80AcresOnline

We had gorgeous weather for Thanksgiving, and an out-of-state guest who enjoyed a moderately long stroll around the place.  We weren’t in rubber boots, so we couldn’t cross the creek or wander as freely, but still a fun hour or so out wandering.

Saturday, in not-as-perfect (but still pleasant) weather I made it across the creek in regular shoes–not exactly dry-shod, but not too wet-footed.   I did put three knapsacks of rocks from the rockpile near the creek onto the ford, which has migrated a bit with the flash floods this fall.  Water quality looked great, clear, spring-fed, and flowing strongly.   This view is upstream from the ford (shown in previous post); the braced fencepost to the right, on grass, shows the north fenceline where it crosses the creek…there’s a mess of flotsam caught on the water gap.

Many small beauties to see here and there on the way, such as this ragged Red Admiral sunning itself on an old prickly-pear pad:

Unfortunately, today I’m having problems uploading images, so some of the ones I want won’t load…including some that uploaded last night.   So the rest of this will have the images that will upload…whatever they may be…and I’ll just write about what I can show, not what I wanted to.  (The phoebe peeking at me from behind a branch…the crayfish claw underwater…etc.)

And grrr…now none of them will upload.  Oh, well.  Lots of things to give thanks for, even if I can’t show them.  We had butterflies: the Red Admirals, a Common Buckeye, lots of  Dainty Sulphurs and Orange Sulphurs and American Snouts.   Still some dragonflies: Variegated Meadowhawks and Common Green Darners.  Lots of winter birds as well as the year-rounders.  The oak trees have turned, so I have golden, orange, and rich red in the yard, as well as the red of aromatic sumac, a few remaining shreds of flameleaf sumac (they’ll blow away in the norther that’s coming this evening), soft roses and lavenders of the roughleaf dogwood.

I hope you had a good holiday week and weekend–we did.

EDIT: 

Well, one more picture came up after shutting everything down and starting over.    Not sure how or why, but this is the back yard from the gate to the north horse lot, showing some of the colors–nearby, crepe myrtle, and farther on, a couple of red oaks.

Let’s see if the phoebe will show up:

And there it is, peeking out at me, as I sneaked around trying to get a clearer view.   The crayfish claw is in the other post.

Although it doesn’t show in this image, I could see that the brushy bluestem edging this pool in the west gully system wasn’t as dead as it looked in late summer after two very dry years…a few green leaves were showing.  The roots held the sides of these pools where the grass was thickest, though there’s still erosion above, with slumping into the former long ditch.

(And I’m really glad that the system agreed to upload some more pictures!  Yay!)

EDIT again: changed out the first image for one not identical to the previous post.