Heartfelt thanks

Posted May 16, 2013 at 10:05 am

I feel guilty at times being unable to answer all the letters and e-mails we get from those of you who read this column. There are just too many to answer properly and I am not going to send out some pre-arranged universal message to everyone. So I will use this column to thank all of you who sent cards and condolences on the loss of my mother and my uncle Norten and my uncle Roy McNew, all of whom died within just a couple of weeks of each other. It is great to know that so many people read this column and care that much. From my heart, thanks to you all.

There are notes and messages about other things, and I can’t answer the bulk of them because I just don’t have the time. Putting

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    Forsythias and spring flowering shrubs

    by Susanne Howard, guest author

    Along with the spring flowering bulbs, nothing says spring to me like the bright big yellow beacon of a forsythia in bloom. They are often accompanied by coral-colored flowering quinces, and followed a little later by white spireas, and again a little later by red or pink weigelas. Many of these large (8-12 feet high and wide) shrubs have been around long enough to be considered heirlooms.

    Covered in flowers, their impact is huge. Bees and hummingbirds (for the weigelas) love them. But

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    Top 10 tips for long-living trees

    Trees, like people, have a life span. They live, they flourish, they die. University of Missouri Extension agronomy specialist Pat Miller, Nevada, offers her Top 10 practices for prolonging the life of your tree.

    1. Don’t plant too deep

    Planting too deeply can cause roots to encircle the tree and eventually girdle and choke it, Miller says. “This invisible killer often doesn’t cause a problem for many years.”

    Dig the hole only as deep as the soil ball. For more information, see the MU

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    Harmful ornamental

    An oft-planted ornamental tree – Bradford pear – has become an invasive species that harms native plants or trees that support wildlife. Property owners and managers are urged to consider native alternatives, such as the downy serviceberry tree, as they plant new trees this spring.

    Bradford pears are a common landscaping tree because they’re adaptable to soil and shade conditions, and in early spring they produce a profusion of white blooms. They were long considered safe for the environment because it was

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    The last bass

    It was early October of 2010, and the first falling leaves were floating along the river beside us. Uncle Norten and I had enjoyed a great day of fishing. The bass had been hitting, and I marveled at how well he could cast and fish at his age of 87.

    He had begun to have trouble remembering how to get to the river, but he had no trouble remembering how to fish a spinner-bait, or bounce a jig

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    Deer hunting, then and now

    I remember what deer hunting was like back when I was a boy. I am utterly amazed at how it has changed. Some very good hunters regularly visited Dad’s pool hall where I worked as a kid. Most of them were rural people who knew all about deer and how they moved. At that time in the mid-60′s I would estimate the Ozarks of southern Missouri had about 10 to 20 percent as many deer as we have today. In those times, if I remember right, the season was only a few days and

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    Fish biting at night

    Lake Stockton Report

    by Michael Weis

    Stockton State Park Marina

    A couple of guys brought in a lot of crappie the last couple of nights. They said they were using lights.

    The crappie were keepers, but not much bigger than keepers.

    We have a few crappie beds throughout this area.

    People have been bringing in a steady amount of catfish. They are using perch on trotlines and jugs. The cats run up to 10 lbs. a couple of blues but mainly flatheads.

    Bluegill

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    Walleye bite in August in Canada

    It was hot last year, too, the first week of August.

    We wondered what the weather was like in Canada. Sondra Gray, who is the editor of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal which I publish, loves to fish, and her husband, David, had a vacation coming up. Gas was high, about 2.59 a gallon, if I remember right, but a display company in Minneapolis had asked me to build an old time wooden johnboat about 10 feet long and they would pay my expenses for delivery. So

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    Regular spring turkey harvest totals 40,447

    Hunters checked 40,447 turkeys during Missouri’s regular spring turkey season, up by 2,120 from 38,327 last spring, or about one percent. The harvest of 4,319 turkeys during this year’s spring youth weekend, March 31 and April 1, brought the 2012 spring turkey harvest to 44,766, up about one percent from 2011. Youth hunters harvested 3,893 turkeys during the 2011 spring youth weekend for a 2011 spring total of 42,220.

    Top harvest counties during the regular 2012 spring turkey season, April 16 through May 6, were Franklin with 852, Texas with 803 and

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