New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

We have leaves.

Friday 05/10/2013

Wow things are really clicking now. April seemed to just drag by with below average temperatures. The last vestiges of snow didn't leave my front lawn until mid month and it was near months end before the wisp of snow along the shaded end of the field across from my house finally melted as well. Spring peepers didn't even chime in until near mid April, weeks late this year. Things were running a good two weeks late for much of April.

But we are making up for lost time and temperatures it looks to me. Most years around my house tree leaves spring out from the tree branches about the end of the first week in May. We may be just three or four days behind on this as I look out my home office window this morning. So we have about caught up. I did hear my first tree frog along the edge of the Suncook River this week as I sat by a camp fire to ward off the black flies, and not so much for it's warmth, Wednesday evening.So I think tree frogs will be along about on time.

We are in a drought though. The local brooks are but a trickle right now and the Suncook River took on more of a summer look last week. I think we were down some three inches of rain in April. And the soil was very dry when I rototilled my garden last Friday. I'm a bit late getting things in the ground this spring. I saw no sense in trying to plant in the cold ground that we had all April. I got peas, potatoes, cabbage and a short row of cucumber seeds in last week. Two years ago, a real early spring, I risked planting a whole row of cucumbers mid April and we had no late spring frost. I had cukes by early July that year. That's not happening this year. We've had frosts here within the last few days and more are predicted early next week. So a late season garden this year is in the works.

My 89 year old mother, soon to be 90, was up to her usual optimistic self. She had a new fruit tree arrive this week and had the hole all dug to plant it. She has planted close to a dozen fruit trees this last couple of years. She can practically taste the apricot jam she intends to make from these newly planted trees. I'm counting on her genes to see me through another decade or more. Go MOM!

My granddaughter Kate got her first turkey the last weekend of April on the Youth Turkey Hunt Weekend. She was hunting with her dad and uncle. How proud she was and what a family episode it was for us. First she brought the turkey to her grandparents houses to show it off. Kind of like the deer on the hood thing of years ago. Then I joined the crew to go register her bird at a turkey check station. We cooled the bird and soon began dressing it and getting it into a refrigerator. This work was mostly done by her father but she was at hand to watch the process. Of coarse as a wildlife biologist I had to open the crop and gizzard so we could examine what the bird had been feeding on that morning. How this turned back the hands of time for me. Her mother used to be at hand when I dressed game birds at about her age ((9). Her mother wanted to know how things worked inside an animal. This is the girl, who then declared at about that age, "I want to be a doctor". And now is one! Isn't life wonderful.

That next Monday Katie got home from school and got the house and dinner wear all set up for a big family dinner. Her dad had cooked her turkey. Both sides of the family were there to dine on her bird. I think I counted 14 of us. Kind of a spontaneous Thanksgiving. No doubt no different than families across the eons thankfully enjoying the bounty of nature and the hunter(tress) who provided the feast. Truly a family occasion to be remembered. How lucky I am.