Finally!!!! I saw on last year's thread that I reported hearing the peepers sing April 1 or 2. This relentlessly cold spring it was April 26 here in Danby, Vermont, three and 1/2 weeks later than last year! And I *have* been faithfully listening for them nearly every night now. I really thought they had all perished or decided to stay under the mud all summer, but fortunately they live!

Well, spring has now exploded here today and it seems to be much more of an "overnight" sort of thing than it is some years. Here's the latest new signs of spring: all over Marietta (but not in our yard) the ornamental pears have burst into bloom. Plums are blooming and so are some peaches, but not the ones in our yard. (I do expect my Ranger peach to begin blooming tomorrow. The buds are already pinking, and just a couple of days ago they didn't look like they were doing anything at all.) More and more daffodils are blooming every day, and not just the early ones either. The maples have red bloom showing here in the same way that you mentioned, and some of the native trees are leafing out, especially willows and elms. I love the new spring green of early leaves. The oaks are about to bloom and they have that "fuzzy" look about them. The water lilies are putting out new leaves fairly regularly. The tadpoles are bigger every day and the frogs are staying out in the sun...on lilypads or on the banks of the pond....a little longer every day. We're seeing quite a few moths and butterflies, and tons of birds. We've also got craneflies, ladybug beetles, mosquitoes, wasps and bees. No sign yet of green lacewings, dragonflies or hornets. I'm seeing lots of bunnies, moles, voles and field mice, but no snakes yet. Every day I notice more newborn calves in the fields, and occasionally a new colt. Oh, today I noticed the bermuda grass is starting to green up, although I am not especially excited about that. The rosebushes have a lot of new growth too. Everyone's winter wheat has looked just pitiful all winter due to the lack of moisture. Now, though, since a little rain fell last week, the wheat is looking much better....thicker, taller and better color already. Only a little snow here and a lot of it melted as soon as it hit, at least until the temps dropped below freezing around 10 p.m. last night By 10 a.m. this morning, though, it was all melted away. Lovely sunny skies here today and a repeat of that is expected tomorrow.

Diane, Like almost all fast-growing trees, Silver Maples tend to be weak-wooded and prone to disease. It also has surface roots that worsen over the years as the tree grows ever larger. The surface roots won't be a huge issue unless the tree is near enough to the house, a patio or a sidewalk to lift the concrete and cause damage. Although it is not my favorite tree, I don't especially dislike it. We kept the one in Fort Worth because its shade was the only shade we had on the west side of our house and I felt like the kitchen would have been unbearably hot on summer afternoons without it. I couldn't get anything much to grow in the soil under it because those big surface roots took up most of the space and apparently greedily sucked up the water too. Even normally rampant ground cover type plants couldn't compete with it and survive under it. So, whether to remove it or not is, to me, a personal thing based on whether you like the look of it, whether it gives you any trouble, or whether you'd just like to replace it with a better-quality tree now as opposed to 5 or 10 years from now when it develops pest or disease issues. Also, if it is anywhere near a planting bed of any type, when it sheds its seeds, they tend to pop up everywhere and have to be pulled out. I think if it were in my yard near the house and it was not essential for shading the house, I'd take it out and replace it with a high-quality tree. Fort Worth organic gardening guru Howard Garrett, aka The Dirt Doctor, is very blunt and tells it like it is. I've linked the description of the Silver Maple from his website because it makes me laugh every time I read it. He doesn't sugarcoat things, and when people would call in to his radio show with problems with silver maples, as you might imagine, he'd tell them to get rid of the tree and replace it with a better one. As you'll notice, he disses the mimosa in his answer, and I absolutely love mimosa and planted one here years ago for the hummingbirds, so I don't always agree with The Dirt Doctor. However, my mimosa is near my garden so I can watch the hummers visit its flowers, and it is not in a prominent place in the landscape. I wouldn't have put it up close to the house because, like almost all fast-growing trees, it too is weak-wooded and prone to insect problems. That doesn't make me love it any less, it just makes me keep it more in an out-of-the-way location. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Silver Maple Tree Info From Howard Garrett's Website

Near the end of winter, when New England gardeners are sick to death of snow and mud and dead vegetation, they despair of spring ever coming. The catalogs are worn, more plants have been ordered than the budget allows, yet the garden just sits and sulks. And so does the gardener, who can get unbearably whiny and pouty without green stuff to play with (just ask the spouse and family). Then one night comes a chorus of "peeping" from the distant woods that brings hope into the heart, and knowledge that there WILL be a spring this year, and SOON! Even New Englanders who've lived in the middle of a city for 20 years will respond joyously to the words "WE HAVE PEEPERS!" And so the word goes out each spring, and different localities of New England excitedly report the return of the peepers. And invariably a newcomer will ask "What on earth are they talking about? Is this a joke, like a snipe hunt or the search for a left-handed wrench?" Yes Virginia, there really are peepers, and they're frogs, not birds (no, this is not a joke). THE SPRING PEEPER: The critter is a tiny frog that used to be called Hyla crucifer, but has now been renamed Pseudacris crucifer. Frog taxonomists have the same mercurial habits as botanists - can't leave names alone. The peepers are still considered to be in the tree frog family; however, the herpetologists in their wisdom have decided that the peepers have more in common with the chorus frogs (Pseudacris species) than with the classic treefrogs (Hyla species), because of the size of their toe pads and the fact that they don't like to climb very high. Whatever you want to call it, the northern spring peeper is only about 1 1/4" (18 to 33 mm) long, tan or gray or brown with a dark cross on its back (whence comes the name crucifer). Like other frogs, it goes through a life cycle involving mating, laying eggs in water which hatch into tadpoles, which then metamorphose into frogs who head off onto dry land. The frogs overwinter in soil and can actually survive freezing. The peeper is found throughout the eastern U.S. and into Canada as well. THE CHORUS: Only the males sing, to attract the females. The males gather en masse, but each male stakes out his own little territory and starts calling. The individual calls have been compared to the "peeping" of a newly hatched chick, and the chorus has been compared to the jingling of distant sleigh bells. If you do a web search for "spring peeper" you'll find a number of sites which will actually allow you to hear the songs. If a female likes the song, she joins the male and they head off to the water to mate. TIMING: The breeding season is from March through May, but sometimes isolated peepers can be heard in the fall when the weather cools down. FIRST SPRING PEEPER REPORT IN NEW ENGLAND: 2006 - March 13 at the Connecticut shoreline Zone 6, reported by sooey. See the FAQ for other areas. ............................................................................................................................................................ WHY CARE? You might say, OK, there are frogs singing madly out there, but why should a gardener care? As Chelone, a Garden Web member says: "In case you don't know, "PEEPERS", are the "door bells" of spring in New England. They are the amphibian equivalent of the chorale in Beethoven's ninth symphony. To those of us who survive a New England winter (willingly or unwillingly) they are the harbingers of SPRING. ANYTHING RELATING TO "PEEPERS" POSTED IN MARCH/APRIL IS OF VITAL IMPORTANCE TO MANY OF US... Get it?!" ............................................................................................................................................................