Hey y’all! Sorry it’s taken me so long to update. Even though it’s been a minute since our last community event, I’ve still been doing lots of work behind the scenes, so wanted to give an update.
Johnsongrass: The Johnsongrass is finally dying off for the year – good riddance! It was a struggle to get out there in the heat and humidity, but I managed to log about 10 hours over the month of September, sweating BUCKETS, and yanking up what I could before it had a chance to reseed. We’ll see how the area looks next year. As usual I am terrible at remembering to take a “before” photo, but here’s one of the afters:
Wild pigs: I often find tracks left by wild boars that inhabit the area, but seeing them in action is more rare — for all the time I spend out there (a lot!), I’ve only seen them once… a pair of two, that ran off as I approached. But if you wonder why the trails look all dug up from time to time, it’s the pigs’ rooting behavior. These guys are in fact invasive and do quite a lot of damage across the state.
The Creek!: I’ve been having a blast going out in water shoes and walking the creek as the weather has been getting more tolerable! Each time I go out, I walk away with a couple full trash bags… I’ll get it all cleaned up, and then more will flow in from upstream. Sigh.
One of the projects I took on by myself was cleaning up an area I call “Trash Mountain”. It’s a debris jam of wood and logs (actually a good thing for the creek – these prevent erosion and flooding, and also provide important habitat for animals) but that also catches any trash that flows through it. You can see exactly how high the water level gets during floods by looking at how high some of the trash piles up.
Anyway, I went out there at the end of October (motivated by the cool weather), armed with my water shoes and trash grabber, and sort of clambered around the logs monkey-style until it was all picked clean. Honestly I had so much fun, but some activities are too dangerous to involve anyone else in, so I had to conduct this one alone… 🙂
Before:
After:
Elephant ears: Not far upstream from the trail end, where it meets the water, I noticed a patch of invasive elephant ears. It really feels like it sprang up out of nowhere… I don’t remember seeing it last year. Anyway, yanked that up right quick. Git.
Critters: I’ll end with a few of the critters I’ve found in and around the creek. Amphibians, crawfish, even a scorpion!
And last, to end things, the creek. Ain’t she a beaut!
