I gave myself and Toby a Christmas present this morning, and went for a walk back through the woods. We hadn’t been back there since before The Farmer’s knee surgery, so it’s probably been about 3 weeks.

While The Farmer was in the hospital we had a lot of rain. Over a foot of rain in fact. It filled up the pond and flooded the bottom pasture and across the road below our driveway.

I looked to see if the flood waters had moved the tree that fell in the creek a month or two ago, and sure enough, it’s disappeared. And I do mean disappeared. I have no idea where it ended up! I couldn’t see it anywhere. I thought it would get caught in one of the bends of the creek, but the water was so high, there’s no telling where it floated off to.

At first, I thought this tree might be it…

However, when I got to looking closer, I noticed it has a line of barbed wire connecting the fallen tree to the upright tree beside it, so obviously it wasn’t the previously fallen tree from further up the creek.

This one isn’t actually in the creek, but just has part of the tree hanging out over it.

It rained so hard you can’t see where the tree broke off except for a patch of smooth, bare dirt.

There’s always a lot of trash that washes down the creek when it floods.

I thought it was interesting to see this plastic crate caught in some tree roots along the creek bank.

The water was much higher than usual, and muddy. That didn’t deter Toby from splashing out into the middle of the creek and goofing off.

“Aren’t you coming?”

I declined to follow him into the creek today. Considering I wasn’t wearing boots and how deep and fast the water was running, it would have been a very cold and very wet adventure!

On the way back home, we walked through a different area of woods than our usual route.  I noticed a lot of persimmons on the ground.

I was rather surprised to see so many.  The persimmon trees I’d seen earlier were already pretty bare of fruit.  However, when I looked around and spotted the persimmon tree nearby, I could see there was still fruit WAY UP in the top of the tree.

 That’s the trouble with fruit trees in the middle of a wooded area.  The trees grow way tall, and there’s no way you can get to the fruit.  I guess the birds and squirrels and raccoons and whatever other critters like such stuff can enjoy it however.

There’s certainly a good bit left for them to munch on!  With persimmons, hickory nuts, walnuts and acorns, there ought to be plenty of food available for wildlife able to reach it.

I was pretty tired by the time Toby and I made it back out.  Guess sitting around in the hospital with The Farmer kind of blew any conditioning I had.  We’ll have to get back in the habit of walking after chores each morning so I build up a little more stamina.

Walking in the woods is a pleasant way to get a little exercise!

5 Comments »

Almost every morning when I’m out to do the morning chores, my canine companion, Toby, and I go for a walk. We go down through the bottom pasture and into the woods.

We have about 4 acres of woods on our little farm, so although not real big, it’s enough to get in there and not see any civilization.

We had some rain a few days ago, causing a lot more leaves to fall off the trees and carpet the path.

Going into the woods and under the bigger trees makes me feel a little like I’m a hobbit or elf or something, treading along through Middle Earth in the Lord of The Rings.  It’s so tranquil, and a great way to start the morning.

Our usual path through the woods takes us by a big hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis). The morning sun and a low limb makes an interesting pattern of shade on the big tree’s trunk.

This is the same tree that had all the slugs crawling up and down the trunk earlier this year.  It’s too cold now for such critters to be sliming their way up and down the tree, so we didn’t see any today.

We passed by an old fallen log with a covering of moss, plus an added decoration of a bright red leaf.

Eventually we meander along the creek. With the sun shining so brightly today, it made some nice reflections of the trees in the water.

In the deeper areas of the creek, we can usually see some minnows swimming along. They zip by pretty quickly, so it’s hard to get a picture.

The reflection off the water also makes getting a decent picture difficult, but at least you can see there’s little fish in there!

It doesn’t matter how cold it is, Toby has to splash around in the creek.  He loves playing in water!

Many of the fallen leaves have caught on some rocks in the creek and made a little dam, slowing the flow of the water.

They’ll eventually float away, especially if we get more rain and it raises the water levels for a while. 

Further down the creek there is a fallen log.  It’s been there a long time, and has created another bit of a dam in the creek.

The water and floating leaves rush over one or two little sections.

Listening to the water flowing along is quite soothing.  Maybe a walk in the woods would be better than medicine for high blood pressure or depression!

Here’s another little video taken from the bank hanging over top of the end of the log.  I kind of like this one because at the end a walnut goes floating over and bobs in the water.

On the loop back through the woods, there are ferns here and there. It may be fall, but some things are still green.

