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.

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