Continuing Series on Sugaring! 

There comes a time in every maple sugaring season when I feel compelled to share a bit of hard earned advice with my fellow sugarmakers. Paying heed could mean the difference between a successful final few weeks of the season and utter disaster...

Unlike the Ents in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, real trees can't walk away from danger or fight their own battles. When climate becomes inhospitable, forests can only shift ranges over long periods of time. This isn't a problem when natural climate change occurs slowly...

Found this hanging from the rafters of an old barn. What is it and what was it used for?

Every other week we run a photo of something unusual found in the woods. Guess what it is and you'll be eligible to win a copy of The Outside Story, a paperback collection of our Outside Story newspaper columns. A prize winner will be drawn at random from all the correct entries. The correct answer, and the winner's name, will appear in next week's column. 

This long rusty mark was found on a black cherry near our office in Corinth, Vermont. What caused it?

Trentepohlia is usually part of a lichen, but in this photo it's "free living" - not associated with a fungus to make a lichen. A lichen is a combination of a fungus (the mycobiont) and an alga or sometimes blue-green bacteria (the photobiont). Trentepohlia is a green alga but it looks red (or yellow or orange) because the chlorophyll is masked by carotenoid pigments.

We thought for sure we'd get to keep our book this time around. But no. We had a number of correct guesses, proving once again that it's very hard to stump our readers.