Revert to Wild | Catching up after a trip away from Wild Ozark

Everything reverts to wild when left alone for long at Wild Ozark. I’m still catching up after a trip to TX, but finally getting a little time to make this post.

It’s going to mostly be a photo essay, because I’m still catching up and don’t have as much time as I usually do to create these posts. And, I can’t remember everything in sequential order since I didn’t make any notes, lol. But lucky thing is that I do always take pics, so I have that for an outline.

On the way

I took some videos of wildlife spotted while we were working on converting a storage room to a bedroom for Rob’s sister. I wish I would have had video going the whole time we worked on that project, because it would have been hilarious. While I think we did a good job, I can also say we learned some things we didn’t know how to do and had to learn on the fly. A fly-on-the-wall video would have provided a lot of funny blooper reels. Especially when it came to hanging a door for a closet. That one part took us an entire day.

Garden did Revert to Wild

My little willow retaining fence is still doing a good job holding the mulch and plants in, but the potatoes themselves grew like crazy while I wasn’t here to add more mulch. It doesn’t take much encouragement for the garden to revert to wild.

I’ll just leave them alone and let them grow now, and if my experiment pans out and there’s a good amount of potatoes below the mulch, I’ll do this again next year and keep piling it on. I don’t know how many potatoes we can use before they’d go bad, anyway, so it’s not like I need a huge amount. They may stay good in the ground/mulch until I need them. We’ll see.

Wild Slime Mold

Even the driveway reverts to wild when we’re not here to manage it. Heck, it does a good job of doing that even when I AM here to do the work.

This interesting creature growing on it is Fuligo septica. It’s a slime mold, also called ‘dog vomit’ or ‘scrambled eggs’ slime mold. Neither of those names make me think of it as potentially edible. I don’t think it is edible, anyway… not that I’d be interested in finding out.

Fence Lizard Didn’t Revert to Wild

Look at her basking. She’s literally unconcerned that I’m looking at her from overhead. Legs all stretched out, soaking up the warmth on the concrete below. But she’s looking at me, too, lol.

Revert to Wild on the Driveway

With all of the grasses and weeds growing in the driveway, this little cottontail bunny isn’t acting very ‘wild’. She wasn’t moving as I approached in the car, so I got out and was able to get quite close to take this photo. Before she scampered down the way a bit, she grabbed another leaf to take with her. I took some video and will make it into a short to add to my YouTube channel soon.

Barn Swallows on the Porch

Our little pair of barn swallows were still in residence on the porch when we returned home. I watch them often. They work in shifts. One flies out to catch a bug while the other sits on the nest. As soon as that one comes back, it lands on the brace beside the nest and twitters a bit so the other one gets off of the nest. Then it sits there after feeding the babies while the other one is out catching another bug.

They do this all day long, taking turns. They eat a lot of bugs!

And the interesting thing is that they’re pretty tidy. There’s no bird poop piles beneath the nest.

A REAL studio coming soon!

I’ll soon be able to host workshops and open studio days in MUCH better style. I’m so excited about this, I don’t even have words. It’s overpayment for the work done, but I appreciate it immensely. Thank you Valerie!

Google still won’t let me add the location to the map as a ‘business’, because I can’t make a live video to show the surroundings and permanent signage. There’s no signal there for me to do so. And there’s no way around that verification process, apparently. But once the building is in place and I get my shingle hung on it, I’ll try it again and see if it goes through.

If the bridges aren’t flooded tomorrow, I’ll be heading to Hindsville to place my order for this cute little 10 x 20′ building. It’ll take me a little while to finish out the inside and set up everything the way I want, but I’m planning to start using it immediately and will just do the additional work on it as I can.

Painting still Waiting

I have not caught up yet with everything else to have time to work on my owl painting. Hopefully once I get my studio set up, I will be able to take at least an hour each day I’m home to dedicate to focusing on my art. No cell phones, no emails, no housework, nothing at all to distract me while I’m out there. I can’t wait.

When Everything Reverts to Wild

There’s only so much that can be done in a few days. It’s going to take me a while to get back to an ordinary schedule. Real estate was also waiting for me when I returned, so I’ll be working on TWO new listings to go live next week. If you’re interested in a ready-to-go market garden/home or a home/wildlife refuge with nightly rental potentials, let me know! I’ll share more of those next week at my wildozarkland.com blog once they go live on MLS.

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Author/Artist Info
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In the summer of 2018 I began making watercolor paints from the rocks, clay, and other resources of our land here in the Ozarks. In 2023 I began experimenting with the same pigments in oils. I love this medium and now paint in oils almost always. I call them Wild Ozark Paleo Paints, because they’re made in a way very close to the same way paints were made when man first put a hand-print on the wall of a cave. I use very small amounts of outsourced pigment for blue, white, and sometimes yellow to offer a greater range of hues built upon the earthy local pigments. My specialty is painting nature, specifically the nature that surrounds me here in the remote hills of northwest Arkansas.

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Madison Woods
@wildozark (Instagram, Twitter, Threads and FB)
madison@wildozark.com