Mt Chocorua

We headed north on Route 16 at 7 am, directly into the smoke-tinted haze blanketing northern New Hampshire and beyond. It seemed like many more people were headed the other way, perhaps heading home early from a long weekend to escape the smoke. Strong winds had forced smoky air from Quebec fires our way, smothering views of the high peaks, as well as our destination at just under 3,500' -- Mt. Chocorua.

As we set off on the Champney Falls Trail with Kodi trotting by our side, the air seemed clear and just cool enough for pleasant hiking. Not until 2 miles in did we meet other people; for the rest of the hike though we passed many others with the same idea, including at least 7 other dogs. Kodi was polite with everyone and every dog.

This was Kodi's first long hike of his life (that we know of). Much to our delight we discovered that he is a superb hiking companion. Only once did he make our heart skip a beat, when he scrambled down a steep rock along Champney Brook, then turned to climb back up, only to slide backwards over into a deep pool. He swam calmly to shore and raced back up to the trail. From then on we were confident of his back country skills.

Me and Kodi atop Mt. Chocorua

We discovered black flies on top of Mt. Chocorua. They swarmed us whenever the breeze died, which seemed too often. They crawled in our hair, under watch bands, inside our clothes. After a quick lunch we retreated back down the trail. No one paused long on top, given the persistent black flies and the hazy views.

  A smoke-tinted view

Despite the smoke, and the haze, and the flies, it was a great hike. Pink lady's slippers dotted the trail side, including the all-white versions. Along the way we listened to warblers, vireos, thrushes, and a winter wren. On the way down we splashed cold water from Champney Brook on our faces, while Kodi drank the clear mountain water.

pink lady's slipper (Cypripedium acaule), white form

Champney Falls

Pollen (and Smoke) in the Air

I smelled just a hint of smoke in the air today. It reminded me of India, where the humid air holds all sorts of smells and where someone is always burning something. The air here looked hazy too. We drove to Durham for errands and a walk with Kodi. The air smelled the same. Only then did we realize that it was pollen. UPDATE: I just read that smoke from fires burning in southern Quebec was reaching us here in southern New Hampshire. So it really was smoke in the air. The smoke plus pollen made the air thick.

Tree pollen, especially from white pine, seems especially high this year. I never suffer from allergies, but my throat had a tickle. The air looks cloudy, there is the faint smell of smoke, and the ground is covered in yellow powder. After last nights rain a bright yellow puddle formed at the bottom of the driveway. On our woodland walk with Kodi we noticed that everything was covered in yellow -- all the way down to the understory plants including the wild sarsaparilla.

wild sarsaparilla coated in yellow pollen

Thankfully neither of us suffers from allergies. This would be a difficult day if you did, especially in New Hampshire. Click on this pollen/allergy forecast and you'll see that our state is high compared to most of the country.

We postponed our hike up Mt. Chocorua until tomorrow, when the weather is expected to be excellent for a hike. Steady winds are already clearing the air of pollen.

Another interesting trend this year, in addition to high pollen levels, is the lack of black flies. Knock on wood, but I don't think we've seen a black fly yet this year. Where are they? Not that I miss them, but you do wonder.

A Spotted Turtle

Just as I started to water the garden late in the afternoon dark clouds moved in followed by a brief rainstorm. Enough rain for now that I put the hose away. Once it cleared we took Aria and Kodi up the road to a conservation area.

Late afternoons at this time of year, just after a rain, are lovely. A light breeze was enough to keep the mosquitoes quiet. The dogs sniffed deeply in the wet grass along the trail that winds through an old orchard and grassy field, to a wetland, and beyond. We stopped at the wetland for the dogs to wade in and retrieve a stick or two. An old stone dam provides a crossing and access to back land. A marsh was created when the stream was dammed. Sedges and cattails and alders rim the open water. A few logs in the water offer sunning spots for turtles.

While the dogs were focused on the water, I looked for snakes and turtles. Sure enough, there was a spotted turtle, in the middle of the trail as it crosses the old stone dam. This is a threatened species in New Hampshire. She (her underside or plastron was flat which is one key to sexing turtles: a male's plastron is concave) was 4 to 5 inches long -- spotted turtles are relatively small. The yellow spots that dot its smooth, black back (or carapace) give the turtle its name.

