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...]

  By Dr. Leonard Lee Rue III   When I wrote my book, The Deer of North America, in 1978, I had already been studying deer for 39 years and had taken thousands of photographs of them.  I have over 17,000 reference books in my personal library and I read 486 books and biological reports on deer in order make my own book as complete as possible.  One of the reports, in the Journal … [Read more...]

  (Quail populations are down by over 80% since the 1960s. Some have given up all hope of their return, but others are taking action, as described below.)   By Marie Majarov   Landowners and neighbors in rural western Frederick County dearly missed the once-frequent “bob-WHITE” whistle and coveys of northern bobwhite, our native Virginia quail scurrying across their … [Read more...]

  Beware of Zebra Mussels!  Really? A small bivalve? What are these clam-like creatures going to do, crawl out from the bottom of a river and slime us while we’re sleeping? No, but they are indeed a threat to our environment and the Division of Wildlife Resources has declared them to be an invasive species to be concerned about. Here’s what DWR has to say:   Zebra mussels … [Read more...]

  The Louisa County Sheriff's Office Animal Control Officers have confirmed a bear in the Bumpass area. It has reportedly killed 3 pigs and now a sheep and seems to be roaming between Louisa Farms Rd and Little River Farms Rd. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources has been made aware.  Please refer to their web page for what to use as bear deterrents to protect your livestock and … [Read more...]

  We have elk in Virginia, you know. The Game Department introduced them several years ago in the far west reaches of our state and the herd is prospering.  Below is an update from Jackie Rosenberger and Jessica Ruthenberg/DWR.   As we head into November, the elk breeding season (also known as the “rut”) is coming to a close. At this point, most females, referred to as cows, … [Read more...]

    (This is the second in a series on Invasive Species in Virginia)   By Ron Messina/DWR   It’s a typical summer afternoon on the Upper Chickahominy River. There’s a scattering of small fishing boats, and tons of wildlife everywhere you look—frogs, geese, turtles, and ducks. A bald eagle soars away, over the tall pine trees. Massive cypresses, anchored in … [Read more...]