Road re-graded

Road re-graded!

Geese and goslings

Geese and goslings, a photo by umlud on Flickr.

Another sign of spring: goslings. Usually quite cute. However, when all the geese are honking up a storm at dawn, their presence on Third Sister Lake becomes somewhat annoying.

More damnable garlic mustard

Well, it's definitely spring: the garlic mustard's up.



Luckily, they pull up quite easily when they get to their flowering stage.

Luckily, too, the areas that I pulled last year are not returning this year.

Remediation of the lawn and road

Part of the lawn and part of the road were degraded due to the drilling activity a few months ago. The lawn will be remediated today.


The road will be regraded tomorrow.

Nice.

Partially washed out berm

Partially washed out berm, a photo by umlud on Flickr.

Yet another impact from the massive storms of last week.

A slow spring

It's the start of May and the forest is not as far along as it was last year. I've been taking photos from the front of the cabin over the past two years (much more often this year than last). According to the news, this cool spring is likely to continue through May, thanks to the rather strong La Nina that is happening this year.


May 2, 2009


April 23, 2010


May 4, 2010

Wind + Torrential Rain + Dead Ash Trees

Walking around the forest, I found one of the continuing impacts of the emerald ash borers that came through Michigan a few years ago, destroying all the planted ash trees throughout the area (including Saginaw Forest).

In addition to the expected ecological changes that are caused by the loss of a significant tree species in a forested area, there are direct physical impacts that are likely to happen, such as winds toppling the trees in the sodden ground caused by recent torrential rains (~1.7 inches in 2 hours). In this case, the toppled tree's roots pulled up parts of the road next to it...

I wonder how I'm going to apply maintenance to this problem: