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Everything posted by tamarack
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Snowfall here is almost evenly divided by the Jan-Feb line; it's now 45.0/45.9 but has remained within an inch over the past few winters. May just be the different location, but that 9-year period noted above was marked by front/back extremes. Most front-loaded winters here were 05-06, 09-10 and 03-04. Most back-loaded were 06-07 and 04-05. Those 4 winters 03-04 thru 06-07 had front-back whiplash. Another facet is that, looking only at winters with at least 60% front or back, the front-loaded were poor - 81% of average snowfall with 5 of 6 BN (14-15 the exception), while the back-loaders averaged 118% of average and all 4 were AN. (The 11 other winters averaged 104% of average - those front-loaded ones dragged the average down.)
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With 1992 the poster child for that truism. Had Andrew been named by today's date? Edit: According to wiki, Andrew was declared a named TS at 12z on the 17th.
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Maine historically does best for snow (using CAR, PWM and Farmington numbers) with weak ENSO, either side of neutral. Looks like we may be in that general vicinity this coming winter, unless there's a major change.
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I think that practice was a tip (pun intended) from "Crockett's Victory Garden."
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All season long I cut off the side stems to keep the plants to a single stem. Over the weekend I cut off the topmost growth shoot so the plants will no longer attempt to lengthen. Will need to do more shoot pruning as the plants keep trying to extend the vine.
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It's rather comical at this point. Spend all this money for lawn looks, and have a field to look at. Will need to drill another well to get any real irrigation, but that's a very costly project. I don't think I've seen it look this bad I wouldn't recommend tossing $10K at a new well just for the lawn, especially since that granite block on which you sit may not yield any more for from hole #2 than from #1. Garden explosion. Cukes are sweet as heck. Basil gone wild. BGW. Only fail so far has been green beans. Made a pesto with basil, garlic, olive oil and pine nuts. Off the hook Our garden is about 180° from yours, so far. Cukes haven't even blossomed while last year we were giving them away, while the green beans are in full production. I plant them sequentially over a 5-week period because we much prefer them uncooked, but we sometimes get overwhelmed and blanch a bunch for the freezer - may happen again in the next couple weeks. Cherry tomatoes almost ready for the pick to start, and I've begun nipping off the tops so the fruit already started gets all the plants' efforts. Goal is to ripen all the fruit before frost rather than grow bigger vines and try to do the indoors ripening with hundreds of greenies rather than the couple dozen we get even with top-stopping.
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Had an 8-week stretch that "summer" (early June-early August) with only 7 days that it didn't rain. Coolest July of 22 here, 2nd coolest June and coolest met summer despite AN August (in which sun and convective precip finally appeared.)
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Probably by a factor of about 10 every 3 weeks or so. In 2-3 months a solo queen can bring the nest to a thousand or more. When I lived on the farm I torched one and then dug out the mammoth 4 foot by 3 foot nest. Insane What a giant! Fortunately, in the instance noted above, there was no dig needed, only fill as the burnout was total.
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Wait for the next sub-60 morning and get them at first light. I'd use one of those long-distance wasp killer sprays, from 4-5 feet away. If none come out in response, plop a rock on the hole big enough to block it, so the chemical is trapped with the insects. The year that paper wasps colonized the rock wall along our driveway (3 stings for me and 5 for my wife), I picked a 50° morning to flip the rock under which they'd nested, and got plenty of juice on them before any became airborne - and none made it more than 2 feet from the nest. My dad used to do the gasoline method at our grandparents' summer place with it's 3/4-acre lawn that averaged 2-3 nests per mowing. He'd go out in late evening, dump the half cup and light it. On one particularly large nest (judged by swarm size when disturbed, there was a washtub-size hole in the ground the next morning.
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Too small for yellowjackets. Ginx is probably correct, and there are many such species native to our region.
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Most ground-nesting bees are solitary, with bumblebees an exception and I'm sure you would already know if yours were bumblebees. Another possibility is yellowjackets, especially if there are numerous critters going in and out. Those beasts are the most aggressive of the social wasps, IMO and in my (oft-stung) experience.
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Measured 6.41" at my (then) Gardiner home, greatest calendar-day rain event I've recorded. Bob was also the only TC of my experience in which the backside winds were essentially the same speed as frontside, though over 90% of the precip came before the switch. PWM had a bit over 8" with several Cumberland County bridges blown out. That was their biggest one-day rain until the October 1996 hybrid storm dumped 12" on them.
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More importantly (since they may have already bred by beechnut time), they make the bears fat.
