tamarack

Two surprises in that post, though I don't doubt either. First, that sweetgum is native at 42-43 north. There was none at all in the woods around our NNJ home - first ones I ever saw were planted where my in-laws retired in CNJ, though its absence 50 miles to the north may be cultural history more than forest ecology. Sweetgum has bright red fall colors, though IMO not as vibrant as red maple. (No shame in trailing #1.) It also has abundant and slightly prickly 1" diameter seed balls reminiscent of sycamore, so some serious yardwork, perhaps. 2nd surprise is baldcypress rated at Zone 4, though it's native to southern Illinois which probably gets to -20 now and again. Since Chris is probably Zone 5B, it might be a good if unusual choice. I don't think it's native in the East north of coastal Virginia.

Quaking aspen doesn't do well in swampy areas, though it would probably persist there. Balsam poplar, its cousin, tolerates wet feet better but I'm not sure it would be available. Maybe some native red maple? Then with the ones in front you would have fall colors from late August in the swamp to near the end of October toward the street. I'd be wary of baldcypress unless one can find a cultivar that's proven hardy this far north of its native range. Either northern white cedar (sometimes sold as arborvitae) or the less common Atlantic white cedar are wetland approved. To respond to S&P's query on pruning tomatoes, I've always pruned to a single stem unless growing paste tomatoes, which don't get pruned or staked. In my location, "soon" comes before "many", as first frost date averages Sept. 19. About 3 weeks from today I'll pinch off the top to prevent our cherry tomatoes (only kind I'm growing currently) from setting any more fruit, so that those already set have a better chance of ripening in time.

Only 0.01" here today as the heavier stuff stayed north. Soil is plenty moist however, though the high of 61 doesn't do much for what's growing there. Next 3-4 days will make up for that. And on another topic, misty drizzly cloudy days in the 60s with matching dews are probably about as common in October as in July - maybe one every couple years.

8/1/75 had been blazing hot as my co-worker and I did some very sweaty forestry research work NW of Greenville (Maine), well up into the 90s at our BGR home, but we had guests (Bro-in-law and his wife) and stuck to our Saturday plan to pick blueberries along Route 1 in Gouldsboro. We lasted until late morning - only B-I-L's Hawaiian wife who had grown up picking pineapples and cold-loving foolish me persisted past 10 AM - and then drove to Acadia and had our one and only swim in warm ocean water in Maine. BHB hit 100 at the water's edge. BGR had touched 101 and was forecast to be 100 on Sunday, was still 90 at 11 PM which was amazing for that part of the world. Next morning it was 70-71 with the occasional sprinkle, most wonderful BD of my life. yeah...I know... it's about on par as that 1998, March 31 event... I was up at the UML lab at 3:15 pm and it was 89.4 on the monitor ( locally), but the ASOS at the time had CAR, ME 37 F with a wind gust to 43 mph from NE.... The 3 Public Lands regional managers, one being me at that time, were at our Scraggly Lake tract just NE from Baxter Park on March 30-31, scoping out our annual 2-day peer review field trip. Wx was cloudy and foggy the whole time, low-mid 30s with occasional showers, some with a bit of IP. We had no clue than southern Maine was flirting with 90.

The world record 22 lb 4 oz bass caught decades ago in Georgia was listed at 32". I saw a pic of a 21+ lb bass from Lake Castaic in CA that was 27-28" and looked like it had swallowed a football. (Bass have been established in Japan and I recently read that one 22 lb 5 oz had been caught there, but the keepers of fish records consider fish within 2 oz to be tied.) I think I screwed up lol. Hammer Nailz was right. 24 inches not 34 ,oh boy my eyesight is shot Your 8.75 lb is probably about what my granddad's 24" fish weighed when he first brought it home.

