Last year I bought some Nasturtium seeds and planted them all around the edges of my newly dug gardens. Some of them did very well, but the red ones especially did not.
For some reason they got aphids (I think) all over them and died.
Ready to plant!
I didn’t buy seeds this year, but I did collect seeds from the dried out pods last year and I’m hoping they will grow once it’s safe here to plant seeds – which should be very soon.
In fact this weekend will be in the 80’s and I might not be able to wait until June 1st -which is the safe planting date for this area. This time of year the temperature is like a roller coaster…today was about 52 and tomorrow will be mid-eighties.
Generally, I love where I live in south-western New Hampshire. But at the end of April and all through the month of May the black flies are plentiful and annoying.
It Must Be May in NH!
I pretty much write off the entire month of May as lovely weather to look at from the safety of indoors. It’s a shame that just as the sun begins to get warm and the days are longer and everyone wants to be in the yard doing something, these little bugs make life miserable.
You would think it’s no big deal. They are just tiny flying bugs. I lived in Florida for 27 years and believe me I saw some nasty, awful creatures down there, but nothing was as horrendous as these flies.
They buzz your head and fly into your ears. Wearing long sleeves and a hat helps some, but they crawl up under the hat and into the sleeves and gloves, etc. and BITE! The bites are itchy, but not right away. In fact you can’t really tell they are biting until later.
That’s when the welts begin to appear with a horrible itch. My bitten ear is swollen and red and I have a lump the size of a quarter on my arm.
Hence, the net. When we first moved to NH, we saw people wearing nets over their heads in Spring … and laughed at them! Now, it is how I dress to do any type of yard work this time of year. Even so, I am not safe outside for long. Inevitably I end up with a new welt someplace.
The photo is a self portrait from last year. I took it of my reflection in the slider.
Happy Spring! (And don’t come to New Hampshire in May).
Today it’s snowing and I am hoping that this cold day has caught the nasty black flies off-guard and will kill them off.
Yes, it’s April (almost May) in New Hampshire and that means we can start getting a good arm work out whenever we go outdoors. It’s known as the NH wave.
Already the biting bugs are plentiful and making any outdoor chores unpleasant.
You might wonder why I have two eggs in my intro picture and it’s because I had to watch my neighbor’s chickens last week while they were away and I get paid in eggs. It has nothing to do with the rest of my post, but I like to include photos. So now I have lots of eggs, bugs everywhere and a rambling post.
At least the snow has quit falling.
I worked on this picture of a cool looking moth yesterday. I had a customer ask me for something special and this is part of the order I fulfilled. The moth was in my driveway last year.
Wednesday the northeast has some nasty weather. Many places saw a little snow and then it turned to rain, but where I live in the hills north of Mt. Monadnock, we had all snow. About a foot and a half of it!
Heavy wet snow
It was the nasty, heavy wet stuff that was a pain to shovel and weighed down the hemlock trees.
My neighbor's black lab loved it!
The dog had a blast chasing my snowballs. By the end of the day the snow depth was over my knees in the yard.
An early measurement
This is an early measurement. We got about 4 inches more after this…
Basement slider- I won't be using this door any time soon
The metal roof on this house emptied the snow off like it’s suppose to, but that meant lots more shoveling.
Snowfall from the roof!!
It is Thursday- the day after- as I post this and we are getting lots of rain on top of all this snow and flood watches are in effect. My friends in Florida sent me photos on Facebook of their trip to St. Lucia. It looked pretty nice.
New England's Narrow Road 