This spotted turtle may have just been wandering or maybe she was off to lay eggs. It is turtle nesting season; the time of year to be watchful on the road. Although some people probably hit turtles by accident, there are many heartless people who run over turtles and snakes on purpose. Road mortality and illegal collection are two main reasons for turtle declines. We were glad to find this turtle living in a wetland that is within a large area of conserved land.

I put her gently back down among the cattails. The dogs never noticed her, as they were busy elsewhere. We left her to her wanderings, and we hope a successful nesting season.

Too Much Sun

My blog posts were sparse this week. I think it was the heat. Tuesday and Wednesday topped ninety degrees. I spent much of Wednesday outside. In the morning I helped at New Roots Farm. All the other farm assistants are younger than me and they seemed less zapped by the intense sun. In the afternoon I walked dogs for two hours at the SPCA. For the first time the dogs seemed anxious to get back inside where it was air conditioned.

All my energy for creative writing was zapped by the sun as well as a series of online training courses that I am taking. These training modules were developed by a federal agency (that I will leave unnamed). The intent is to educate and inform on how to work with landowners within a framework of many, many federal laws. Instead the courses are making me listless and dumb. I usually don't like the word bureaucratic because politicians use it when they don't know what they are talking about. But these courses seem very bureaucratic and a bit removed from reality -- from the soil, air, water, plants, and animals that we are meant to better protect and manage by taking these courses.

Admittedly I am speed reading the course content, just so my brain doesn't fizzle completely. I have completed 3 out of 5 courses. Two more to go. Sometime during this Memorial Day weekend I will finish it off. Before that though we are heading north tomorrow for a day hike up Mt. Chocorua in the southern part of the White Mountains. This will be the first real hike for Kodi. He is in great shape and there is a stream along the way, which he will enjoy. Hiking up the trail, breathing in the wood air, soaking up the view from the top and I'll be ready to tackle whatever the remaining online courses throw at me. At least I can daydream about the hike, while I speed read my way to the end of the course.

Lady's slippers on Stingy River Road

Around mid-day I walked Stingy River Road, a class VI dirt road located in a fairly remote corner of Epping and Raymond. The rarely traveled road crosses the Pawtuckaway River, a quiet meandering waterway that is now largely protected thanks to the Southeast Land Trust of New Hampshire.

The road is not maintained by either town, but it is drivable in snow free conditions. I elected to walk as I was on a mission for the land trust, looking for invasive plant species. The woodlands on each side of the road shaded me from the mid-day heat. Along the way - deep in the forest -- I found a small population of Japanese knotweed just off the road, far from any human habitation or other noticeable disturbance except the very old woods road. My thought is that someone dumped a bit of fill and trash in this spot within the last few years. And as I've been saying over the past few days: invasive plants are moved in fill and other material.

Farther along the road I stopped for a drink of water and noticed a couple pink lady's slippers. This is a fairly common plant in our woods, but it is still exquisite.

 pink lady's slipper, Cypripedium acaule

The only sound I heard while enjoying the lady's slippers in the noontime heat were chipmunks. Stingy River Road is bounded on each side by a stone wall. Throughout New England chipmunks have adopted stone walls as one of their favorite habitats. Here, deep in the woods, many chipmunks called. We were noticing back home in our neighborhood that the stone walls seem empty of chipmunks. We thought perhaps a population crash during the past few years, but I'm thinking a neighborhood cat or two might be one culprit. Probably the coyotes, fox, and owls, take a share too. They will rebound.

Back home, as I expected the phoebes fledged from their nest -- all three were gone today. I hope they survive their first flights. The robin eggs are hatching today. I peeked in first thing this morning when the mother was off collecting insects. One tiny head was wiggling among the remaining eggs. By mid-afternoon a second one had hatched. The robin seems more alert than ever to our movements. With the temperature reaching the low 90s by tomorrow she'll need to keep the youngsters cool and go for food. It will be a busy time in our front yard.

An Uninvited Beetle

Three weeks ago we bought 3 yards of loam/compost from a local nursery to augment our gardens. I put it in nearly every garden including around a highbush cranberry in the front yard. This morning as we started on our walk I suddenly noticed that a third of the cranberry was defoliated. As I looked closer I noticed many caterpillar-like larvae. On further research I am certain it is the Viburnum leaf beetle and I suspect it came in on the loam/compost.

