Twin Oaks in December

A jet streaks across the predawn sky.  It look like it might have snowed but that is just a heavy frost.

No time at Twin Oaks changes so little as the second half of December.  Whereas there are still a few leaves, still a little color in the first half of the month, the hard freezes kill and make flora go dormant before Christmas.  This month we had a lot of Sandhill crane action, many flocks headed south.  

Although their numbers changed a little each day, we usually had two female deer and two older fawns hanging out in our woods.  Actually, the adults had been doing that all year.  Most of the photos of deer in this series of posts are of the same couple of does.  They each raised a baby at Twin Oaks in 2020, perhaps the most hopeful thing you could ask for.  Being a home for new deer simply accentuates the nature of "place" on our land.

Some days were incredibly quiet in my woods.  Several cardinals, bluejays, dove and quail on sunny days, especially with no wind.  Crows every day as it becomes their time of year.  In the stillness I can always feel the space, my place on this Earth.  

Other days were overcast, the low gray clouds allow the sound of the interstate highway to bounce off of them bringing us traffic noise from five miles away that we do not hear when there are no clouds at all.  Strange, but I felt that five-mile space as well.  Through the years I've felt it changing, developing, coming towards Twin Oaks.  In 1993 I lived in the middle of nowhere but now I found my land only at the edge of nowhere.

Overall, it was a mild, wet month, just like most of 2020.  The bitter heat of the last two weeks of July was partly offset by an extremely cold Christmas Day.  The high was 33 degrees, the low 19 here at Twin Oaks.  My heat pump can't handle those conditions, as I have stated before.  Luckily, we were back to "normal" after three very cold days.  Most days, however, the highs were in the 50's and the lows in the 30's.  I love to run when it is that cold and there is no wind.  I seem to be able to fly.  I ran one morning in 27 degrees, the coldest temp I've ran in all year.  I was still hot and sweaty at the end.

Wow, another year has gone by.  As with them all, some of it seems to have happened recently and other parts seem ages ago.  It has nothing to do with chronology.  I has to do with how you feel your life.  I've come to understand that time is feeling.  I feel this year, near and far in memory, strange all the way through.  

It can be disorienting.  But it doesn't have to be.  I contemplate these last days of December, how little changed but for the coming and going of rain and chill.  Nature takes a pause in late December at Twin Oaks.  Changes slow, almost freezing.  And that slowness grounds me to this place such that no disorientation lingers from the strange passing of the years.  Twin Oaks is me.

Frost.

The last bit of color is a light brown early in December.  All these leaves will be gone by the end of the month.

One exception was this maple sprouting up through our Savannah holly.  I guess we will end up cutting it but it was a nice surprise this December.

The volunteer oak growing above our rock terrace has light color as well the first half of the month.

Two weeks later the leaves are gone.  I've also trimmed up the lower branches with my chainsaw.  This will allow more sun reach the garden, particularly around the tree itself, in the spring and summer.

The same tree before I trimmed it, this time looking in the opposite direction (west) on a cool foggy morning.  The place felt enshrouded.

Looking down my driveway the same morning.

With the leaves gone, the woods open up in December.  Here Kudo is scouting ahead during our evening walk.  The sun is near setting and casts light at an interesting angle.

At the other end of my woods facing southwest in the same sunset.  Again, you can get a sense of how open everything becomes this time of year.  You can see a lot more sky.

We've lost a half dozen large, old trees in the past few years.  This dead oak was once the prettiest one at Twin Oaks but the drought in 2018 weakened it and it died last year, easily over a century old.  Sad.  With the intermittent nature of cold spells and the increase in heat and drought due to global warming I will probably live to see a lot more of my little woods die out in the coming decades.

This is some tree damage I am still in the process of cleaning up from the tropical storm that hit us back in August.  Two good sized cherry trees were blown from left to right.  One I had to cut quickly as it blocked the walking path.  The other I have left because you can stoop and walk under it with ease.  But it is slowly falling further as it slides down the oak tree helping to hold it up.  I will have to cut it eventually, it has fallen about two additional feet so far.

This giant sweet gum tree was still standing back in February.  But the August storm blew it over, completing its slow demise which lasted over several years.

Yet another set of twin oaks.  The third set!  This was once all open field, my front yard.  Over the years we planted various flower and shrub beds.  They were watered and well-mulched for a few years.  Avery played in them as a child.  Out of some of that mulch these two hybrid oaks volunteered.  Now they are getting to be large trees.  This is hopeful.  For every tree we've lost over the years at least 2 or 3 new ones have come along and flourished, usually by volunteering, not planting. These trees now provide shade for the turnaround area of my driveway.

Looking past the second oak out to a maple we planted in my front yard.  The dark bark maple is older than the oak.  Again, showing how volunteer trees thrive compared with planted ones.  One of my magnolias (planted) is on the other side of my yard.

