Greene View Springs' Nessie

I've mentioned the snapping turtle that lives in our pond a few times in the past few weeks. Today I was able to get close enough without startling him to get a few shots.

The first picture shows his shell pretty well. It seems either to have some growth on it or to have accumulated some debris from the pond sticking to it. I think it is debris because it wasn't visible the last time I saw him just a week or so ago. But either way it looks bizarre, like a distorted hump.

Of course the smaller, apparently separate, part protruding from the pond is his head, obviously not separate at all.



Enlarge this second picture to get a really spooky look at one of his eyes sticking out of the water with his snout on the left. Neither picture gives a good idea of his actual size, but the shell is at least a foot long.

Shingle Oak - Quercus imbricaria

We have at least eight varieties of oak tree on the property. I think this one, the shingle oak , is the most unusual because it doesn't have the typical oak leaf shape. Click on the picture for a better look.



The books say the wood is easy to split and was once used for roofing shingles, hence the name. Its leaves are always shiny and attractive.

Tenting

Over the last few days I finished dismantling the platform we had used for tenting near the pole barn. On Saturday Sandy and I moved much of it down the hillside close to the existing pond. With three pallets as the base and three 4'X8' sheets on top, I rebuilt the platform and set up the tent.

Here's a view looking from the platform toward the pond.



Though it doesn't look like it from this angle, the tent is right next to one of the paths mowed through the property.

Grapes

Today I helped Sandy with her project of cutting out grape vines. Wild grapes are a serious problem at Greene View Springs. They cover and weigh down trees and shrubs and their seeds are spread by wildlife that eats the grapes.

We cut them off at the ground and then pull them out of the trees. Sometimes the roots are too large to cut with either pruners or lopping shears. Here's a picture of a the base of a huge vine plant that is covering three or four large trees.



The thickest of these is thicker than my forearm. Look carefully at the vine on the left and you can see it has been sawed in two.

Within a day or so we will see the vines browning out in the tops of all these trees.

Thistle

Yes, it's an invasive, but there's no arguing it's very pretty when blooming.

If you can determine which of the dozen or so varieties this is, please post a comment.

I give up. What is that?

If you zoom in on the picture and look carefully, you can see two tiny legs forming on the largest tadpole. This is nearly the end of a long story which I'll try to relate.

Late in the spring we were entertained each night for over a week by the sound of frogs. With a little study I learned that they were tree frogs. The closest large trees to the house are about 50 feet away so we were surprised to hear the frogs coming closer to the building each night.

Next to the building, under the eaves, along with lots of plastic buckets I've been using to catch rain water, were two stock troughs, each about 4 feet long and 2 feet across. They had once been used as planters and had some holes punched in their bottoms, but I had lined them with fragments of billboard tarps and they hold water perfectly.

One day, while using some of the rainwater from a trough, I found a small frog in the folds of the tarp. The next day, believe it or not, a frog was nestled in the bracket that supports the satellite TV dish. (Satellite is the only option this far out of town. It's too hilly for antenna reception.) Since s/he was about 6 feet above ground, and the wall is HardiBoard (cement board) panels, it wasn't hard to conclude this had to be a climbing tree frog.

By now the nightly chirping was so close to the house you could tell, through the downstairs bedroom window, that a frog was within reach right under it. The next night there seemed to be two frogs close by, and soon a third, though this one sounded different.

The next morning I found a large mass of frog eggs in one of the troughs. One could already see tiny, tiny tadpoles in most of the eggs. The eggs had not been there the day before. Virtually all of them hatched, and soon we had about 500 tiny tadpoles in the trough.

I feared there wasn't enough surface area or water volume to support them all so I scooped roughly half of them into the other trough. After more studying we learned that tadpoles are vegetarians, eating only what vegetable matter they find in their water. (Some say they also east larva, but this must only be after they have nearly completed their metamorphoses, because they are sharing the tank with larva as big as they are.)

This was not good news. First, I had hoped they would eliminate the larvae sharing their space. Second, there is no vegetation in the troughs except some algae, and not much of that. Finally, with no nourishment, the troughs simply can't be expected to support them all.

Consequently, I began a program of transferring them, 50 to a hundred at a time, to the pond. I had no idea if they would survive the change, but what alternative was there? I was able to give a few dozen away to a friend with a small pond, but the rest were going to have to move.

Over the next few weeks I took almost all of them to the pond. It is a different environment: the water is usually muddy and there is at least one large snapping turtle in it, but there is also some grassy vegetation to provide cover, and plenty of vegetable matter.

The picture above is the last bucket of tadpoles to be moved. After a few months they still have not matured much in the troughs, and cooler weather is coming. If they were to make it this season, they had to move.

We hope this effort has allowed a lot more of them to grow big enough to swim away from the turtle than if they had been laid in the pond to begin with. I hope we'll hear from many of them again next spring.

By the way, I tried to find help raising the tadpoles from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, the Indianapolis Zoo and online sources including two herpetological societies. There are plenty of pictures online, but not one had useful advice. In fact, some said "Let us know how you make out."

Here's what the pond looks like now from up the hill a bit.

Typical Hedge-Bindweed - Calystegia sepium

There are dozens of similar species but I think this is correctly identified as Calystegia_sepium.

Toads

A few weeks ago, on Freecycle, a woman nearby offered a small formed pool liner. We went by to look at it and tossed it on the trailer on top of a load of wood chips we had gotten from the county recycle facility. I dug a hole for it in the swale above the driveway. Here's what it looks like in the ground. There's still some dirt to be moved to smooth it all out.



