#Zeki attempts to stave off the crushing weight of seasonal depression

[shingekinomyfeelings]

tumblr ate the original post I typed up on my phone this afternoon after my walk and I spent the rest of the day procrastinating making another, but here we go.

I drove to a nearby nature trail for today's walk. I usually don't go on paved trails because I like looking for tracks and stuff, but this was nice.

These are pretty, but unfortunately it sucks. This is Japanese barberry, an extremely troublesome invasive in North America. It pushes out native plants because it forms dense thickets, and it raises the pH of the soil and depletes nitrogen, so other plants struggle to grow. It's also an unusually perfect tick habitat, creating population booms that may even contribute to the rise in Lyme disease cases. Deer won't even eat this shit. It's EVERYWHERE. A couple of states have banned it, but many others continue to allow people to plant it as an ornamental.

This is American bittersweet. It's native, and it has great wildlife value, but you might not want this in your yard either, because it can be a very enthusiastic vine and choke out young saplings. Womp womp.

Bonus penalty picture:

The remnants of a hawk's snack, on the edge of the creek. I'd say it was a Downy woodpecker, which is an adorable little bird, but hawks gotta eat, too. Is it weird that I'm good at finding and IDing predators' kill sites, or is that something you guys like about me?

[shingekinomyfeelings]

This is gonna be a lot longer than the others, so bear with me

Okay, you might be thinking 'there is nothing particularly interesting or pretty about this picture,' but that is actually part of the point I want to make.

My major is wildlife bio, and my minor is conservation, but while I've always LIKED plants, my focus has always been animals. In fact, I kind of suck at keeping plants alive, even the easiest ones. I basically have a black thumb, so I haven't bothered delving much into gardening until very recently. Earlier this year, I started on a small-scale eco restoration project on my parents' property, mostly targeting the layers of landscape cloth, degraded and eroded soil, and noxious invasives. In the process I've been learning way more about the plant life endemic to this mountain.

While I was doing a survey of the plants on the property to see, for curiosities sake, how many of the woodland flowers were non-native - of over a dozen wildflowers growing in the yard, only two were NOT introduced. How sad. Virginia has so many beautiful wildflowers.

There are very few wildflowers in the woodlands at all, though. That's something I'd obviously been aware of for years, but I started wondering then, is it because of the degraded soil? In fact, the biodiversity seemed incredibly low. Is it because of the destruction of most of the old-growth forest on this mountain? Is there a way to help?

So, I started looking into the history of the Brush Mountain Wilderness area to see what plants used to be here. It turns out that this mountain is covered largely by a particular ecosystem community type: the Oak-heath forest. And guess what? Biodiversity is naturally comparatively quite low in Oak-heath forests.

Like the name implies, these forests are dominated by Oaks in the upper story, and in the middle and lower story are the Heaths - the mid layer of rhododendrons, azaleas, and especially in our Oak-heath subtype, the mountain laurel; the lowest story is the Vaccinium (blueberry) species and huckleberry.

There's very little on the floor level. It's mostly leaf litter and moss, with sporadic acid-tolerant forbes like galax, false Solomon's seal, and if you look hard enough, little flowers like bellwort and native orchids.

What I thought was a problem related to all the human disruption that continues even now with the Mountain Valley Pipeline being cut through our neighborhood was... actually the forest continuing to do what it's supposed to do, in spite of the damage we've dealt.

We have a horrible tendency to value only ecosystem types that are interesting or aesthetically pleasing, don't we? Like, even people like me who want to protect all our natural ecosystems. A lot of the time it's because we literally don't understand what we're looking at. I wasn't in tune with the plant life at all because I thought I was just bad with plants and had put my focus elsewhere. I wouldn't say I'm GOOD with plants yet, but I'm learning. It's helped me understand how to improve the actually badly degraded parts of the property, too.

The Oak-heath forests have suffered a lot from human development, imported pests and disease, and the colossal (human generated) white tailed deer population. Also, as you can see, when fall hits, these areas look kind of, well, ugly. People destroy them to plant 'prettier' ornamentals that have no wildlife value, because of the anthropocentric notion that all of this is here for us. But the Oak-heath has tremendous importance to many animal species, including bears, birds, and pollinators. When the Vaccinium produce fruit in the summer, the areas become a valuable food resource. It might not be the most visually appealing, but it's something that needs conservation.

