October 29 – November 2, 2009 Visit
This is probably the last visit this year.
Only the bright red oaks and some beech still have leaves now. The appearance of the woods is strikingly different in that you can see the shape of the land, the steep hills, the rock ledges and boulders. As the adjoining properties are wooded, it seems like the woods continue forever.
On Thursday, after driving down, I finished marking the east property line. This completes marking property lines for the 50 acre woodlands portion.
Friday was a beautiful fall day. I spent the whole day cutting more grapevines on the next ridge after the Beech / Maple woods.
On Saturday, it rained until about 5:00 pm. I stayed in the cabin and read Richard Dawkins’ excellent book ‘The Greatest Show On Earth, the Evidence for Evolution’.
On Sunday and Monday, I cut still more grapevines. At this point, I am almost finished. There were frosts both mornings, but the temperature rose to the high 50′s each day. Good weather for outside work.
I can see that trees that have grapevines are more likely to be blown down and then the grapevines tend to damage neighboring trees. In addition, grapevines compete with the trees for sunlight and nutrients.
I am leaving some grapevines for wildlife. It is difficult to balance protecting the trees with the effect on wildlife.
On my previous visit, I dumped 500 walnut seeds at four different locations in the pasture and in varying distances from the woods. I was pleased to see that almost all of the walnuts were gone from all four locations and presumably have been planted by the squirrels. I will be very interested in seeing how many walnut seedling result.
