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.

Nuts!

Early this morning I moved four used freight palettes to the tent site to get the panels off the ground. I just screw the OSB panels to the palettes and block them up to be level. Raising them keeps them from rotting on the damp ground and provides some habitat for mice, amphibians and other critters. I built a platform for a wooden bench nearby, also.

The walk back to the house is through some of the larger trees on the property, and that's where I took this generic shot through the woods looking east.


Nearby were a few shagbark hickory trees (Carya ovata). Their nuts are tasty and about as hard to remove from their shells as a walnut.


I arranged a few nuts in their husks with a half of a husk and husk quarters opened by some critter and a single nut that was left behind, probably because it has a small hole drilled through it and was not worth opening.

My first large snake sighting

Today as I was spreading wood chips, when returning uphill for another load, I came across a snake lying halfway onto the trail. I didn't have my camera (isn't that always the case?) and, by the time I got past it, it had slithered into the undergrowth.

I have been searching the web and the best guess I have is it was a prairie kingsnake. The description states, "The Prairie Kingsnake is found in western Indiana." It also states, "The species is considered uncommon within the state," so I could be wrong, but I have searched through about 25 snake species on the web and this is the closest one to what I saw.

Maybe next time I'll be ready with the camera. It's hard to carry it around when shoveling and spreading chips.

Where chips come from

An earlier entry contains a few pictures showing how we are building our trails. I thought I'd show how those wood chips make their way to the property.

There are a few sites that have chips available, but the closest, cheapest (free) and easiest is the City of Bloomfield's sewage treatment plant property on the south west corner of Bloomfield, about 8 miles away. The guys there load the chips into our trailer for me. After it's loaded I pull half of the tarp over the top, strap it down and drive off.



When I get back to our place I back the trailer onto a simple ramp I built near the edge of the driveway where the soil was piled up higher than the original profile to support the leveling of the driveway's cross section. The steep drop off and the ramp bring the back of the trailer a few inches higher than the garden cart's sides.



With that altitude advantage I can push most of the chips into the cart with only minor shoveling. Then it's turn the cart south and hang on as gravity does its thing. Each trailer load fills the cart eight times.

Today it was hot and sunny so there were lots of breaks in the work, and, now that the paths near the barn have all the chips they need, all the trails left to cover are down hill, so each cart-load takes a bit longer than the last.

By the way, do you like the 50's fins on the trailer? They're leftover pieces from the siding at the peak of the barn. It looks a lot like my first car. It had a black roof and no reverse gear. I had to park it in diagonal spaces facing uphill only, but that's another story.

A quick visit from Ike

Hurricane Ike smashed into the Texas coast late Friday night and early Saturday and has already made it to the midwest and moved east. Here are two shots from our dining area table of the persimmon tree just outside the window.



Above: the normal view

Below: the tree fighting its way back up during one of many strong gusts

New blog feature: preview linked pages

I just installed a new feature on this site called Snap Shots. It enhances links with visual previews of the linked page, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, inline videos, and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots show you the information you need without your having to leave the Greene View Springs page, but it always lets you "look ahead," before deciding whether to follow a link or not.

I can decide which links benefit from the Snap Shot feature and will "turn it on" only for those entries. If Snap Shot is active for a link, a small icon will follow it as you can see in the links above.

Usually the previews display quickly, but sometimes it takes a while. If you hover over a link and the Snap Shot takes too long to appear, just move your cursor off of it, or ignore the Snap Shot bubble and click through on the link.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon (the small gear) in the upper right corner of any Snap Shot bubble and opt-out.

Completely off topic

I was working on the blog late last night when the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson came on the TV. If you have about 9 minutes, please listen to his monologue. It starts out pretty slow, but funny, and ends with a bang.

At the end of the show he spent another 5 3/4 minutes on a follow up.

Ferguson recently became a citizen. With humor, he made more sense, and spoke more for me, about the way we elect our president, than any news person or politician has had the courage to say.

Now I'll go back to telling you about Greene View Springs.

Overdue barn pictures

I was reminded a few days ago that I hadn't yet posted a picture of the barn after we painted it. We just got back from a CASA meeting at the courthouse and it was getting dark, but I took these anyway. Otherwise I'd probably forget them for a few more days.

 
North side                                                 West side

The cool hex sign was a gift from my sister Judy. Looks pretty nice, eh?

You don't see the corners because I still have to buy, paint and install them plus trim around the windows.

The trap is still working

Our cat Stubby sure likes fish skin. I never thought we'd catch anything during the day.