New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Spring is bursting into summer all at once it seems.

Tuesday 05/05/2015

How a week can change things here in New Hampshire. The never ending winter was slow to release its grip on us. But just this week we have leap into summer temperature wise. It was 86 degrees yesterday and high 70's today. The fiddlehead ferns practically leapt from the bulbous orbs of winter and are unfurling as fast as a flag on a windy day. Tree buds have burst forth as well. The ground around my house is littered with them. And just a week ago the beech trees still held firm to last years pale brown leaves. Not so now as they too came showering down the last few days.

This week into next will be one of the most glorious times of the year. In that I mean color wise. Maybe these are not the bright reds and oranges of our fall colors but there is a bounty of color to be seen. Red maple buds on trees are sprinkling the horizon with red dots. But it is the greens that excite me the most. For there is every shade of green imaginable. As I turned off route 28 on to Short Falls Road in Epsom this morning my eyes swept the hillsides beyond and drank in the luscious green bounty pouring over the hillsides. A few nearby trees actually were showering me with their color as I drove by them.

And the fragrance of late spring fills the air around my house. And it is not that of blossoms. For in fact it is the bursting smell of cow manure. Well, having lived on a dairy farm in northern Maine in the mid 50's it is a smell that bursts forth with the warming days of spring into summer. This locally mean our neighbor dairy farmer will be planting his fields to corn this week. So the sounds of his distant tractor will peak my interest as well. So, so many smells to scour the air for over the next few weeks. And the air is saturated with the sounds of life from spring peepers and toads to birds and tractors. So much to glean from what is around us right now. Life is good!