New Hampshire – Page 37 – New England's Narrow Road

The “New” Wood Stove

wood stove in basement — My new used wood stove

Last year I was lucky to find a good, used wood burning stove to buy and put in my basement. This picture was taken right after it was moved in by a couple of strong guys who did have quite a bit of trouble, since it’s very heavy. That is the hardest thing about buying a stove. It’s not something that you just go and get and bring home, lots of preparation is involved and deciding where to put it is something to consider before bringing one home.

This stove was purchased from a stranger who took out an add in the paper and my landlady is the one who told me about it. The price seemed right, and at the time I didn’t know about the importance of having fire bricks inside. I’d never had a stove with a brick lining. In fact, the previous owner told me it didn’t matter that they were missing. I found out that the bricks are necessary for holding the heat and keeping the sides of the stove from warping when the heat is high and no matter how hard I tried, the fire would occasionally get hotter than it should. I feel that if I hadn’t added the bricks myself, that the structure of the stove would have been affected.

Since buying this stove, I’ve written a page about my experience and all I’ve learned along along the way, including the exact amounts of money I put into the pipe, hook up, and bricks needed to get the stove up and running. And remember that pellet stoves require electricity to run, and that is why I am not interested in them. I need to have heat when the power is out and so went with the wood-burning type.

The Silky Milkweed Pod

While walking by the lake a week or so ago, I came across some milkweed pods. As a kid, I loved to find these as much as I did the white dandelions so I could blow the silky seeds away. There is something about watching things float off into the sky that is enormously amazing to children, and many adults too!
This time, I didn’t touch the pod, but took a few pictures because it looked so pretty in the sun. The pod was open and the seeds, attached to the long silky fibers, were being swept out by the breeze.

I don’t recall seeing the milkweed plants earlier in the year, but the pods always stand out.
Before writing this article, I was searching for info on milkweed plants and found a page at Squidoo which has all kinds of information about the usefulness of this plant.

Did you know that besides attracting Monarch butterflies, the silk is used to stuff pillows, vests and other things? Also, part of the plant is edible and it can me used for medicinal purposes. I didn’t know any of that. Once I read about the plant, and how to save the seeds, I began to wish that I had kept some of those seeds to grow milkweed in my own yard.

Visit the Many Uses For Milkweeds page to learn more and watch the video which shows the changes milkweed plants undergo.

Butterflies Choose Plants for Medicinal Qualities (scientificamerican.com)
How To Create A Butterfly Garden (brighthub.com)

Black Bears Leave Their Mark

markings on a tree — Are These Bear Claw Markings?

While walking in the woods with my cats, I came across some signs that the bear or bears had been looking for food.
I know that black bears will tear up dead trees looking for bugs to eat and there are quite a few dead trees in my woods that look as if that is just what happened.
Then I came across this tree where the bark had been stripped off and was lying all around the base of the tree. Upon closer inspection, I also found these horizontal markings in the wood on the tree.
I know there is at least one bear that has a trail of sorts through the woods in that area. I’ve found a valley full of very large boulders back in the woods and have seen the bear myself at the top of the hill, standing in the road.

dead tree bark on the ground — Bark Scattered At The Base Of This Tree

Just this summer my neighbors older kids were up the road in the “bear area” picking blackberries when they were frightened by a baby black bear that came trotting out of the bush.
Knowing that the mama was surely close by, they screamed, dropped their berries and high-tailed it home!
So what do you think, or know, about these markings? They are on a standing, dead tree and are noticeable in many various spots on the tree running horizontally and reaching up about 5 feet. Am I correct in assuming that a bear left these gouges in the tree while ripping off the bark? My other guess would be that insects living inside the tree, underneath the bark, made little tunnels in the wood.

Fog on the Lake

I don’t often drive my son to school, but he didn’t get his Math homework finished in time for the bus this morning, so I drove him. No, he doesn’t usually do homework in the morning, but it’s a long story…. anyway, I brought my camera along and as we came to the lake the sun was just shining above a fog bank that had formed on the lake.
My son thought it was so cool that he didn’t even make fun of me taking pictures while I was driving (I slowed way down and there was no one on the road). He is usually mortified when I aim my camera over the steering wheel. In fact he would make fun of me for saying “mortified”. “Who says that?” is his famous line for me. I am not hip, as he is always saying and I reply that I am not trying to be. It’s kind of funny.
So what do you think of the fog?