... But, the Rain Went Away

… But, the Rain Went Away

August 31, 2017

 

It had not rained since August 22.

August 31 was still unseasonably cool (thank goodness) but it was intensely sunny and getting a bit crisp.

I went down to Cottonwood Pond to the sounds of cicadas calling, woodpeckers tapping, and trees creaking in the intermittent, light winds.

The lower places were no longer slick, shiny mud – they were drier, lighter in color, and there were come mud cracks occurring.

 The main pond, from the north

The main pond, from the south

 Bottom of the main pond

 Plants growing on a broken segment of the upper Very Rotten Log (under the Inlet)

 “little pond” and the Trunk

Creek, Seep, and Bark Ledge

Bark Ledge, breaking up

 Seep start and Isthmus

 Temporary Creek #1 - very dry

Swampy Spot (certainly not swampy)

 Creek, looking upstream

Creek, looking downstream

In the bottom land, a “mystery plant” was further along in bud.

Jewelweed was blooming more profusely.

Lots of orange dots of Jewelweed blossoms on the Mud Pile

False Nettles were more fully into fruit. Some Wood Nettles were still in white, lace-like bloom while others had gone to seed.

False Nettle

Wood Nettle blooms

Wood Nettle in fruit

Honewort has been in seed for some time, but some are falling 

The fruit of Ditch Stonecrop starting to brown as seed matures

 Water Smartweed, still in bloom

Great Blue Lobelia was still blooming near the Swampy Spot …

… and the Elderberry clusters were bare skeletons, having lost all of their berries to wildlife or drop.

 Seedling growing from the Trunk - not sure what it is yet

While some new plants were growing, sometimes in seemingly precarious spots, the Sassafras trees were dropping just a few of their prematurely autumn-colored leaves.

Spider webs seemed to have sprung from the air, in profusion everywhere. Various types of spiders had been exceptionally busy. There were little hammock-like sheet webs, bowl-and-doily webs, spectacular orb webs stretched over great open spaces, and sturdy, single strands reaching so far from plant to plant that I wondered how  spiders could have cast their lines over such distances. Evidently, they had some wind to help. I ran into webs, literally, all over the place.

 Bowl-and-doily

A great orb web

A long strand shining in the spots of sun.

I found other fresh signs of animal activity on the Very Rotten Log over the Creek. Last time, I had only seen where an animal had shredded the rotten wood, looking for morsels. This time, there was “sawdust” around a hole bored into the wood.

 “Sawdust” fallen onto a shelf mushroom

Under the log, on the dry Creek bed surface, there were sprinklings of “sawdust” as well as some tiny pellets.

If the Creek had been running, I likely would not have seen this.

By far the strangest, most mysterious thing I came across that day was a tiny spot of bright magenta pink on the ground near “little pond.”  At first, my mind registered it as a small flower petal, but there were no bright pink flowers in the vicinity.

Looking much closer, I saw a glistening pink blob resting on a small piece of dead leaf.

Note the black seeds to the upper left of the pink blob - what kind are they?

I picked up the dead leaf and brought it closer to me, where I could examine it with my loupe magnifier. It was not quite gelatinous. The blog seemed to be full of layers of a strand-like substance.

I set the leaf piece where I could find it again, at the base of the Two-Trunk White Ash. Later in the day I went to retrieve it, putting it in a small plastic container, hoping to examine it under a scope. But, by that time it had dried up and was no longer pink

What was this? It was not the color of blood. Could it have been regurgitated or deposited by and animal that ate something pink? What were the seeds next to it, and would they be a clue? Or, was it some kind of weird bacteria? Or a slime mold? I knew it was not a fungus.

I might never know, but I would try to find out. And if anyone reading this definitely knows what it is, or has a really educated guess, please leave me a message!

There were definite fungi about, but some were drying up for lack of moisture, or just ripening and fading.

Tiny orange mushrooms on a log (seen in an earlier post), some brown and ready to release spores

The same mushrooms, near moss sporophytes (also ready to release spores)

The beautiful Oyster mushrooms seen last time on the Trunk were dried up

Ghostly grayish mushrooms on the Very Rotten Log

How long would it be before we had rain again? I thought of the life in the pond water earlier in the year, during frequent rains. What had happened to the snails, the frogs, the water insects – to everything?

Top end of Cottonwood Trunk, caught in a Red Oak tree up the back slope

Looking up the front slope above Cottonwood Pond