A Year in the Forest

  More leaves down everyday.  The crows came back today but I only heard them in the distance.  The squirrels are busy on the ground still.  The forest is still very much alive, birds and animal noises everywhere. Not much more to report.  Cool, dry fall day.

  It is cool and dry today.  The forest was unusually quiet, the crows were no where around for a change.  I did hear the stag deer snorting and stomping around in the forest letting everyone know that he was there.  The leaves are coming down more every day and can be seen in the picture at the start of this article.

I have two cats, a 2 or 3 year old big cat (she is my office cat) and a small old cat about 12 years old.  The big young cat never goes with me on walks, the small old cat does sometimes and did today.  She follows from a distance like she is stalking me and never comes up close.  Nothing much else to report.  I found a ripe paw-paw and ate it.  The mushrooms are all gone.

  The view down into the stream bed is getting clearer every day as the leaves fall and allow more light into the picture.  Two things caught my attention today.

Frist crows.  As I started my walk this morning I noticed first how quiet it was and then for some reason the birds started singing.  I enjoyed the diverse sounds of the bird songs for a few minutes and then the crows started cawing.  The other birds shut up at this point.  With the leaves coming down, I looked up and for the saw the flock of crows that were making all the noise – there were at least 30 crows.  And then I began to notice that they were the loudest when I was moving.  So I started experimenting.  When ever I stopped and didn’t move they quieted down.  Whenever I began to move again, their raucous noise began again.  When I got close to the house they quieted down.  Hmmmm.

Second PawPaws.  My path goes right down the middle of a large paw-paw patch.  I noted earlier how the animals stripped this patch of paw-paws early in the season.  Yesterday I found another patch, untouched by the wildlife because of the strong sweet smell and harvested a few.  That patch is stripped now.  Today I wandered off the path to look at a large root ball when I noticed the ground littered with paw-paws and looked up to see one lone paw-paw loaded with paw-paws.    So the wildlife got the majority of the paw-paws but left some of the later ripening ones.

I got to go out in the woods in the morning today.  It is cooler and this morning a little quieter.  The air is moist and the ground is dry.  The leaves are coming down more all the time and all the paths are now covered with leaves.  For some reason, the leaf colors don’t seem as bright this year, probably the hot dry weather.  I took a little time and went off my beaten path today and was rewarded by the change. 

First I found enough oyster mushrooms to make a good batch to cook.  Second, I followed my nose and found another paw-paw patch with ripe paw-paws all over the ground.  I gathered about 20 good fruits and left that many more that had some blemish on them (usually something took a bit or two out of them).  There are few things as sweet smelling as paw-paws.  They make things like honey-suckle and corn pale by comparison.  Super sweet smell.

The log which had 2 or 3 pounds of mushrooms a couple of days ago was completely cleaned out today.

  Here is the view today.  You can see the trees turning and the leaves on the ground.  It finally got a little cooler around here.  Yesterday I foolishly decided to wait a day to harvest a big batch of honey mushrooms.  I should have known that the woodland creatures would get them if I did and sure enough, what was 2 or 3 pounds of mushrooms was almost completely wiped out.  I got maybe 1/4 of a pound.  Oh well, I guess they needed them more than I.    I did smell a pawpaw again but was unable to locate it.  I saw a few squirrels but did not see the deer again.

The most interesting thing happened before I took my walk.  I was talking to my neighbor and he was telling me how a skunk got a yellow jacket nest for him also.  He related how the skunk used to live under his shed.  When I asked him how he got rid of it, he said that he had taken a piss around the shed every night for a couple of weeks and the skunk just left.  Now he only does it about once a week to keep it away.  Haw never heard of that.  But more interestingly, he told me how he had been at the back of his property, which backs up to my woods, one evening when he heard a low growl like a big cat purring and when he turned to look saw something in the underbrush going off.  This is the same woods I had heard the large cat growl in.  There are not supposed to be any large cats in our area and we have both been told we were crazy when we told other people about what we saw/heard.  I guess its nice to have it confirmed, now it makes me wonder what is in the woods.