Everything frosted over in the morning, no breeze, but silence. Just me and my new landscape. The slightest breeze starts picking up, and like a domino effect, the frost shatters and falls to the ground.
Category Archives: Trees
Center of Attention
As normal, January is covered in snow. This is the view in the windbreak. Evergreens feel like a natural fit during our wintery, snowy months. Their branches help stop snow and wind, and their green gives us a dabble of life in the dreary and otherwise dead season.
Ice Party
Some years it happens more than once, sometimes not at all, but this year the ice party has begun. We had some freezing rain that glazed everything in its path. This actually makes the evergreen trees quite beautiful, even though I have to worry about whether this will break some branches. Definitely don’t want wind […]
Goat Drought
We have stumbled into August. The pastures are drying up as the clouds have closed up any rain falling down onto us. The goats look for what little grass blades they can find. This is a good example of cool season grasses that are not really appropriate for this climate. Most of the established trees […]
Last of the Giants
Most of the large American Elms(Ulmus americana) have died decades ago. There has been one of these elms growing along a fenceline that is very large. It has a circumference over 10 feet. This summer I started noticing the Dutch Elm Disease signs in the canopy of this large elm tree, so soon it will […]
Maple Valley
Few years back I planted a lot of Silver Maples(Acer saccharinum) down in a valley. I fenced out this area from the cattle and removed barbed wire from an old fence. This is what it looks like currently: There are a few other types of trees, including a Northern Catalpa(Catalpa speciosa). It has started flowering […]
Hackberry Leaf Drop
My Common Hackberry(Celtis Occidentalis) dropped a lot of its leaves this year. It was not a pretty sight and have not seen this happen before. To my delight, it started to grow out new leaves, so ended up not being a major problem that was going to kill the tree.
Purple Spring
Every Spring I get to experience the vibrant Purple Beech trees leafing out. It is a variety of the green-leafed European Beech(Fagus sylvatica), which I also have. They are all slow growing trees, but Beech trees suppose to live for hundreds of years. Also when they are decades old, they suppose to produce Beech nuts […]
American Basswood
American Basswood(Tilia americana) is a common tree on my place. It attains a large size as this pic proves: When I came close to this tree to measure it, I saw a lot of rot inside the huge trunk, the whole inside is hollowing out. The circumference of the trunk is around 16 feet. I […]
Fall Colors 2002
Fall is a sad part of the year, there is less sun and everything starts to look drab. So what is there to help me through these cooler, dark months of the year? Well why of course, having some fall color on my trees helps me enjoy this letdown compared to the greener and more […]