Hawk eye

Yesterday afternoon as I was using the laptop in the living room, something moved outside in the trees that caught my eyes. One of the hawks that usually just soars overhead took up residence in a tree outside for about an hour. I suspect he was hoping he'd have a shot at some of the birds at our feeders below the window. No luck. Yesterday, and almost every day, the birds had cleaned out the feeders by mid-afternoon, and that's after the second filling.

Sandy checked to be sure. It was a red-tailed hawk. There is a tell-tale speckled band of brown across the white breast that is visible in the picture.

And the survey says...

A few weeks ago we surveyed, on foot, the general area of the Greene View Springs property where we hope to build our home. The remainder was also surveyed by using the surveyor's GPS equipment and downloading data at two of the four corners of the property.

The final product, since it includes more than 16 acres, was scaled at 1" = 100'. That's useful for overall site planning, but we had to blow it up quite a bit for our house-siting purpose. Here's a part of the plan at a larger scale, though I realize the scale is a relative thing when displayed on your computer screen.


This view represents about 1/6th of the total area of Greene View Springs. The large irregular polygon that surrounds the core of the plan shows the area surveyed by actual "shots" on the ground. The remainder is data from satellite surveys of the whole area. This level of information is available for the entire country.

The odd pentagon near the top represents a very large collection of large rocks that encircle an area that could be an interesting feature when we have time to exploit it. There are many rocks on the hillside. We're hoping they will be an asset and not a problem when we start to excavate.

The numbers on the numbered tree symbols each represent a size and species of tree. The two "14's", for example, are 12" popular trees; the "9" is a 30" poplar. We shot about 25 of the larger trees to help us orient the plan when we're walking around the site.

Through the middle is a "flow-line" that begins at the spring and flows to the southeast. We hope to place the house so that the spring can been seen from the west end of the building. We also hope to have a deck on the south and west sides that will overlook the stream below the spring, along the flow-line.

Though we have not determined the exact site for the house, we know where we would like it to be. Imagine a building, 60' long, more or less, running west to east from just east of the tree symbol numbered "6" and between the trees numbered "6" (above) and "14" (below).

It would be placed into the hillside with the south side just above the existing level (approx. 693') and the north side barely extending above grade in some places. The roof will start near grade at the north and rise as it runs south to allow winter sun to enter at the top of the south interior rooms.

The building may be deeper north to south in some places. If so, the deeper sections will likely protrude north into the hillside more than the rest, rather than extend to the south which would block all but midday sunlight to other south-side rooms and areas.

The view to the south from the site takes in the large hillside that is shown in the winter panorama in the blog header.

The two trees along the fence row at the county road show where we would like to bring a driveway onto the site. Cutting to the road at this point, where the grade is just a few feet above the roadway, will avoid building the driveway uphill from the wettest spot on the whole property. This will avoid a climb of about 20 feet which could become a problem in bad weather.

None of these plans are final, of course, because we haven't done any core sampling to see what's under the house site and the driveway route.

Survey Day

A week ago, four days before the big snow storm, we had a surveyor and his helper come to the property to survey the hoped-for building site and the area surrounding it. The final product will be a contour map of Greene View Springs with more detail in the area we walked. The rest of the property will also be shown using data from aerial photos.

The most important tool of a surveyor is called a "total station," named as such because it incorporates both a distance meter for measuring distances and a "theodolite" for measuring angles. Here Andy has set up his station on the hill north of the pond looking back toward our hoped for home site.

 

It sends a beam of infrared light toward a prism, shown here supported by an extendable pole held by the surveyor, Eric. The light reflects off the prism directly back to the total station, and, by measuring the time it takes to return, the station calculates the distance, direction and vertical angle between the two.

 

The information from the total station is recorded in a data collector for later downloading into a computer in the office.

Eric also directed me as we tried to get "shots" at representative spots on the property. I'm not running in the first picture; I'm tripping over one of our %&#$! grape vines! The second picture shows the prism a little better. The last picture shows just a few of the many large trees we marked so they would be shot and shown on the topographic map, our final product.

   

And while we were having fun thrashing through the woods, Sandy was working so hard she didn't need her jacket, cutting rose bushes I had cut off earlier in the week into small pieces so they can be more easily removed when the weather allows.



Behind that mass of brush is the mouth of our small spring. If the house will fit close enough we'll be able to see the spring from the house's west side.