I don't know if nurseries handle the native flowering dogwood - it often suffers from an anthracnose disease that is frequently fatal, so it may be quarantined. IMO it's even a nicer tree than the Kousa - blossoms at least as pretty and spectacular burgundy/purple fall color punctuated by bright red clusters of "berries" plus a unique "blocky" bark. (I may be biased as I grew up living on aptly-named Dogwood Trail in NNJ.) If red twig dogwood is the same species as the common red-osier dogwood, plant it only in places where you can easily control its spread, which is often done by runners extending through the duff (or mulch).

Did you catch that in the spring? In April 1961 I caught a 26" pickerel that weighed exactly 3 lb, obviously a female that had just laid her eggs. As the main pickerel fishery, on the adjacent lake, had been demolished by a fish kill the previous summer (milfoil control that worked too quickly so rotting weeds de-oxygenated the water) I was sure I'd win the lake community's pickerel trophy - longest pickerel and heaviest bass got awards. Two weeks later I watched a classmate bring in another thin-as-a-rail pickerel and one glance told me my "sure" trophy was gone - just under 28" and 3.5 lb. And he caught it in the same place I caught mine! (Three years later I caught a 22" bass weighing 5 1/8 lb in the fish-kill lake - bass tolerated the conditions better than pickerel - and thought again I'd win. A friend's dad caught a 20.5" bass in the skinny-pickerel lake and that one weighed 5 5/8 lb - foiled again.)

Maybe you need a new ruler, maybe 2 - one for length and one for girth. Longest pike I ever caught was 33" and weighed 8.25 lb. My grandfather caught a bass in the 1930s that was 24" and still weighed 8 lb after 3 days in the fridge before he could get it officially weighed. At the time it was NJ's biggest bass on record and though I only saw the mount (I'm old but not that old) the fish did not look especially portly. And that girth seems way low. Using the length-girth weight estimator (girth*girth*length divided by 800) a fish with those measurements would weigh about 6.1 lb. For skinny fish like pike the divisor is 900, which would be about 5.5 lb. We drove by the old ski lodge once it was light out the next morning...you could see the old trails still faintly visible too in the growth of the trees on the mountain. Apparently it went defunct after the 1981-1982 winter. Maybe the poor financial choices were a major part, as 1981-82 as a big snow winter in Maine. Dec was warm but snowy while the next 3 months were cold and snowy. (They would've probably been closed for the April blizzard in any case.) Of course 1979-80 was terrible, IIRC at Christmas that winter only one natural-only ski area was operating - Fort Kent - and it was marginal even there. 1980-81 was little better - those 2 winters rank 1 & 2 lowest at the Farmington co-op - so 81-82 might've been just a dead cat bounce for Evergreen. That may have been the time another small no-snowmaking area in Maine closed, Enchanted Mountain between Bingham and Jackman on Coburn Mountain (partly in Upper Enchanted Township though the ski area was in adjacent Johnson Mountain Twp.) (Coburn is one of Dryslot's favorite snomo destinations and possibly the highest groomed trail in New England.)

~75" avg. Three winter's ago 132" The 10 seasons on your sig average 83", but I think 75 is closer to the long term average. Your (hypothetical) neighbor at 250-300' lower elev would be near 70". Western Maine (and adjacent NH) is the CAD capital of New England. Agreed, as I've learned from experience, which also has shown that "best CAD" is often paired with "worst upslope". Bridgton area trivia (for anglers) - Maine's record bass, 11.5 lb, came out of Moose Pond. I've fished (frequently to obsessively) since I was 9 and have never caught one even half that big.

NNE did a little better, at least in Maine. Oddly, 3 of those 6 NYC ratters, 52, 54 and 55, had big dumps on Feb. 17-18. The 1952 event has been pushed back to #3 at PWM but it was a far more powerful storm in Maine than PWM's bigger snows of Jan 79 and Feb 13. When I read "Their Finest Hours" (have not seen the movie) I was reminded that the Maine Turnpike had about 1,000 stranded vehicles at the height of the '52 blizzard. Not much snow at CHH but it was plenty exciting.

To find another winter like 05-06 with no 6"+ storms I had to go back to 67-68 in NNJ. To find a third I'm probably back in the early 50s before I began to even measure the stuff. (Looking at the stats, winters 1949-50 thru 54-55 were a sixpack of ratters in NYC and anyplace in the general region.)

