Bits and Pieces of January 2025

Chilly weather is biting this month, though nowhere near as hard. The lowest nighttime temperatures I’ve seen this month have been just 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a far cry from my childhood when 20 to 25 below zero F and even 30 below would occasionally accompany a real cold snap. The picture below dates from at least 10 years ago.

Thermometer showing below zero Fahrenheit



I only took a picture because such low temps seem to be a thing of the past (hope I’m not jinxing myself). This is one aspect of global warming I won’t complain about.

Snow has been sparse this winter. On January 19, there was about two inches or snow on the ground instead of the usual 6 to 8 inches. Additional flurries have left a dusting, maybe one time we got about three and half inches. This was dry snow, so dry that my brother was able to use a leaf blower to clear his driveway.

This is worrisome as it likely means a dry spring with the risk of brush fires. While New Hampshire is usually immune to the vast wildfires which plague the far West, smaller brush fires are not uncommon in the spring. The largest forest fire to hit New Hampshire was in April of 1941, the result of some unusually hot weather coupled with a huge amount of tinder left over from the Great Hurricane of 1938. WMUR, the state TV station, had a local color story giving an account of the event.
Only time will tell if we get any major fires this spring and summer.

Animals are stirring about. I have a plastic composter in the backyard where I collect leaves, spent flowers and weeds I yank up. Food waste also goes into it, but only after sitting in a compost bucket in the breezeway where it gets skanky enough so wild animals will turn their noses up at it. Even so, they still check the backyard composter once in a while. About a week ago, I noticed the lid was off. On checking I found a generous number of raccoon tracks around the composter. The material inside is still frozen solid, so I don’t think they found much that was palatable. I’m glad it was just raccoons rather than a bear, as bears can trash a plastic compost bin without too much trouble. That was the sad fate of one that I had many years ago, which is why I have the food waste in a ‘half-way’ house before I finally consign it to the composter. I figure even bears have their limits.

While it’s still mid-winter, I saw something this past week which is usually a sign of spring. A flock of robins came through, feeding on the neighbor’s lawn and visiting my hawthorn trees which still have berries on them. It was startling to see them and left me wondering if this meant an early spring. Previous to this, the earliest I had seen a robin was late February.

Robin in winter plumage


As mentioned in a previous post, I have begun baking bread again. Since it’s been so long, a learning curve needs to be renegotiated. So far, my loaves seem to want to deflate in the oven. I’ve gotten new yeast so the problem is likely over-kneading or possibly over-proofing. I do tend to be a little vigorous with kneading so will have to lighten up. The resulting loaves are still perfectly good for eating but not quite what I’m striving for.

One use for less than perfect loaves is to use them to make stuffing mix. A YouTube video by someone styling himself Wyyse Guy had a recipe that looked good. I made a few adjustments, leaving out the carrots and egg. There’s no need to wait for the bread go stale, you can just dry it out in the oven. As it was always my mother’s custom to add giblet meat to her stuffing mix (she used Bells Stuffing Mix for her breading), I saw a chance to use up the chicken livers I had bought at the local farmers’ market over the summer. After cooking and grinding up a few, I added them to the mix I had, along with the cooking water. Baking it all in a casserole dish produced some very pleasing results.

Well, that’s all for now. Have a good February.

Valentine's Day Heart

Return of the robins

Robin with nesting material

Well, here it is, nearly the end of June, and I have been engaged with a persistent nester-wannabe in the form of a robin. In spring of last year, I spent some time discouraging a robin attempting to build its nest on the motor of my garage-door opener. After some blocking tactics, the robin finally gave up and I was safe for the summer.

Well, once again this past May, nest building commenced once again on the door-opener motor (the same one since it’s a two-car garage). Since all robins look alike to me (forgive me for being prejudiced) there was no way to tell if it was the same bird or not. Robins only mate for the summer, then break up once breeding season is over. Interestingly, it is the female only who engages in nest building. I assume the male stands by and tries to give directions and maybe provides nesting material. But I suspect it was the same bird as last year.

I used the same strategy as last year and activity ceased, or so I thought. A few weeks ago, the garage-door motor in that part of the garage began malfunctioning, so I called the garage-door repair service people. A nice young man showed up, who was thorough and seemed to know his stuff. He cleaned out some remaining debris from the motor, checked its connections but could see no issues. The problem turned out to be the button on the wall which I use to open the door. It apparently had a short, so he replaced it and all was well.

It wasn’t until a day later, when I had left the door open for a while during the afternoon, that I discovered nesting activity had resumed with a vengeance.

nesting material

In a startling short space of time, the robin had returned and resumed building, I’m guessing at warp speed, for after chasing it off, I swept the above large ball of grass off the motor. It was already well shaped and ready for the mud addition for the interior. Talk about persistent! I would have thought that the robins would have already been involved with a nest they built somewhere else, but I suspect there was a nesting failure, so they were starting over. And of course there was this ideal spot they already knew of!

So I’m back to keeping the garage doors closed until such time as I think it may be safe. I hope.

Have a happy and safe July!

cartoon of nest building

Spring Equinox Tidbits

Well, last month the main topic was the abnormally warm weather we’ve had this past winter. That continued to be the case right through March up to and a bit past the Spring Equinox. Then this past Saturday, winter decided to take one last whack at us. Beginning early in the morning, a fine snow began falling at a great clip, rapidly accumulating. Weather forecasters had already put out the winter storm warning so I was stocked up grocery-wise in case I was snowed in. There had been a snow-fall several days before of about four inches.

By the time the snow had tapered off Sunday morning, there was sixteen inches of fresh snow on the ground on top of what we already had. Some places got as much as two feet. In all, I think we got more snow the first week of spring than fell all winter. Global wierding indeed.

Robins must listen to the weather forecast as they showed up in the front yard, the day before the storm, filling themselves up on berries from my two hawthorn trees, dislodging some cedar waxwings which had begun to feed.

Robin in winter plumage

The robins still had their winter plumage, which consists a large white patch at the base of their tails, spreading up to their abdomens, giving them the look of wearing their long undies. Being larger than the waxwings, they dominated the trees, though a few pine siskins and a house finch managed to sneak in a few bites.

Several weeks prior to this, I saw several small flocks of geese migrating overhead on their way back north. Thanks to the mild winter, there is open water for them to land on when they stop to rest. Lake Winnipesauki had ice-out declared on March 17, beating the old record of March 18 set back in 2016. Never mind what the calendar says, spring seems to be coming earlier every year. To add to the wierdness, Easter falls on the last day of the month with April Fools Day coming the very next day.

Now the weather has warmed above freezing again, melting away the snow. It should be mostly gone by Easter, just over a week after it dumped on us. A solar eclipse will be happening on April 8, but given how mercurial the weather is here, it may be cloudy when it happens. What next?

Giant rampaging kaiju rabbit

Well, here’s to hoping April won’t be too crazy. Have a happy Easter.