2016 January, two snows, two melts

Two snow falls and melts, one period of a week or so with below zero f lows and no more than 20 for the high.

The west garden path defines the negative space of the ecological niche it flows through.
Rather than define garden beds and make paths to accomodate, I'm making paths to get to most parts of the area and using the paths to define the beds. In the middle of this one is a red dogwood dominated area with plenty of "weeds" coming up around it. Some of the native plants will turn out to be undesirable in this location, such as poison ivy, black locust and persimmon. Others, such as oak and pine seedlings, will be moved to better homes, if possible. The blocks are western red cedar, untreated so far and just laid on top of some sort of sheet to suppress growth between. Probably a good idea to treat them with boiled linseed oil when the path layout is done and I start digging them in about an inch below ground level so that the path surface remains higher than the soil. I'm going to have to sheet mulch the areas where grass is coming up now. That grass in much to opportunistic to allow in this part of the garden. Mainly because it will be too difficult to mow in here.
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river birch bark at sunset
Unlike the birch that grow further north, the river birch has what appears to be flaking bark rather than sheets. The bark does come off in sheets, but very thin and usually only a few square inches. There is a fair amount of resin in these bark flakes, enough to catch fire even on a damp day.
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Watching
Late afternoon in early winter. 1/15 sec, f8.0, ISO 100, 85mm prime

The dead stalk is food
The white spots are some kind of animal that is digesting the stalk.
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Back lighting at sunset
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Today's ecological intervention was to collect and pile branches across there the water flows freely during and after heavy rains. all the water falling on the east field, half of the big field and all of the east woods south of this point. The runoff has been digging away through to the other side just to the left of the forsythia and needs some more attention if I want get more oganic matter to accumulate here instead of washing down stream.

On the east side of the north end of the berm, this tree had fallen almost directly in the channel being dug by runoff over the years. I was able to collect quite a bit more and put it in the channel, but do need to come in here with the chainsaw and make a really deep logpile berm here.
Turns out these are sugar maples! I was puzzling over this one species that is hanging on to its leaves like the oak does, but these looked more like maple leaves. I explored the various tree books and to me it looked like the leaves were opposite, which led me away from the maple leaf shape I was seeing. At the library last weekend I spotted on the staff pick table a thin little pub from the MO conserv called A key to missouri trees in winter. Cliburn and Wallace. Just the ticket. Close examination of the twig showed me the leaf scars are opposite and led me to key 22, sugar maple. So there are maybe a half dozen full grown, or at least young adult sugar maples and another dozen or two saplings.
The wild plum thicket is reasonably happy, even though it doesn't produce all that much fruit. The path going around it is also a water channel when rain runoff is flowing.