A Year in the Forest

We finally got a little rain here, only about 1/10 of an inch but something.  As could be expected, it made the mushrooms pop up also.  I found one I have been watching out for the Deadly Destroying Angel.  If you pick mushrooms to eat like me then you need to be aware of this mushroom.

I have mentioned several times the Beech aphids.  Something is very efficient in eating them.  Almost everyday I find a limb that was covered the day before that is now completely free of aphids.  I cannot imagine that they would just leave enmass like that.  The leaves are starting to turn and fall from the trees.  There are an abundance of bright red and yellow falling leaves right now.  To look at the forest as a whole it is not showing much color yet.

Back to my evening walk.  It is really dry here now.  Today was the first time in several weeks that there were not enough mushrooms too pick for a meal.  The ones that were there have been eaten by the animals.  About the only animal I saw this evening was a deer who came busting through the woods and stopped abruptly when it saw me.  The squirrels are still busy with the nuts. 

I have been noticing somethning the last couple of weeks.  Something is tearing into the old stumps and logs.  I at first thought it was the woodpeckers, but with the amount of damage done it would take several hundred working round the clock to do it.  I suspect coons or possums or skunks tearing into them to get bugs.  There is one stump that has been almost destroyed the last week.

There was a heavy dew this morning, so heavy that it sounded like it was raining at times in the woods.  The dew also made the nuts heavy, because they were falling with regularity also, both hickory and walnut.  As I said yesterday the forest seems much more alive in the morning, there is more noise and activity.  Fall is making itself much more evident.  The underbrush is dying back and the trails are much easier to keep open.  The animals have found the newest crop of honey mushrooms, some plots are entirely gone.  There is a russula mushroom that has been fruiting for two weeks, but I have not found one untouched specimen yet.  Usually by the time it peaks through the leaves, it is already eaten on.  Its like the animals are storing up for the winter like the squirrels and the nuts.  Yesterday I saw a ink cap mushroom come up for the first time and today it was already a black slimy mess – wow what a short lifespan.

I picked what will probably be my last meal of Stump puffball mushrooms and what was left of the honey mushrooms – I am going to miss my several time a week mushroom meals when winter gets here.

I realized today that the Honey Mushrooms I noticed at the base of the Beech trees were a different variety: Armillaria gallica.  I suspected this since they were growing in different locations than the other ones.  This particular variety can be very harmfull to trees.  Luckily it is confined mostly to a north facing slope with lots of Beech.

For some reason the woodpeckers were very busy today – I heard at least 5 different ones.  Since I have had Stump Puffballs every night with dinner this week I decided to not get any today – but they are still there in abundance.  The hickory nuts must be optimal right now.  There is one section of my path that goes under a big Shag-Bark hickory that is almost covered with nut shells.  They are on the ground, on logs, on everything.  One fell as I was walking past and I half expected to be mobbed by squirrels.  I can find Black Walnuts on the ground all the time but rarely find anything but empty hickory shells.  Its obvious what the squirrels prefer.

I went into the forest today anticipating that I would see lots of trees and branches down.  Yesterday the remnants of Hurricane Ike came through with 30 mph sustained winds and gust to 60 mph.  As the storm came through I watched the trees being whipped around, fully expecting one to come down any minute, but just like the rain earlier I was dissappointed.  There were a few branches and one small tree down but that was all.  I am beginning to think that the forest is more reselient than I had imagined.

The most interesting thing that happened was, one of our cats followed my wife and I on our hike.  When we had gotten down in the bottoms, at almost the furthest point in the walk, she just quit and sat down on a log (the cat not my wife).  No amount of coaxing could get her to move.  She is mostly an outside cat and doesn’t like to be carried, so we left her.  She did not come back to the house till early the following morning.  Was I relieved.  I was sure my wife would make me go looking for her first thing.