tamarack

While I don't disagree with the overall premise, I don't think the phone/social media comparison works. If I (falsely) yell "Fire!" at home, my wife and I scramble out and, other than wasted adrenalin, no harm is done. If I do that in the proverbial crowded theater, it's not quite the same. There's always tensions when freedom of speech when personal responsibility and "do no harm" come into play. As was said years ago, my right to swing my fist ends before it hits your nose.

Pole beans are a little more sensitive to cold than bush beans. In your area I'd hold off on beans until after the mid-week cutoff makes its exit. We're on the edge of z4 and z5 here - average for winter's coldest is -24.2, median 24.5. Most recent 5-year average is -25.6.

Either it's spring flowers or fall colors.

Anecdotal only and my weed experience is strictly 2nd hand smoke (especially while delivering pizza to BGR's most prestigious private college many years ago.) On my summer 1975 job as a field research assistant, my co-worker liked the stuff but never brought any on our Mon-Fri work weeks. Most of the landowners on whose woods we worked supplied grunt labor to help us in cutting/weighing the trees on research plots, and on our week near Machias the labor was young men on "work-vacation" from NYC. Thursday (their last day helping) after work they invited us to where they were staying and offered some MJ. I demurred but my chum said yes. After we got back to where our sleeping bags lived, he exclaimed how glad he was that I was driving, as the NYC grass was "the gooood stuff!" - far more potent than what came into Maine. He said that on the 10-mile drive he'd think we were going 200 mph one minute and at walking speed the next - total scramble of time perception. Maybe it was just being utterly blasted by the unexpectedly high-test weed, but he certainly wasn't fit to pilot a vehicle.

If I'm in Mass on 495 where it's 3 lanes and I'm on the middle one driving 65 if 5 Mass drivers pass me, 4 will go by on my right. Haven't seen that characteristic nearly as much elsewhere. NJ drivers on the GS Parkway are notorious for multiple-lane swerving to gain a few dozen yards. At 75 mph, that's less than one second of "gain".

If a tree shows any green, some call it fully leafed out.

Red maples blossomed a week ago here and the petals are falling. Sugar maple buds have barely begun to swell and probably won't flower until mid May. Might your "sugar maples" be Norways? Leaves are nearly indentical and Norway maple is as early as red maple.

Forecast for Lead, SD, in the Black Hills: Friday, 67 with 50% chance of showers Saturday, 26 with 10-14" and winds gusting to 49 mph, another 4-8" Saturday night.

'Fella has the right idea for lawns. We love watching 7 grandkids trample ours (when they're not climbing the apple trees).

Might be painful when the kids want to play football or frisbee.

Salad greens, carrots, peas, most brassicas should be fine there unless the soil is really soggy. All but the peas have tiny seeds subject to rot if it's too wet.

I think we're close to schedule here. April is running about 2° AN but w/o real warmth, just no cold, though we had 22 this morning, tied for month's coldest. Coldest daily mean this month is 35 and if that stands (10-to-1 it will) it would be the least cold for April's coldest in 24 years here. (4/99 bottomed at 34.5 so it's close.) Just a mini record but shows the lack of cold. Quaking aspen male catkins are fully formed, red and silver maples blossomed last week and the petals now litter the ground. Willow buds are open with some bits of green. Oak, sugar maple, ash, basswood remain at midwinter form, which is normal for the date. It's been a windy month so far but I don't know whether/how that affects spring phenology.

How do your oaks look?

Temp in low 40s, gusts to low 30s, 70% cloud cover (and our downslope site usually clears out well) - not too a bad day, for mid March.

First week was nice, but 9 of the past 12 days have had measurable rain, 6 with more than 3/10" and most days have featured siggy wind. Despite the month temps running about +2.5, the mildest has been right at 60, only 4° milder than we reached in February. mehhhhhh.

We drove our 1971 Beetle from NNJ to Fort Kent that Sunday, about all that little air-cooled engine could handle - lots of metal pings when we turned off the engine. Stopped in Boston to visit my BIL and his Hawaiian wife - she had no issues with the heat but we were dying. As we approached their apartment steps a rat scuttled across in front of us but was too fat to fit down the rathole and had to keep running. Then we had a massive meat-and-potatoes dinner with the apt temp well into the 80s. Fort Kent never got much over 60 and that cool air was sooooo sweet.

Surprise for Maine outside of the mountains might be how little snow fell before the changeover.

Had the same here, about 2:1 ratio. Still some traces on the leaves despite 2:30 with mid-30s RA.

Two reasons for "cabbage" pine, full sun and white pine weevil, and the first reinforces the second as the insect prefers the thicker leaders of open-grown pines, more room for the babies. Weevils hit the young pines in thicker woods, too, but less frequently and usually those pines soon have a single side branch win the race upward, such that the tree has a small crook but is otherwise straight. In the open, most/all of the top whorl branches continue to grow, and get weeviled, and grow, and . . . (After white pine, Norway spruce is the weevil favorite due to that tree's thick leaders. The critter will also hit white spruce, though rarely. I've never noticed it on red pine.)

0.2" of 2:1 "stuff" fell 7:15-8:45 then cold rain. Had to call tech support who talked me thru rebooting the WiFi connection. She said they were having all kinds of issues, probably storm related. An hour-plus ago CMP was reporting over 20k w/o power. Little wind here, just RA- and mid 30s.

Short of pruning back lower branches, not much as most trees try to build their "factory" as big as conditions allow, so when standing alone, trees grow both out and up. I can't think of a way to prune for less width and retain a decent looking tree. If you try the side-branch pruning, always stop where a vigorous branchlet can be left or the branch will die and be an ugly stub. 23 years ago we transplanted a 2-foot tall fir onto our lawn. Fir naturally has a more narrow profile than hemlock, but even so the now 40-foot tall tree is at least 20 feet wide - would make a nice Christmas tree for PWM.

Running 3° AN thru yesterday.

Recorded RA on 6 straight days, though yesterday's ended shortly after midnight. Precip/temp both AN so far and tomorrow may push precip above the 4.10" average for all of April. Yesterday's -3 temp is the only BN greater than -0.5° this month. The 14 AN days included none greater than +8. Working on 2nd straight month of meh wx.

I recall that event well, as our area near Augusta was forecast for advisory or better snow. Things slowed down and by the time the CF reached us, after 1.85" RA, there was nothing left. We did get 1/2" of 25:1 fluff overnight, maybe the ULL. Saw flakes in Farmington about 1 PM but no sign that any fell around home, just a few house-creaker gusts.

Odd color. Most blue spruce I've seen, including the one in our front yard, have light green for the new shoots. Fortunately, those in the pic appear to retain turgor; if they'd been frostbit they would be hanging down.