Porch Dogs guarding the Swamp Throne

Dogs at work.

Probably I shouldn’t assume everybody recognizes this sort of environment. This is a shallow cypress swamp, with mostly cypress and blackgum trees, with a few loblolly pines, plus slash and longleaf pines and oaks around it. That’s actually different from a pocosin swamp, which has mostly smaller shrubs. Both are fairly common in the U.S. southeastern coastal plain.

This cypress swamp used to be full most of the year, forty or fifty years ago. Nowadays it’s dry most of the year. We’ve been having rain every few days for a week or more, so finally it’s almost full.

When that happens, we like to put kayaks in and boat around. Which is interesting due to all the cypress logs to navigate past.

Those are two of my dogs. They live here, in several hundred acres of land my grandfather bought in 1921. They are working dogs, protecting us from snakes and catching rodents. They don’t attack other wildlife (well, except raccoons), because we teach them not to. They do like to run fast, especially in water.

About the swamp throne, only the initiated know, and Tom H. Tom H Johnson Jr ain’t tellin’.

More rain coming.

Still not quite full