A Walk on the Land

The snow has melted.

It's 60 degrees.

Time to walk the perimeter.

Every good land owner knows when the snows are gone you must walk the fencerows to see what winter has wrought.

So Tom and I walked today the perimeter of The Land.

In the woods - no spring beauties yet, no mayapples or bloodroot poking through the duff. Give it a few weeks.

Here's where the deer knocked down the fence. If we don't keep them out they browse everything under 4 feet tall. We'll have to repair this soon.

We come up on spruce hill - the first place we planted trees with our three little girls. Here's the white pine Tom mowed down by mistake. Three years later it had grown back and now stands taller than Tom. We call him Ghost.

Check out the bird boxes. One has a wren's nest of twigs. Another has a blue bird nest. Two boxes are empty, but the bluebird pair burbling in the trees as I open the box tell me they are in the market for a home.

Here's Tom's tree house.


It didn't make it.



Pine Corner - wow! These pines are 20 feet tall! It's hard to believe I planted them so many years ago. Our district forester, Jason, told me I had just planted a deer buffet. They were 4 feet tall and just the right height for a deer to eat the top candle thus ending the trees upward growth.

But Jason had a solution.

Go to a near-by hotel and ask them for their soap stubs - the bits of soap people have used and left behind.
Rub the soap on the browse level branches.
Scrape some soap scraps on the tree.
Leave the last bits at the base.

It must have worked because every one of those 10 little trees flourished.

The Land itself is flourishing.
A haven for wildlife.

A walk in nature for Tom and me.