I just wrote about this on Friday -- be careful of the source of loam and compost. Now I have more anecdotal evidence of this problem of moving material, at the expense of the the highbush cranberry. The shrub will likely recover, unless the beetle hangs around and defoliates the entire plant again next year.

Besides the discovery of this little insect in our yard, the weekend was beautiful. The weather gods seem to be in sync as we've had our second spectacular weekend in a row. All the New Roots Farm seedlings found a home in the garden. Just a few hours after I planted a bed of annuals at the base of our deck stairs, a ruby-throated hummingbird zoomed in for a quick sip of nectar at the red salvia. The robin is still sitting on eggs and the three phoebe nestlings beneath the deck are getting too big for the nest. One day soon I will look and they will have taken flight.

We are harvesting fresh cilantro planted last fall and turning it into pesto that goes nicely with grilled eggplant, onion, and zucchini. It is an easy recipe from Mark Bittman: in blender mix 2 cups fresh cilantro, a clove garlic, pinch or more of salt, 3 tablespoons corn oil, add  a tablespoon of lime juice then puree. The rhubarb is being made into crisp and pie. My spearmint -- delicious in tabouli -- keeps advancing on the lawn until I corral it back to its rightful place in the herb garden.

A nice weekend, except for the pesky viburnum leaf beetle that arrived uninvited.

What's in the Fill?

Yesterday I spent the day at a workshop at the Seacoast Science Center, which lies within Odiorne State Park on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. The water shimmered under a blue sky, the Isles of Shoals looked close, students visiting the Science Center clambered over the exposed intertidal rocks. The focus of our workshop, however, was landward and less idyllic.

Invasive plants. Sometimes it seems hopeless trying to remove existing infestations and repel new ones. The workshop speakers, experienced in both, were determined and motivational. It is worth the effort they said -- to restore and maintain natural habitats, to maintain native plants that an array of native insects and other wildlife are adapted to, to ensure that natural systems keep functioning. The monarch butterfly is an example. It depends on common milkweed for its life cycle, but in some places in the northeast the invasive pale swallow-wort (also in the milkweed family) is taking over fields and crowding out native plants. Although the two plants are from the same family, monarchs cannot use swallow-wort.

A panel of three focused entirely on Japanese knotweed. The stems look like bamboo. It forms dense stands and is one of the most difficult invasive plants to control. Mowing spreads the plant farther. Knotweed spreads quickly along waterways and roadways; its rhizomes can move long distances undetected underground, extending up to 30 feet and 10 feet deep! This is one plant that most everyone agrees can only be controlled with repeated treatments of herbicide if the stands are more than a few stems. To avoid use of chemicals, small infestations must be removed as soon as they are detected.

Many people may wonder why there is such concern about invasive plants. A knotweed here, a buckthorn there, a few garlic mustard, burning bush, or honeysuckle in the yard. It's about the numbers. One of the most pernicious traits of these plants is that they spread very, very quickly given the right conditions.

Early detection and rapid response was the message of the day, especially if one goal is to avoid use of chemicals. Once an infestation gets beyond a certain size, hand pulling or digging becomes ineffective or incredibly labor intensive.

Another interesting discussion at the workshop is the movement of material from place to place: fill, gravel, mulch, loam, compost, leaves. It is now known that many invasive plants are being moved from property to property and along roads in these materials. My dad and I just discovered last weekend that the source of garlic mustard on Winterberry Farm was probably in the loads of leaves that he got from the town for use as mulch.

A few recommendations from the workshop:

• Know the source of any fill, mulch, loam, or other material brought to your property

• Get to know the invasive plants in your area and employ early detection-early response

• Look at many excellent sources for more information, such as:
• Invasive Plant Atlas of New England
• NH Coastal Watershed Invasive Plant Partnership
• NH Department of Transportation

• Avoid staging or piling debris on or mowing areas of invasive plants, unless it is part of a control effort, as you might spread the invasives farther

• Remember to focus on the goal: preserving our natural heritage -- the biological diversity native to the region

I'll be watching for monarchs flitting among the common milkweed.