5 Mile Walk - New Route

 
Today I drove a couple of miles just so I could walk a different road loop from my usual ones. I always like to see new things. Of course I've driven these roads before, but things look different on foot. That said, there wasn't much to recommend this route. Flat, run-down houses and trailers. But I managed to bring home a few interesting pictures.

The first is Phragmites (say frag-MY-tees). This is a wetland grass. You've probably seen it towering in the ditches. The problem is, this is almost certainly the non-native one, and it pushes out native plants and even wildlife because nothing eats it, and it shades sunlight from reaching the water.



The seedheads sure are pretty in the sunlight.



The native one doesn't form such dense patches, and there are other subtle differences. Maybe I'll stumble on some of the native one to show the differences.

I thought this was interesting. It's a retaining wall to prevent a creek from washing out a farm lane. Apparently made by stacking bags of concrete mix. The paper eventually degraded, leaving bag-shaped rocks.



There was no way to get something in this picture for scale. But this is a very large deer skull. Of course, it's spring so the roadsides and ditches are littered with deer parts in various stages of decomp. Trust me, this is big.



The best find could have apeared on any road walk with various wet spots. A great blue heron gave me the evil eye and then took off.



But the sky was blue and the sun shone. Nippy in the wind, but it was a good walk. (But I doubt I'll bother with that loop again.)

In other news: I finished reading the second book I'm reviewing for my newspaper column, did some housecleaning (I know, don't faint!) and laundry. Started formatting The Hitchhiker for ebooks.

	See Work and Wildlife Again See Solution to the Bony Mystery
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