A rolling stone gathers no...

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss (I think), so we must not have any rolling stones here at Sage Creek Ranch.  Today's post is about moss, lichen and fungi.  

Before I talk about the photos, a little riff on what it took to upload them.  I am using a new version (the beta) for Adobe LightRoom 3 to catalog and play with my photos.  Two issues - the first is that I had never used LR2 - so I didn't know what I was doing or how to really utilize the program.  The second is that for some reason, it takes an inordinate amount of time to process even one photo.  Sigh.  These photos were taken yesterday morning (before the snow fell), but it's taken me until today to figure out the presets, how to save, where to find them once I have, how to get them uploaded to the blog (because the program put them in a different format than the one the blog likes).  All that said however, I really like LR3 beta.  It does a gorgeous job.

This is some sort of mushroom.  It is bright orange - especially against the rainy, dark sky.  I've only seen it growing on dead wood.

I loved the stone below because of all the kinds of lichen and the variety of color... (the color is un-retouched in the photo).

All of these shots are within .5 miles of the house... with the rain and the damp, the beautiful lichen is everywhere!  When we lived in Minnesota, I never pictured Texas as "green" - but there is a lot more green than I could have imagined here in the Cross Timbers region.  We love it here.

Dead things are especially good for sprouting some lichen.

This is my favorite photo of the bunch - a little bouquet of lichen inside the lichen.  And some of the lichen has died - but look at the beauty of the tree bark as well.  The deep green lichen looks like little stars.  

This moss always looks like hair to me.  

This tree trunk has been growing lichen since we moved here in '06 - sometimes it's a little greener than at other times, but it always has some sort of moss on it.  

I haven't taken any photos since the snow fell yesterday, but they'll be coming.

Oh - the bird feeders got filled the other day and the cardinals and chickadees have started coming back, so there'll be some new photos of our flocks shortly.

Find some awe-inspiring beauty to behold today.

iBird South

Oh yes!  Just purchased this to support our efforts to find and catalog the birds that we're attracting to share the land with us!  Loving it!  (This is an iPhone App).

Creating Habitats

I know - it's been forever since I've posted.  My daughter is threatening to take my blog off her posted "favorites" unless I post more often.  I guess I could threaten to stop posting AT ALL... But it would help motivate me (you know, a little peer pressure ) if there were more 'followers' - so if you haven't clicked the "follow" box in the middle of the right hand column, just go ahead and do that now...

Really though, I just need to get out on the land more often.  The truth is I just haven't wanted to go out and take pictures in what has been an unseasonably cold winter here.  Really.  Having mostly grown up in Minnesota, you'd think the cold here in Texas wouldn't be any issue at all. Nope.  It's too darn cold here for me lately.  I like 50's and 60's (well, 70's are the best, but I'll take 50's and 60's in the winter).

We've been at work on building our wildlife refuge here at Sage Creek Ranch.  There are a number of things to do to create an attractive habitat for the animals here.  The wildlife here consists of deer, turkey, squirrels, rabbits, quail, dove, songbirds, raptors, red and gray fox, coyote, bobcat, raccoon, wild hogs, opossum, armadillo, waterfowl and various rodent, reptile and amphibian species.  And, the occasional mountain lion.  We haven't seen any armadillos on the land, but we've either seen all the others or their evidence.

We're in the Cross Timbers and Prairie region of Texas.  It's the closest thing to Minnesota terrain we could come by...

We're very excited - we found a flock of doves have moved into the roof of our loafing shed.  Unfortunately, every time I get close enough to take a photo, I startle them and they fly away.  The loafing shed is now fenced, rather than open.  We fenced it to house visiting dogs, but the visiting dogs tend to get spoiled and do not have to spend any time in the loafing shed.  The good news is that, without any dogs, the birds are free to nest mostly undisturbed there.  There're somewhere around 6-8 birds living there.

Given our commitment to encourage wildlife here, we've planted all of our fruit and vegetable gardens in containers.  That way, we minimize any runoff. Although we only use organic fertilizers and sprays, so we'd probably be okay without the containers if we wanted to.  Tim just got another huge load of the tall, white containers that we like for our fruit plants.

"It should be noted that no less than 40% of any given habitat be made up of heavy brush cover for optimum wildlife production" (T. Haley - 1996).  We have 10% open field; 35% partial clearing; 5% ponds/ tanks/ streams/ wetlands; 50% heavy cover.

However, it's important as we continue to clear some of the brush and the unwanted vegetation that we build up areas of ground cover for the rabbits, quail, turkey and small mammals. The photos below show some of the areas where we've intentionally put brush for the animals.

In this photo, you can see some of the cutting that's getting done.  The cutting makes the area more park-like for the humans and gives more sunlight to the plants that will feed the animals we're looking to attract.

We need to pay attention to this particular area of ground cover.  It's important to watch how much cover is easily combustible - so Tim frequently turns the branches; picks up the ones that would make good fire wood and adds new twigs and branches.

We are also working at attracting additional songbirds.  This is one of the feeders we have placed around the ranch.  As you can see, the birds have eaten every bit of the food!

Walking around, looking at the front garden, I noticed that we're having a bit of an early spring.  Almost all of the plants have little blooms, like the yellow rose below.

Below is a view of the park-like area that the girls and I started cleaning out last fall (Betty's birthday party was a fabulous excuse to get out there and clean up the woods) and Tim has been continuing to clear it to fill our firewood needs.

You'll note though, that the baby swing is empty.  It needs grandchildren.