Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 379
The scattered showers missed here again as I was up in the Woodhull fire tower for the tower lighting and they passed by me to the south. I could see the Rome Airport lights all evening and the city of Rome all lit up. I got up to the tower about five minutes before sunset and there was just a crack of open sky right at the skyline. The sun was just above the opening, and it passed through it very quickly, but it was pretty. There was very little wind, and the red spruce trees were covered with cones. The red maples around the tower were very colorful already but that faded fast with the loss of daylight. All directions were visible at first but as night came to the east filled with fog to about the head of the South Branch of the Moose River so I wouldn’t be seeing any towers up that way lit up. There was a very loud band playing in the Old Forge Area for a while. When we turned on the lights at 8:30, I could see the Rondaxe Tower and Stillwater Tower lights. Stillwater hides behind a growing spruce tree, but I could still see it this year. I heard some fireworks going off but I couldn’t see anything but flashes in the sky. A woman and her son came up just before nine and we could see the airport very well as well as all the wind farm lights to the south which became visible after the rain showers had passed by. I took the lights down at nine, and we walked down the mountain together. I showed them where the tower cabin was and a big beech drops plant that was growing right in the trail. A nice night for a walk in the woods.
The Inlet Community gardens are growing quite well and some of the veggies need to be harvested, why grow them if you’re not going to eat them or share them with others in the community. The dahlias in the upped garden are starting to bloom and there are some beauties. Mine at the house are doing well about the only thing the deer didn’t eat while I was in Alaska. That’s not true as they didn’t eat the monkshood, any foxgloves, may apples, wild carnations, wild geraniums or a couple three-foot-tall jack in the pulpits. The only bushes they don’t eat are the daphne which have nice red berries hiding in their greenery at this time of the year. They are the first things that boom in the spring. They came from Russia and that is about the only thing they ever gave us that was worth having.
Tropical Storm Edouard made land fall in Louisiana only seven miles from the Texas border which will be dumping over two feet of rain across the state through Thursday morning. There are three hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean, Marie is just off the California coast causing large waves and wind but did not go ashore, going south along the Mexico coastline. Two other hurricanes are swirling out in the Pacific, Lowel and Karina, not affecting land right now.
Several National Parks have been affected by construction. Crews have bulldozed through parts of Big Bend National Park and Big Bend State Park, but no fence has been put up because of several court orders stopping the building. Other places along the border in New Mexico and Arizona in the Organ Pipes Cactus National Park construction of a second wall is being done without regards to the wildlife and rare plants that exist in that area and travel through there in migration routes. Water used in building these walls has become an issue as water in these areas is a big concern for farmers and residents who live and work there on private land.
Bears are working in some local wild cherries and other berries producing bushes but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo above: Woodhull Fire Tower Lighting
