Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Last weeks freeze shows up on trees

Many of the trees suffered leaf damage from the deep freeze we had last week. Most of the ash leaves turned brown as well as any walnut. I am sure this will have a bad affect on the apple and acorn crop. Many of the oaks on top of Cedar Mountain look bad wilting as they were starting to grow. The rusty damage to the leaves made the sides of the mountain appear more like early fall colors at first glance.
Of course as you look closer you could see the browning and welting of the leaves. The leaves will drop off and be replaced, but anything blooming is done for the year.
I took the pictures of the sides of the mountain
going down to Cedar Run on Leetonia Road. It was a rainy dreary day in the upper 40's to low 50's the kind of day you just want to sleep.
I had one job on a porch covered by a roof so I opted to do some tear off today to prepare for replacing the deck tomorrow. The forecast promises to be a little drier but light showers are possible.
They patched the one wash out on the road going down Leetonia Road just before the Carpenter and Bobcat camps. They dumped some gravel on top of it today and in a few pot holes while it rained. I never understood this because it turns into a mess fast. Guess they can't wait for nice w
weather on everything.
The last picture shows the only shining spot coming up the road. One small bush was blooming beautiful pink flowers at first I thought it to be mountain laurel which would be about a month early, but on closer inspection found this not to be true.
I don't remember seeing this plant before and it is one I will have to look up to find out what it is. It was the only one I have seen in all my travels up and down the mountain roads.
Lee and I are filling in with census work and they are having us check all the seasonal places to make sure no one is living there.
We either have to find someone there to verify this or find someone besides us that knows it is seasonal. Just trying to match the census maps with what we know to be true has been a challenge and finding someone at camps is the luck of the draw on weekends.
The nicest part of this experience is going back and finding places even I didn't know existed. We tend to be creatures of habit traveling the same roads all the time and only seeing what can be seen from the road. I am here to tell you there are 113 seasonal cabins leased from the State in Tioga Forest. And I would have been lucky if I had been to half of them before the census adventure. I had to travel down a logging road 4 miles to find one and the last mile was a steep rocky path down. I was glad to have the clearance of the truck. I will have to say it was fun finding but I don't care to go down that road again in the near future with a vehicle. One thing we have been talking about is the fact we know so little about how to contact the people who own these camps. I think it would be great to create a directory of camps with contact names and phone numbers. This way if any camp is damaged it would be easier to get a hold of you all in person. If you would be interested in participating in this voluntary list, email me your information and location of camp. I will give lists to all who participate, but they will not be given out to anyone else. My email is campeaglebear@yahoo.com. Mountain girl, Paula, logging out.

UPDATE: Flower is wild azalea. Thanks to a couple of readers for that identification. Check comments for a link to a detailed description. I took that picture from my truck in the rain so it was a little blurry.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Paula, I can't tell from the picture but the pink flowered shrub is most likely Rhododendron Periclymenoides, otherwise known as the pinxterbloom azalea. Did it look like this? https://web.gsc.edu/fs/jhamilton/tumblingcreek/images/plants/shrubsvines/rhpe1741.jpg

Ken