Piney Z Lake shoreline

I hiked Swift Creek woods from my home this weekend, looking for indian mounds. I don't really know much about mounds but there are still many in Florida even though the most famous ones were broken up for road beds many years ago. If you are in Florida and notice a road with crushed shells, they might have come from a Calusa mound! Wow!

The Swift Creek woods are between me and the PineyZ and Lafayette Lakes and I rode my bike in these woods a lot before developers built the hundreds of homes and the middle school in the middle of the former Swift Creek Indian encampments. I have been looking for the forty mounds said to be in the area. I did see several of what I have discovered are called ridge or bank barrow mounds. I wasn't sure when I was looking and I am still not sure but it "seemed" as though they were mounds. I don't really know if Indians built such mounds, actually. I 'm only guessing. I have put in a query to my Fish and Wildlife friend but haven't heard back as yet.

Some very large pine and live oak trees have been left to grow around these lakes. I tried to photograph one here. The circumference was probably two people's arms encircled and touching.

I have been walking with the Trixie dog and trying to learn better pack leadership skills with her because she is quite dominant even though she doesn't have issues and has been well trained in the past. She is much hardier than I originally thought and we will be walking a great deal more. Also I have begun to understand the notion of energy communication, small cuffs from a half closed hand for correction, and the order of a dog's needs. Also the idea of calm, energy, and the need for a dog to be trained to be calm makes so much sense. Behavior training that is applicable to dogs and humans is a curious phenomenon, to be sure. Treating phobias is virtually the same approach but humans can be very stubborn about not giving them up! Dogs, not so much...

From the end of my neighborhood one slips into the woods by a path next to the school property and it goes along the railroad tracks and down into the paths by the lakes. I am hoping Trixie claims this for her migrating territory and gets familiar with it and knows it is her home range.