Main photo:  
It's yellow ladyslipper time in the woods.  The blossoms last only a two or three weeks, but they are always a treat to see.  


Other broken oaks
A website devoted to Indian trail marker trees may offer some clues about our own "broken oak." 

Travel Tips
Everyone who travels has some ideas on how to make the experience more fun and less stressful.  A recent Wall Street Journal article offers some unique ideas. 
    On our latest 
trip, we decided in the future we will bring two clothespins with our names on them.  That way, when you stay at a hotel that encourages re-use of your towels to save water and resources, we can mark our towel and hang it up so we'll know whose is whose when we return to the room.  Sometimes it seems that housekeepers don't know how to differentiate, so they just give you clean towels.  We're hoping this idea will head off that problem.

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Just ahead...summer!

No story to go with this picture.  It speaks for itself.


Escape Wisconsin
Finding inspiration in Muir Woods
Superlatives are always open to question. At the entrance to Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco, the words of John Muir are written on a signboard:
"This is the best tree-lovers monument that could possibly be found in all of the forests of the world." We haven't seen all of the forests of the world, but it certainly has to be one of the best. It makes us a little jealous that we can't grow trees like this in Wisconsin, but we brought back a redwood seedling from the gift shop to give it a try. If it can survive our harsher climate, we'll just have to wait a few hundred years to find out how it does.
                        To read more, check out our report.

At the Farm
Early spring puts a mark on April
With everything in the natural world running three or four weeks ahead of schedule,
April just wasn't her usual self this year.  We were able to get the landscaping done in the first week and watch the grass start to come in for the new lawn.  We cleared a huge and tricky downfall over one of our trails in the pines; started the the annual war on invasives like garlic mustard and buckthorn with hand-to-hand combat and chemicals; and started a new trail up to the top of the hill.  This photo of rattlesnake plantain amid some buckthorn seedlings epitomizes our situation - natural beauty and "old friends" amid the scourge of invasives.  After several years of losing that battle, we feel we're ready to retake some ground this year.
     Find out more in our latest At the Farm report.