June Observations

The month of June here in northern New Hampshire has seen its fair share of rain, a little more than three inches for the month compared with four and half inches last month. Fortunately it’s been spread out rather than coming in mass quantities all at once. There’s only been occasional minor localized flooding, nothing disasterous.

This month’s project has been tree removal. For years the white pines around my home have been growing taller and taller. Given that winds seem to being blowing more strongly than they used to, I figured it was time to take down some of them. I started with three pines all well over fifty feet tall as well as a large oak tree located beside my house. Two of the pines were just over the edge of the bank and the remaining pine and oak were at the end of an old defunct garden.

guy in bucket loader cutting tree


The space between my home and the steep narrow bank next to my property was kind of a tight squeeze but with a bit of jockeying the tree service guys worked in their bucket truck and commenced the felling. They started with trimming branches off each tree, feeding them into a woodchipper which noisily gnawed through them, spitting out the chips into a truck also driven up on the lawn.

wood chipper


To make room for felling the trunks, undergrowth had to be cleared out to one side, so the cutters had a place to drop the trees.

tree cutters clearing undergrowth

Then came the main event, the felling of the trees.

First the tops.

Pine top falling
Pine top being cut down

Then the bottom halves.

base of garden pine falling down
Base of the garden pine being felled.


Then the bottom half of the last pine.

last pine tree being felled
Last pine tree on bank being felled.


This last one fell so hard, it snapped in half.

snapped tree trunk
Last pine trunk snapped in half when falling


Then all that remained was to haul off the trunks, probably to be cut into boards or firewood.

loading up pine trunks
Pine tree trunks being loaded on flatbed


All in all, a job well done by the tree service. Admittedly it was a bit expensive to remove four trees, but it was worth it for the peace of mind. Now, of course, there are two huge pines on the other side of the house that need removing but that’s for a later date. In the meantime, I will be mulling over what kind of landscaping needs to be done in order to spruce things up.

chewed up garden bank


beat-up side lawn


Peace to you all and have a happy July.

May 2026

The weather has finally moderated enough to put plants into the ground and so far the rain has been fairly generous. Yard sales are beginning to pop up with the promise of a lucky score. Last year I got a small magnifying stand with a light for only a quarter of the price I see online. The lamp with its magnifier will come in handy for my aging eyeballs when I come to do mending. This year I’m hoping to find a bundt pan that doesn’t have that nasty non-stick coating. Another item is a blocking board for the crochet projects I’m doing. I’ve seen some crocheters use those foam pads for infants when they’re playing on the floor, so I’ll see how I make out there.

The local recycling station has a shelf where people put old unwanted books. I’ve recently found the book below.

vintage cook book

It’s a little beat up and the pages are yellowed, which isn’t surprising since the publication date is 1927, just shy of a century old. But the book is still quite readable. At a hundred years old, you won’t see any low fat, gluten-free or low cholesterol recipes. The recipes have a minimum of ingredients, meaning you don’t see the huge laundry list of items which go into making a supposedly easy recipe, something which has always irked me. The following looks interesting enough so I think I may try it at some point.

Savory Potato Balls

6 medium sized potatoes, 1 ½ tsp paprika, 1 tsp finely minced green pepper, 4 tsps butter, 1 egg, ¼ tsp celery salt and ¼ cupful cheese

Cook the potatoes until tender. Drain, dice and add salt, butter, celery salt, paprika, green pepper and beaten egg. Beat well, make into balls the size of croquettes. Arrange in greased pans, brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with cheese and bake in hot oven of 450 degrees until brown. Serves six.

I’m guessing that some of the beaten egg is saved to be brushed on the potato balls, though the recipe obviously isn’t clear about this. Also, it doesn’t say whether to peel the potatoes first or not. I suppose it’s your preference which to choose.

This one looks good too.

Celery Chowder

4 cupfuls finely cut celery, 1 quart milk, 1 large potato grated, 1 medium-sized onion, 2 Tbs fat, 1 Tbs of flour, 2 hard-cooked eggs, salt and pepper to taste.

Cook celery in water to cover until tender and force through a sieve, keeping the water as well as the pulp. Add milk and grated potato and cook five minutes. Chop onion fine and saute in one tablespoon of the fat. When delicately browned, add to the first mixture. Chop the hard-cooked eggs and add. Thicken slightly with one tablespoonful of fat and the flour blended together. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Leaves and the tough outer stalks of the celery may be used. Serves six to eight.

One thing that caught my eye was the ingredient ‘fat’. The recipe is not specific on what fat should be used but since this book long predates modern obsessions with dietary fat and cholesterol, it is quite likely lard, though it could be Crisco shortening as well as that had been introduced in 1911 and was being heavily touted by its makers. Some of the recipes in the book did list shortening as an ingredient.

