Claire,
As I am picking myself up off the floor and wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes I have to say you nailed life in New England dead on. Perhaps we should consider this for a lifestyle/garden FAQ page. kt

How about Twig Season, when all the leaves are off deciduous plants but snow has yet to hide undone chores? Unusually long this year.

Ana

Very funny! An enjoyable read. I also think of each season by what tasks I am up to:

Winter
Catalog reading time, Seed and Plant ordering time. Garden planning and dreaming time. Garden book reading time. Greatful for the gardening break time. Attending Flower shows and lectures time.

Spring
Local plant buying time. Seeds and planting time. Attending garden tours time. Eagerly awaiting spring flowering trees and bulbs time.

Summer
Keeping everything watered time. Getting everything finally planted time. Garden photo taking time.

Fall
Bulb planting time. Yard and garden cleanup time. Garden winding down time.

Claire, thanks for the good laugh!

Great post, Claire!

Please don't forget Catalog Season, which is just spinning up, and The Season of Remorse, which quickly follows and lasts until all those new plants are in the ground - and finally paid for.

Do any of you people who live in hunting country want to comment on Hunting Season?

Claire

As seen on a local business sign:

"Winter has been cancelled. Order your T-shirts now"

Love the local humor - mmqchdygg
Hunting season should be included in Fall
tourist go home, leaf peepers stop coming, to early to hybernate for winter
what else is there to do!!
I think I am scared to see what February brings we have lucked out so far

I love this! I'm printing it...

Thanks,
Tricia

Add to winter:

Mourning and burial time for lost overwintered plants.

Add to Spring:

Pull out the muscle balm for the copious amounts of wheelbarrows full of compost.

Add to Summer:

Make many lists of must-haves and moves that probably will get lost within a week.

Add to Fall:

Reunite with cyberpals who have spent the previous two seasons with too much dirt under their fingernails to type.

Best!! Martie

I just remembered this old thread on the Building a Home forum.

Claire

Here is a link that might be useful: Deer Hunter Shutdown!!!!!

"Hunting Season" follows "Leaf Peeping Season". It is the reminder to the spleenier "hangers on" that LPS and "Fair Season" are OVER and it's time for them to "go home" and leave the rest of us in peace for a few weeks.
Nothing like gutted deer swinging on the scales at the registration stations or in the back of pick-ups to drive home the point, lol.

(and there's nothin' like venison on the grill or venison mincemeat to bring out my red neck... )

Hee hee hee... I figured a reference to hunting season would flush out chelone.

Good to "see" you here.

Claire

"Hunting Season" is also the time of year when your normally obedient dog raises its nose to the wind, raises its hackles and tears off into the woods, often SILENTLY (unusual for their kind). No amount of calling, whistling, or clapping will lure him back until the scent on the wind has been throughly investigated by your canine detective.

When he does return he inevitably sports the "mantle of death". That foul, sometimes slimey, coating about his head shoulders that requires an immediate "bath".

(you're a wiley vixen, Claire)

Since chelone has opened up the discussion of Hunting Season to the behavior of dogs, and since this is the slow season for the forum, I can't resist posting a reference to dogs and an elk.

The reference is to cactus joe's GW Member Page. Scroll down to "Most Memorable Thread" (about a third of the way down).

Claire

Here is a link that might be useful: Two Dogs in an Elk

I found the "dogs in elk" bit several years ago and think it is the one of the funniest things I have ever read--have sent it to a number of people. I'm really glad to hear it is still out there, and you're right, Claire, this is just the time of year we need something like that. Puts the chipmunks in my car's heating/air con system in perspective.

Oh dear, I laughed so hard I had tears coming down reading the "dogs in elk".

"Puts the chipmunks in my car's heating/air con system in perspective."

Would you care to elaborate?

Claire

Oh, how I wish I could make it as amusing as dogs in an elk. And how I wish I found it as amusing as my friends do.

My garden--and my house--and my car have turned into a wildlife preserve over the last eight years or so, entirely without my permission. For the sake of my mental health, I will skip the part about the moose and their evil twins, the deer, browsing my evergreens down to nubs. And the tiny feet I hear scampering in the walls at night. And the larger feet I hear scratching and body (bodies?) flinging themselves around in one particular wall every evening just at dark.

To the car. When I turn on the heat or air conditioning, I hear dozens of acorns tossing around in the blower. I have to turn it off and on til the sound settles down to a rattle. Acorns are too heavy for mice and the space is too small for most other things except chipmunks. I take the car in to the dealer on a regular basis to get the acorns and chipmunk fur cleared out. It has added up to quite a sum tho just yesterday, the guy told me about a woman's car where they chewed thru the wires, at a cost of several thousand dollars. So it could be worse.

Tho I keep the garage door shut all the time, they easily get under because there is a small space on each side where the tires have made ruts in the asphalt. And the garage adjoins a stone wall, which chipmunks love as winter protection, and the space under my deck, a veritable Miami Beach for chipmunks in winter--with plenty of food provided by the roots of my perennials nearby. And of course the nice cozy warm space in the engine of my car. There you go--any ideas?

A couple of years ago, my mechanic was completely mystified about the small, hard seed that had accumulated in my car's air filter. That was relatively easy to fix - I now only use sunflower seed in the bird feeders, and haven't had any trouble since. Now how *anything* managed to squeeze into the air filter is still a mystery.

Among the other wildlife that wanders in and out of our yard is a collection of feral cats, and a fairly large assortment of raptors. Nothing large enough to disturb the deer, but plenty to give mice, voles, chipmunks and squirrels something to think about. Several times I've found squirrel tails dangling from tree branches. It's rather bizarre.

