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forests that resemble grasslands Monday, June 3 2024
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
At 3:00pm this afternoon, I took all three dogs for a walk in the forest. When we headed up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail, Jack wallowed briefly in the puddle in the wetlands there, which was now no bigger than a bathtub. Neville either didn't feel the need to wallow or decided it was too mucky after Jack was finished with it. We continued all the way to the Stick Trail and then back home. Along the way, I noted how severely the gypsy (aka "spongy") moths had defoliated the oaks, which made much more sunlight available to the ground cover. In some places the forest floor is so thickly covered with sedges that it looks like grassland.
At 5:30pm I was to meet Gretchen at the Garden Café for dinner with her and our friends Lynne and Greg (a dinner date that was initially supposed to happen the day Neville was severely quilled by a baby porcupine in the Adirondacks). I showed up a little early and met Gretchen on the street as she was walking from the bookstore. Though the weather was beautiful and most people were eating outside, Lynne can't really deal with outside insects in even homeopathic concentrations, so we ate indoors. Tonight the Garden had the Latin mushroom tacos, which is one of my favorites, so I got that with a side of black beans and a side of those potato wedges. As always, our conversation drifted all over from such subjects as the abundance of feeding gypsy moth caterpillars. Lynne said they'd sprayed one or more of their trees with some sort of natural biological agent to kill the larvæ and that it was very expensive. I said I was holding out for the sudden appearance of a natural disease; telling them that this was what appeared to happen during the peak of the last gypsy moth infestation. Whatever it was sickened the caterpillars and turned them into limp bags of brown fluid. I also mentioned the predation I'd seen, particularly by a large black beetle (I'd forgotten the name, but it's Calosoma_sycophanta). I also expressed concerns that gypsy moth caterpillars might hitch a ride on our car to the Adirondacks (or perhaps on a piece of bluestone), though hopefully it's too cold for them to survive there. Also, their favorite diet, oak, is not present there. Other topics of discussion included Lynne & Greg's boat, a 17-foot fishing boat capable of navigating across open ocean, though it has no cabins for sleeping.
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