A Bear! and Rain!

Two unusual sightings in our yard today. 

I slept in til 5:20 this morning. When I retrieved the disk from the wildlife camera strapped to the crabapple tree in our front yard, I scrolled through the pictures to see the resident rabbits and two deer that visit daily. Then a big black blob appeared in one -- a black bear! The time stamp said 5:17 AM...if only I had rolled out of bed at my usual 5 AM, I might have seen it out the dining room window. Although, it is now a bit dark at that hour and I likely would have been looking the other way focused on making a pot of coffee.  Tomorrow morning I will be more alert. 

A black bear rambles through our yard this morning.

We've had little rain since some time in July. The ground is rock hard. The outdoor plants are asking for more water. We've been teased at least once a week since mid-July with potential thunderstorms to bring rain. Each time they pass our patch with barely a drop. I recall only a few times during this stretch where we got a sprinkle, only enough to wash dust off the leaves. 

The forecast for today held promise. We even heard rain falling during the night, but it was just a sprinkle again. As I write this mid-afternoon, the dark clouds are forming, some rain is falling, and I hear thunder (but that could also be the Blue Angels Air Show at Pease). Now, a few hours later, as storm clouds roll through and thunder in the distance, we get a nice drenching. This feels like a true rain -- an unusual sighting, to be sure, this growing season.

Chocolate Covered Cherry Coleus

The ground is parched, the garden plants are thirsty, the lawn is crispy brown in the hot, dry places in our yard. The NH Drought Map shows us only at "Moderate Drought." It feels and looks worse, "Severe" at least. When I plant vegetables in May and keep at the weeds through June, the plants are lush and look to be in the right places. August was rough, with so little rain and hot days. Now, in early September is the time to assess where to plant vegetables next year (as some things didn't work) and begin converting more flower beds to drought-tolerant plants. 

Each year I tell myself not to plant too many annuals as they require constant watering, especially this year. And each year I do it anyway. One annual plant that exceeded my expectations for beauty and grit is a coleus that I purchased as seedlings from a local nursery and planted in pots. Known as the Chocolate Covered Cherry Coleus, it has grown tall and lush and beautiful in its red and purple and green-edged foliage. 

Chocolate Covered Cherry Coleus

 

 

Gardening guides say to cut back flower stalks of annuals and perennials during the growing season to encourage more growth. I was about to do this to these coleus in early August, when I noticed bumble bees and hummingbirds visiting the tiny blue flowers. So, I've left them all and enjoy seeing the pollinators as well as the lovely arrangement of the flower stalks. This is one annual that will stay on my 2026 planting list. 

Sharing the Bounty

Our yard is a mosaic of raised beds for vegetables, fruit trees and bushes, perennial gardens, and wild, native meadows and shrub thickets (bordered by a patch of woods). We grow food for ourselves and create habitats for wildlife from insects and spiders to deer and fox. Since we draw wild creatures to our yard, it is only fair that they sometimes venture into our food plots. 

Lately, a doe has been wandering through around 6 in the morning (when we see her) and probably at other times. The leaves on our small peach tree are disappearing, a few more each day. Today I watched her amble under the spreading crabapple tree, eating a few fallen fruits as she went. Then she meandered over to the peach. She was eyeing me through the window as I was looking at her. She can browse other plants in our yard, but the peach is too far. I opened the window to shoo her away and she barely moved. Eventually she wandered away, munching leaves of a dogwood then asparagus fronds. She sniffed a pokeweed, but passed on that as they are poisonous. Finally, she plowed through the underbrush to the next yard.

Our resident doe advancing on the peach tree.

 

A Fall Return

My mother would have been 104 yesterday, on August 31st. She was always a fan of my blog, as I suppose a mother would be. (I still miss her 9 years after her passing). I wandered away from Spicebush Log a few times, trying out WordPress and Substack, neither providing the ease of writing and posting as blogger. In her memory and honor, I am returning to my roots here at my original blogging headquarters.

In his eloquent book of essays, A Rural Life, Verlyn Klinkenborg, writes of his compulsion to start a journal of life on his New York farm at the dawn of each New Year. Aldo Leopold, writing about a land ethic and stories from his Wisconsin Farm in A Sand County Almanac, begins his "Sketches Here and There" in January. In Naturally Curious, naturalist Mary Holland begins her month-to-month photographic and descriptive journey of New England natural happenings in March, "for March is the month of 'awakenings,' when the earth begins to thaw and life begins to stir after months of relative inactivity." 

