Montana is a great place to enjoy a wide variety of recreational activities including nature walks, bird watching, hiking, fishing and hunting as well as many others. However it is easy to overlook a common noxious weed scattered throughout the landscape. Houndstounge is a pesky plant that has widespread negative impacts to the landscape. More than likely anyone that recreates has encountered this plant and cusses its ability to stick to almost anything including your beloved pets and livestock. The plant is a tap rooted biennial which means it lives two years usually flowering and setting seed the second year. During the first year of growth the plant forms a rosette and a deep taproot. Th
Spring is here and the mice are busy looking for places to raise their families. Mice have bothered homeowners for centuries. They leave feces and urine everywhere, carry diseases and chew holes in things like electrical wires and insulation. Mice make eating their favorite past time. They eat 15-20 times per day. They are omnivorous, which means that they eat both meats and plants. Mice actually prefer fruit, grains and seeds but the common house mouse in fact will eat just about anything they can find. Mice have a travel range of up to 30 feet and prefer to build nests in the warmest parts of a structure such as areas near furnaces and hot water heaters. People tend to hear mice busily
Spring is here!! The blooming flowers, green grass and birds singing bring a smile to our faces but with that comes the dreaded box elder bugs. These bugs tend to blanket the sides of homes working their way inside around doors and windows. Box elder bugs are small and oval shaped. They also have wings and are identifiable by the red stripes along their bodies. During the spring and summer months they infest box elder, ash and maple trees. They lay their rust colored eggs in their host tree or on the leaves of the tree. The eggs hatch in a couple days and develop completely in a few months. The box elders eat plants such as flowers and leaves. They can destroy the trees that they live
Native or Noxious? As spring begins landowners in the Mission Valley and surrounding counties will soon be noticing tiny, white bunches of flowers covering the landscape. More than likely these will not be the beloved native wildflowers that we all love to see but rather a very invasive noxious weed known as Hoary cress or commonly referred to as Whitetop. This particular plant has the ability to out compete native grasses and forbs for moisture and nutrients which enables it to quickly become a monoculture. Whitetop is a perennial plant that spreads by both seed and root rhizomes. The success of this invader is due mostly in part to its high seed production rate and its ability to adapt to
"Your smile is your logo, your personality is your business card, how you leave others feeling after an experience with you becomes your trademark" This is one of my favorite quotes by Jay Danzie and the Xtreme Team works really hard to live by this quote. Have you ever been to a business when someone was less than pleasant, maybe the service wasn't what you expected or the owner/employee just didn't act like they wanted you around? I have experienced this and tried hard not to let it affect my feeling of the whole business and to be honest its really hard. Unfortunately that experience tends to stick with me. On the other hand I have been in businesses and left with such a positive feeli
