What gorgeous weather! It was sunny and warm this time – each day it got warmer until the last day it was 75 degrees. And the spring birds are continuing to arrive.
The snow is all melted except a few places in the woods, most of the intermittent streams are dry, and the creek is back to normal. Here’s the way it looks this week:

I saw lots of new butterflies for the year – Eastern Commas, Mourning Cloaks, Compton Tortoiseshells, and lots more Milbert’s Tortoiseshells. And still a few Infants – fewer than last week. The butterflies and the flies like the sap that wells out of the birch stumps from the trees we cut last fall.

Here’s a Compton Tortoiseshell

And an Infant (a moth) – with its wings closed so you can’t really see its gorgeous orange underwings

The wood frogs are calling in our frog pond – it has taken me 2 years to figure out what that noise is. I kept hearing it last spring and not realizing that it was frogs calling. It’s a wonderful sound – like small stones clicking together.

We burned one of the brush piles – the one in West Center Valley. It was a large, long pile, and very dry, so when Mike dripped a little fuel on it and lit it, it immediately burst into flame. It took about 20 minutes to burn along the whole pile – with huge flames – and then it calmed down. I should have taken photos while it was really burning, but I was a little nervous about those big flames. I did take some once most of it had burned away.

Here’s the brush pile last fall

And here it is after the main part of the burn was over

I stayed and watched it smolder for a while, and then left it for the night. The next day we stopped back on our way out for our walk, and raked the remaining logs together so we could come back and burn them later. By the time we got back from the walk, the smoldering logs had started the new pile on fire, and it was burning nicely. By the time we left, it was completely burned away.

The last day Mike decided to mow the edges of Goldenrod Valley, and I tried some aspen girdling. It’s a little early for girdling – it’s supposed to be done in May and June, when the sap is running. But our aspens are starting to bloom, especially the ones facing south on the bluffs, so it seems like the sap should be running, and I thought I’d try it. It wasn’t difficult, but I’m not sure I’m cutting through the right layers to make it work. This is what it looks like after cutting though the outermost layer – the bark plus the bright green layer.

Under that there’s a brown spongy layer, and under that is the smooth wood. I just asked Mark Martin about it, and he said not to do it now – so I guess I’ll have to be patient.

Mike’s mowing project went very well until the end when we both started getting tired – always a signal that it’s time to stop. He mowed out most of the south-facing end of Goldenrod Valley. I tried to find some “before” photos, but haven’t found any yet – it’s been so overgrown that it’s difficult to take pictures of it. Now it’s much more open – and will be even better next week. We found small Burr Oaks hidden in all the brush, so the mowing should help them.

Here’s a view from the bottom – you can see the path in the middle – it looks like just a deer path, but it’s the only part that was open before.

And this is the way it looks now from the top

Mike kept mowing and mowing, hoping to finish the whole slope, until he got the powertrac wrapped around a tree. Sometimes on a hill the powertrac slips a little and a tree gets between the front and the back wheels and the only way to get out is to cut down the tree. He called me, and I came with the chain saw and he cut the tree – it was a Box Elder, so it was good to get rid of it anyway. In the process the saw slipped and cut the plastic on the armrest of the seat – a little duck tape will fix that. Then the saw cut a little of the tire – just a surface cut – but it seemed like it was time to stop. Mike was determined to keep going just a little longer to finish up. In about 15 minutes, just long enough for me to load some big birch logs into the gator, he called again because the powertrac was caught around another tree – a big one this time. I drove the gator up the hill to meet him, forgetting that I had logs in the back and they all fell out and rolled down the hill – along with the chainsaw. (Definitely time to quit.) The tree was an elm so the wood was hard and it was pretty big – especially when you have to worry about not dropping it on top of the powertrac. Here’s the powertrac caught by the tree

Mike thought about it for a while, and then cut very carefully, and it fell exactly right – missing the powertrac and the Burr Oak that was right next to it (and Mike). Whew! We’ll finish up that project next week.