Another recipe, called English Monkey, took breadcrumbs, milk, egg, cut-up cheese and some seasonings to create a topping for crackers. I had never heard of this recipe before so did an internet search, discovering the existence of monkey bread (here’s a link to a recipe). The AI overview (which seems ubiquitous now on Google) states it is Hungarian in origin and was brought over by immigrants to America where it was quickly adapted into the sticky pull-apart treat described in the YouTube video.

Since preparation calls for a bundt pan for cooking, I’ve made the search for one at yard sales a goal for this summer. Wish me luck!

marchers in Memorial Day parade
Memorial Day 2026

Planting In April



When out walking, I sometimes spot something I didn’t see before and wonder why I didn’t notice it previously.

trees hugging each other

The above picture show two trees, one a birch, the other either a maple or an oak, growing around each other. Since they are right beside the road, I marvel that they hadn’t caught my attention earlier. It probably falls in the same category when something that’s always been there gets removed, and you notice the absence but not what had actually been there. It’s not that I didn’t really notice the trees, it was that I hadn’t noticed what they were up to. Well! Guess I better mind my own business.

April has been on the dry side, with a few brush fires here and there, though thankfully not near where I live. With the weather finally growing warmer, I’ve begun prepping the spent flower pots and raised beds for the next round of growing. I’ve bought only one bag of organic soil for use. With plenty of soil amendments left over from last year, it’s more a matter of supplementing what is already there, rather than starting from scratch. Some of last year’s smaller pots have been dumped into the raise beds with some green sand and a bit of fertilizer. The last of the bagged manure from last year will be added to it and I will buy a new bag this year, hopefully from the nearby greenhouse.

The goal is to plant some garden peas and wax beans, which I will have to cover with chicken wire as a woodchuck made its appearance in the backyard a few days ago. Carrots and potatoes will also go in. I have a left over seed packet of Bloomsdale spinach that I never got around to opening for some reason. The packet is not dated,so I have no idea how old it is and if the seeds are still viable. So I will test them out by putting them in one of the pots I have, to see what happens. If nothing grows, I’ll just put in something else.

As I like to experiment a bit with new plants, I bought a seed packet of Miner’s Lettuce.

Miner's lettuce

It looks intriguing enough so I want to try it out. Internet info says that it is hardy from zone 6 through 9 which makes it an annual in my zone 4 so some I will have to grow in a pot. It is shade tolerant, a plus since shade is something I have a lot of.

Another vegetable I am looking at is New Zealand spinach.

New Zealand Spinach

Also known as Warrigal greens or Botany Bay greens, it’s actually related to figs and marigolds. It does well in hot weather and tend to sprawl as it grows. As with miners lettuce, this is not hardy in zone 4, so I’ll have to grow as an annual. Because it contains oxalates which can interfere with mineral absorbtion, cooking is recommended, boiling or steaming much as you do regular spinach.

There’s no guarantee I’ll like either one of them, but that’s why you experiment. If they are good, I have a new addition to the menu, if not, I move onto the next experiment.

Happy plantings!

baby merganser

March Musings

The weather has finally moderated (slightly) enough so that the foot and half of snow in my front yard has almost entirely melted away, except for a tiny patch here and there. We’ve had a few spells of rain, but of the raw and chilly kind. This is actually normal for this time of year here in northern New Hampshire but it does make one impatient for the weather to warm up enough to make outdoor activities enjoyable instead of an exercise in endurance.

A persistant breeze blows which carries with it a wind chill factor that discourages me from doing any walking, though I’m hoping the weather forecast for the next week or so for milder weather pans out. While walking is good exercise, it can be a bit tedious at times, since I tend to walk the same route. Still once in a while, I get a little gift which keeps my interests up.

Pussy Willows

Pussy willows are something to keep an eye out for. Found on various small willows, they are actually the flowers of the plant, the ‘cat fuzz’ is protection for them until the weather moderates enough to justify them turning into catkin flowers. They’re not much to look at, as they are wind pollinated and do not need to be showy to attract pollinating insects. A good breeze pretty much does it for them.

One day during the summer, I came across a sugar cookie dropped on the ground by some careless child.

ants find a sugar cookie

It quickly drew a horde of ants that I’m guessing were in the process of disassembling it. By the next day when I passed that spot, it was totally gone, whether by the ants themselves or an opportunistic raccoon is hard to say. At any rate, Bon Appetit!