Sometimes we wander around the paths in the pasture at the end of our walk, but that’s more fun in the spring and summer when there are butterflies and other bugs livening up the place.

For today, That’s My World is a walk in the woods.

27 Comments »

The water is down, and the tree is now long wise in the creek instead of across it.

Toby helped me check things out, but he wasn’t brave enough to jump in the water today!

The top of the tree is still spanning the width of the creek bed, but another bout of high water will break off a lot of those branches as they dry out and get brittle.

It’s still cloudy today and looks like we could get more rain. I guess that would be good, as we’re still way behind on rainfall averages. It just plays havoc with my work cause of the “rain pain”. Such is life!

No Comments »

Please note, that’s a tree IN the creek, not BY the creek.

A few weeks ago we had some windy days.  Apparently one of the trees by the creek gave it up and fell in the water.  We first noticed it when The Farmer was out making the path in the woods.

 I figured it couldn’t have happened too long before we found it, since the leaves were all still green.

When I was out walking this past Monday, I took another picture of the tree.  By then the leaves were pretty well all dying and brown.

The Farmer and I have been wondering what would happen when we got a hard rain. If the tree stayed put, it would catch a lot of debris and water would back up behind it and flood over the road.  It’s not unusual for water to flood over the road, because the county put in two smaller culverts instead of one big one, and the debris catches there and water backs up.

Fortunately for us, that part of the road is past our driveway, so we aren’t really affected.

It started raining yesterday, and by mid-morning today we had 3 1/4 inches of rain in the gauge. When it finally stopped raining long enough for me to go out and do chores (hey! the animals weren’t out of their sheds either!), I took a walk back to see what had happened with the tree.

Obviously, the tree wasn’t heavy enough to withstand the pressure of all that water pushing at it, and gave way.  I thought it might since it wasn’t buried into the ground to help anchor it in place.

And by the way, if you compare the tree stump on the bank in the first picture to this last picture, you can see how high the creek water was!

2 Comments »

Every morning, rain or shine, hot or cold, the critters need fed. So every morning except Saturday, when The Farmer does the chores, I’m outside taking care of critters.

Since I’m already in my outside-doesn’t-matter-if-they-get-dirty clothes, that’s a good time for a walk too. The Farmer keeps paths mowed in the bottom pasture, and Toby and I go round them at least once every morning.

But I missed going in the woods like I did in the winter and early spring. A couple weeks ago I told The Farmer about trying to go in the woods, but the growth was so dense, it was just too much hassle, so I gave it up.

Fast forward to the next Saturday. The Cave Geek and I were inside working on something. It was a nice fall day, so we had the doors open. We kept hearing this noise. Cave Geek thought it was a shop vac. The people next door have been doing some remodeling so that wasn’t unreasonable. I thought it sounded like a weed eater.

Later when I went out to check on what The Farmer was up to, I discovered we were both wrong. The sound we were hearing was our riding lawnmower stopping and starting way out in the woods, cause The Farmer was mowing a path for me.

How sweet is that? I merely mentioned I missed being able to walk in the woods, and he came up with a way so I could do it again. It’s really cool. Kind of reminds me of a state park or something. All we need is little signs here and there.

Now, I enjoy walking in the woods and so does Toby, but the dog has a MAJOR phobia about electric fences. He won’t cross one, he doesn’t want you to carry him over one, he doesn’t want to come within light years of one.

My favorite theory is one day he indulged in his favorite hobby and hiked his leg to leave his mark, this time on the electric fence. I think perhaps some rather sensitive parts got zapped, and thereafter there was NO WAY he was getting close to the electric fence.

Since the path into the woods started at a spot where the electric fence going around the bottom stood, he wouldn’t go into the woods with me. Never mind that The Farmer took down the fence there, he knew there used to be an electric fence in that spot and he didn’t want anything to do with it.

That was the first day.

The second day he finally realized the fence really and truly was no longer there, and by the time I came back he was sitting just inside the woods waiting for me.

On the third day he followed me right into the woods and kept close.

By the fourth day he’d decided this was a lot of fun, and before I even got to the woods he was bounding ahead of me and running around in the underbrush.

Now when I head for our walking area, he’s way ahead of me and goes toward the woods.  Today he discovered it’s great fun to wade around in the creek.

I doubt he’s over his phobia, but one thing is sure and certain, he’s discovered there’s no fence barring his entry into the woods now, and he’s loving it!

4 Comments »