Finally the close has come to a really crazy year. Not much to write about as I have been busy with Christmas and other things. But I thought it would be worth looking at the pictures from this past year.
January, the earliest I’ve seen a robin.
February, an attempt at making home-made saltine crackers.
Results of the second try at home-make saltines
March, volatile weather to say the least. Going from this…
….to this a few days later….
Just an FYI, the snowdrops did recover nicely once the snow melted off.
April, warm weather did bring some fresh greenery and early flowers.
May, Memorial Day brought the usual parade.
June produced a surprise hatching of baby spiders.
July burst with a profusion of flowers.
August produced more flowers.
In September came a cornucopia of acorns, much to the delight of squirrels, chipmunks, birds and deer.
October, of course, brought out the Halloween decorations.
November gave us the first hints of winter to come in the form of hoarfrost.
December is coming to a close with Christmas on the 25th and an ice storm today on the 29th which left a quarter inch of ice on everything, bringing down some tree branches.
Here’s hoping the coming year will be quiet and uneventful.
Our first light frost happened in early October and hard frost in mid-October. We’ve gotten some light snow in November though, so far, it’s melted soon after it falls. While it’s been a bit colder than usual, it’s not out of the norm for northern New Hampshire.
While I’m sorry to see the frost take its toll on the few green plants still lingering, frost itself can be a source of surprising beauty. Hoarfrost is very striking to see. It forms when the air is moist enough and temperatures are below freezing. Moisture will condense directly onto any surface area, creating tiny thorn like spikes during calm conditions unlike rime ice which is rougher in shape and forms under windy conditions such as the summit of Mount Washington.
Hoarfrost has a more dainty appearance, turning bare branches or brown weeds into glittering sculptures.
I had some recently when a heavy fog settled in overnight and the temperatures fell under 32 Fahrenheit. It left the spent vegetation with a frosty facelift.
Bare stems turned into prickly wands, as in the pictures above.
Withered leaves developed a punk-style hair-do.
Old bee-balm flower stalks got a make-over.
Even the lavender plants in my garden sprouted their own tiny spikes.
It all melted away once the sun got high enough but while it lasted, it made for a lovely show, a final hurrah in the fall season before the snow seriously starts to fly.
We finally received some decent rainfall this past week; ½ of rain on Tuesday 23 and 1 ½ inch on Thursday 25, finally relieving the bone dry conditions which have been ongoing since early August. Except for a paltry half inch in the last week in August, there has literally been no rain at all. A picture I took of a passing monarch butterfly recently shows the brown grass afflicting everyone’s lawns.
Only the toughest weeds stayed green. A dish of water I put out drew a steady stream of wasps and yellow jackets, so many in fact that birds stayed away from the bowl. Daily waterings of my garden kept that going but even trees seemed to show the pinch.
Even so, many oak trees produced huge numbers of acorns, making it necessary to sweep out the driveway over four times as acorns and their caps fell in a steady rain I could hear pretty much everywhere while out on my morning walks.
Squirrels and other acorn lovers will be feasting and hoarding well this fall.
Lastly, the change in foliage color is now underway, with bright yellows and oranges beginning to flare though it will probably be at least a week before we reach peak foliage here in northern New Hampshire.
I saw something interesting this past month which I haven’t seen before. I have some chamomile growing in a large pot out front. During the spring, surrounding maple trees (and probably others) began shedding huge numbers of catkins, which covered the lawn, driveway and any plants I had growing. One morning I noticed what looked at first like a clump of catkins draped over the chamomile blossoms which were just opening up, but found when I came to brush them off, that it was really a cluster of baby spiders just hatching out.
Since spiders devour nuisance insects and serve as baby food for hatchling birds, I let them be. Since the chamomile had just grown this spring, the egg mass must have been laid in the leaves and I hadn’t noticed. There was no sign of the mother spider, so I have no idea what species they were.
Now I’ve seen plenty of baby spiders just hatching out from their egg mass plenty of times before, so spiderlings are nothing new. But the next day I saw something I hadn’t seen before. The mother spider must have been still around, because a long thread, too large to be the doing of the tiny babies, had been spun all the way from the chamomile to a foxglove plant growing nearby in the garden.
My camera is an old digital Panasonic but I managed to capture the thread which in the picture stretches just barely visible from the flower head across to the center and down to the left where the chamomile flower is.
The distance between the flowers was over four feet so it was an impressive achievement. What was even more surprising was that the baby spiders were migrating over to the foxglove along the thread. They looked like tiny tight-rope walkers. Unfortunately, my camera couldn’t really resolve the sight as they were so little. You can see them beginning to congregate on the foxglove below.
By the end of the day, they had all moved over to the foxglove and when I looked the next morning, they were all gone, with only a little webbing to show they had been there.
Once baby spiders hatch out, they spin a long fine thread which acts like a parachute. When a breeze blows, they will float away, attached to the thread, and take up residence wherever they land. This is called ballooning or kiting. While they usually will travel only a few meters, a strong wind can carry them quite a distance, often miles if the conditions are right.
This behavior has been noted for quite some time, all the way back to the ancient Greeks. More recently the 19th Century poet Walt Whitman wrote a poem with a kiting spider as its theme.
A noiseless, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory; it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them – ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you, O my soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, – seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d – till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my soul.
Nearing the end of May, looking back on the month, it’s hard to decide what to focus on. The weather started out the month on the decidedly cool side with the rain being on the generous side without being a gully washer. This encouraged plants to grow, though slowly because of the cool weather. The raised beds have been cleared of dead leaves and various weeds trying to get a head start ahead of my planting. A garden trowel is very useful for discouraging this. I now have garden peas, carrots, spinach and potatoes poking up, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The old flower gardens I’ve inherited from my mother are badly in need of renovating. Lily of the Valley has been making a power play to take over the front garden, crowding out everything else. The side garden, which is dedicated to daylilies, also needs a make-over. Last year, they looked like the picture below.
This year, it’s wall-to-wall daylilies and I can’t see any sign of the daffodils I planted there a few years before. Visits to gardening websites recommend thinning every three to five years to keep them under control, something I’ve been very negligent about and will have to correct.
Monday was Memorial Day, and my small town (population just over 6000) had a parade. A few years ago, the parade had been canceled due to lack of volunteers and an aging honor guard. This produced a loud enough howl of protest that efforts were undertaking to quickly bring back the parade. Yes, the honor guards are getting a bit long in the tooth, but they marched anyway.
The American Legion did their bit, carrying their banner.
And including a small float.
The local Knights of Columbus also marched.
An outfit called the sons of the Revolution put in their own float, along with cosplayers.
The parade wound up with the local Fire Rescue Squad, complete with a dalmatian dog.
A modest affair compared with larger towns, but it drew a good crowd, nonetheless. The weather was clear and mild, making for a perfect Memorial Day.
