Found more acorns in my house. Really wish I knew which leaves these match.

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We may have three species of oaks instead of two. By the pond this morning I found that the oaks nearer the pond have less rough bark and the sorts of leaves that have deep sinuses from the previous post.

However some of the oaks standing back from the pond have much rougher bark. Some of their leaves are still on, and they are a different shape than the other two. Oblong with a distinct tip, so definitely a member of the red oak group.

Here are the acorns I found along the fence line yesterday. They are nearly spherical and have a very pronounced tip on the end. The cap is more bumpy than flaky or scaly. As far as I can tell with my limited vision.

How is all this pertinent to permaculture? I'm still working on my maps, and will be for the duration of the course. The base map didn't have any trees on it because any of these trees may be removed. None of them are hands off. However, that doesn't mean they all go either. They do all have to be mapped out as I make a plan. And they need to properly be identified for species.

Why does that matter?

Did you know that some acorns drop the same seasonal year they start forming, while others drop two seasonal years after they start forming, while the next round of acorns are budding? That pattern has a lot to do with the interdependent species in the environment. That has to be taken into account.

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The place is just adrift in leaves like the below, but I did find a few piles with some of these other shapes.

I haven't yet found a good match for this acorn.

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Here is a video about telling apart some common oak species. There are 34 native oak tree species in Mississippi, and then some folks have brought in oaks from other places trying to boost acorn production through interbreeding. So identifying oaks can be tough.

Plus, this year, the acorns are scarce. I've been looking for weeks, and I finally found a few along the fence line. I suspect they got hit with Roundup or something and that's how they were left alone.

So I recently learned that while pecans are like dogs — they come in infinite variety but they're all the same species — oaks come in lots of different species. And it's important for me to identify which ones are on the land.

The tons of fallen leaves appear to be from water oaks. But there are a couple of places that have more complicated leaves that are plainly in the red oak family, but I don't know who they are.

Until I found the acorns this morning I've been working from one acorn I found under my bed. That one probably came from the tree that I used to be parked under. Which also dropped a lot of water oak leaves but the acorn does not match the description.

I haven't yet tried to match the acorns from this morning. It's been a really busy day.

I have pictures. There will be pictures. But I need to go take the laundry out of the dryer.

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Whew. That was exhausting.

The current lesson consists of developing a base map of the property and interviewing the clients.

One was super rough because we are doing it in Google Slides, which is murderous to people with hand motion issues or poor hand-eye coordination. I spent easily as much time undoing as doing and it was a LOT of freaking hours. My future designs will be on paper until I find a better app. But I'm probably stick with this one for the rest of the course, since this is one single design.

The other was super rough because I had to overcome social anxiety and a certain amount of estrangement to get the input I needed from the clients. Two of whom declined to participate anyway.

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• The wind is almost never from the west!?!?
• The wind is mostly from the south, from the north sometimes in the winter.
• It snows even less than I thought.
• Hardiness zones are only about freezing temps. We are in the same hardiness zone as the West Texas desert.
• Koppen Geiger climate classifications are way more useful.
• There are no NOAA weather stations near here at all! There had been one at the chemical plant but it went silent in 2018. They came and got the equipment three years ago.
• However, university mesonets are on the rise. I found some fairly decent data in (I think? I don't have my laptop up.) University of Illinois' mesonet network.
• Temp records: high 106, low -4.
• This chart:

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• Dunno where I read that the Yazoo tribe was made up by white people, but I found a lot of stuff that seems to contradict the narrative.
• This land belonged to the Yazoo, Choctaw, and Quapaw people. By 1850 they were all gone from here. The Yazoo took a lot of losses in the Natchez Uprising in 1729. The survivors joined the Tunica and Biloxi. The Choctaw and Quapaw were removed to the west.

