Bottle Gentian, Pine Marten, and done with the Bronze Age Wattle Wall reconstruction?

Since this remains closed - it is most likely Bottle Gentian! My first time discovering this flower.

If the flowers are open when I go up north next, then I'll know they are the more rare Great Lakes Gentian

It's pretty stunning - despite the blurry photo.

What mammal dug this hole in my clay pile? They kept leaving scat on my walking trail also. Then I heard squeaking noises last night.

 In this recording, the pine marten exhibits scolding behavior by producing squeaks ...

Scat can often tell us what the critter is. Here's three different scat piles that I think are from the same critter.

2nd:

third:

To give a size of the scat:

Ok now let's look at scat images.

I wish they'd just tell you instead of making it into a guessing quiz!

I'd rather just get it over with.

That digging hole is too big for a chipmunk and I've never noticed scat that big from a chipmunk.

It could be porcupine!

that's from India - porcupine scat.

It could also be fox scat.

Or maybe a raccoon.

It's not a lynx. Probably not a bobcat. https://www.hcn.org/articles/can-collecting-wildlife-scat-change-the-way-we-conserve-open-space

 One 2008 study, for instance, suggested that bobcats were five times scarcer in California reserves that allowed hiking.

The scat image in that article looks JUST LIKE the scat I captured above - but guess what!!?? The article does not even tell us what the scat is!! How frustrating is that. I'm gonna email that scat expert... that's what I do when people make Bootie Dookie errors. She's a "consultant" so probably would want to be paid.... oops. Or I mean Poops!

thanks for just TELLING me - not making me take a quiz! But the only scat I got wrong in that quiz was goose scat.

I've SEEN Pine Marten - in fact I have a Pine Marten TAIL in my car - from my mini-forest. Maybe it is another Pine marten.... yeah it is more like a Twisted cylinder... (and that RULES out raccoon which is a "blunt" cylinder, same with a bear)...

Twisted cylinders are from members of the weasel family; mink, marten, fisher and weasel. These will have hair and pieces of bone in them.

 Yep - squeaking - and twisted cylinder and I've seen Pine Marten already - so it must be a Pine Marten!!!!

Yeah skunk looks closer than porcupine - based on this chart....

OK so the final Wattle Wall photos.

Here's the 2nd Wattle Wall.... I still have to finish the cob on the top - up to the Wall Plate - to close the wall off.

But this wall is an amazing 8 inches THICK of straw "clay slip" insulation.

So I harvested about 30 small bales of hay-straw off the mini-forest (field)...

12 feet long - you can't really see much... but the other side has better light.

So that back corner open is for the chimney. I realized I can't really put in another wall to close off smoke for the Kang bed-stove. I don't have the rafters lined up and with just a tarp as the roof - it is not real secure to shut out smoke. I was gonna have the stove near the door - and then a 2nd inside wall to cut off smoke from the stove. Then the heat-smoke would go through the wall and INTO the Kang bed-stove and then out of the chimney. Oops.

It was gonna be a big project and already I'm hitting a limit on harvesting clay.

So here's more horse manure clay aka COB on the outside of the wattle wall. This goes pretty fast - but it also goes through the clay fast. So that's over six buckets of clay - 2 gallon buckets.

So I need to cob the inside and outside of the walls for fire protection and also thermal mass and water proofing. Then I was gonna do lime wash.

So the end walls were gonna but just pure COB but I need another horse manure haul. PLUS tons more clay. I have the clay - I just need to dig it up and haul it. I would have to do major excavation.

My main concern is the birds drowning in whatever hole I dig - I guess if it is broad enough then they can get up any steep walls. I already dug a 5 foot by 5 foot hole - so I can keep working on that. I also have a drainage ditch for my tipi. I can go a bit deeper on that - without it being too steep for the birds. I don't want to repeat the "tank" effect that I got this summer where three birds got killed by the steep walls.

 This Bronze Age Reconstruction Walls - took FOREVER but ever step was labor intensive. Cutting the hay with the scythe - raking the hay - cutting the hay with a knife - soaking the hay in "clay slip" - so gathering the water and clay - and smashing the clay and water and hay around - mixing it by hand. Hauling everything about a quarter mile each way. Cutting all the willow off the branches, and weaving them, etc.

It's all very slow but the effect is great since you get excellent insulation. I can already feel the heat difference when it gets cold at night - only a cold breeze sneaks through the top and the rest of the area is much warmer.

As for the mushrooms - I soaked all the logs - then we got tons of rain. The mycelium fungus growth appears to continue to spread but it's kind of hard to tell. I'm not supposed to get shrooms till next spring but maybe I'll get some when it gets down to freezing - as the "shock" to simulate winter.

Mushroom logs after soaking - and after an all night rain. How much rain did we get? Yeah actually not much rain over night - so it was a long light rain.

This is a clear example of trade-offs between survival and growth.

Climate Change Forces Decomposer Fungi To Focus On Survival