There are some plants that are missing, though. The Box huckleberry once grew in huge colonies here, but that species has been decimated across its native range, and only a few known wild colonies exist today. I've found a native plant nursery that sells Box huckleberry plants, and I'm hoping to plant a few in the spring. I know I probably can't start a long-term colony of them, but I'd like to bring back just a little bit of what humans have taken out.

So, I encourage anyone who wants to help our native plant communities to start by identifying what type of community you're looking at, and dig into the history of that location, so that you can help in the way the ecosystem wants you to, not just the way you want to.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Eastern Redbud with fall foliage. They're a very popular and common tree in the Eastern US, particularly in the south. You'll see them in a lot of neighborhoods and yards now, but they used to be considered a very "spooky" tree with associations to hauntings and witchcraft, because of it's similarity to the closely related Judas Tree of the Old World. Having them in your yard or hanging out under them at certain times was a good way to attract bad attention.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Even though it was very overcast it WAS warm enough to go on a walk today.

Remember the post from November of the downy woodpecker feathers from a hawk's kill site?

These feathers that I found on a hill today might look like more of the same, but the size of them tells me this hawk snack was most likely a hairy woodpecker - a species that looks pretty much exactly like the downy woodpecker, but larger.

Novice birdwatchers often struggle with telling the two apart, and really, you just get better at it from seeing them a lot. 🤷‍♀️ Boring answer I know. Both species visit our porch feeders, so maybe one day I can get a decent picture of them together.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Checked out the Coal Mining Heritage Trail today. It was in the mid 40s, but I overheat like a bitch regardless of weather and had to take my hoodie off after 20 minutes.

There's not much to see on that trail, and noise from the highway is loud, but it's nice enough as a place just stretch your legs and get some fresh air.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

The perfect blueness of today's sky

[shingekinomyfeelings]

I'm a bit less garbage-y today, but... y'know, still pretty garbage-y, so I'm taking it easy again.

I've also realized that my ADHD ass is definitely not going to do those makeup posts for last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I went on the walks and took the pictures, but uhhhh the moment is long passed lmao.

Instead I'm setting out food and water for the birds and critters. I think it only occurs to most people to put out bird baths during the warmer months, but water is still very important in fall and winter, and often scarce.

Ngl most of that food will be eaten up by the time the sun sets. We get a LOT of bird traffic.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Back to the Smithfield Historical property for today's walk. Look at all these tennis balls!!

Actually, they're fruits from the Osage orange trees. They're not a citrus at all, and apparently they're in the mulberry family. Right now the fruits are everywhere.

They're very hard and not many critters eat them. Here are some of the squished ones littering the road.

Penalty bonus picture for yesterday:

Can you spot the cottontail rabbit hidden in this foliage?

No?

That's because there's fucking not one! They both ran off before I could take the picture!

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Okay, I get to go have a super fun root canal in an hour, so no walk today. I'll snap an extra bonus picture tomorrow as a penalty.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Even though I was utterly, painfully tired when I went to bed, I got maybe two hours of sleep last night, so no walk today because I feel like a soggy piece of trash.

Instead, I'm just making sure the bird feeders and baths are full. This county is considered a hot spot for bird diversity, and we try to put out a range of food for everyone.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

A shorter walk today because I'm trying to get some serious work done on cleaning up parts of my parents' house before my brother visits.

Here's a sparkly, rainbow-y piece of quartz! Extremely common, not valuable at all, but I'm not NOT gonna pick up a pretty rock

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Spaced off doing a walk yesterday because I'm scrambling to get a project done, so today as a penalty I will have to take pictures of two things!

[shingekinomyfeelings]

This beautiful and very old Sugar maple on the Smithfield Historical grounds. My pictures really don't do justice to how huge it is. We've destroyed so many of our truly old trees, to say nothing of our old growth forests. I'm glad trees like this are still here, but I hope in the distant future there will be a lot more.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Most of the leaves are finished for the season. Always a little bit sad to me, but the tremendous amount of leaf litter is also vital for the forest.

[shingekinomyfeelings]

A little grove of Orange-grass St. John's-wort. When you crush the stems, they smell like citrus.

One week bonus:

Turkey-tail polypore mushrooms, and Nodding Ladies' Tresses, one of the orchid species native to Appalachia

[shingekinomyfeelings]

Glass bottles from a small dump site in the woods. I doubt they're particularly old or noteworthy, but I might find a use for them.

Penalty bonus picture:

One of a bunch of Blair Witch style stick people I totally forgot I had made and hung in various spots back in mid summer to fuck with some children who were coming up here to vape

Sorry if you're realizing I'm terrible