11/13/2020

            I arrived at my sit spot at 4:43 pm, well aware that once again, the garden would likely become dark before I was finished with my journal entry. I applied bug repellent despite the mysterious lack of bugs in the air, just to air on the side of caution. The air was silent and the garden still, and despite my best efforts, I heard nothing but the gushing water of the stream. The stream was completely flooded, as was the rest of the garden, a soggy, mushy, muddy, wet mess. A tiny stream had actually formed from the small lake that was now located in the middle of the garden’s walkway and ran down into stream. Upon crossing the bridge to my sit spot, the first thing I noticed was how different the stream was. At first, I thought the heavy rain had washed the rocks that lines its banks into the water, but after staring at the dramatic difference for a moment realized that the width of the stream was actually bigger, and that the water had flooded out over a foot past the rocks at its inner bank. I do think that these boulders were washed in or around a little bit, as they appeared to be much more uneven than they had been previously, but it was not as extreme of a movement as I had first thought.

As I observed during my 15 minutes of focus my surroundings felt so empty and washed away. Two squirrels bickered in the trees behind me, even go so far as to screech at one another, and I turned around just in time to see one of them chased off by the other. I heard a tree branch snap, and looked to my NW to see a small bird hopping around in a tree, then take flight and fly away. The air was initially decently warm with a gentle, cool breeze when I arrived, maybe in the mid to higher 60s, but by the time my 15 minutes of focus was over the temperature had dropped slightly. It wasn’t a significant difference, but it was noticeable. The breeze stopped as the temperature dropped, and the garden remained quiet, with only the stream and distant highway traffic breaking the silence.

I have already described the major difference in the stream, but there were some changes in my other two followed objects as well. The Virginia sweetspires remained basically the same, but had lost some more leaves. Now, they only have a few deep red-purple leaves left scattered across their branches. The oak tree had also lost a few more of its dead leaves, I suspect from the heavy rain, but still continued to hang on to the rest of the shriveled leaves. I thought back to what the garden had looked like when I did my first journal entry, and how much it has changed overall since then. I realized there are a lot of changes I have looked over, or just not included in my entries. I realized that most of the surrounding trees have lost all of their leaves and are now completely bare. I can now see old bird and squirrels nests in many of the surrounding trees, a detail I never noticed when they were lush with leaves. The soil of the stream bank in front of me was partially washed out, exposing a white pipe I never knew was there. I realized that a pipe cap stuck up out of the soil, I just never noticed it. I wondered if it had been exposed the whole time, or if a lot of soil was just washed away. The soil in my area, as well as the rest of the garden, was completely saturated. There were a couple moments, specifically when I first arrived, where the ground I stepped on collapsed under the pressure of my body weight, leaving a cartoon-style footprint behind. I had noticed the gradual depletion of the flower bed across the stream, but didn’t realize how extreme the change was until today. There are only a couple hardy plants left standing. Everything else has been completely flattened and demolished.

Sit spot #1 photos:

 

Sit spot #6 photos:

I’m still glad that I chose to follow the objects that I did because I feel that they have shown the most constant change, while also remaining reliable. I always know that they will be there to document and are extremely unlikely, if not impossible, to disappear. I have observed – not necessarily documented, but observed – multiple objects that at the time I thought would have been a good thing to have chosen to follow, but they are always gone by my next visit. Such things have included various sticks and small branches, little plants, or something in the stream. I think it would have been much more difficult to continue this project if my followed objects were constantly disappearing.

Throughout my observations today I thought of a few different ecological concepts that could be applied to my sit spot, the most obvious today being the concept of disturbance and succession. The recent storm had a large impact on this environment and created a large disturbance, flooding the stream and field, leveling what was left of the flower bed, washing out the stream banks, and washing away much of the leaf litter and debris across the garden, especially in my area. I remembered the times I saw tiny plants and weeds disappear and new ones grow back. The tiny sprouts that had been present by the bench were washed away by the rain, but I know they will grow back eventually. Also considered concepts like competition, natural selection, migration, and dispersal. I have been keeping an eye on a larger tree sapling, roughly 2-3 ft. tall, that has been slowly dying. It is almost completely dead and dried out, except for the very top few branches, which lost the last of their leaves before the rest of the trees’ leaves turned for autumn. I wondered if this was related to natural selection, as this tree struggled to survive in the wet, stream bank environment that other plants like the Virginia sweetspire thrived in. I remembered back to the couple times I had witnessed geese migration overhead, or the time I watched a baby snapping turtle swim downstream, dispersing to a new location downstream from where it hatched. I also considered the competition that occurs in the garden environment, and the numerous times I have witnessed squirrels fighting or bickering with one another over something they had found, which even occurred today.

So far, I have identified the Virginia sweetspire, a thin-legged wolf spider, a Magnolia green jumping spider, and a Melanotus beetle in my sit spot. Had it not gotten dark on me, and my phone had not died, I would have liked to have identified the species of oak tree I have been following, and one of the leaf types I found on the ground that was blown into the garden by the storm (this leaf did not belong to a tree that I had seen in the garden, unless it was on the far other side where I don’t normally go). There were quite a few types of leaves scattered around that I don’t remember seeing in the garden before.

I spent 5 more minutes observing the dark, damp garden, and listening for a new sound. Someone yelled and laughed in the distance, but otherwise the air was only filled with the steady gushing of the murky stream’s water, the sound of trucks and traffic on the highway in the distance, and the calls of two lonely crickets singing back and forth to one another. I left my sit spot at around 5:55pm but cannot be positive of the exact time because my phone died before I left.