Yes I was hearing the robins last few days but today I saw a male and female in my birch tree so funny as they are usualy one ground the poor things were flapping there wings like what on earth are we doing in Mi. dont ya know it is snowing here today ha. I had to laugh. Happy Spring yeh right. poor things and us too. I have my grow light in basement ready but havenot started my peppers and tomatoes will wait 8 weeks before planting for tomatoes and a bit longer for peppers. It is exciting I have some wintersowing flowers been watching but not much moving yet.

I don't have much to add here--Tom has covered everything, I think. But I can elaborate: I like your spacing, and as Tom says, You should not have to thin for quite a while. You can thin when some trees seem too crowded, and then take out the weaker ones or the ones that seem less attractive. Eventually, if you thin out every other one that will give good final spacing. But if two really nice trees grow close to each other, leave both and thin out trees on the other sides. You will have irregular spacing, but I prefer that to leaving weaker trees. You can decide what looks best to you. As for the deer--the browsing should be a minor problem, but a few, at least, will have their tips nibbled off. That is really disturbing when the trees are so little, but in the long run it is not too serious. After the trees grow up more, or if there are a lot of NS in the area, deer will know they don't like them and they will leave them alone. A bigger problem for me here in Winchester, VA is the buck rubbing. The deer destroy trees completely this way. Their being next to a road may reduce that, especially if there is some fair level of traffic. The repellent may, or probably will, stop this. Also a fence around each one is a good idea, if possible, or a small "T" post (the lighter grade 4 footers may do the job) next to each one can stop it. I just planted a 900 foot double row NS screen--about 180 trees plus a bunch more for possible replacements, and I will be using fences, "T" posts, and repellent. But deer in different areas act differently--where my timberland is in the MD mountains, the deer don't focus on NS for buck rubbing. Maybe in your area they won't bother them this way. Maybe you can wait and see if it is a problem--watching carefully each day starting in September, and then if they start the buck rubbing, take fast measures. If you see one tree buck rubbed some--the critter more than likely will come back and do more. Here in Winchester the bucks return to pine and spruce trees until they completely, and I mean completely, destroy them. --Spruce

How about an update, mboston?

Jim, losing a pecan tree is hard. We expect them to live a long time. We thought we might keep our tree, but I've limbed it up so much the top towers way up there and if it went it would be taking the roof with it. Only a few shingles are messed up this time. Yes, what to do with the shade plants will be the challenge here too. Also wondering what to do with the huge coral vine that would travel to the top of the tree every year. Gail, I knew this time might come someday and have planted a few small ornamental trees around the yard to hopefully take up the slack when the A. ash finally bit the dust, but they haven't had time yet to grow much so I'm planning to plant a Lacey oak for posterity. We had to laugh at our poodle, Sport. With the noise he went running outside with us, looked up at the limb and uttered one soft 'woof'. I've never known him to woof only once. It was like he was saying "Dang!" ... pretty much my thoughts too ... LOL