We went for a nice walk in the woods this afternoon. It was just the right temperature, but we found there are already black flies around so we had to keep moving. I hope since black fly season seems to have come early, we'll be rid of them earlier than usual, too.

It was lovely in the woods, but we found many tree tops on the ground, snapped off tall spruce trees by the wind. There were a few that were uprooted, but mostly the top 10-20 feet of a lot of those tall, stately evergreens had been whipped by the wind last winter enough to break them off. We've never seen as much of that kind of damage before. We have found tops of trees broken off from time to time, but today there were dozens of them.

We had a hard time finding our old walking paths. The lumbering that was done on the land above us has so changed the landscape it's really hard to tell exactly where you are; and then there were the fallen trees. We found we were constantly adjusting our route to go around the debris. It's usually a good idea to follow the trails of deer, but apparently they have had the same problem and it seemed as if there were no "paths." We saw lots of deer tracks and a few moose tracks.

I always move whatever is in the pathway as I go through the woods, throwing branches and broken limbs aside and breaking off the dead twigs that are sticking out to snag your clothing or scratch bare arms. Fred laughs at me, reminding me we probably won't take the same route through the woods again. Today I started off doing all that work as usual until I finally realized there really was no more "path" to clear, and until the leaves are out we will certainly not take the same route again.

Here is a short slide show of where we were today. I'm sorry you can't hear the birds and smell the woods - the dry leaves, the wet muddy swamps, the faint sweet smell of daphne. We didn't find many flowers, but it's early yet. Woods Walk

I received this from my friend, Bonnie Dannenberg who loaned the Ruth Stout No Work Garden Book to me:
Hi Jane,
Read your blog and I'm dropping a note to say I must respectfully disagree
with the comment from Steve Allen: ". . .hay and straw are no-nos!!! . . .
release their seeds into your garden soil . . ."

Ruth Stout, in her "No-Work Garden Book" does not recommend a thin
layer of hay, but a *very*deep*layer*, eight to twelve inches thick I believe.
On page 7 of her book she says: "I am asked over and over why isn't it
bad to mulch with hay which is full of weed seeds? Well, if the mulch is
thick enough, the weeds can't come through. When I say this, people
then invariably ask why it is that the vegetable seeds come through and
weed seeds don't; this is because heavy mulch is on top of the latter, but
not the former. As I said above, a planting of small seeds shouldn't be
covered with mulch, or at the most a narrow board, strip of paper or
half-inch of sawdust will keep the ground soft and moist." {This would
be until the plants are large enough to draw the hay mulch up closer to them.}

The key to her system is that she has a very deep covering of hay on the
garden year round. If she sees a weed, she just throws hay on top of it
and it dies. As the hay rots, she adds more (and scatters her kitchen
vegetable waste on the garden, which she then covers with more hay.
She says there is no odor.) She had her soil tested and it lacked nothing
as a result of using the continually rotting mulch. She also has not plowed
or tilled in years, because the hay mulch keeps the soil soft, rich and moist.

As far as grass clippings, I wouldn't have enough from our small lawn in
10 years of mowing! :-) Anyway, I highly recommend the Ruth Stout
book to everyone.
Bonnie Dannenberg

Bonnie has a nice garden every year, so I guess it must work well for her. As I said before, it saves your back and lots of time. I found last year that I had to keep a really think layer of grass clippings around the plants to keep the weeds from coming through.