Kristin and I took our friends Monica and Nick down to Wilmington with one of our “missions” of the trip being the collection of vast quantities of berries. This wasn’t meant to be.

A recent rain had knocked what was left of the ripe berries to the ground for the ants to carry off. What little was left were slightly under ripe and tangy, not worth more than a few pops here and there. The people had invaded and stripped everything else away.

At least it was a nice day – cool, sunny, perfect just for being outside and walking around. The focus quickly changed from the blueberries to the downtown farmer’s market and to fig gathering at the beach.

Mullein is a fascinating plant. It easily colonizes disturbed areas, but its growth requirements prevent it from becoming invasive. Too much shade and it is all over for this plant. Rapid succession from other plants will crowd it out.

This early succession plant can actually make itself less viable by its own presence. A study in the Journal of Ecology conducted in our area concludes that as the years progress, the plant will become smaller and smaller and seed production will drop off significantly each year. According to the study, the first generation produced five times as much seed as the third generation.

Our friend Nick came over, so he and Kristin decided that we should go out to the spot and harvest some of the mullein leaves.  These first generation plants had some giant leaves, meaning less time harvesting and more time picking the ticks off our legs.

Mullein has many medicinal properties – it can be made into a tea or smoked to battle a cough. Sounds counterproductive, right?

The plant is also referred to as Nature’s Toilet Paper, but the irritating hairs that cover the plant make me think that you would need to be in some dire need to use it for that purpose more than once in a while.

The dried stalk contains many oils that supposedly make it a good torch.  I am going to try it out this Fall after the stalks are up.

We met a neighbor who told us a little about the trail network that crosses a dozen or so properties (ours included) and found out more of the family history of the place we bought.  The trails are miles long, dumping out onto various properties or ending up at creeks and roads.

As a start, we walked west on the trail that leaves our property.  It was apparent that the forest had been clear cut in recent history, more recent on the properties south of this particular trail.  Many of the older trees were spaced in a way that indicated that the land had been used as a pasture.  Almost all of the large trees had scarring from when they had been used as fence posts.  Others were just big and dead.

The recently cut forest gives great glimpses of how succession works in our area. We have several models in action though.  Since clearing land for pasture usually leaves the remnants of hardwoods in the area, what would usually be pine dominated growth is now a heavy mix of young hardwoods.

Also, since we have not begun farming our open space yet, fast growing scrub and trees are coming up all over.  Sweet gum, tulip poplar, sumac and cedar are already a few feet high in some places.

So, with the research I was able to look through, I figure the forest around us was cut more than thirty years ago but less than seventy years ago.  I could be wrong as I am also relying on some things that I learned twelve years ago in ecology classes.

Along the trail we found some late ripening wild blueberries.  If I had to guess, they will probably ripen around the first of September.  I haven’t been able to find the name of the wild berry that ripens late.

We also saw quite a few wild creatures, from deer to beetles to spiders.  Several large spiders made great use of hollow tree parts for their webs.

This luna moth (Actias luna) was at the end of its life, having lost its tails.  The adult moths live only a week, long enough to mate.  They don’t even have mouths to eat with, such is the singularity of their purpose.

Noel caught a crayfish (Cambaroides sp.) big enough to use as fishing bait but not big enough to make a very good meal.

The stony creek at the end of our walk deserves much more exploration.  I imagine we will all spend a lot of time there poking around among the rocks and pools.

From the looks of the high banks, it also looks like we could have some nice little swimming holes if the rain would cooperate.

As usual there is an end of the line, which we will be sure to adhere to until we can get some permission to trespass.  It usually isn’t hard to get such permission as long as the owners know your name and intentions.  It should come in time, but we have enough space to explore for the time being…

Yesterday we got the bug to clean up our room and get rid of some of the piles of papers and such that had collected over the last few months. I am pretty big on creating piles of crap – receipts, fliers, magazines, various notes, paystubs, etc. – but I am not so big on cleaning them up. The rain outside facilitated our cleaning rampage, and I even had time to roll up a few dollars in loose change.

In the afternoon the weather turned, and we decided to “blow off some stink” and take a walk to the train bridge. The rain had been pretty intense so the massively polluted Burnt Mill Creek was pretty high.

On the walk to the bridge, Kristin grabbed some honeysuckle and started eating the nectar. It is really good, but you don’t get a lot out of it.

 You basically just pick the flower off the branch and pull out the filaments.

 When the filament comes out of the flower, a drop of nectar will form at the base.

 Among other uses, honeysuckle vines make strong cordage.

Along the walk to the bridge there are a huge number of mulberry trees, all hybridized into various shades and tastes. We found red, black, pink and white, some tasty and some not so tasty and others that we pretty gross. I thought the white mulberry had the best taste, but a few of the trees we sampled had no flavor at all.