One time, when making a final lap on my walk, just a short ways from home, a dog (name and ownership unknown) living on a side street spotted me and barked. It was not an aggressive worrisome bark that would have alarmed me, but rather an authoritative ‘halt-who-goes-there’ sort of a bark. I stopped and he immediately trotted down and sniffed me over.

neighborhood sentry dog

Evidently I passed muster as the encounter didn’t escalate. But, nevertheless, he must have thought I was of sufficient concern that he escorted me home (which wasn’t far). After closely inspecting my garage and driveway, he ‘marked’ the corner of the driveway and headed back to his home turf.

By far, though, the best thing I saw, which regrettably I have no photo of, occurred a number of springs ago. While out walking near a small estate called the Boulders, complete with tennis court (which never seems to be used), I could hear the loud honking of some geese. I thought it was odd that the well-to-do people who owned the mansion, would keep geese on their property, but who the heck knows with rich people? The voices of the geese were audible at quite a distance, though it sounded like only a few of them. At any rate, I continued walking, made the round of a church parking lot and headed back. As I came to the crossroads by our local high school, I looked down the road, which is at a downward incline and gives me a long view down two streets. At that point I noticed that not only was the honking still audible but was getting louder.

It was a pair of Canada geese, who had apparently made a brief stop at the Boulders. They had just taken off, and were following the road towards me as they flew along, quite low. I could see them gradually draw closer and closer until they flew overhead and out of sight. While I had my camera with me, I didn’t bother pulling it out as I wanted to absorb the experience without fumbling to take a picture of it.

Now what does one do with a gift like this? One that you can only get if you’re in the right place at the right time? You cherish it of course. And you keep an eye out for more, as there are always gifts being offered like this by the universe we’re embedded in. So pay attention no matter how tedious things may seem.

Peace.

monarch butterfly on milkweed

End Of February

View of snow in back yard

Well, February didn’t disappoint in terms of snowfall. Thanks to a series of snowstorms over the course of the month, we have just over two feet of snow here in northern New Hampshire. There’s more in the southern half due to several coastal storms which clobbered them but mostly missed us. The snow banks beside the road and piled up at corners of streets are huge, so making a turn onto an adjacent street is really an adventure.

Needless to say, we are all ready for spring up here. The Spring Equinox is next month, but New England being what it is, warm weather will take a while to catch up to the calendar date. The days are getting noticeably longer so I have begun to do some spring cleaning. Going over one room at a time, for half an hour each day keeps the task from being overwhelming. It takes just over a week to make my way through my home, so anything I missed on the first go, will get a cleaning by the time I make it back to my starting point, the kitchen.

seed catalogs

I’ve also been reviewing seed catalogs for the latest offerings (not the old ones pictured above, but new ones). Since sunshine around my home is at a premium due to many tall trees surrounding the property, I try to pick seeds which do well in partial sunshine. Peas are an old favorite, as are carrots and potatoes. I don’t buy seed potatoes as a two pound of seed potatoes often goes for more than $10. Specialty potatoes such as Purple Majesty go for more than that. Instead I use potatoes I have bought at the grocery store which are poking out shoots. I know many consider this a no-no but I have not had a problem as yet and the yields are pretty decent.

I favor Yellowstone carrots over the usual orange varieties as I like the color and flavor, though I don’t turn up my nose at the traditional orange ones. Purple carrots are all right, though I haven’t tried those except in cooking. Spoiler alert: don’t use the purple varieties when making soup as the color cooks right out of them leaving your broth a funny muddy color. The flavor is all right but visually it’s not appealing.

I stick with the old stand-bys as I like them. I generally don’t experiment with odd varieties unless I manage to get one or two plants to try out, not wanting to be stuck with veggies my taste buds reject.

I did try lemon cucumbers once. The flavor was good, but they were very seedy, maybe because the growing conditions were not optimal. Lovage was touted in the catalogs as being similar in flavor as celery, so I tried those but found the flavor unappealing as it was too strong for me. It certainly didn’t taste like celery.

Still, it’s not hard to be tempted by various odd-looking vegetables not usually seen in the supermarket. The local Food Coop will carry odd veggies and fruits from time to time. Dandelion greens aren’t bad but there is an underlying bitterness I don’t like and which didn’t go away even after I put them through several rinses of water before cooking. Wild ramps, a member of the onion family, were appealing though it wasn’t until much later I found out you could eat the leaves as well as the tasty bulb. Oopsie. I’ll know better next time. However, these only show up very rarely on the store shelves in the spring. You can grow them yourself, but it takes a long time for them to mature and spread to the point where you can harvest a few.

Perhaps I may find something different at Sullivan’s Greenhouse, located in Lancaster New Hampshire. It’s a bit of a drive but I have recently discovered the quality of its flowers and vegetables are far superior to what can be found at Home Depot or Walmart. The personal touch of a local greenhouse just can’t be beat.

Have a safe and happy March.