thinking out loud

[dick benbow]

Sanke 56,
was real impressed to hear of your scots pine! wow! sounds like a beaut!
was looking at some just the pther day in two gal pots and one had a more bluish tint than the others. internodes were too long tho!

Motown,
used to be a buckeye. would head every spring to the u.p. and chant my mantra " I wish again to fish again, in michigan". used to fly fish the pere marquette for browns. daughter married and moved to illinois so still have a midwest connection.

it's been fun getting to know all of the contributors on this board as people not just koi keepers only!

[Bern]

Motown.

surprised and devestated to hear about EAB. Having once been a regular traveller to the States I was always impressed with the controls on plants etc at the customs areas.

The UK had a similar problems some 15 years ago with a disease known as Dutch Elm Disease which wiped out a high percentage of healthy trees in a short space of time.

rgds BERN

[Andrew]

and Dutch Elm Disease is still here Bern, I lost eight large elms two years ago, about 14 year olds.
'twas the dreaded beetle choking them!

[Sanke56]

Yes some of the introductions we have done around the world are devastating. Many are early efforts at biological control ie rabbits to Australia and the cane toad wow. In Alberta we are using grass carp and silver carp for weed and algae control but they are triploid and not able to reproduce so they don't take over. The silver carp eats suspended algae sort of a filter feeder. I am sure they are used in other countries too but we are having a go at them here.

Scots pine can have yellowish and bluish tinges to them. I have a cultivar that gets a yellowish tinge in winter it is very hardy and doesn't sun scald.
We get a lot of sunscald here in winter when the days get longer and the sun reflects off the snow and the tissue gets dried out.

[Motown]

Dick/Bern:

It's kinda a sad sight to see. As you travel from the farming south to the wooded UP (Upper Penisula) in the north you would always see mixed forest areas along I-75 and US-23. In the summer, these forests look like the first few weeks of spring when only the soft wood trees have leaves. After the Elm disease in the last decade, this has been devastating to SE lower Michigan. I have never seen anything move so fast, I never realised how high the Ash percentage was.

Dick:

Pere Marquette, (http://www.peremarquette.org/maps.cfm) that a great place to fish. I hiked that area about 10 years ago. Heres last weeks fish report: http://www.fishbaldwin.com/Reports/Reports.cfm

I hope no one has a problem with this.