Nature – New Hampshire Green Leaves Blog

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.

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?

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

That Time Of Year Again

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Summer’s End 2023 (part 2)

With this past summer winding down and the first day of autumn this Saturday, I like taking a look around before the fall chill really starts to bite down. A few leaves have begun turning color, although the real show won’t begin for a few more weeks. Small flocks of birds are starting to congregate, in preparation for their migration south for the winter. The raised beds are past their prime with the potatoes having matured, their greenery dying back. Those I will leave in the ground for the time being. Wax beans have mostly gone by, with the last batch being just enough for a meal.

Zucchini has never done well for me, with only a single zuke on the vine that looks like it might actually amount to something, the others having withered and dropped off the plant without getting any longer than my thumb. This can be due to missing soil nutrients such as calcium or inadequate pollination by insects. Since I have seen a decent population of bumblebees this summer, I suspect that the soil may be the issue. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Carrots didn’t do all that great, with poor germination by the seeds this past spring. I had to replant and even then the seed sprouted slowly in a very desultory fashion. The excess amount of rain we received this summer may have affected their growth. Those that did grow will stay as long as possible in the ground before I pull them up to see how they did.

The carrots left over from last year that I planted as an experiment, blossomed profusely. Many, though not all of the flower heads are going to seed. I noticed with some surprise that ants seemed to favor the blossoms, climbing around on top of the flower heads. My initial suspicion was that they were farming aphids, but close examination of the flowers and stems showed no sign of aphids. Apparently the ants seemed to like the flowers themselves, but whether they did any pollinating is hard to say. I have seen ants on wild sarsaparilla blossoms also, so they may do a bit of pollinating here and there.

The last few weeks of September are when stores such as Home Depot and Walmart fill up with fall mums. The grocery stores offer them up as well. There seem to be just three main colors (that I saw), white, yellow and deep purple. I haven’t seen any of the orange-bronze color yet. As many of my potted flowers are going – well – to pot, I dug some of them out and planted fall mums.

Fall wildflowers put on a bold display with goldenrod and asters predominating. My personal favorite is the New England aster.

The blossoms are a vibrant purple with orange centers. Bees, wasps and yellowjackets zoom around over these tall flowers, eagerly pollinating them. Herbalists make use of these plants, employing the stems and root for relieving pain and healing wounds. The root by itself is claimed to ease diarrhea and fever. I haven’t had occasion to try them out, much preferring to just admire them and try sowing the seed heads about after they finish blooming in the hopes of helping them spread. If this plant does have medicinal value, it’s worthwhile to have as many as possible.

That’s all for this month. Hope your summer was a pleasant one.

Summers’ End 2023

As summer draws near its end, I like looking back at the season gone by. The biggest impression I have of it is the rain. Rain,rain,rain,rain,rain…etc. You get the picture. For almost a decade now, the summers have been abnormally dry, creating moderate to severe drought conditions in New Hampshire. Now the pendulum has swung in the other direction. For the month of July we received nearly 10 inches of rain in the northern half where I live, about triple what the average rainfall usually is. While I didn’t measure the rain in June, it seemed to be a similar amount. Flash flooding in the southern half of the state was severe, with many roads getting washed out and farmers getting their fields too soaked for anything to sprout. August has been drier with about four inches as of the 21^st, but there’s still a few weeks to go.

The plants of course have been loving it. You can almost hear a collective green sigh: Finally some decent rain! After the freak hard freeze of mid-May, oak trees quickly rebounded with new growth, though I see no sign of acorns. Mosquitoes, after a noted absence during the dry years, have experienced a renaissance, back in full force and as ferociously hungry as ever.

I expected to see a bumper crop of mushrooms this year but was surprised to see they are in no more abundance this summer than last. Still, one type of mushroom popped up in the back yard that I haven’t seen for a couple years; the morel.

I’m not a mushroom eater, so I left this specimen to run its life cycle and drop its spores for the next round of morels.

I spotted this patch of ghostpipes about a month ago. Many people, unfamiliar with the plant life in their neighborhoods, confuse these with mushrooms but they are actually a vascular plant, a flower in the same family as heather. Ghostpipes are parasitic, feeding off certain fungi in the soil. Because of this, they have no need for chlorophyll, hence their white coloration.

Mullein is an herbaceous biennial, preferring roadsides and waste areas. This particular plant is in its second year, going from the rosette above in late spring to this in late summer….

Just over four feet in height, it will drop its seeds in late summer and early fall, sowing the next generation. I’ll be collecting a few seeds and see if I can get this plant to grow on the bank in front of my home.

My garden loved the drenching rains as well.

The echinacea is quite tall this year at over four feet (you can see some beebalm in the background).

Phlox, both pink and white, are blooming profusely.

Black eyed Susans are doing well. I have both a domesticated version as well as the wild form. This is the domesticated flower.

I’m trying a experiment this year. At the beginning of the growing season, I found I still had several carrots which I had grown last year, in the bottom of the refrigerator drawer, unused. They had bright green leaves sprouting from their tops, so on a whim I planted them to see if they would grow.

They quicky took off with great gusto as the above picture shows, obviously ready for the second half of their life cycle. Carrots are biennials. The roots we see in the stores are the first year growth. The second year they produce flowers looking much like Queen Anne’s Lace, which isn’t surprising since Queen Anne’s is a wild ancestor of the store-bought carrot. They will hybridize quite freely, producing their ancestral form rather than the carrots we’re fond of.

Since there’s no Queen Anne’s Lace growing nearby (that I know of), the carrots I’m using, a Yellowstone and a Chanteray, should have each other to cross with. Yellowstone is open pollinated but I’m not sure about the other as the seed packet is long gone. Any seeds I collect, will be planted next year. What will grow, if anything, is anyone’s guess. Stay tuned!

Hope you all had a happy summer.

Peace, man.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30