Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Nice Weekend at Camp

Arlene, Mary, Tiny and I went to Camp early Saturday morning even though the weather forecast was for rainy and cold weather.

Arlene wanted to "house clean" the trailer and Mary and I would work on cleaning up the mess around camp from the winter. We got to camp about 10:30 AM and it was rather cool and cloudy so we made a nice fire and got to work.

Something is killing our beautiful spruce trees! I don't know if it is an insect infestation or a type of tree disease but it starts with the ends of the boughs turning a kind of yellowish-brown and then slowly the needles fall off and the tree limbs die. Does anyone know what this might be or how I can find out what it is???

Anyway, the high winds this winter caused the tops of three of our dead spruce to snap off leaving a big mess by my bow shack. Mary and I removed all of the limbs and cut those up to burn up in the campfire and then I cut up the trees for firewood.

We did other chores too and had quite the busy afternoon. By 4:00 PM Arlene had completely finished cleaning the trailer and we were just taking a break when it began to rain. Mary and I hustled inside to wait it out. We decided on a game of Phase 10 to pass the time. Soon the rain turned to HAIL and it was pelting down pretty hard.

I was going to make sandwiches for dinner but the girls were hinting that they would like something warm to eat, like maybe a hamburger. I soon realized that they meant they wanted to go down to the Hessel casino for dinner and some gambling fun.

Sunday dawned cool but sunny and after a breakfast of coffee and donuts we started cutting firewood for my Mom and Dad's woodstove. They burned quite a bit of the wood we cut for them last fall during the long, cold winter so they need stocked up.

Arlene's brother came up and cut up a bunch of downed dead trees and left them piled up to be picked up later.

Finally, about 3:00 PM we called it a day. Muscles that had remained unused all winter except for snow shoveling were pretty sore and tired so it was time to quit. We just sat and enjoyed the sunshine and the peace of being out in the woods.

Can't wait to go again this weekend!!

1 comment:

Judy Merrill-Smith said...

Cathy, is there a certified arborist around? Look in the yellow pages under "tree services." Those folks are trained in tree pests and diseases. You may be able to take an infected branch to the arborist for a diagnosis. The other option would be to take a branch to a master gardener -- does MSU have an extension up there?