Summer has been winding down the past few weeks much too fast for my liking with Labor Day less than two weeks away. Officially the first day of fall doesn’t arrive until September 22. The fall equinox is when day and night are of equal lengths, a mirror image of the spring equinox. Nature itself slowly segues from summer into fall rather than making an abrupt transition, giving us a chance to make our preparations for the season change.
It’s a bit too soon for the big leaf color change which leaf peeping tourists are so fond of as that really doesn’t get underway up here in Northern New Hampshire until the end of September and into early October. A few trees here and there are already making the transition but these are plants which are somewhat stressed and sickly, not surprising since we did have drought conditions early in the summer which makes life difficult for even the healthiest plants.
A better sign of late summer is the appearance of goldenrod and wild aster flowers, eagerly visited by bee, wasps and the occasional butterfly. Monarch butterflies begin their annual migration in August, travelling 50 to 100 miles a day, depending on weather conditions. These fall butterflies do not reproduce but head to wintering grounds where they hunker down, not moving northward until about March, breeding and surging back until the cycle is complete and a new migration begins
I have seen a handful of Monarchs these past few weeks which makes me hopeful the species can hold on but their wintering grounds are under seige from humans and climate change so unless the butterflies can adapt to these changes, the amazing migrations they make will likely become a thing of the past, like the migrations of passenger pigeons.
The flowers did well, once the rains finally came. Onion chives, marigolds, catchfly and cosmos all put on a good show attracting many insects. Bumblebees, small butterflies, solitary bees all visited the blossoms as they opened up. An unusual visitor also showed up, one I don’t see very often.
The sphinx moth often confuses people not familiar with wildlife. It beats its wings so fast, it sometimes gets confused with hummingbirds and in fact is sometimes called the hummingbird moth. This one paid numerous visits to the pink catch-fly flowers which seed themselves profusely in my vegetable garden and seem to ignore my efforts to try reseeding them in the flower garden where they belong.
The vegetable garden is winding down as well, with the wax beans petering out and the cucumber vines beginning to wither. Carrots and potatoes look good though I will not dig those up until the fall. In the case of the potatoes, I passed on the pricy seed potatoes being offered in the catalogs I receive. Instead, I took a few organic Yukon Gold spuds purchased at the local food coop, sliced them up and planted them. These sprouted quite well and grew quickly, producing flowers and remaining potato bug free. Interestingly, some of the blossoms went on to produce small fruit resembling green tomatos, not surprising since they are both members of the nightshade family. Potato berries (as they are called) are not edible, being full of solanine, giving them a bitter taste and inducing great intestinal distress for anyone silly enough to try and eat them. It is possible to get seeds from them, but as the potatoes are hybrids, they will not breed true. Still it might be an interesting experiment to try on some occasion, just to see what you get.
When venturing into deep woods, you may come across something like the picture below.
This is referred to as a nurse log. It is the result of a large tree dying, then falling to the ground. As it decays, seedlings take root on it and grow using the rotting trunk to fuel their own growth. It’s a form of recycling and is one of the reasons to leave dead wood where it falls, so that nutrients will remain for the next generation of trees. Some might complain that fallen trees create a fire hazard but fire is part of the natural cycle of growth. As with the process of decay, fire will help release nutrients faster, helping pave the way for new growth.
Seedlings are quick to exploit any new opening for themselves. Sometimes though, they do jump the gun a bit. On a morning walk, I noticed two tiny trees sprouting in the crotch of a still living tree. It’s not likely they’ll make it as the tree looks healthy and not likely to perish anytime soon.
Still, hope springs eternal. Hope your summer has been a good one.