It’s mid-summer at the Scuppernong Springs Nature Trail and I’m sticking to my weeding.

The challenge of being an activist, and what caused me to take a break from that line of work and seek refuge at The Springs, lies in the fact that people make it their business not to know things, that would cause them to understand things, that would conflict with their strongly held beliefs.  Before I get to my weeding, let me give you one quick example: people don’t want to know how the Twin Towers were constructed and what the laws of gravity dictate.

To do so would cause them to understand that, the only way the towers could destruct at the rate they did — free-fall acceleration — would be for something to remove the resistance of the steel frame structures.

Hmmmm… what could have done that?  Who could have done it?  I don’t recall NIST mentioning anything about this in their report.  Come to think of it, neither did the 9/11 Commission.  Never mind, I’m going to stick to my weeding…

One weed success story at The Springs is that we have kept burnweed from spreading.  I spotted this aggressive invader last year and pulled all that I could find before it went to seed.  The only place I’m seeing it this year is right off the trailhead in an area where we cleared buckthorn last winter.

I’ll get these pulled in the next few days.

We made significant impacts on: sow thistle, garlic mustard, Canadian fleabane, nodding thistle, bouncing bet, white campion, ragweed and others, with spotted knapweed being our biggest challenge.  This past Thursday and Saturday afternoons I pulled spotted knapweed on the sand prairie.  I’m not taking the time to dig the roots out now.  If the stems break off while I pull them, that’s ok, at least the flowers won’t go to seed.

Before…

… and after.

I’ll probably resort to mowing the remaining knapweed flowers soon: except for the area on the south end of the prairie where I released the flower weevils (root weevils should be arriving any day now.)

I replaced or repaired a few boardwalk planks near the hotel spring bridge where forked aster are blooming…

… and over by the the no-name spring.

I’ve been seeing a great blue heron hunting in the river lately.

Thursday night was a bit sticky, and very buggy, so I sought out the wide open and relatively bug free shores of Ottawa Lake to watch the sunset.

Saturday morning I patrolled the banks of the Scuppernong River between the Scuppernong Spring and the Hotel Spring pulling sow thistle.  Then I mowed the DNR 2-track access road on the south end of the property and cut pokeweed and fleabane that I missed last time.

These yellow composites on the cut-off trail are 12-15′ tall.

It was a pretty busy day at The Springs and I got a chance to play host and talk to a lot of people.

There is a lot of repetition in the scenes I shoot but I’m just trying to capture the changing seasons.

Another marl pit bridge sunset.

The perigee moon.

I went over to the boat launch on Ottawa Lake to get a better look at that moon.

Wish I’d been here as the sunset!

See you at The Springs!