{"id":589,"date":"2009-11-29T16:25:41","date_gmt":"2009-11-29T22:25:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=589"},"modified":"2009-11-29T17:27:27","modified_gmt":"2009-11-29T23:27:27","slug":"thanksgiving-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":"Thanksgiving Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanksgiving Day gave us perfect weather and wonderful guests who enjoyed the beauty of the land&#8230;but no pictures.\u00a0\u00a0 The creek was too high to wade in regular shoes&#8211;beautifully clear, though, and today, with rain forecast to start tomorrow again, I thought perhaps I could make it across.\u00a0 What are wet feet, after all?<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-590\" title=\"tractor-ford339\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/tractor-ford339.jpg\" alt=\"tractor-ford339\" width=\"310\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/tractor-ford339.jpg 310w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/tractor-ford339-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We need to put down more rock: that lovely clear water through which you can see every stone is too wide to jump and too deep for ordinary shoes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Still, I was determined to check on the pump at Owl Pavilion, and the state of the rock crossing at Westbrook, before the next rain.<\/p>\n<p>Water in the west gully system pools is now perfectly clear, with a trickle running through them all.\u00a0\u00a0 Although the bushy bluestem that had spread along the margins looked dead after the two years of drought, its roots still held the soil when the flooding rains came in September, and I saw a few green leaves sprouting at the crowns.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-593\" title=\"west-gully351\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/west-gully351.jpg\" alt=\"west-gully351\" width=\"310\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/west-gully351.jpg 310w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/west-gully351-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Flotsam from a flash flood reaches well beyond those two trees.<\/p>\n<p>When I got into the west woods, I found that Westbrook had done some more &#8220;rearranging&#8221; of the rock crossing&#8211;we&#8217;ll have to repair that when we can get a cart across the main creek to help with the rocks.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-594\" title=\"Westbrook347\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/Westbrook347.jpg\" alt=\"Westbrook347\" width=\"310\" height=\"207\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/Westbrook347.jpg 310w, http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/Westbrook347-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In this view, from a little upstream of the rock crossing,\u00a0 the rock crossing has made a sinuous pond&#8211;so clear today that I immediately noticed a crayfish claw lying on the bottom.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-599\" title=\"crawfish-claw346-B\" src=\"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/crawfish-claw346-B1.jpg\" alt=\"crawfish-claw346-B\" width=\"300\" height=\"253\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not expert enough to know if this was some raccoon&#8217;s leftovers, or if this is a molted exoskeleton from a crayfish who&#8217;s now larger.\u00a0\u00a0 Either way, it&#8217;s proof of crayfish being back in Westbrook.<\/p>\n<p>Upstream from this point is a lovely reach; the stream drains a neighbor&#8217;s land to the west.<\/p>\n<p>EDIT:\u00a0 This was a draft post from Saturday&#8211;when I began to have trouble uploading the images I wanted.\u00a0\u00a0 The next post was written Sunday, when I thought the Saturday post had been lost&#8230;and when some of the\u00a0 images in the Saturday post would not upload.\u00a0 Moreover, the Sunday post would not let me add tags initially (though I&#8217;m hoping to now, with an edit.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thanksgiving Day gave us perfect weather and wonderful guests who enjoyed the beauty of the land&#8230;but no pictures.\u00a0\u00a0 The creek was too high to wade in regular shoes&#8211;beautifully clear, though, and today, with rain forecast to start tomorrow again, I thought perhaps I could make it across.\u00a0 What are wet feet, after all?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,7,4],"tags":[13,70],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-plantlife","category-wildlife","tag-beauty","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":617,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.80acresonline.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}