Orange and not in a good way

We have been watching a stand of Pines the last few weeks.

They seem to be turning orange all over. Will they recover and live…I am not hopeful.

Here is what they should look like.  This is a similar stand just down the road.  Note the amount of needles turning color are toward the inside of the tree….not all over the tree.  Pines normally drop some needles every year in the Fall.

My best guess is that someone who knows who that might fly around in a helicopter spraying crops got his chemicals all mixed up, or there was a heck of a wind…just a guess of course.

If I were the property owner I would be pissed very angry.

 

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.”   Aldo Leopold

Timber

"A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Timber is a renewable natural resource here in Minnesota.  Timber is harvested just like a crop. The Department of Natural Resources is in charge of public lands. Now I am not saying that they are  perfect in their management practices..but someone has to manage the timber on public land..and they do a fair job. 

Timber should be harvested from time to time to stop the threat of disease that will wipe out entire species of trees in one area.  The Lodgepole Pines out west are  good examples of why plantings should not be all done at once with the same kind of tree,  when the Mountain Pine Beetles came in..they had a hay day destroying entire stands.

September 2010

Forest Fires are Mother Natures way of taking care of old stands of trees and regenerating the forests.  Logging is one way to keep the threat of forest fires at bay and it opens up the dense canopy and allows new trees to begin growing. Renewable resource..either by fire or logging..at least with logging the lumber harvested is used, and wildlife is not displaced like it would be in a forest fire.  I don’t particularly like the mess left behind by the loggers either..but I have noticed that some logging companies are much neater than others.

 

Far Guy and I like to watch them work..we heard that from this spot back in the woods that you could see Shell Lake.   Way up there..and this was a zoomed in view..I never realized that this hill was that high. 

I wondered if you could see it from Shell Lake..sure enough..

February 2011

One day last week I spotted it.

 

I am not sure if the brush piles will be burned..or just left to decay and be homes for rabbits and squirrels.  Trees will re-grow in this area eventually:)

Planting Trees in the Spring of 10

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
                                                                                             -- Nelson Henderson

Who enjoys planting trees?  Well old people because they want to leave something useful behind and little kids because there is something really cool about planting something that can grow to be taller than they are. They can carry a tree in one hand all by themselves, plop it into the ground, splash some water on it and before you know it..it will grow into a tall stately tree.

Yesterday, we got a call early in the morning,..the seedlings were ready to be picked up.

This is the cold storage room..there are thousands of seedlings in this room..Future Forests.

Last winter I led my brothers into this planting project. I just wanted a few trees..maybe a hundred.  I could order 500..how many would they each like?  They decided we should plant a whole bunch of them. Since our land all adjoins, it is a cooperative effort.  My baby brother who lives in Oregon footed the bill.  My other baby brother has a tree planter thingy and Far Guy and I started planting yesterday. Hopefully in the next few days, everyone in the neighborhood will help with the planting!

Far Guy and I load up the three wheeler and the wagon and meander through the woods, planting as we go, giving each newly planted seedling a drink of water and moving on.  We haul the water in covered buckets in the wagon..that way we don't slop water all over.  I get a little pitchy..that is not bitchy..did you know that Avon's Skin So Soft removes pine pitch? Did you know if you pray really hard..just before going to plant..God moves all of the snakes out of your way too..at least it worked yesterday..and I have faith it will work again today.   Just in case I am going to continue wearing my red magic snake repelling boots.

These are White Pine seedlings or Pinus strobus.  They can grow really tall and live to be very old trees.  No we won't see them grow to be huge stately trees, but someone else will...someday maybe someone will say..remember back in the spring of 10..:)

Guyles Lake

"Wilderness is a resource which can shrink but not grow. Invasions can be arrested or modified in a manner to keep an area usable for recreation, or for science, or for wildlife, but the creation of new wilderness in the full sense of the word is impossible. " Aldo Leopold

Far Guy took me out the other day, I was pinging off the walls and it was a warm day( above zero!! ). We went for a short drive. We found this "lake home" ..beavers are opportunist's. They build where there is water and wood, they don't think about lake shore taxes when they build..they just know that winter is coming and they need a home. In this case he has his own private lake, Guyles Lake. No one lives on it because it is surrounded by a swampy reedy area. Swampy edges must be natures way of saving some lakes for wildlife.

I wouldn't exactly call this small little swamp locked lake a wilderness, but in it's own way it is. No humans live on it, there are no docks and no boats. It is desirable only to the wildlife. There are no houses with gardens and lawns to fertilize and run off into the lake. No one can possibly throw trash that far to make it a garbage dump, although its swampy edges do suffer from that fate. Over the years this lake has shrunk, and it's swampy areas have increased. When I was a child this lake had a swampy buffer but only a small one. In years that we had lots of rain, the water did reach the edge of the road. Am I the sole witness to this change over fifty years? Am I the only one who still appreciates a swamp locked lake, perfect for wildlife? :)