Because the hole was dug in nearly pure clay, I realized that if it rains before I got any water in it, the pond form would likely float up in whatever water seeped down the sides on the outside and accumulated under the form. You can see a gap in the surrounding soil on the right side near the middle. I shot a little water into it with a hose and sort of forgot about it. A day or so later I went up to spread some more soil and clay around the rim and found this critter.



There are two levels to the form and the sides of each are very steep so this little fellow/gal was stuck in the mud, so to speak. I added the length of 2"X4" to see if it would provide an escape.



When I looked in a few fours later, the toad was gone. This won't be a problem when the pond is full, but for now I'll leave the wood ramp in there.

I find toads like this in the wildflower garden all the time. They seem to like the taller plants and I'm sure the swale has helped keep the garden moist longer after rains.

Our roses are dying...

... and that's a good thing!     ...at least in this case.

This picture shows a fairly large multiflora rose bush that is dying because of some blight that seems to be spreading. Multiflora roses are invasive, exotic shrubs. They were introduced from eastern Asia - China, Japan and Korea. In some places it is even classified as a "noxious weed."



Wikipedia has a nice picture of it blooming.

I have been cutting it off at the base, but it's hard (and sticky) work. The district forester says I should be sure to NOT clean my pruners between plants to encourage the blight to spread. It doesn't seem to affect any other plants.

I tried to take a picture of an area, about 20 feet in diameter, from which I had removed just one rose. But it's hard to show what isn't there in a picture. Next time I'll take both a before and an after shot.

Another neighbor takes a ride

Last night Sandy and I tented out to enjoy the night sounds and the cooler air. It actually rained, but not enough to completely wet the platform.

This morning I looked over to see that the trap had been sprung. Here's who I found:



I've seen bigger opossums (Didelphinae Didelphis virginiana). This one didn't weigh much either but it was as feisty as a larger one.

I don't know if opossums have been responsible for any of the pranks and destruction outside, but he or she got the same ride as the raccoons. Even if opossums haven't been trouble makers yet, I expect they will be happy to chomp down on our tomatoes and melons when they can. A quick check on the web shows their "natural" diet to be between 10 and 18 percent fruits, with the rest being a mix of almost everything you can find outside.

Our plan to make it rain

We have had less than a half inch of rain since the first of August. So we decided to take matters into our own hands. We set up a tent so we can sleep under the stars tonight. We will peel back the tent fly if it's not raining.



As you can see I have begun dismantling the platform we used last fall to tent with some of the grandkids. Since last fall it has been used to keep some outdoor furniture off the ground during the winter.

I left about 8' X 8' of it to use for now. The rest of it will be moved down the hill somewhere for tenting the rest of this fall.

And, no, the large Joe-Pye weed isn't growing out of the tent. It just got bent over a bit.

Three-peat foiled!

The trap was sprung this morning, but it was empty and about 15 feet from where I had set it. Not much more to say about it. I'll continue trying to trap any more of the raccoon family for a few more days.



For this picture I've put the trap back where it was placed. Notice the smaller trap was also sprung, but no one was inside.



One can also see the beginnings of our terraces and (in the top picture) the end of a short, wood-chip path from the driveway to the place we make campfires with the grandkids. It has been enhanced with the fireplace grate that used to be in the house I grew up in, though we haven't used it there yet.

That's two

Well the heartless human has again captured a poor defenseless raccoon (unless you count sharp teeth and very sharp claws) and transported it away from its home to a strange place.

This one was smaller than yesterday's catch and a little less feisty, though it had pulled more mulch into the trap than yesterday's traveler.



A close-up in the trunk of the car. Don't you just hate me for doing this? Look at those sad eyes.



He or she (You want to check it out?!) was let go at the same spot as yesterday and disappeared just as quickly into the high weeds.

I have visions of them regrouping down there, enlisting others, and making an assault on the house within a week.

Early morning in the neighborhood

After releasing the raccoon this morning I took a few minutes to take in the scenery. Here's some of what I saw.



The sun was just coming up over the hill, shining literally right through a neighbor's trees. These first two pictures were taken from where the raccoon was released.



These last three pictures, taken from the road on our east, and scanning from north to south, show how quiet and humid it was at 7:30 AM. Can you spot one of our four-legged neighbors?

Got 'er!

For the last three or four weeks we have been visited at night by a raccoon (Procyon lotor). In itself, that would not be a concern. But this particular raccoon has not been very neighborly.

She is not particularly afraid of people. One night my sister set up a flood light to see what was eating the bird seed just feet from her "guest room" window. When she heard the small chimes that hang on the same device as the feeder, she turned on the light to see mama raccoon staring back at her. A few nights ago I chased her and two of her youngsters away so I could bring the feeder in for the night.

She climbs the metal poles that hold our bird feeders. She is large enough that she literally bent one of them about 30 degrees from vertical. That's bent over, not pushed over.

She has knocked over our bird bath and pushed it down the hill. She has dragged clay-potted plants down the hillside. She has torn up plant starts.

Well not tonight.

Last night I set a humane trap for her and this morning there she was, trying to hide in a large pile of grass and wood chips she had scraped into the trap with her, waiting to see what would happen next. All I had was some banana peels and a few pieces of gristle from last night's chicken dinner, but that was enough for her to come into the trap.



Based on good advice to keep my distance from the top of the trap, I picked it up with a set of ice tongs. This worked great. I spread a tarp in the trunk of the car and put the trap in while mama hissed at me bravely.



I drove south on our east-side county road to its end and turned east a hundred yards or so to the small bridge over the creek, a little under 2 miles. I put the trap down on the road and slowly rolled it over. The door fell open and, before I could snap a picture, she disappeared into the tall grass at the creek.



I hope the distance will be enough to keep her away from the house. We'll see. Tonight I hope I can trap one or two of the kids and send them along with mom.