The many seasons of New Hampshire

You may have noticed (or maybe not) that I haven't done a post in quite a while.
I blame it on the face that Mother Nature decided to skip winter last year.

We had one day, JUST ONE, that had sub-zero temperatures!

If we had managed to gather up all the snow that fell all winter we might have been able to come up with a foot of the white stuff.

Now, a lot of people might say it was a good thing that we didn't have snow. 

Wrong.

Snow is a wonderful insulator.  Without it, things happen that one wouldn't normally expect.

Skip forward to spring.

Tulips, daffodils and hyacinths all got too cold and didn't show up.  They were frozen out from the lack of snow.

No blooms at all.  Zip.  Nada.  Zilch.

It happened all over town.  Oh well.

Lack of snow means less water going to the water table.  We didn't have a drought, though, but the spring that runs under the house has dried up and hasn't "sprung" back from our wet fall.

The maple syrup season was disappointing as well.  You think gasoline is expensive?  Check out the price of syrup now.

Because of the warm winter the bears broke hibernation early.  Because they woke up earlier than usual, their regular foods weren't ready yet. 

So, there was more of a nuisance bear problem around the state than usual as they were  looking for food in all the wrong places.  Houses, garages, sheds etc.

And again because there wasn't enough snow cover a lot of the black berry canes didn't flower which meant less berries.

We had a yearling cub that was visiting us.  It climbed the dog fence and came into the back yard to get bird seed.  To scare it off on a couple occasions I fired a .22 pistol loaded with blanks.  That worked...once.  The second time, not so much. 

I then graduated to a Coast Guard rescue air horn.  It kinda worked.

Then one day, I hauled out the .410 shotgun.  I fired it once into the ground which sent the cub kind of running.  I loaded and fired twice more into the hillside to the left of the now rapidly departing cub.

Haven't seen the bear since.

Okay.  We have covered two seasons...winter and spring.

The next season is mud season.

What you get when the ground starts to thaw out.

Actually, it wasn't too bad or too muddy.

Ahh, skipping into summer now.

It was a good summer.  Not too hot and not too dry.  The farmers here were able to get three cuts from their hay fields.

We all feel so grateful that we had sufficient rainfall...unlike the Midwest.

This year we have discovered a new season...Parade Season.

Parade Season actually falls within summer.

This season impacts mostly those that are political candidates.  Sure, you have your run of the mill 4th of July parades, but up here there are Old Home Days parades (celebrating birthdays of towns that are way older than anything you will find in Florida).

I only mention this new season because Linda is running (we now know why they call it "running") for the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

New Hampshire has the third largest legislature in the world!  Only the British Parliament and the US House of Reps are larger!

By law, NH citizens have a representative for every 3000 or so people.

The standing joke up here is if you have a room full of people and throw a rock, you will hit a member of the House.

It only cost $2 to file for office (the other running comment is "where else can you have so much fun for $2?")...and no one is in it for the money...they get paid the princely sum of $100/yr for a two year term.

And, to add to the mad scramble - they are ALL up for reelection at the same time!

Now, we all know everyone likes a party...and New Hampshire has a few.  Of course we have the Democrats, the Republicans and the Tea Party.  We also have the libertarians and one I am sure you have never heard of, the Free Staters (www.freestateproject.org).

Basically, the Freestaters want no government.  This is one group you DO NOT want in your state.

If you want to see how Linda's opponent voted, please see... http://www.granitestateprogress.org/legislator/ingbretson#workers

If you want to know more about our legislative mess feel free to email me.

At any rate, the summer has been "it's Saturday, there must be a parade somewhere..."

We did join a gun club this year.

I learned something...don't walk into a room of rabid gun owners and say "I'm a democrat and I'm here to take your guns".  Not a very well developed sense of humor in that group.  But we do have fun target shooting.

So, now we are at the tail end of fall.  The leaf color was good this year and we may have actually had more tourists than last year.

The church had its month-long bake and craft sale and seemed to do fairly well.

The covered bridge is going to be closed for a year this coming November for refurbishment.  The town received a $2million grant to cover the cost.

The bad news is that for people on either side of the bridge to get to the other side they have a 30 minute trip to go around.

The extended trip is going to affect our post office because some folks on the other side of town are now going to opt for rural delivery and close their PO Boxes.

Did I mention that the USPS is going to cut our PO back to four hours a day?  It's not going to be pretty.

So, now we are heading towards winter with the hopes that we will have more cold, more snow and more fun.

In preparation for winter we have what I call "stick season".. This is when town and state road crews mark the edges of roads with long sticks that used to be saplings so the plows don't go over the edges.

When we moved up here in 2006, we brought four dogs with us. 

Kyra passed on a few yeas ago.

 Cody, Tyler and Steffi all entered their winters this year.  Cody left us on the 23rd of February at 14 years old.  Tyler left us on the 2nd of April.  He would have been 13 on Aug. 31  And Steffi left us on 16 October  she would have been 15 on Dec. 21.

Now, the house is totally devoid of canine influence, or is it?  We still feel each one of them at one time or another.

We WILL be getting another pup and it will be a Boxer.  We just have to be patient.

And now, a few pictures...

My buddy, Harry Potter, the Snowshoe hare

This is the butterfly that overwintered in our garage as a chrysalis.  If you look below the fork in the twig you can see the empty chrysalis.

Flutterby's first meal...

Stretching his wings...

Now outside and fueling up to begin life...

Harry (or Harriet) Potter is in this picture...



First spring ferns

This is an appropriately named tree...Thornapple.  Impressive thorns.

Retirement fail...Linda signing up to run for the NH House of Representatives.





Proud of my state Democratic convention credentials.

Hail in June

Mist and fog rolling in after a storm



First crop of caterpillars this year.  All in all we raised 18 on the curly parsley through the summer.



Fall!

Bath covered bridge (one of three in town). 



Inside the bridge

Night sky (we call them Disney skies).

That is all for now.

Take care...and think snow!!!