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I'd go with witch hazel for the left leaf. Their seeds mature in early fall and get forcefully ejected, sometimes falling 20 feet or more from mama. Witch hazel is a woody shrub that rarely gets over 20' tall. And you're correct about beech - their nuts grow in a spiky 3-panel package about 1/2" diameter, with a single triangular nut within a hard-to-remove hull. Quite tasty straight from the hull, though one might starve to death trying to free them from their covering. Kind of like celery - chewing that veggie takes more calories than it provides. Of course, if one eats beechnuts like a bear, spiky covering, hulls and all (and as fast as they can get crammed into the bear's mouth) the energy budget is more favorable. At least in Maine, bear reproduction is keyed to beechnut crops; lots in the fall, many cubs in the spring.
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Looks more like a basswood. Aspen blossoms/flowers are long gone, generally before the leaves are fully formed. Basswoods near our house are full of flowers.
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Or bitternut - leaflets look sufficiently narrow. In CT there are probably 4-5 different native hickories; in Maine there are 2 (shagbark and bitternut) and I've never seen any non-planted ones other than shagbark. And probably most of the hickories native to the US could survive that climate once established.
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The 4:30 AM coyote alarm has been repeated several times over the past 2 weeks - they set up just beyond our informal pet cemetery perhaps 100 yards from the house and have a songfest. One evening they were much closer, probably within 20 yards, could hear their feet on the leaves. Sometimes it sounds as if there are 2 families instead of the usual one. Since losing a cat for the 3rd time (fisher or coyote, though to the cat it makes no difference) we keep the felines inside.
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I've been amazed at how much sapsucker damage a tree can sustain and yet survive with a full crown. Those pics are high end damage for sure, but I've seen basswood and yellow birch nearly as bad - the birch usually stitched with much straighter rows. I'd leave it alone and watch the crown to see if there's dieback. Any control/repellant is apt to be costly and probably would require frequent repeats.
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Agree. ALB is not only shiny, but has much more distinct white dots. Native longhorned beetle, aka sawyer, or powder-post.
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Many of the grass species often used in the North are cool-season adapted, and will naturally become dormant in big heat/dryness then spring back to life when cooler wx returns. One can keep such grasses green throughout with abundant watering, but it's not the natural sequence for those species - more like using artificial lights to force your potted daffodils to bloom for the mid-March flower show.
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1954 Cat 3 (Carol) 1954 Cat 2/3 (Edna Though Hazel went well inland, I think it produced Cat 1 winds in New England (BTV?) It had the strongest winds of the 3 at our NNJ home, one of only 2 times I saw houses pasted with chopped leaves. (And the 2nd was tender June leaves, not tough old October ones.)
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Hot as it is, either split those big sections now before the ends dry out, or stack them (tough when so heavy.) Ash, like red oak, tends to split easily, but allowing the ends to dry greatly increases the degree of difficulty. For the most difficult, try splitting along the rings rather than across, sort of flaking pieces off the sides. (And if you ever encounter large elm, try nitroglycerin.)
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Absolutely true, so research must establish that non-target organisms will not be harmed. Another exotic, winter moth, has been defoliating hardwoods from Mass to Maine, but there is increasing success in control using a parasitoid fly from the invasive insect's home area that has been found to be totally specific to winter moth. Releases have been done in Mass and Maine, populations of the fly have been established and appear to be increasing on their own, and defoliation is way down. My hope is that some critter/fungus native to EAB's natural range and that affects nothing else can do what that fly is doing to winter moth.
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Maybe. If this methodology becomes feasible for broad-scale forest application, that would come only after extensive testing of its effect on non-target organisms and development of application methods - probably at least 10 years down the road. One problem with treating ash in the forest is that it usually is a minor component and almost never forms pure/nearly pure stands on areas larger than a fraction of an acre. Still, this approach warrants further study. My first hope for control is in establishing some sort of biological control, some predator/parasite/disease specific to EAB that can be established in that beetle's range.
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That's what I've read, and even if that was only true in the central/southern Apps region, it's still quite possible that chestnut was once the most abundant single species east of the Big Muddy. Despite the immense forest trauma, nature abhors a vacuum and other species, mainly oaks but also hickories, maples, etc., quickly filled in. That same outcrossing was done on the state's Topsham lot for 3 years beginning early in this millenium, though probably with less hybridized male pollen. Unfortunatley, that female tree has died, and though there's no proof, I think that opening up the area around it to gain natural regeneration (an action I fully support, as we've done it for chestnut elsewhere) may have facilitated the inoculant's reaching a 60-year-old specimen that had shown no prior signs of disease.