New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

NO frost yet at house.

Friday 10/21/2011

Wow what a fall. Still no frost yet here at my house. Well at least my tomato set against the south side of my house is still alive and well. My garden a mile down the road and farther from the Suncook River has been hit a little once. In fact yesterday I was at a commission meeting at the Sunapee Ski Area and talked with a conservation officer who lives up that way and he hasn't had a frost at his house yet either. Talk about a warm wet fall. Going back three decades or so my tomato plants against the house normally were hit with a frost the first or second week of September. If this trend continues, the warmth, not the wet, maybe this winter will not be as bad as last winter. But we have had lots of rain this fall with at least an inch a week in my rain gauge.

How the colors have come and largely gone the last week and a half. They peaked here at my house overlooking the Suncook river on Wednesday the 12th. (Above are pictures of the river at peak color, and today and my still green tomato plant) A couple of days of rain right after that stripped many leaves from the trees and the past two days of rain, some pretty hard, has swiped many of the colored leaves from our trees. Although I must say my drive up to Sunapee mountain yesterday afternoon up route 103 from Warner still had plenty of color despite afternoon showers.

And just a week ago, one rainy night, weren't the frogs still about hopping across the roads. Moths are still about and we really haven't had a killing frost for our mosquitos it seems. In fact to me the mosquitos have been about as bad as they can get all summer the last few weeks around here. I was doing some work in the garden the other day to pull up stakes and put away the tomato racks and boy was I being chewed alive.

I did take my mother for a nice leaf peeping ride on the 11th. We stopped to buy some apples and cider. It was then that she nearly fainted. Setting on some shelves for sale were various canned goods like bread and butter pickles, dilly beans and relish at nearly $6 a jar. She said to me "This means you have nearly $600 of canned goods in your basement!" For a depression era child she always has been very frugal and this drove home the value of our collective garden and canning we do together much of the summer and fall.
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