New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Another day into the 90's today and no hope of a drop of rain. Epsom remains bone dry. Well at least the south side of town. Yesterday's thunderstorm brought some hope late afternoon for the local farmers corn withering in the hot sun. But no luck. A thunder cell with rain passed north thru town north of the Epsom Circle about 5 pm. Then an hour later another went south. But not a drop of rain for us on River road or the local corn crop. What bad luck. I'd say the corn is about half as high as it should now be.

Luckily my mom's well is deep with plenty of water for our garden. I have the sprinkler come on an hour each morning at 5 am. So the garden has been spared the worst of the drought. My corn is waist high and pretty much everything is doing well. Although when I got home last Saturday after eight days at camp in Maine the potato bugs had stripped every leaf off my plants. There was not a single bug on the plants the day before I headed to Maine. How quickly they multiply. In short order I sprayed some organic potato but killer on them and by Sunday most were gone. MY early planted cucumber plants, the four that lived, have some small cukes on them so I'll have fresh cucumbers within a week. The zukes have some fruit coming along nicely. The later cucumber seeds have thrived and I now have three or four rows of promises growing. So it looks like we will be canning pickles by mid August.  Sunday and Monday I kind of went crazy weeding and hoeing in the hot sun for too long. I was exhausted by days end each day. At least I didn't keel over and die in the heat. And for that I am grateful.

I'm seeing a few turkeys locally and have caught glimpses of some bantam sized polts with the hens. Funny I never did see a big brood of little polts despite having so many turkeys locally. My bird feeder where I put out food scraps and some cracked and whole corn so as not to draw a bear in has had mostly squirrels with the occasional Jay. And a raccoon visits sporadically. I am seeing a few deer about town. I do have a wren nesting in a decorative bird house on my front deck. It is amazing how quiet and still most days are in this heat wave. Not much moving or to be heard. Kind of the summer doldrums I guess. All is well.