Here is a white mulberry ready to pick -

 Me picking black mulberries, sporting a well-worn AK Press t-shirt -

 You can see all the various shades and sizes of the ripe berries in the sum total of our picking -

Unripe mulberries are hallucinogenic. With the hallucinations come severe nausea and cramps, so it might not be the best idea to run out and get some unripe fruit. Also, large amounts of ripe fruit can act as a laxative so take it easy unless you need that sort of thing.

Our walk brought us into contact with a bunch of creatures, most notable a huge amount of young frogs. The frogs were no bigger than a fingernail, and they were everywhere under our feet.

 We also ran into a family of geese near the flooded creek.

While I was taking pictures of the geese, a man came down from this house to ask if we had seen the alligator that had come out with the flood. We hadn’t. He said it was about six feet long and traveling slow.

The next creatures we had to dodge were the fiddler crabs hanging out in the grass near the creek. Since the creek is inter-tidal and brackish, there are usually thousands of these crabs hanging out in the mud. With the flooding there were plenty in the grass and puddles as well.

And of course the flooding also brings out the record of human progress. Plastic bottles, Styrofoam to-go food containers and plenty of basketballs rush towards the ocean at low tide and back into the neighborhoods at high tide. The trash never really makes it anywhere as it builds up into floating rafts of debris or settles into the mud on the sides of the creek.

This is our legacy. If you contributed (and we all have at some point), thank you for helping build this pile of shit. If you need a reminder of why you should use refillable containers, why you should use the recycle bin or simply use a garbage can, then just come back and look at this picture…

Under and around the train trestle are a series of above ground waste water pipes, pushing storm water and human “waste” from downtown and the surrounding area out to the Northside water treatment plant. I have walked on several of the pipes over the years, ending up in all kinds of interesting places. One of the pipes ends up behind the back lot of Screen Gems studios where you can see the prop buildings and various other crap from the movie and television industries. Another pipe weaves around the backyards of homes and businesses. Another goes to a small, but fairly often used homeless camp.

Today, since the tide was low, I was able to hop on one of the pipes that I had not followed very far in previous explorations.

My intent on these walks is to not have an intent. Walk the pipe and see what happens. I basically walked until the vegetation growing around the pipe grew too thick and I couldn’t get by. Again, since the tide was low I jumped to the side and got to some dry high ground.

The edge of an estuary is the perfect habitat for the cottonmouth, the high grass able to hide those venomous little pricks of misery. I saw one about six years ago near the train trestle, but that was the first and last time I had seen any type of snake out there. This trip was no exception; just a few birds and the widely scattered remains of a deer.

Also scattered all over the place were various plastic flowers and ribbons, scattered into the grass never to decompose, only fade in the bleaching sun. They joined the hundreds of plastic soda bottles and aluminum cans, deflated basketballs and Frisbees floating in the estuary and piled on the ground.

I came to a gravel trail that seemed pretty well traveled by vehicle and feet. With the brightly colored potato chip bags scattered about, barely touched by the sun, and the fresh boot tracks in a somewhat dried mud puddle, I figured folks came back here all the time.

Back here, everything is kudzu heaped over dying trees, the vines themselves browning after the first frost. In the summer the kudzu piles become mountains, climbing and killing everything. The vines’ march is stopped only by the estuary. If kudzu could grow on water it would.

The kudzu opened up and I stumbled upon a discarded pile of those grave side stands that hold funeral flower wreaths. After finding a few more pieces of evidence and getting my bearings, I figured out that I had ended up behind Oakdale Cemetery.

I followed the path more, passed a dozen piles of chopped up trees, pallets and freshly dug dirt. I guess it makes sense that the unused dirt from a grave has to go somewhere. Might as well be in a pile that will eventually be colonized by kudzu. The path finally ended behind a chain link fence. The loosely locked gate had my favorite sign attached…

The view through the fence wasn’t that inviting, so I decided not to jump it. The cemetery is several hundred acres, a place I could easily explore using the front gate. The one time I actually went in, the guy at the gate gave me a map since it is pretty easy to get lost in the labyrinth. I didn’t make it far that time, but if they allowed bicycles I might consider another try.

At the gate I turned around and headed back home. Well, headed back home after throwing a couple hundred rocks from the train trestle. The other things of note for the exploration were a rope swing near a waste water pipe…

a thick stand of river cane…

and a plant in the mint family that I haven’t figured out yet.

It smelled like mint, but a bit “gamey”. It wasn’t catmint, and it wasn’t wild mint. I did find wild mint (Mentha arvensis) nearby. The closest picture I can find online is for apple mint. I couldn’t smell any apple. Anyone know what this plant is?