More pictures of mud...

[rubyelf]

Today it rained all day, and I've been fighting with tedious calculations that require you to multiply the number of people in a certain age group by the total number of people in the population and then divide it by the sound a person's head makes banging off a hardcover textbook and... anyway. So these are from yesterday. Still not much spring.

Comments

[rubyelf]

The entire lake shore looks like that. They're just washing up in piles. The smell is quite unpleasant.

[moominmuppet]

I love the skunk cabbage flowers and the tree with all the woodpecker holes especially.

[rubyelf]

I am very fond of skunk cabbage flowers. They are just as good as the other flowers even if they are a little strange-looking.

[vjezkova]

Yes, life is resilient. Your winter there was really severe - wow and still some ice on the lake! It must really be frozen to the very bottom and the fish suffocated, otherwise the fish survive under the ice quite well but they need oxygen.
Why would someone want to burn the trees? Definitely morons and worse, I want to join you with curses!!!
As we don´t have poison ivy here fortunately, at least not here in the south, I was surprised to see this - it looks like a long and sinister "boa"!
The trees and their hierarchy, how wise and the cycle of life is eternal. Many thanks for your picture/story always!

[rubyelf]

I suspected that it was cold enough to freeze all the way to the bottom this winter in the shallower parts of the lake, which is not good for the fish that usually spend the winter there.

I have no idea why any idiot would want to burn down a protected state park, other than that they are idiots. I hope terrible things happen to them.

Poison ivy without its leaves is rather unsettling the way it climbs and clings... and don't worry; I think it's a North American native!

Different climates and places have different cycles of which trees take over as a forest matures, but the overall cycle is the same.

[nimnod]

Does anything eat those fish?

[rubyelf]

Eagles will eat some (they like fish and unlike ospreys, they're not picky about how alive they are), and raccoons and other omnivorous scavengers will eat some, but there are far too many even in a normal year for the clean-up crew to deal with... the vast majority will just rot and smell bad for weeks until a heavy rain washes them back out into the lake, where I expect that catfish and other bottom-dwellers probably clean up the remains.

[moth2fic]

Another lovely nature walk and lots of interesting trees. Thank you Ruby!!

[rubyelf]

You're welcome! Trees are pretty much all there is to see right now...