Site Discussions

What a great article. Thank you so much. My husband and I are in the planning stage of our Christmas Tree farm. There is lots of good, practical advice from the author AND in some of the comments.

That’s interesting!  Both the bait and the likely symbiosis.  That might explain why gall resistance does not seem to have evolved.  In some places 1/4 of the stems seem to have galls.  We just gathered 500+ for lab today.  Lab reports will follow!

I used Heartgard followed by a regimen of amoxicillin and accompanied by weeks of feeding with 2-3 pounds of chicken daily to successfully treat a serious case of mange in a red fox.

I sooooooo enjoy winter for its slower pace and fewer distractions.

Question:  How do tree roots grow in cold, stone-hard earth, in wintertime?
I’m in the process of writing a children’s book (that may or may not ever be published) that includes how tender roots grow.
I look forward to your response.
Thank you for your time.

I heard cooing about seven this morning for a short period of time and questioned my phone (Siri) as to whether or not doves migrated. I enjoyed reading all of the comments and questions on this site.

We also are privileged of the daily visits from two spotted grouse beneath the shelter of out large spruce trees. Being retired and winter days sometimes seem endless,they are truly a welcomed delight beneath our living room window

I started some indoor projects this winter season only to be lured outside with the unusually warm weather flowing down the west coast.  Yikes - time to prune fruit trees & harvest the earliest greens.Thanks all for expressing the nostalgia for winter so poetically.

I have noticed a baby possum a few years back on my property. Recently I saw a possum in the front yard and I went near it and it just stood there looking up at me so I started talking in a cutesy voice to it and it walked right up to me tipping its head from side to side and when I walked off it then walked back to the woods beside my home. I have a havahart trap set under my bird feeders for squirrels and 3 times in the last week my little possum was in there eating the peanut butter sandwich that was in there for the squirrels. As I type now it is in the trap with the door propped open having its lunch…lol I now call him/her Peaches! I took a furniture blanket and covered the trap except for the door as its snowing and cold and Peaches seems content to wait out the storm. I love seeing Peaches come back day to day.

Your takes on the winter season is spot on. After a busy fall of wood cutting, deer hunting and putting the garden to bed I also look forward to “dormancy” of early winter. Soon after New Years it is time to get back at it, however the weather doesn’t always cooperate. I would love another few weeks at least of frozen ground, with a few inches of snow on the ground and temps in the low to mid twenties.

Lichen is everywhere and is common to the point of being boring.  And mushrooms are only interesting if you like to eat them.

That’s how I really saw them until I started trying to identify pictures of them I’ve been taking. Now I’m so obsessive when I start talking talking about lichen my kids are like “geez, again!”

But wow, they really are fascinating and useful.  And it became like a puzzle quest..how many different species can you find.  And some of them are like math equations or a rubrix, you have to go through a long list of if this than that.

And if you find a lot if the bushy kind of lichen, lucky you..you know you live in an area without that much air pollution.

Thanks for your comment John!

It is very interesting to consider.  I looked briefly to see what data exist on the great lakes.  NOAA has some fascinating information.  The data sets vary in duration and it’s difficult to choose a single long-term data set.  There’s ice thickness, % ice cover and at what date that particular % occurred and where.  It’s worth a look: https://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/

The beauty of the Lake Champlain data set is it’s easy to explain, even with the potential inconsistencies.  And the pond data sets have simplicity and consistency.

Good piece. Thanks. It might be interesting to also look at ice data for the Great Lakes where there may be better and more consistent data. I enjoyed flying over Erie and Ontario last week and seeing the giant ice jigsaw puzzles (see link above) but many years in the past there has been no ice.

Keep writing.  Sweet passage on time travel in this season.  Never thought of needing another month between Jan/Feb—already the longest month of my year.

We have 3 opposums coming to our back deck.  We call them Billy1 (big boy) Billy2 (medium size) and Little Billy.  Little Billy has frostbite on his tail and licks his feet a lot.  I feed them Ocean Smelts, apples and peanuts mostly.  They seem to live under the Gazebo and deck. It has been extremely cold this winter, down to -25C, and I’m concerned about Little Billy.  Wonder if I should trap him and take him to a wildlife vet.

1971, built our first home burned wood in Franklin stove,1976 older hot air furnace wood heat and a lovely fireplace wood heat.1981, built our 3rd home and heated with wood boiler add on. 2001, built our retirement home and have heated with wood boiler add on, this year our insurance company charged an extra $100 dollar/year surcharge for wood stove heating. I cut all my wood from my neighbor’s farm at a small cost, so I suppose we may continue our long romance with great wood heat for a few more years. Our home is never cold and we have saved thousands. Our oil tank was last filled in 2005 and still has a half oil in it. Last 16 years, 100+ cords cut have been salvaged, dead trees from 400 acres.

There’s something about wood stoves that warms the body, the mind, and the soul. It connects you to the earth, and to the past.

It’s probably a mental thing, but nothing like it warms, REALLY warms. With the baseboard heat going strong It can be plenty warm in the house, temperature-wise, and I shiver. But fire up the stove, and almost immediately comfort floods the mind and the senses, even before the cat hops up on my lap.

Pitch perfect as I “linger over coffee… with my back to the wood stove.”

Enjoyed it immensely.

Yes, to more real winter with fresh snow, not rain. Real winter is beautiful.

My dog met a porcupine one snowy winter, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence from me and I could only plead with her to come back fearful of what was about to transpire.  But no, the dog and porcupine sniffed noses, turned and walked away from each other.  Astounding!