New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Gray is the day in kind of a mid November way

Friday 10/31/2014

The hard rain and wind of earlier this week has pretty well stripped most tress of their leaves. Even the oaks at road's edge across from my house are looking pretty lean. And certainly the windrow of leaves in front of the stone wall by my house are a reflection of the storm.

How quickly the view has turned Novemberish. Yes much of the horizon has suddenly changed gray. From the trees themselves which are showing the gray trunks and branches to the view thru the leafless trunks the monotony of winter is at hand.

I did see my one and only skein of geese obviously headed south this week. That on a south wind which I though was kind of going against the grain of things that day. But who am I to argue with the thousands of year old erg by them to be flying south that day. Wildlife can and does defy logic some times. Human logic any ways.

We certainl have had plenty of rain and enough sun to grow another crop of hay silage for the local farmer. He spent much of the week chopping what I'm thinking is his third cutting of haylage. Not a bad year for him. And his corn crop seemed to be great as well from my guess watching the annual cycle hear some 35 years in town. Yes I have peered out my back windows at the corn growing down in the meadow for some 35 years. How time has slipped by and seems to continue to slip my grasp to slow it down as I seem to be doing. It is my granddaughters that seem to be flourishing like the fast growing corn. Sprouting up ever taller and more mature by day. Can't seem to slow down that process either.

I guess today starring at the gray horizon has me wondering what is beyond. Not in distance but in time. What lays ahead the other side of winter. Liked the geese headed south life is to be had just over the horizon.