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• The north fence is actually outside the property.
• The west edge of the property has a ~20 foot buffer zone between pasture and the industrial farming field adjacent. It's just messy. Trees, some of them fallen, branches, vines, shrubs. Also lots of moss and fungi.
• The north and west fence is mostly crushed and probably more than 70 years old, according to my other uncle.
• Large sections of the north fence have been removed and coiled up. The other side is a feral wood. It used to be a pasture and doesn't have the undergrowth of a wild wood.
• They are way more spigots than I expected. I found five, but there could be more under overturned barrels or inside other items.
• My dad and uncle are both junk hoarders. But my dad's junk is in disarray, while my uncle's junk is neatly stacked and arranged in rows.
• The main property has lots of ditches. But the land doesn't slope toward them. It's flat. I don't really know how they are supposed to work.
• The land really is boggy in places. Especially in front of the shop, which surprised me because I'd expect that to be closer to the highway's elevation.
• We've got some truly gorgeous moss and fungi going on.
• Nearly all the trees appear to be oaks, except the handfuls of pecans, magnolias, and whatever the conifers are.
• The clover, dead nettle, and Carolina cranesbill are sprouting like crazy.
• It is wildly frustrating trying to draw in Google Slides! Next time I'm making an analog map.

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I mean, besides what's in the curriculum.

• Apparently, my grandaddy may have been a jerk after all.
• My uncle got on his bad side by majoring in education going on to coach football, a much lower paying job than the welding he was doing while in school and in the lag time before landing a job.
• He became a coach because he and his cousin would have been football stars if the coaching staff at their high school hadn't curtailed their opportunities because they were poor rednecks. Read: embarrassing. He wanted to give the next generation a fair chance.
• There used to be a shotgun house where the shop is now. My granny's family lived in it while her parents-in-law lived in the main house.
• When they were kids, not only did they have horses, they had cows too! They each were different breeds, and his gave five times the milk of the others. So he usually gave up after two gallons and let the calf have the rest.
• He knew somebody who found a fungus that was effective against Johnson grass, but was bought out by one of the pesticide companies and they squashed it.
• One year they raised a lot of beans and harvested the bean straw. People told them nobody would want to feed their cattle bean straw, but that year there was some kind of famine on the Texas straw that people usually bought, so his family made a decent amount selling bean straw. -The water table used to only be 8 feet down. Before the levee was built, the flood waters would get up to the floorboards of the house regularly. I think the house is three feet off the ground?
• Down by the church in Eden there is going to be a community garden this year.
• Eden used to have 7 substantial stores.
• There used to be a Methodist Church next to Eden Baptist Church. Neither had a full time preacher so they alternated sharing their circuit preachers. One week both congregations would meet at one church, the next week the other.
• He's pretty excited over a native tree species called the bluebell tree, royal paulownia, princess tree. He said it yields wood as soon as 7 years. ( Don't worry, while looking up how to spell paulownia, I found out it's not native and rather is an aggressive invasive. Now I wonder what else may be inaccurate.)
• He's a huge proponent of composting! He's had compost piles everywhere he's stayed and doesn't hold with putting food on the garbage. Whatever isn't fit for compost, the dog can have.

I got all that while interviewing my uncle. The big surprise from my dad was that he's done with breathing Sevin Dust and that's why he won't garden anymore. I'm keeping it a surprise that my project is free of it.

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Oregon State University offers two Permaculture Design Certificate programs. There's a 10-week track for the basic education and 20-week track for those who want to become professionals. I'm in the second one.

It's an online course but it's intensive. It does actually kind of follow the lecture + lab format of other university programs. We have live “office hours” with our instructor via Zoom. Lectures are delivered via video. We can also get one-on-one help from instructors and peer support with each other.

The lab part I find interesting. We are given a template for a full-on design proposal. The course walks us through all the elements of the template. But to fill out the template, you have to research A LOT. Because you pick a piece of land and complete the template as though you've been hired to design for it.

So, for example, in the first two weeks you introduce yourself, the land, and the climate. That sounds simple but it goes really deep. You have to find out who the indigenous people were and how they lived. If it's been colonized, you have to describe that relationship too. You have to describe your personal relationship to it. You have to deep dive on the climate conditions.

The current assignments have to do with developing a base map and interviewing the clients. I am learning so much about this land! And about my family.

So that's why I feel prompted to start blogging here again even though the deer camp development is effectively at a standstill right now.

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