Bogieblog

Bear Damage

Wednesday morning I was getting ready to let Rita out, and took a look around the backyard first as I always do. I take a look because there is a fox around, and I have seen coyote. The fox could definitely get into the pen if it wanted to, and perhaps the coyote too (I don't think so, but you never know). The neighbor's cat come in sometimes. Rita isn't interested in finding a way to escape so I just worry about something getting in. Well, this is what I saw

Hey, at least he left the feeder - and it was still in good shape. I know it didn't have very much in it as the squirrels are pretty thorough and compete heavily with the birds. All the bear had to do was turn the feeder upside down and it would have spilled the handful or two of seeds and nuts. Seriously, the only damage to the feeder was existing from the squirrels chewing thru the heavy plastic pipe at one of the feeding ports (thru the mesh wire around it).

Needless to say, Rita did not get to go out. After I got off work, I removed the fence panel, the very one that got crunched when the willow tree top came down. I tried to straighten the panel out again (remember, it had been smashed previously), but the bottom pole had been bent into a V so when I stood it up, the only part that touched the ground was the point. Even after "straightening", the top now has two kinks, one on either side of the center brace, so it wouldn't be stable. That green pole is a heavy duty T-bar that I didn't have a hope of straightening.

I neglected to take a picture, but the bear also bent the heck out of the cast iron feeder pole to get the feeder off.

I went to the local Agway and asked for a kennel expansion panel, and would they please deliver. However, checking all their 6 stores, there were no expansion panels to be found, only 1 or two kennel sets (10 x 10 x 6). Apparently those are in short supply and they couldn't even get any thru their connections. ARRGGHH.  Friday I contacted a fencing company to get a bar to replace the bootm piece. Once I got it all pt back together, I made it work, but this can't be the permanent solution this time.

It's not pretty, in fact downright ugly, but I can let Rita out anyway. It is barely stable because it is still horribly out of wack and doesn't track along the straight line of the timber it is supposed to rest on.I'm pretty sure that the first snow dump off the roof would wipe it out.

It's times like these I wish I had a real truck. I can find a used panel on CL but getting it here from 40 miles away is a challenge without a vehicle that has the capacity to carry it. And if I have to rent a vehicle to carry it - well, let's just say I might as well buy the entire kennel from Agway between the mileage and gas I would have to pay for.

Last of Fall Planting

Turtle heads in the shade garden are blooming - bees love them

 

Planted a couple of Rose of Sharon's in my new garden area by the swamp.

And I got a different type of turtle head  that I planted in this section

I wasn't really pleased with the way the rock wall came out, but found a way to make it much better (in my opinion) by adding cap stones.

The small plants between the two Rose of Sharons are Japanese Anemones, Curtain Call Pink (it is tough to see the RoS's as they blend into the greenery of the shade garden). I also added some crocus bulbs that have been in the fridge since last fall. It seems the chipmunks/squirrels have already been digging those up. I could find some re-planted somewhere else :)

My place got a 1/2" of rain on Wednesday, but no more rain is in site at least for the next week so watering this area will be my night job.

FHC September 2020 G2G

Last weekend I went to an FHC get to gether (G2G) for a guy that is moving from NJ to NH (eventually). He had someone come in a clear the house lot and yard. The person did it for free as he got to keep the wood. However, he left all the tops so the G2G was to help pile those into burn piles for the winter.

Three of us were from NH - The two on the left (me and Mike - from towards the seacoast) and Molly on the right (her husband was there, but he is physically disabled so was a cheerleader). Dave, the land owner is the one with a drink in his hand (his wife took the picture). Brad, in the yellow shirt came up from CT with his wife. And Mike, next to Molly, is from Massachusetts.

Mike from NH was actually there to cut a small path to the pond for the wood and the rest of us put up 7 huge piles for bonfires. We got fed well, with a late lunch, for our efforts.

A couple of weeks prior to the G2G, Mike from MA had mentioned in the gardening section of FHC that he needed to dig up some volunteer Rose of Sharons and give them to neighbors or take them to the dump. I replied that if he was coming up north, I would take a couple of them. Well, he came thru and brought a couple with him. I was expecting smaller starts, but they were about 6' tall with the rootballs.

Dang, he saved me about $120 bucks right there (I happened to be at L*we's on Labor day and checked out the prices). Can't beat that with a stick!

Maple Down

While working from home, I try to take a break each hour and take a short walk around the house to get the blood flowing again. It doesn't seem like much, but if I worked in the office, I would be going to get coffee/water or the restroom - which is more than 6-10 steps away from my chair.

Tuesday morning as I was in the backyard I heard a crack and saw some green leaves fall in the property behind me (where the parking lot for the apartments to the left is). Didn't think anything of it as small, dead branches have been falling on a regular basis with the drought this summer. My guess is that was the start to the end.

At lunch time, I went to take another gander around my gardens. But when I got out the back door I immediately noticed there was something amiss.

The neighbor's kid to the right happened to be just finishing mowing, so I told him about it because I know sometimes their dog goes back there (not often, but it happens. The next time I went out, I happened to catch the the landlord walking up to the apartments, which was amazing since he is rarely there. I pointed out the widowmaker so he could have it taken care of. By late afternoon, the top had weakened the small trees that were holding it, so that part was down even though the trunk was still in the air.

