Canis nobilissimus

Boris and I--and even Lucy--extended the drainage ditches. This is the first big digging effort in years. The goal was to dry up the paintball field, but this was not really successful. Still, the new channels are still carrying lots of water away a week later (it seems like a year).

Posted 2:01 PM by Tamarack
The winter was hard, and not only on the trees. We buried Loki amidst the red pines yesterday evening. requiescat in pace, canis nobilissimus.      

Deer & Diane

The 5000 has largely been eaten by deer; I went out in early November and it was a sad sight. I think the trail groomer has run its path straight out to the Williamsburg road. Back when the trees still had a fighting chance this would have enraged me. (Now, only the deer have cause to complain. I maintain this log at about the same rate at which the trees grow.) Meanwhile, Johnny has put a seepage bed in the midst of what was once a half-acre of struggling (not very successfully) red spruce seedlings. Diane's mini-home sits on most of the rest of them. All that remains is a triple row of black spruce, most of which came from Sugar Bear's leftover stock, supplemented by transplanted natural regeneration. That part is starting to look like something; it has been in the ground for about seven years. Of all the trees we have planted, the larch have shown the most gratitude. They are very tall--about 20 feet--and flourishing. The red pine are beginning to make their presence felt, too. Only the red spruce were real failures. I have trouble finding any, and we planted about 800.

I should mention, while I remember it, that this summer past I sprayed the pines for a fungal infestation that was rotting off the needles about mid-way. Some were very badly affected. It seems to have developed because of the very cold weather late in the winter, coupled with a wet spring. I mixed up the powder in the sprayer and gave them several treatments. By late July there was hardly a sign of the fungus and everything looked healthy again--hope it lasts. I also dealt with a few aphids, though they did little harm this year.

The 5000

I can't believe I started this so long ago (and wrote so little). What a little time capsule.

The red pines next door are doing splendidly. The "5000" is a disaster, overgrown with dogwood, but all around the house the mechanically cleared areas are sprouting nicely. I will add pictures soon.

Milo & the Bear

Another season has come and gone. Apart from some thinning and a lot of work on the banks of the ditch, I did little. I took a walk out to the Five Thousand this week, and it was a solid sea of red osier. The little pine seedlings were buried under the masses of dogwood; I hardly had the energy to curse when I saw that a four-wheeler had driven in and rammed its way through the plantation. While I was taking all this in, I lost track of the dogs, who had run into the bushes after something large, judging by the sounds. When I realized that Milo, the beagle-Alsatian pup, was missing, I started back, calling as I went. The crows circled above us, crying so raucously that I began to imagine they were feeding on poor Milo and jeering at our cries. By the time I reached the camp, I was quite worried; we pressed on to the Grove, and in my mind I was already organizing a search party, but at last we reached the house, and there was Milo, trembling on the deck. He had walked the kilometer-and-a-half back to the house alone--not bad for his first walk in the woodlot! He was trembling and filthy, and took a long time to settle down. I wonder if the dogs found a bear?

Closer to home, the trees are doing better. Some trees in the new lines around the house have died, but on the whole they look good. The larch in the grove continue their steady decline. I think it badly needs draining as well as replanting. I did manage (finally) to dig out the ditch along the trail for quite a piece; the trail has dried up nicely, and it's been piled high with clay and mud.

Revived Blog

I began this blog in 2003 in Blogger as "Out Standing in His Field," early in the blogging era. Now I no longer have the Netscape.ca address I used to use, so I have had to re-create it in Google Blogger by cut-and-pasting my own pages! The old blog, a digital orphan, still exists, but I cannot edit it. This was the first post:

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Posted 11:33 AM by Tamarack

We have two main pests: the larch sawfly and the white pine aphid. They are especially

harmful to seedlings and full-grown trees, it seems; small trees sometimes recover.

Both are pretty nasty; here is an old picture of what the larch sawfly can accomplish, cribbed from Gifford Pinchot's A PRIMER OF FORESTRY (originally published in 1899; this is from the 1903 reprint which is available at https://fp.auburn.edu/sfws/sfnmc/class/PINCHOT1.html):