Lovely Morning in the Woods

It was a lovely morning to be in the woods.

I spent the early part of the morning cleaning up some brush from yesterday.

Opened up canopy to favor oak and chestnut trees.  Went from 85% canopy to about 30% canopy.

Slightly different angle.  I also trimmed up some branches on the "keepers"

 

Battle Creek River

The Battle Creek River is redundantly named.  Its headwaters are about four miles east of Charlotte, Michigan.  If you watched Saturday morning TV in the 1960s then you knew that Battle Creek was the home of breakfast cereals.

This is what the Battle Creek River sounded like in Veteran's Park, Charlotte, Michigan at 10:20 AM on December 19, 2013.  This video is dedicated to all of you who are stuck in an office or house and could not get outside.

Just a few other pictures

Virgin's Bower

Close up of the Virgin's Bower seed mops

Mature White Pine (Pinus strobus)

 My reason for scouting out Veteran's Park is that I plan on starting some pine trees from seeds.  Some sources say that having the correct soil microbes makes a difference.  I will be back in the spring and will scrape about a half pound of needle litter and top-soil from the northeast corner of this planting.  That corner is most likely to the the greatest diversity of soil biota as it is the downwind corner of the planting.

My home run scenario is to get some King Boletes and truffles to "take" in my planting.

Lacebark Pine.  Picture from here.

I ordered Korean Nut Pine, Lacebark Pine, Jeffrey's Pine and Siberian Stone Pine from Schumacher's Seeds.  They are easy people to do business with.

I saw at least two dozen squirrels, Fox, Gray and Red.  This is the black phase of the Gray Squirrel.

It was beautiful morning to be out in the woods.