Friday morning around 9, there was a terrible racket and the house started shaking, then I heard chainsaws starting up. Can you see the guy cutting on the tree top in the first picture?

By noon, this was all that was left. BTW, the terrible racket that had the house shaking was the grinder they used to reduce it all to wood chips - actually wood chunks.

Don't know why the tree came down. It wasn't windy and the tree top looked pretty healthy. As I was picking up the chunks that had made it into my backyard, I noticed they were heavy with moisture, so it is pretty strange. On the other hand, it was a maple, of the junkier kind (not red, swamp or rock), and I believe those are just fairly week trees to begin with.

The last time my area got a decent rain was clear back at the end of June and since then we've gotten a reliable 1/4" of precipitation each week. This past week my area didn't even get any moisture besides dew so we are dry, dry, dry. I've been mowing every 2-3 weeks and this past Friday was one of those times. It only took less than 1 hour and 15 minutes to do both yards, which normally is about 2.3 hours or so. I didn't mow about 1/4 of the neighbor's yard, and about 1/3 of my yard didn't get touched. Those areas were either brown (most of my front yard and part of the side yard), or where even the weeds hadn't bothered to grow (back behind the pen and between the shade garden and sitting area, plus the neighbor's back yard).

NH counts 90+* days like Kansans count 100* days. Our average is 10 days per year, but we are officially up to 21 (or maybe 22 since I didn't see the news Friday night). I know it got up to 90 at my house Friday, but they only count days that Concord gets up there since that is the official spot. However, yesterday the high was int the low 70's so it seems to be turning the corner. Still basically no chances of rain, but cooler will at least help.

Hurricane Isaias Remnants

The morning prior to the hurricane remnants hitting us, I saw a dark blob in the back yard. I thought it was a turtle, but when I got the binoculars out, it was a bird. It took me a while to figure out it was a juvenile robin that had jumped, or fallen out of the nest. It was not yet at the stage it could fly (or maybe just hadn't figured it out yet). (following three pics taken about 9:30 am on 8/4/20)

After a while, I saw Mom and Dad in the area.

That afternoon, I got alerts from both my personal and work phones - tornado warning!The local channel had Hillsboro in the warning area also, just can't see it in this picture. The tornado was indicated by radar (not by sight) and at that time was in Peterborough area, but the storm was moving 50-70 mph (so they said). I let my boss know I was logging off from work, then grabbed the youngsters, put them in their pen, and rolled it into the hallway (closing all the doors around it). Then I grabbed Rita and put her in the basement (she respects the gate at the top of the stairs.

My side of town saw only about 1/4" of rain (as has been usual, 1/4" of rain per week since the 4" more than a month ago). and very little wind. However, at higher elevations there were lots of trees and electrical wires downed, although no tornado or straight line winds.

A couple hours later, I looked around and finally found two juvenile robins. Both were beside the red rhododendron at the side of the house. Before I could grab my phone for a picture, one had gone behind the rhodie or under the burning bush that is behind it, so I could only get a shot of one.

We must have gotten more wind that night, because the next day I found some large limbs had come down. Thursday evening, since the dump is open late, I gathered all the limbs and took them to the shrub pile

I haven't seen the juvenile robins around, and I've only seen one adult robin, so it is hard to say if they got taken by the neighborhood fox, a cat, or are fine and on their own (or even being taken care of by parents somewhere in the swamp). And, previously I had rarely seen both mom and dad robins at the same time, so all I have a questions.

Just looked it up and it seems that the fledglings take a couple of weeks before they fly. They are taken care of by dad while mom lays and sits on more eggs, so I'm going to go with that explanation :)

 

Garden Pictures Week of 7/12/20

A few bright spots in the gardens

I can't figure out what the name of this lily is, but I just found out yesterday there are two different clumps in the shrub garden

Stella D'Oro

My view from the sitting area where I was reading the other day. That is the shade garden with some orange day lilies, and the unknown yellow day lily is showing thru the foliage of the hydrangea tree.

The driveway garden. The pink toward the center is some regular echinacea (coneflowers)

Sombrero Granada Gold Echinacea in the roadside garden

Double Scoop Mandarin echinacea

And a group shot of the various echinaceas in the roadside garden - all of them have a pleasant scent.

Vegies from 7/3 until 7/10

I think I had mentioned I planted a couple of tomatoes, some peppers and basil inside the fenced in area. On 7/3, they were looking really good

On 7/6, I discovered I have vegetables (or fruits for you purists).

This is a mildly spicy pepper - no, I'm not going to run outside and figure out the names of any of them :)

Roma type tomato

Teeny-tiny bell pepper with a good look at some of the basil behind it

Meduim sized slicing tomato

Yesterday I noticed the tomato plants were nearly to the top of the 6' fence, with one runner at the top :O

Today, 7/11, that tallest one is several inches above the fence. It is reaching for the skies!

Flowers from Week of 7/6/20

Lots of Day Lilies doing their thing.

