildflowers. These Rudbeckia grow in many places, and they are keeping the pollinators busy these days. (I am not sure which species this is; there are several species in the Hollow.)