New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Drought is going on to a month, rivers and lakes are dropping.
Wednesday 09/05/2007
We are in a drought that is raking havoc with my garden this late summer season. My cucumbers are giving up the ghost it seems with my tomato plants aging by the day. The local smaller brooks have essential dried up with the Suncook River practically at a standstill as it passes by me. I had to dig down deep into the soil to scavenge a dozen worms for fishing this weekend. These few worms are tied into knots to keep their moisture intact.
We do seem to have a bumper crop of what I call the fall web worms. My American cherry trees are covered with a silky white coating as if I had decorated them already for Halloween. Ghostly skeletons of web-covered trees mixed in with the still green maples. And the caterpillars are raining down on my deck, not the rain that is needed right now. Oh for the remnants of a hurricane, that would surely quench Mother Earth.
I'm seeing turkey flocks all over with one single hen herding a clutch of 10 pheasant-sized poults across the road right in front of me. Now that is a huge flock of poults this late in the season. Most other broods are now down to 5 or 6 young birds.
The sky and even the trees seem to be completely vacant of birds right now. The summer silence continues with nary a chirp or a call to be heard around here. It just seems to be strange to have the trees and shrubs so full of life as far as being green, yet they are lifeless save for an occasional butterfly to drift by.