LOL!
I haven't laughed as hard in a long, long time! The visual is too funny. I've had my share of absolutely FOUL dog adventures, but none of them involved anything as large and potentially stinky as an elk carcass.
LOL

I know what you mean about squirrel tails in trees, Mad.. :)

So now we're in Forum Freeze-up Season when New England gardeners are sick of talking about the weather and watching their gardens hunker down in the cold, and would rather not discuss it, thank you very much.

Whether the Gardenwebbers formally hibernate or just move on to other warmer forums is unknown; but it usually takes a hint of balmy spring breezes to bring them back.

Claire

Well, we seem to be safely out of Forum Freeze-up Season now, but Irrational Exuberance Season Redux is upon us.

This is the season when a few warm sunny days bring about a frenzy of plant shopping and plans to put new seedlings outdoors - even when snow is forecast for mid-week and night temperatures are hanging around freezing.

No matter how many times the sensible person screams "Last frost is not past yet!" and "Wait for Memorial Day!", the crazed gardener pulls off the mulch and engages in serious plant endangerment.

(I speak as one who has started the clean-up, and has a number of new plants shivering in a pitiful shelter).

Claire

Ah...Irrational Exuberance Season Redux could not be sustained when cold weather returned for a while (this is early northern spring, after all).

So it has been followed by Irrational Despair Season .

Come the next few warm days of spring and a few intrepid (foolhardy?) plants are showing signs of life even though the rest of the garden just sits there. Or looks irreparably damaged.

And the wail rises - "My beloved perennials/shrubs/bulbs/vines/trees/whatever are dead!"

And now the sensible person makes soothing sounds, murmuring - wait, wait, all is not lost, Mother Nature has been through this before, your plants may be OK. Give them time (like after Memorial Day).

- Claire (who is learning a lot from this seasonal process)

on memorial day, new england gardeners pause to remember all the brave plants that froze to death waiting for memorial day.

Here is a link that might be useful:

One of my favorite threads...a New England Forum Classic. kt

I'm checking to see if I can bring this thread out of mothballs (archive). It seems relevant now.

Claire

I find in coastal southern New England winter starts a lot later then everyone seems to think. Everyone schedules stuff for the summer, and activities/festivals grind to a halt when September 1 hits even though 90F days are more common then Snow in September. The inevitable September heat wave always surprises everyone.
Everyone goes into full-on winter wonderland mode in November (or late October)...but most of the serious snow around Boston and Rhode Island comes in January or February. Generally people get sick of the winter wonderland stuff before REAL winter hits most years. We have this image (conjured by Christmas cards and the traumatic memories of a few bad winters) of the ground being continuously covered in snow all winter, but that is rarely the case around Boston or Rhode Island.

Late Summer: Beach Season, Music Festival Season, Summer Vacation, mosquitoes, miserable heat waves in the city. People go into gardening mode even though it is a terrible time to plant trees.

Early Fall: People go into mourning, cancel social events, and wait, terrified of impending snow while sweating in heat waves. School starts. Lecture Season. People should be planting trees and bulbs but don't.

Late Fall/Early Winter: People realize it isn't terrible, come out of their holes, and start scheduling stuff. People have forgotten how to deal with snow so overreact to any that occurs. Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas blitz.

Late Winter: Real Snow storms hit when people finally think it isn't going to happen this year. People are sick of snow. Oddly they schedule more stuff then in the balmy days of early Fall. They feel like old pros where snow is concerned.

Early Spring: Occasional snow storms confuse people. Mud Season.

Late Spring/Early Summer: Great weather when it isn't raining. Mosquitoes. Mother's Day/Father's Day/Graduation Season. People start planting trees, shrubs, and bulbs way too late.

Good additions, Ed.

I found a link to a thread that used to work (mentioned above) but is broken on this thread. A bit gory but very funny.

Dog in Elk

Claire

What a blast from the past. And so good to see a lot of familiar names. Still battling deer and chipmunks here but the arrival of so many predators--fisher cats, foxes etc--helps somewhat with the chipmunks. But everytime I go on vacation and the car sits, I come back to acorns spitting out at me from the a/c in the car when I turn it on. But things could be worse. We now have bears in town tho none have been seen near my neighborhood--yet. Then it will be Katie bar the door.

ginny12: The acorns spitting out from the a/c reminds me of the time a few years ago when a mouse nested in my car and chewed up some essential wiring. The engine started and then immediately stalled - again and again. I ended up having it towed to a local service station and then to a dealer when the local guy couldn't handle it.

I also enjoy seeing the familiar names of people who no longer post.

Claire

I might have missed it, but I didn't see a mention of black fly season. Before moving to rural NH, May used to be a month I enjoyed. Now I can't go outside without full body coverings of clothing and nets. DH is allergic to black flies, so carries an Epipen and if he's outside, both his clothing and what little bare skin is showing is covered with DEET. He plans to do almost all work indoors during May.

I wonder what all those folks do now for their garden chat? I don't think that Facebook works nearly as well because you can't find anything later.

And some years there's caterpillar season, with the sound of caterpillars chomping on leaves, and frass decorating all surfaces, and little bodies writhing as they dangle from silk threads in the wind as they balloon to new foraging areas.

Claire

My first year in NH we had snow piles tall enough that the kids used them for sledding, winter dark by 4:30, and May was a combination of black flies and gypsy moths dangling from every eave and branch, accompanied by a constant rain of frass. I am still amazed that I stayed!