Those choices would be 2003-04 and 2007-08 up here. Dec 03 brought storms of 24" and 13" by the 15th and the rest of the winter only added another 35". Given the comparative regularity of snowfall thru the 4 snowy months, having more than half the season's production coming that soon is anomalous for sure. Then 2007-08's biggest event was 12.5" and only one other storm cracked 10, barely. But for nearly all 4 "winter" months (here) we saw 2 [or more] storms per week and finished with 142.3" and over 3800 SDDs.

48.2" when we average 90.6" - awfuller. I think some VT sites take the booby prize. IIRC, a couple places had their biggest 2015-16 snowfall on May 16, with about 4". I thought we were deprived here in 05-06 when we failed to have a 6" event; can't imagine not even reaching 4.

The cocorahs observer in Temple, Maine (next to Farmington) lives at 1220' and always gets more snow than other folks. In the Feb 2010 slopfest the Farmington co-op recorded 8.8" and that observer had 26.4" about 6 mile (and 800') away. 15 minutes to the hospital and attached medical specialty offices, an hour to AUG or LEW, 2 hours to the shore. More state taxes than NH, however, and not quite far enough inland to avoid the April mank.

I've seen 98/88 at some sea level Iranian sites - HI about 140 or some ridiculous number. And when winds are reported at 25 and the wx condition is "sand", must be lovely. Might drop below 50 tonight at my place. We average 6-7 sub-50 mornings for July, ranging 3 to 11. This month has a chance to set a new low for such minima - month's lowest so far is 54.

Cannot have too many trees. Back on topic - The Eagle Lake public lands, 22,000 acres just west of the town of Eagle Lake, has been blowdown central in recent decades. The tract shared (equally) a 600-acre blowdown with the township to the east in September 1986, a strip 4 miles long and up to a half mile wide with damage consistent with straight-line winds 90-100. Don't know if the folks at CAR did a ground check. Then 14-15 years ago a storm left a 15-mile string of blowdowns across 3 townships centered on the state tract, with most in patches 1-5 acres but with one 65-acre wipeout on the state land just south of Eagle Lake itself. The in 2013 (IIRC) an EF-0 tor in the town became straight-line wind and flattened about 200 acres along the north shore of Eagle Lake. We picked up about 3,000 cords of blowdown in both the first and last event, perhaps half that from the 65-acre patch.

Like what today is up here.

We had 0.65" from May 17 thru June 27 - wonderful for getting the garden started. Since then we've had 8.33"; maybe go from dust to mushrooms? Edit: 06z GFS OP shows 0.26" over the next 16 days. Pendulum swings again?

Several years ago a co-worker gave me a box full of black walnuts, probably 200-300 all told, from his trees on the midcoast. I fall-planted about 2/3 of them, 3 to a hole, and never saw any sprouts at all. Nor did I see signs of their being excavated by local rodents. That co-worker also has had no success in getting any to grow. A side note: There was a half-full 5-gal bucket of the nuts after I'd planted both of my open areas. For temporary protection I slid a 2nd bucket into the 1st. Red squirrels chewed an inch or two from the top edge of the lower bucket, trying (unsuccessfully) to get at the nuts. Those critters had never been within 50 miles of a black walnut yet they certainly knew good eats when they smelled it.

1.18" here, 3.82" in 4 days, 8.33" in 17.

Except for this year, with its 6-week drought that went from CoC to just plain hot. One year in 10?

The tree-killer hailstorm that hit Rome (Maine) on August 30, 2007 still had significant piles 24 hours later, despite temps in 60s-70s. By then only the runoff-accumulated piles remained.

Today will be July's 1st BN day though we're only about 2.5F AN as we've not gone over 82. June 29 and 30 were BN, and were days like today, only with even more RA.

Showers just arrived here. After the famine, the feast continues.

Either that or a gall. Some are caused by disease and others by insects (and the bug would be inside or there would be an exit hole.)