Posted 12:13 PM by Tamarack
After a few days of warmer weather maliciously encouraging our hopes, the cold drops down again. Our thermometer read -27 this morning; this will kill the bugs AND the trees. Many large and apparently healthy spruce have shattered in this combination of wind and cold. Others have been topped; they're firewood now.

Posted 1:42 PM by Tamarack
23 Feb./03 It has been a wonderful winter for cold: for whole weeks it barely climbed above minus ten. Naturally, I was eager to start crown lifting as soon as the weather warmed. I was pretty sure all that the nasty elm beetles were frozen stiff, so I started with my favorite tree: the young elm behind the tractor shed. Much of our recent snow has been in the form of ice pellets, so I was able to stand on the crust; this was as good as six-foot scaffolding all around the tree. I had already snipped away the suckers, so I took off the last rogue branch, leaving one main fork which I'm still sizing up: it looks a little too V-shaped to be strong enough for the long haul. Still, most of the natural trees in the area have co-dominant stems. I might just cut it back slowly while the other stem flourishes. Wildlife: a flock of snowbirds and one swamp deer (almost black and very fat).