Birds in the snow

OK, here's the truth. Earlier this year I lost my camera. I think I owned up to that a month or so ago. (I found it in the pocket of a coat I hadn't worn since spring a few weeks after my sister bought me another one as a gift.)

In December I lost the cable used to download pictures from the new camera. I found it today, pretty much where it was supposed to be. (Too darn many pockets in the carrier I use for the laptop and its accessories.)

I've been taking pictures all along, though, so I'll post many of them now, not necessarily in the order they have been taken.

I'll start with some of the birds that are emptying ours feeders a few times a day.

	One can see all of our feeders from the apartment windows. This shows three of them at the first floor level. The thistle feeder is not shown, but it is rarely used by the goldfinches when sunflower seed is available. There are at least 20 shown here but we have counted between forty and fifty at times.
	We usually have two suet feeders hanging at the upstairs windows. Here's a little Carolina wren that has been visiting occasionally.
	This red bellied woodpecker is a new visitor. He seems the least skittish of our moving near the window.
	And finally, a male downy woodpecker. There are also a female downy and a male and a female hairy woodpecker who are coming each day. One can really tell the downy from the hairy by their sizes after seeing them both on the same nearby feeder.

NOTE: Apparently it's not as easy as I said. Sandy tells me the last picture is the hairy woodpecker, not the downy.

I'm melting... oops!

Today it's about 50 degrees here at the ranch.

Overdue update

Once again I have allowed more than a month to elapse since the last entry. We have been far from idle during that time.

The most visible effort has been the completion of the outside trim on the building. Here's the finished view of the west side.



You can see we got our first snow. Though it was only an inch or so, it did make for some pretty views.

Brandon and Matthew built the property's first snowman. Not a bad effort since the only help they got was finding the hat and scarf. The grape vine hair was their idea.



Also this week, with advice from a local soils scientist, we have abandoned the idea of adding a large pond due to the unlikelihood that it would hold water long enough to justify the investment. In addition to those I was already aware of, with all the annual vegetation dead for the season, we found dozens of significant holes in the area where the pond was hoped to go. Some of the holes were rather large. One accommodated two of us standing in it. With no way to determine where these might lead, it is highly unlikely we could build a keyway for the dam that would be both deep enough and wide enough to intercept all the underground channels that might exist. To find all of them, if that is even possible, would require excavating many times the area otherwise necessary, and to a greater depth.

Instead, in the spring, I'll begin to clean up the swale through which the main spring falls after it emerges from under a giant tree root to make a series of small ponds where water already stands. Each would overflow into the next, at least three of them, before the swale exits the wooded area.

5 days to go

We have been working on getting outside tasks finished before it gets too cold to work outside. It has frozen two or three nights so far but we're mostly ready for the cold. Days are warming up a bit for the immediate future, so it should all get done.

All of our indoor plants are back inside from their summer vacation and one large pot with a pepper and a few large tomato plants is now upstairs in the living area. We had one of the ripe tomatoes with lunch.

I am a few hours away from finally getting a small roof over the sliding barn door. It took me a long time to decide how to do this. The solution I'm trying looks like it will work. The problem has been how to support a 16-foot span only from the ends. If it works I'll take a picture. If not, pretend you didn't read this.

Also, just before the trip to Albuquerque, we got all but one corner of the barn and all the windows trimmed with white boards. It looks pretty good but there is still the corner at the sliding door to finish. When the small roof is done, that corner will be the last to do on the building outside for this season.

And we've been doing what we can to change America's direction with the current election. My precinct has been "targeted" for extra support by the Obama campaign. I'll be doing what I can to get every last voter to the polls on Tuesday.

Finally, we had a visitor on Tuesday who didn't stay long. These two pictures were taken through a window which caused the auto focus to miscalculate the distance, so the focus isn't great, but it was nice to see him in any case.

We're back

We got home from our vacation trip to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Friday evening. There are lots of pictures posted at their site, though I think we got many that are just as nice. I just posted the last pictures from our trip at http://picasaweb.google.com/ed.paynter/BalloonFestivalTrip#.


Today we took some time to harvest persimmons.

As I left the house, right outside the door, the hummingbirds having left for the season, I saw that the bees are dealing with the rest of the sugar water in the hummingbird feeder. I think I'll move it away from the door after dark.

We collected enough ripe persimmons to get over a quart of pulp which Sandy turned into persimmon pudding with a bit left over. I'm eating it as I write this and you can't have any.



