[To see photos and stories of this prairie in other years, go to the links on the main Pine Point Prairie page.]

This year the prairie looked much better.  Some of the prairie grasses came up, and there were more prairie flowers – especially Yellow Coneflowers and Oxeye.

August 2004 – looking east across the prairie and the wetland

August 2004 – looking west

August 2004 – looking up into the woods at the west end of the prairie.  This little corner has a remnant prairie.  It’s very small, and fairly degraded, but there are some common prairie species.  The edge of the woods shows the area where the pines were logged.  On the left side of the photo, there were no pines, so the shrubs are taller.  On the right the brush has been growing up since the pines were cut so there’s lots of low, scrubby growth.

October 24, 2004  after mowing the prairie

10/25/2004  We tried using the powertrack to remove some of the pine slash.  It turned out to be very difficult.  The stumps were too high for the powertrack to drive over, and there was lots of slash to clear. Mike made a few big piles, but got tired pretty quickly. He had to stop and cut every stump so he could make enough of a path to be able get in to pick up the slash.

10/25/2004  This was the end result of the powertrack project.   We decided to leave it again for a few years – maybe it would be easier once it decayed a bit more.