Garden Spider Goes Quadruple!

A garden spider, Argiope aurantia, set up shop in our kitchen window and had a wonderful summer and fall. Still productive (with some feeding help from us) in late November, it amazed us by laying its 4th egg sac.

egg sacs

weaving number four

count 'em - one, two, three four!

Raleigh Nature post on this garden spider

Mushroom Madness

Sporadic but heavy rains have brought a plethora of mushrooms to Raleigh!

Marsh Creek Park mushrooms

Milburnie landfill meadow mushrooms

Decayed faerie ring at the Capitol

Ancient shelf shroom at Sadlacks (NE parking lot)

Baby shelf shrooms on my tomatillo cage

Cedar Hills Park

Below is a monster from my school, TFA.

Lots of mushrooms after sporadic but heavy rains this summer.

Marsh Creek Park Expansion

Off New Hope Road is Marsh Creek Park, which has recently added a recreational center and skate park.
The setting is typical Piedmont farmland after 50-60 years - upland pines and chestnut oaks with a slope down to water - though not Marsh Creek. the park is named for Marsh Creek Road, which begins just across New Hope.
The skate park is impressive and quite popular.

Just below the skate park is a rain garden with a beautiful stand of Joe-Pye-weed as seen below.

The new center has a large meadow beside it and its large parking areas have nice ecotone areas, though stilt grass is fast invading.

The microstegia - stilt grass or bamboo grass, is in the center.

This is a lower field, and through the trees are headwaters and a nice small pond.

Marsh Creek post on Raleigh Nature

Back to Raleigh Nature

Pigeon House Re-hab Helps Edna Metz Wells Park

A nice piece of graffiti has garnered some media attention for the City rehabilitation project taking place just above Edna Metz Wells Park along Smallwood Drive. The stretch represents the headwaters of Pigeon House Branch, which was diverted, ditched and straightened during the construction of Cameron Village.

This is the current view of Edna Metz, but as you can see below, all is well in the interior.

The entrance off Park Drive.

The small park between East and West Forest drive just above Edna Metz.

This is the beginning of work on the Smallwood section. They added large boulders, retention terraces and other measures to complicate and slow down the flows after heavy rains and restore some biodiversity to this section of the creek.

The landscape is recovering quickly, as you can see be comparing this image with the one below from a month ago.

Pigeon House Branch crosses Clark into Edna Metz Wells Park.

Now here is the graffiti, at the outlet into the park.

Edie Sedgwick's portrait

My record tulip tree inside the beltline inside Edna Metz.

excellent Goodnight, Raleigh post about the portrait

Raleigh Nature article on the subject

Raleigh Nature main site