Little Business is a shorter day lily and is in the front boarder of the shrub garden

Purple D' Oro in the driveway garden

This bright, vibrant, tall and HUGE yellow day lily is in the shade garden. I forget it is there every year until it DEMANDs attention. Unfortunately I never knew its name, or the tag was lost.

This is another day lily that I don't know the name to. I do know that I got it from a gal that I know thru the FHC forum - so I just call it Molly's flower :) . Althoguh the plant itself is not overly huge, the flowers are almost as huge as the yellow day lily.

I've shown one of these in an earlier post, but couldn't find the name. Now that this flower popped today, I discovered it is Night Beacon, planted under the windmill in the driveway garden

Sombrero Baja Burgundy Echinacea in the roadside garden

And these little surprises re-seeded from a purple penstemon that I planted, not expecting it to survive the winter (it didn't). But, I was delighted to find them growing behind the largest False Indigo.

Hope these beauties made people smile.

Birds and Breakage

Yesterday I kept myself busy by mowing both the neighbor's and my yards. I hadn't mowed the neighbor's in 3+ weeks because of the rain shortage. I had mowed parts of my yard once in that time, the parts in the shade and wetter parts of the yard. The sod I laid on June 16, having been watered daily to ensure it survived until roots took hold of the ground, got its first mowing.

In between mowing the two yards, I took a short break and managed to do this. I don't know how, I wasn't manhandling them, just picked them up off the counter, walked outside, put them up to my eyes and put my hand out there to stabalize.

Argh, I've had those for what seems like forever. I don't remember if Cop Car gave them to me before or after I moved to NH (I think after), but they are at least 30 years old. I don't use them every day, but on a regular basis so will need to find a replacement soon.

Another thing I don't use often, but semi-regularly, is my camera. An actual camera and not my phone. I usually only use it for the ability to zoom. A flash of white in the yard of the apartment building next door is what led me to using my camera (after breaking my binoculars).

I haven't seen a white pigeon in the area before and really wanted to find out if it was albino, or just a different color than I'm used to seeing

Although it is hard to tell because the neck area is reddish, I concluded it is just a color variation. And bonus, I didn't realize until I downloaded the pictures that I got a 3-fer in this shot.

I am always impressed with this cheap little Powershot camera when I do long distance shots. In this case it is over 150' (I know, that isn't long distance to many people that have better equipment)

So, after I got the neighbor's lawn mowed (remember, I was mowing at the beginning of this post), I took a shower (the 4th shower between 5 am Friday and 11 am Saturday) I got in the Explorer and headed 38 miles, and 50 minutes away, to pick up pellets that I had found on CL A ton of pellets for $125 was something I couldn't turn down, even adding in the $8-10 in gas I used. When I got on CL early yesterday morning, it wasn't to look for pellets, but I happened to search for them and there was an ad that had been put up the night before. Fortunately I could get to their location using mostly back roads, so I wouldn't have to push the loaded truck too hard to get back home.

I really didn't have room in the basement, but I made room in front of the P61a. I'll have to move them before heating season starts, but for now, they are fine.

Yeah, after all the hard work, I pretty much read the rest of the day.

Playing in the Thorns

Last January, I had taken a day to go out and trim back some of the invasive roses trying to cross over the drainage from the swamp (see Invasive Rose Control). It was difficult as I had the fence behind me and very little ground (snow) to stand on without plunging into the stream. Indeed, that was most of the impetus to take down that fence last month. With the fence down, I could see there were several things I needed to take care of; Roses Gone Wild and rose clumps in the middle of the drainage (bad enough if they give a bridge to my yard, but could also cause damming of the stream).

Yesterday it was nice and cool in the low 70's. Unfortunately the humidity was 78%, but there was no sun so I donned long-sleeved shirt, my trusty thick gloves and thick jeans to take care of some of the thorny issues. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here is the before and after comparison (click to get full picture).

Three clumps of roses I dug out from the middle of the drainage area

Piles of brush. Doesn't look like much until you imagine that the piles were rolled into tight masses (like hay bales) before being stuffed into the back of the Explorer - which was completely filled.

Now, I can see the onslaught of poison ivy - the green stuff in the middle and right.

After taking all the thorn brush to the dump, I took a very thorough shower since some of the branched I cut had 20' whips on them that dragged thru the PI as I was pulling them to my side. After the shower, I went to take a look at what was blooming;

Here is a volunteer butterfly weed in the driveway garden (mama is in next tier up) that has nestled up to the smaller of the two baptisia (false indigo).

This day lily is in the tier above mama butterfly weed (part of which can be seen as the orange flowers)

Voodoo Sedum, planted on 6/14/20m is starting to show some color in the roadside garden

The native day lilies aren't putting on as nice a show as usual, probably from the drought stress, but still look nice in front of the house.

More native day lilies next to the willow stump. The Sweet Autumn Clematis has completely covered the obelisk I put up for it this spring (I diligently trained it). I should have found something 10' tall. There are several tendrils going thru the lilies, and it should be quite the show when it blooms in another month or two.

And last, a couple of blooms from today - a day lily behind mama butterfly weed

Day lily close up