Feels Like Turkey Season

The pear tress have started to bloom and it was close to 80 degrees this weekend.  It's kind of crazy for the middle of March.  This is the kind of weather that we normally get in turkey season.  Ohio turkey season opens April 23 - are any of my hunting buddies interested in giving the farm a try this year?

When we pull into the driveway at the farm, Sydney gets excited and puts her paws up on the console.  This is what I saw when I got out to unlock the gate.  She must have had Spring Fever this week because she got all the way out the sun roof.

More evidence of Spring - the daffodils are blooming under the hi-rise stand.

Speaking of turkeys, it's not often that you find both a deer and a turkey in the same trailcam.

I took a quick spin on the atv to check cameras - I don't often do that in short sleeves in March.  Don't tell Joan that I wasn't wearing a helmet.

Van finished up the new room this week.  We're still fooling around with furniture arrangements and we are discussing whether we need some new stuff (bigger TV, etc).

The room looks great an, with 12' ceilings, it has lots of room for more mounts.

The windows brighten up the whole place.  I'm sure that we'll be fussing over decorating details for some time.

I am really worried about the new trees that I planted last week.  There was 2" of standing water on top of them.  I tried trenching to get the water away - what a mess.

The area that I picked is on top of the highest hill in 3 counties.  But, the soil is really heavy clay and even the slightest depression holds water and turns into a swamp.

We've had some rain but it hasn't been that wet.  It's crazy that this is such a swamp.

Hopefully the little trenches that I dug will do the trick but I'm not very confident.  The trees planted in previous years seem to be doing ok (cages in the background).

I sprayed some of the clover fields.  Two fields to control grass and two other fields for broadleaf weeds.  It seems early for this but they seem to be growing - don't want the pests to get established.

I did find one small shed antler.  I haven't really found any large antlers yet this year.

On a different subject, I've been taking the dogs for a walk at a park near home in Mason (Voice of America Park).  There's a large manmade lake and they planted small trees all around the shore.  Is it possible that we have beavers in suburubia?

There are missing trees all around the lake and they've all been gnawed off like this.

Somebody made an attempt to save the trees by wrapping them in plastic - only partially successful.

This was about 3' off the ground - what would do this kind of damage?

This was an impulse buy at Bass Pro Shops.  It's some sort of self-healing plastic.  You use it for a target and it jumps around when hit.  It's supposed to take 4000 hits from a 22-250 before failure.  I whacked it a few times with a 22 and I wasn't impressed.  I ran out of time - definitely requires some more experimentation.

And, although this has been a mild winter, Spring greenup is none too soon for this young deer.  She looks pretty thin.