Tag Archives: swamp

Cypress Swamp with dogs after Hurricane Helene 2024-11-11

Our cypress swamp doesn’t look too bad at the west end, after Hurricane Helene.

[Deadfall, west end]
Deadfall, west end

But some of it is quite bad. Continue reading →

Turpentine cup on fallen cat face 2022-01-06

Update 2022-03-20: McCoy turpentine cup 2022-03-20.

It’s been 80 or 90 years since turpentining paid off the farm during the Great Depression. Yet we still find turpentine cups, and sometimes cat faces.

[Downed catface with Carolina dog, closeup of turpentine cup]
Downed catface with Carolina dog, closeup of turpentine cup

Blondie is a Carolina Dog, which is a native landrace breed, as in they bred themselves. Carolina Dogs were discovered in South Carolina in the 1970s, thus the name. They were living in longleaf pine forests and cypress swamps, just like where Blondie and Arrow (and Honeybun) live now in Georgia. Continue reading →

Six inches of rain in two days, swamp full 2021-07-05

A month of no rain ended mid-June, capped by 3.5 inches July 4th and another 3 inches July 5th, according to the bucket-and-yardstick rain gauge. Our cypress swamp, which had only puddles, is now full and overflowing.

[3.5 + 6 inches of rain, cypress swamp]
3.5 + 6 inches of rain, cypress swamp

That chair was above the cypress swamp high water mark for this year. Now it’s in the water.

I’m renaming the front driveway Twin Creeks. Most of its flow goes into the swamp. Continue reading →

Porch Dogs guarding the Swamp Throne

Dogs at work.

[Porch Dogs guarding the Swamp Throne]
Porch Dogs guarding the Swamp Throne

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]
Still not quite full

More pictures: Continue reading →