New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Oh so nice to have these long sunny days. Things are growing so quickly now. This includes the baby wildlife. Animals like foxes, coyotes, fisher, raccoons and woodchucks were born back in April. They have grown quickly too and will be getting restless now and are ready to leave the dens and get moving. So over the next few weeks many of them will be out and about and you will be seeing them. And like most juveniles some of them are going to end up in places they should be. Just like you did. So watch out for them. Give them space to make their own mistakes and let them learn to survive on their own.

 

I stopped to take my first turtle of the year out of the road right here in Epsom yesterday. Yes it is time to have turtle eyes while driving by day and toad eyes by night too. I am amazed just how many frogs and toads I see most nights if I am down visiting my mother just a mile away on the mostly gravel road. I make sure I straddle and lump in the road, though most are just a stone that has been flung into the road. But yes some are toads. I saw my first firefly last night. Or as we used to call them lightning bugs. Insects will be dominating our air soon. Not just mosquitos but may flies and June bugs will be hovering and buzzing about now.

 

The local dairy farmers, the Yeatons finally started cutting the hay field across from my house yesterday afternoon. It looks so beautiful this morning in the morning light with the rows of cut hay. I can hardly wait for the day to heat up and send the sweet smell of hay my way.

 

Down at my garden I put in a few more tomatoes yesterday. Some that my mother started back in March. My potatoes have sprung up pretty high this past week. And the radish seeds I cast the other day are already up. Some different in the ones I planted in late April that took a month to sprout. Finally our soil has warmed up. And well that it should with close to sixteen hours of sun this week.