Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to reuse Ziploc bags? We go through literally thousands of Ziplocs a year at our house, and it seems such a waste to be able to use these plastic bags just once. But I had heard of reusable bags, and I tried a pack. They are called Re-Zip bags and they work extremely well. The bags come in both Stand-Up and Lay-Flat sizes. They are leak proof - really … [Read more...]

  Is there such a thing as a State Record for a fallfish? Apparently. A fellow named Josh Dolin caught one of these “trash fish” on the Cowpasture River on May 6. He weighed it in at 3 ½ pounds and they say that’s a new Virginia state record. Fallfish are nightmares to trout fishermen. They live in the same kinds of waters. Two fallfish I have caught in the past stand out in my … [Read more...]

  Ever wonder why there are so many deer in Virginia? When a doe has four at a time, it’s easy to see how there are now over a million animals in our fair state. My buddy, Chris Johnson, sent me this picture of a mother deer with four little ones resting in the shade. With quadruplets, she certainly has her hands (hooves) full. Jimmy Graves of Graves Mountain Lodge told me not long ago … [Read more...]

“Bob white! Bob-bob-white!” That’s a call very few hear anymore. It’s the call of a male quail in the spring, searching for a lady friend. Unfortunately, there are very few quail remaining, but my daughter Angelin recently sent me an audio of a quail whistling behind her house in Adams Farm, a suburb of Greensboro. Nearby are some fallow fields (awaiting development) and somehow a few quail have … [Read more...]

  Some unexpected visitors appeared in our back yard this week – about 25 or 30 of them and they went skinny dipping in our goldfish pond. It was a large flock of Cedar Waxwings and what beauties! I have been seeing Cedar Waxwings in the last few years, but only passing through. I see them along about this time of year and again in mid-fall. I suppose they migrate through this … [Read more...]

  I had never eaten a morel until my old friend Carl Oakes asked if I wanted a few. Not wanting to offend, I said, “Sure”, but I had no idea what they were or what to do with the strange looking spores. Later I found out that morels, wild mushrooms, were mountain delicacies and highly desirable. On several occasions since then, I have taken to the hills and picked them myself. … [Read more...]

  I am still enjoying my Christmas tree. Really. No, it’s not decorated and clad in lights and ornaments. It’s a little, brown, actually, and sitting beside our patio firepit. I clip off the dry branches and limbs, put them in the bottom of the firepit when I’m ready for a fire, light it with a piece of newspaper and “Whoosh!” It’s up in flames. The dried branches and twigs make … [Read more...]

My daughter, Angelin, gave me a birdhouse made of moss for Christmas. I thought at first it was a gag gift. It looks like it once belonged to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I put it in the shed. This week, I remembered it, drug it out and hung it on a Shepherd’s Crook with a baffle. The house may look weird, but it has some extraordinary features. The house is made of wicker and green moss … [Read more...]

Nancy gave me a soil testing kit for my garden two Christmases ago, but like most things with more than one page of instructions, it went directly to the basement to spend its life waiting for someone who didn’t flunk Organic Chemistry in college. My son Jimmie was home last weekend, dug up the kit and tested the soil in my garden. It turns out the soil was slightly acidic, and the nitrogen and … [Read more...]

I planted a Christmas Tree in my garden last week. Well, I didn’t plant it so much as I drug it out of the living room, out into the back yard and tossed it into my garden to sit a spell. In the meantime, I heated an old jar of peanut butter in the microwave, then poured it on the drying branches of the tree and sprinkled bird seed on top. I have now converted our old Christmas Tree into a new … [Read more...]