Rain, rain, go away!

Rowlett Creek Trail starts here. The hiker heads off the sidewalk and just a few feet beyond this sign stares down the steep banks to the small stream of Rowlett Creek way below. A pair of cardinals might be bathing. An egret might wade this way. The hiker takes note of the presence or absence of litter, and shifts into an Oak Point state of mind.

That's the way in a different May. Yesterday something appeared to be swimming across the sidewalk. Through the trees the top of Rowlett Creek was moving past fast. That sidewalk leads down a slight hill to the lake. But now that sidewalk is dumping water into the lake. The flow has washed out a picnic spot.

It'll take awhile to dry, but I'll be excited to see the changes made by all this water. The mosquito prospects are scary, though!

May is the rainiest month in North Texas, and this has been the rainiest May on record. Yes, it follows several years of drought. Interesting to see the rainiest month ever, April 1922, followed the driest year ever, 1921.

May 1990 was no slouch in the rainy month contest. We moved to Plano twenty-five years ago  this weekend. Our trips for house-hunting and moving were soggy, with detours for flooded Interstate 35 ramps.

The fishing pier looks like a giant crustacean crawling out of the water.

Future Parks & Rec Department headquarters

© 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

It's 8:00 p.m. Do you know where your sub-watershed is?

Playing with a new toy in spare moments, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Watershed Viewer. My View-Master is jealous.

I live in the Pittman Creek-Spring Creek sub-watershed

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I work in the Floyd Branch-White Rock Creek sub-watershed

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Oak Point Nature Preserve is in the Brown Branch Rowlett Creek sub-watershed.

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I gave a presentation in the Headwaters of Rowlett Creek sub-watershed Monday.

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Tomorrow I'll do a presentation in the Pittman Creek - Spring Creek sub-watershed. I've lived within four miles of the elementary school for twenty-five years and never knew it existed. But I never knew about sub-watersheds, either!


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I'm looking at two potential litter clean-up sites in the Headwaters White Rock Creek sub-watershed, and one in the Indian Creek - Elm Fork Trinity River sub-watershed.

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© 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

No Sharpies for you!

You sure know how to make me crabby, Arturo + Mayra! Writing on the century plants in the Oak Point parking lot to announce your relationship is the dumbest thing I've seen in a long time. As we used to say in Lincoln, Nebraska, "Fool's names and fool's faces are often seen in public places."

Sad to say Arturo y Mayra are practicing locally an offensive act of vandalism seen more and more often in our national parks. I sure hope the perpetrators were caught on the construction site security video. Among other things, Arturo should learn to spell his girlfriend's name so he doesn't have to make cross-outs and corrections. Note to Mayra, break up yesterday, girl!!!

vandal (n.) 

1660s, "willful destroyer of what is beautiful or venerable," from Vandals, name of the Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 455 under Genseric, from Latin Vandalus (plural Vandali), from the tribe's name for itself (Old English Wendlas), perhaps from Proto-Germanic *wandljaz "wanderer." The literal historical sense in English is recorded from 1550s.

On a happier note, bees are wallowing in pollen in the nearby prickly pear blooms. The recent rains have made many new ponds and lakes visible from the streets.

Pollen wallowing!

 

Spider buddy beats hasty retreat

Red admiral on basket flower with firewheel behind

 © 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Scent-sory walk

May 2, 2015 Rowlett Creek Trail

Wanted to test the camera repairs with a photo walk this morning, so I got out to Oak Point before my haircut appointment. The trails are still a bit muddy, the grasses are up near waist high, and the skeeters are ravenous. The smell is amazing, though. Honeysuckle makes itself known first.

Soon the viburnum blends in with the honeysuckle. My IDs are always open for debate, but this shrub is known to me as a magnet for comma, question mark, red admiral, and other butterflies. That it might be the same shrub with the blackhaw berries never occurred to me. See the silver comma mark on the underwing?

All photos Oak Point May 2, 2015

On my return through the shady parts of Bobcat Trail the aroma of onions prevailed. My photos of the wild onion alien spaceships were dreadful.

© 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder

Fly Through Oak Point

Somebody had a lot of drone fun recording aerial views of Oak Point Nature Preserve. I love the video, but am thwarted in attempts to embed it in this blog. Check it out!!

The singing and conversation between barn swallows sinks into my sleep about 4:40 a.m. each morning. I love the barn swallows launching off my stair railing on their insect-eating acrobatic missions.

In my best dreams of flying, I am like the barn swallows, moving untethered, effortless, steering with the least possible body movement, blissful, but without the insect diet.

In my worst dreams of flying, I am trapped in air transportation nightmares feeling overwhelmed with responsibility for too many people, enabling their inability to plan and pack, and thwarted by persons unnamed controlling the drive to the airport with no sense of time and unrealistic expectations. An insect diet would be an improvement over these stressful dreams.

My next class is about paths and trails and maps and birds' eye views and aerial perspective and I'm very, very excited. Must be the buzz from the insect breakfast! Hope to send some families to explore Oak Point.

Need more kites and maybe a drone in my life...


© 2014-2015 Nancy L. Ruder