I am restarting my writing here on September 1st, a nod to my mother and to my love of Fall in New England. Especially this year, after a rainy May and June and a hot, dry July and August, the recent string of stunningly beautiful days restores my urge to observe and describe and share my observations of nature and land. 

Yesterday offered an auspicious start. While enjoying a first cup of coffee around 6 AM, a small, 6-point buck with velvet-covered tines and shedding his summer fur appeared in the roadside across from our driveway. An hour or more later, a small doe stood in the same spot. On our walk with Henna at the Piscassic Greenway, we heard the whoosh of wings as a raven flew, otherwise silently, over our heads and farther on we watched a green heron preening atop a snag in the big wetland. Returning from an 18-mile gravel bike ride, we stopped to watch a mixed flock of a dozen ravens and turkey vultures soaring. Back in our yard, a barred owl called from the woods behind.

Onward to Autumn in New England. 

A leaf-footed bud patrols a zinnia stalk on our deck.

 

First Walks of 2024

We rise early, well before sunrise. It helps to go to bed early. Fortunately the New Year's Eve celebratory fireworks in the neighborhood ended relatively early so that we and our 12-year old dog Henna could drift off to sleep. Henna is not a fan of loud noises.

As we do every morning, we rang in the New Year before dawn. After savoring a cup of coffee sitting by the wood stove, I bundled up and headed out with Henna, a headlamp clamped to my head. Our first walk is aways in the morning darkness. Henna sniffs around for overnight animal movements. I glance at the sky--darn, still cloudy. The ground is still snow-free and soft, it feels more like March than January.

By mid-morning on New Year's Day we were walking the wide flats at Seapoint Beach in Kittery, Maine. The tide was just coming in, a dozen or so others were there, many with dogs running happily after tennis balls and greeting each other. The calm ocean water shimmered under the brilliant winter sun. A few sea ducks far offshore dove below the surface of the ice-cold sea. I marvel at the circulatory system and anatomy of ducks and geese that allow them to thrive in the cold water, while we require many layers of clothing in winter even on land.

On this clear, crisp first day of 2024, I feel fortunate to be surrounded by such natural beauty. 

Winterberry Bird Scat

A week ago--on a coldish January day--a small flock of robins ate all the berries from one winterberry shrub in our yard. They flew off as quickly as they arrived, after the last fruit was plucked.

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is my favorite native shrub, its beautiful red berries brighten an otherwise late fall landscape and the bounty of juicy berries serve as a mid-winter food for birds. 

The bright red berries of our winterberry in September.

Winterberry is typically dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants. Only the female plants produce the bright red berries; each berry sports a small black dot. The greenish-white flowers are so inconspicuous that I often miss noting their blooms in early summer. The berries are the show-stopper, especially in early fall when the red berries are surrounded by the dark green, finely-toothed leaves or in winter set against a snowy landscape.

December winterberries.

Lots of rain last fall and into early winter has kept water levels high in local streams and rivers. Despite the high water, wetlands have frozen solid due to the recent stretch of very cold temperatures. Yesterday we explored one such ice-covered local beaver pond. We heard what sounded like a flock of crows cawing from the woods above, only to realize it was the clang of our microspike-clad footsteps.

We walked around an unoccupied beaver lodge, something only possible in mid-winter. An intact skeleton of a cormorant lay among the beaver-chewed, sun-bleached lodge sticks. Our dogs Kodi and Henna sniffed about but didn't detect anything breathing inside the lodge.

As the wetland narrowed upstream, we stepped around shrubs, sedge hummocks, and uprooted trees. A few bluebirds and chickadees flitted around us. A thicket of winterberry was stripped bare of its fruits. At the base was a tell-tale sign that a flock of birds had devoured the berries: winterberry scat. Birds have an efficient digestive system and some can process a fleshy fruit with small seeds--such as a winterberry--in less than an hour. 

A pile of bird scat (aka poop) below a thicket of winterberry. 
The contents are entirely winterberry skins and seeds.

Winterberry is a favorite addition to holiday wreaths. A local farm has started a small plantation of winterberry shrubs as a commercial source of these beautiful berries. I clipped a few twigs from our bush in December (before the bird banquet) and added them to our wreath. Just today a few bluebirds picked off all the winterberries. Happy to oblige them this sustenance on a cold winter day.

Our wreath before the bluebirds ate the winterberries.

Robin Song

Drab morning under a gray sky; a cold, southeast breeze chills my face. A robin sings its cheery spring song, another robin chuckles, while a third one sounds an alarm call from the woods.