Fall colors are beginning to show at Greene View Springs. Here are a few shots taken near one of the persimmon groves. The first is taken from our south boundary looking north toward the house which is still hidden in the trees. All the trees visible are on the property.

The last shot shows the hill on the southeast quarter of the property from the east side. At the top of the picture, in the center, the orange-yellow trees are one of the persimmon groves.

Vacation

Sandy and I are away for a few weeks traveling to Albuquerque and back to see the Balloon Festival.

From time to time while on the trip I'll be posting pictures to my Google Pictures site.

Check it every few days to see what we've seen. I don't take lots of pictures of people and buildings, only remarkable ones. I do take lots of pictures of natural things. Our first stop was the Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri.

You're welcome to check out other folders at the site, too. They are mostly from other trips we've taken. Just click on "Ed" to the left of the folder name to see other folders.

Another source of chips

Today on of the REMC's tree service vendors, Townsend Tree Service LLC, dropped a truckload of wood chips for us. It sure is a lot less work than multiple trailer loads.

The pile isn't on fire. The chips have begun decomposing since they've been in the truck for a few days. The cloud is steam.

In the foreground you can see three of the 16-foot barn corner trim pieces waiting for their paint to dry.

Eastern Screech Owl - Megascops asio

After dark last night we heard an Eastern Screech Owl. It's funny that the call is nothing like a screech.

It's not likely I'll get a picture of this neighbor, but here's a
page from Wild Birds Unlimited with a nice picture and an embedded call you can click on to the left of the drawing.

American Bottoms - Cave Tour Videos

While I was researching the web for American Bottoms references, to my utter surprise, I found videos of recent exploration trips into the American Bottoms cave.

The most interesting is this 10-minute cave video shot on August 31st this year.



There are at least two more but I'll just give you the links for them on YouTube. The first, about 8 minutes, was made on April 8th this year; the other, about 10 minutes, was made on May 31st.

American Bottoms - Mr Colling's Cave

Soon after we moved to Greene County we learned about American Bottoms. Just recently I inquired as to who owns the property where the cave is. I dropped in on Mr Collings and his wife to ask permission to visit the cave. He was very gracious and we talked about things for about 45 minutes.

Last week Sandy and I visited the cave. There was some water flowing, but not as much as after even a minor rain event. Here are a few shots of the cave entrance, from outside

 

and inside.

 

I took quite a few pictures inside the cave, but, hey, if you've seen one cave wall, you've seen them all. Here are two, though, that are of interest. The first is the cave ceiling showing what may be a large fossil. At least that's what I'm calling it.

The second shows some raccoon footprints. The cave is the terminus of Bridge Creek, about 3 tenths of a mile from where I released the raccoons a few weeks ago.

 

American Bottoms - Intro

In addition to our mailing address, Greene View Springs' location can also be described like this...

Greene View Springs is on the north side of the watershed of an approximately 5200-acre natural depression known as American Bottoms located about 8 miles east of Bloomfield, Indiana.

All of the views posted to this blog to date (except some 2007 posts of flooded fields and turkeys) have been in the American Bottoms watershed and everything we can see from Greene View Springs, except some of the most distant hilltops, is in the watershed.

Rain falling on Greene View Springs will flow into Bridge Creek and into a cave from which it exits roughly 3 miles away, outside the Bottoms, at Rock Springs near Koleen, eventually draining into Richland Creek. There is no above-ground exit for surface water from the Bottoms.

Though one of the most unique geological features in Indiana, American Bottoms is not well known. Bluffs and ridges on three sides form the basin and two types of porous rock - sandstone and Beech Creek limestone - make up the natural drainage system.

View Larger Map

If you select the "Map" or the "Ter" box on the map above, and zoom out ("-") twice, you will see that Bridge Creek begins and ends in American Bottoms. The cave is at the westernmost end of Bridge Creek.

Careful what you browse on

One of the most prevalent flowers in the woods this time of year is the White snakeroot - Ageratina altissima.



I don't understand plant taxonomy well enough to explain this, but my plant books use this latin name: Eupatorium rugosum. Here's what the linked page says: "White Snakeroot has been reassigned recently to the genus Ageratina, although it is still often referred to as Eupatorium rugosum." (Who gets to reassign latin names and how do they decide, is there a vote?)

It goes on to say every part of the white snakeroot plant is very toxic. It can kill grazing animals and its toxin can pass through milk cows and kill babies. Dear will not eat it. too bad, as it is very pretty in the woods these days.

We'll have to deal with this if we every get livestock.