Category: Local

May Flowers, courtesy of April Showers

Now past Memorial Day, I look back on how spring has been progressing in my neck of the northern New Hampshire woods. As usual, my personal obsession is with the flowers I see appearing. Along with a generous amount of dandelions, strawberry flowers, Canadian mayflowers and both violet and white violas have burst out of the front lawn. The back lawn has a glorious cluster of forget-me-nots, mostly blue but with a few white and pink ones sprinkled in. It gives me a good excuse for holding off on mowing the lawn.

Wildflowers appear in the patches of woods in my neighborhood.

Wood Anemones, wild flowers

I spotted this lovely patch of wood anemones just a short ways up the road from where I live.

Star flowers, Canadian Mayflowers, bunch berry and a solitary pink lady slipper have bloomed in the wood behind my home. The single flower of the lady slipper was a pleasant surprise as the plant had not put any blossoms for at least three years, something I attributed to the prolonged dry spell we had been having in northern New England. But the generous rains of last year must have given it a boost.

wildflower, Trout Lily

While technically a wild flower, I managed to convince a few trout lilies to grow alongside the foundation. Their yellow flowers, bowing their heads towards the ground, put on a quiet but pretty display along with large lavish green leaves.

Flowering bushes decorate many lawns around the neighborhood. Along with the forsythia and azaleas, there are flowering crab trees which seem to be putting on an extra lush display this spring.

flowering crabapples

But of course my all time favorite is the fragrant purple lilac bushes. Their wonderful odor conveys the essence of springtime as nothing else does for me.

purple lilacs

This bush is popular enough so that the nearby town of Lisbon, New Hampshire has a Lilac Festival every Memorial Day weekend, rain or shine.

Now on to June! Happy springtime to all.

April Showers

Been under the weather the past week or so. Don’t have too much to write about but I do have some pictures.

Spring Jonquils

Bright yellow jonquils are making a nice showing this spring. Rains have been adequate and the flowers obviously approve.

day lilies growing near foundation of house

By the south facing foundation are growing my mother’s daylilies. I have no idea what variety they are but they are an attractive orange when in full bloom. The warmth of the house foundation often starts them early, poking up through the mulch as early as February though they wait until it gets really warm before they really get going.

day lilies growing out onto lawn.

The patch of day lilies in the center of the above photo are actually growing out onto the lawn and will need to be dug up. The trick is to find a spot on the front bank where I can place them, as I have already done this several times with previous ‘escapes’.

It’s raining again today with thundershowers. Here’s hoping April showers bring more May flowers.

Happy May!

That Time Of Year Again

seed catalogs

With March beginning near the end of this week, has come the time when I begin deciding what to plant. Seed catalogs usually begin arriving around Thanksgiving but continue on through the winter. It’s fun to look at them but I really can’t get into the mood for planting until the days have grown noticeably longer and the weather begins to warm.

This past winter has been light on snow and mild (relatively speaking) in temperature. Decades ago it was routine to see below zero Fahrenheit temperatures often days at a time. Cold snaps of this sort could be counted on to show up at least twice, if not more, at some point during the winter, usually in January or February.

Thermometer showing below zero Fahrenheit

Not this winter. While it came close to zero degrees Fahrenheit several times, the sub-zero temperatures have been strangely absent. For northern New Hampshire this is beyond unusual. Officially we’re at Zone 4b on the USDA hardiness zone map as it currently exists. But unless we get some seriously frigid temperatures over the next two or three weeks, this winter’s temperatures have suddenly bumped my area up to a zone 6. This may just be an unusual winter but it makes it hard to plan when to plant and what conditions I am likely to expect. That’s always hard anyways but these wild oscillations really play havoc with any gardening plans.

Still, I’ll go with the old standbys which I like, such as potatoes, peas and carrots. Those tend to be pretty reliable. I’ve bought Swiss Chard seeds, something I’ve always had difficulty growing, but hope springs eternal. Light snow this winter may very well mean a dry summer, so the drip hose will be coming out, especially if I plant potatoes and carrots as well as wax beans, another favorite.

I also bought a seed packet of Pinwheel Marigolds this past week and got a good laugh when I read the back of the packet.

seed packet with typo

If they grow the way it says, I will have to call my brother over with his chainsaw to cut a few blossoms for me. Not sure what I’ll do for the vase.

Have a happy Saint Patrick’s Day and a productive March.

Saint Patrick's Day cat

New Years Eve 2023

Well, another year has come and nearly gone. When I look out into the front yard this is the view I have.

View of front yard December 30 2023

The total lack of snow is quite notable. While we have had snowless Christmas’s before, they were few and far between back when I was young. It was more customary to have at least five inches of snow on the ground, if not more, by the beginning of the New Year. Now it seems to be more like every other year. Thanks to climate warming, this is the new norm.

The implications for gardening are hard to measure. With insufficient snow pack, some plants cannot make it through the winter should there be a sudden severe cold snap. Weed and insect pests which might have died from the cold can now make it through to spring. All this requires adjustment on my part when planning a garden. What will do best come summer? What soil amendments will be needed? How heavy or light will the rain be? This past year was quite wet, a change from the semi-drought conditions of the past decade. But these are questions that have always come up no matter what climate change has done or not done.

Many months lie between now and spring allowing me to peruse the latest batch of seed catalogs and mull over what to try in 2024.

Have a happy New Years!

New Year's Eve

November Notes 2023

November seems to have run its course very quickly. The first few snowfalls have whitened the landscape, though mild weather still returns often enough to melt it away. Thanksgiving has come and gone. Christmas now looms. A fresh coating of light snow from some unsettled weather this past weekend gives the lawn outside the appearance of winter, even though technically it’s still late fall and not all of the leaves have gotten raked up.

A morning walk several weeks ago turned up this interesting discovery.

sapsucker holes

A fallen branch from an old beech tree shows a series of holes drilled into the bark. This is the work of a type of woodpecker called a sapsucker. In New Hampshire, it’s the yellow-bellied sapsucker which abounds.

yellow-bellied sapsucker woodpecker

Like other woodpeckers, it feeds on insects, berries and fruits, but it derives its name from its habit of drilling neat lines of holes in live trees and feeding on the sap that oozes out. Healthy trees can tolerate the minor damage caused by the birds, though sickly ones may eventually succumb if the damage is significant enough. For the most part, these little holes, or sapwells as they are sometimes called, can serve a beneficial purpose. Other birds, insects and small mammals like squirrels will also feed on the oozing sap, exploiting an important food source.

woodpecker hole

The sapsucker nests in cavities they excavate in tree trunks. Once the nestlings are raised, other birds such as swallows and bluebirds will make use of the ready made holes for their own young.

Because of these modest but helpful benefits, sapsuckers are regarded as a keystone species in the northeastern woods of North America. If you’re interested in seeing these small birds, they will frequent bird feeders and appeciate suet placed out for them. So keep an eye peeled for them this winter.

Have a happy holiday season.