Another view of the front yard facing southeast.  I took a similar angle in September.  You can see the dark bark of the maple tree from the previous photo beyond the tree on the left.

All four of the "other" twin oaks.  The two planted by my great-grandfather's brother are on the left and the two relatively new volunteers across the driveway on the right.  The same dark bark maple is in the foreground.  I keep a couple of vehicles parked in my turnaround area year-round so the shade these trees supply is much appreciated.  Facing northeast.

The crescent Moon over our house near the winter solstice.

The great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.  I photographed them back in October when they were further apart and Saturn was on the left side of Jupiter.  Here Saturn is passing to the right of Jupiter in the sky at a proximity that no one has witnessed in 800 years.  The fact that it happened on the winter solstice made it even more special.

Our nandina has been around for many years.  See it here from 2009.  In December is turns red and stays that way throughout the winter before turning green again.

Goldenrod turns white in the winter.

The promise of the future.  A holly sprouts from the ground.

Not everything goes dormant in December.  Daisies begin to emerge from the ground in preparation for next April and May.

 

Our rosemary is robust and happy despite the cooler weather.  It enjoyed a good year of growth in various places of the rock terrace.  There is one in the foreground and the background in this photo. Most of the other plants around the terrace have wilted and died in the frosty weather.

Various mosses in the woods are one of the few things still growing this time of year.

A close-up of the moss as it reaches out for more sun.

There was a little color remaining in the first half of the month.  This is a wild peach tree that sprouted near one of our magnolias.  Its leaves were especially noticeable in the December grey.  We will have to eventually cut this tree to keep it from overtaking the sprawling magnolia.  But it was sure pretty to admire this month.  As with everything else, the leaves were gone before Christmas.

A "burning bush" provided another touch of red for much of the month.  It is next to an old porch swing that we rescued from the demise of my grandparents house several Christmases ago. The bench was in bad repair when we hung it from a branch as yard art.  Now it is slowly disintegrating in the weather of each passing year.  I used to sit on it and swing on their porch when I was a kid.

A flock of Sandhill cranes traveling in the familiar V-shaped patter far above my house.  It was quite that day and you could hear their honks and cackles is the splendid distance.  These had to have taken off far away from my land to have reached this height while passing overhead.  Facing south.

A closer look at a different flock flying directly overhead in my back yard.  We saw hundreds of these birds migrating south throughout the course of December.

Many flocks were broken up into smaller groupings.  These cranes took flight from a nearby lake or pond, which is why they are so low.

A larger, more typical grouping is forming a V as it rises in the sky.  They make a lot more racket when they are low like this as opposed to the flock that was very high in the earlier photo.

The same flock after they passed over, heading southeast.  They are always magnificent to behold.

Squirrels are busy in my woods all year long but much more noticeable during this season.  They are busy gathering nuts and twigs.  They are expert climbers, of course.  They can defy gravity, just standing there with their bushy tail twerking on the side of a pine tree.

Another one near my barnyard.

18 or so buzzards suddenly take flight out of the top of my pine trees.  I startled them without realizing they were there.  I managed to take a hurried photo of them.  It was common to have them in my pines in the mornings and evenings all month.  It is difficult to describe the strong whoosh of their large wings all silently flapping as they lift themselves into the still winter air.

One of them circled back to check me out, its wing lit underneath by the setting sun.

We have hawks in the area, though I did not see many this year.  This is what a hawk will do to a bluejay if they catch one.  This was taken in my upper field on a late afternoon walk.  These feathers were not there when I walked by the same spot a couple of hours earlier in the day.

Nice shot of a doe.  They are brown in summer, gray in winter.

A couple of them early one morning, usually the best time to catch them.  You won't find many in the middle of the day very often.

An older fawn, almost a doe.  They keep farther away than their mothers.

Two does near one the benches I have for sitting in my woods.

Two older fawns (in back) with their mothers.  They call my woods home.  I have been photographing these same four deer since the summer.  What a rare experience to have this basic connection to individual deer.  What have we lost?!

A summer fawn darts across our back yard in December.

Another year in the lives of our tall, reaching long-living Twin Oaks.  From their perspective it was windier and wetter than usual.  Otherwise, they did not notice much change.

Highlights:  Incredible disappearance of color.  Trees stand naked.  Crisp blue skies demand jackets and hats.  Having to "winterize" my house for our first arctic blast (polar vortex) of the season (protect against bursting water pipes).  Cleaning out my gutters for the third and final time this season.  A magical Christmas Day despite social distancing.  Watching dozens of flocks of cranes flying south all month long but particularly just before New Year's Day, hearing their honks and cackles so distinctly as if they were all gossiping to themselves.  The fantastic conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on the winter solstice.  Mars was almost directly overhead.  Standing in the stillness of my woods listening to children playing far away, the quiet call of a dove, or hearing nothing at all.