Signs of the coming winter?

[1918ColonialRevival]

Phil's post about squirrels filing their teeth on his flashing made me think about something. As hot as it is in the Mid Atlantic right now, winter is probably the last thing on anyone's mind. While sweating my head off in the hottest summer we've had in the last 7-8 years, I'm starting to see a few signs that are concerning me about what this winter may have in store for us. My great-grandmother taught me to read signs from nature and I'm seeing a few things that are concerning to me:

- There is a hornet's nest about the size of a football under the eaves of my next door neighbor's roof, which is about 30 feet or so off the ground. According to the old timers, hornets only build high when the weather is about to turn bad. I can attest to that - I got into a hornet's nest while cleaning the gutters out in the fall of 2009. The winter of 2009-10 was one of the worst on record for this area.

- Our neighborhood is full of squirrels. I had to chase one out of my garage last weekend that was building a nest up in the rafters. When I knocked the nesting materials out, a lot (and I mean a LOT) of acorns came with it.

- We caught a field mouse in a snap trap in our laundry room two nights ago. My wife thought she heard a mouse last weekend, so I set traps (the earliest I've ever set them). In eleven years of living here, it's not uncommon to catch a mouse or two over the course of a year, but it's usually in the fall or the spring. The earliest I've seen signs of mice trying to get into the basement is late September/early October.

- The deer are feeding in the middle of the day, which is uncommon this time of year.

- Leaves are already starting to turn, with some of the poplar leaves already starting to come down. This is over a month earlier than it normally happens.

Hopefully I'm overreacting, but I'm getting a little concerned. Anyone else noticing any of these subtle signs?

[nhguy]

cooks hill ski.jpg (818.69 KiB) Viewed 740 times

We've always owned farm properties that required field mowing, so every so many years I run into a hornets nest close to the ground. Where we live I mow the three acres of fields with a walk behind Gravely tractor our property is also the sledding hill for town so the hills are steep and a sit down tractor would be deadly. I always wait until after the first frost to mow as the nests are usually dead by then. Well I found a football sized nest less than two feet from the ground last fall. I can only imagine the fun that would have been to hit with the mower in late summer. To get back to the winter bit, it was a very mild and low snow winter here in northern NH. When the ski areas shut down because of Covid, I made some runs on our hill off the porch.

[Gothichome]

Colonial, yes, fall is approaching fast. I have noticed some of the poplar trees starting to yellow and the grease have started to congregate on the river. It’s far to early though to be talking winter . I still have far to much summer work to do.

[GinaC]

It's funny you mention this, because yesterday I was thinking the same thing. My leaves are starting to come down already, and the nights have a chill in the air. I'm trying to wait for the Labor Day sale to buy my leaf vacuum thing, and I hope there aren't a ton of leaves piled up until then.

I bought some mouse traps because I noticed some mouse feces near my kitchen garbage can. I'm thinking it comes out at night because my dogs have not alerted me. This weekend I plan to get some spray foam and plug up any holes I find in the basement.

[1918ColonialRevival]

...This weekend I plan to get some spray foam and plug up any holes I find in the basement.

If you have any gaps or holes, put some steel or copper wool in them first. Mice can rip through foam, but they can't get through the steel wool (it cuts them and they stop). The sad thing is, even when you think you've closed every opening imaginable, the dang things still find a way to get in.

Watch estate sales and craigslist for leaf vacuums if you don't want to spend much on one. I got the one I use most, a Parker SV-6830 powered by a 1968 Briggs Stratton 4 hp engine, for $20 at an estate sale. Had to install a carburetor kit ($8) where it had been sitting a couple of years, cleaned out the gas tank, and a new spark plug ($3) and it runs like a champ. I also have a Giant Vac with an 8 hp B/S, but it is awkward to use, especially when you have to turn. The Parker is slightly bigger than your average push mower.

[Manalto]

It's hard to identify any anomalies here in southern New England because precipitation itself has been an anomaly. It has only rained three times since I returned in early July; all three were disappointing as far as the amount of rainfall and only one storm lasted more than an hour.

Because of the drought, some of my landscape plants have died. Trees and shrubs are wilting or have lost leaves. Several huge oak trees in the park behind my house have aborted thousands of tiny acorns. This is not good news for the squirrels and deer that depend on them.

I suppose there are subtle environmental cues discernible to plants and animals that signal a harsh winter to come, but the drought here (in combination with many days with temperatures in the 90s) has overwhelmed my feeble human perception of them.

[1918ColonialRevival]

Wish I could send some of my rain your way, James. We've had over 8 inches just since August 1st.

[awomanwithahammer]

Here in East Tennessee we have reached our average yearly rainfall of ~48" already. It's August 17. It was 87 degrees today. I can't even imagine winter.

"Winter is when you wish it were as hot as it was in the summer when you complained of the heat."

However, there are a couple of supposed signs of a bad winter here: the thickness of the fur (?) on the woolly caterpillars, and the number of morning fogs in August, which is said to correspond to the number of big snows in the coming winter. I haven't seen any caterpillars, but we have had several morning fogs.

[Lily left the valley]

I read a few months back that last year was a mast year for oaks, hence the abundance of acorns and thus chipmunks and squirrels that had plenty to store. We definitely have more oak seedlings this year than the last three.

The milkweed tussock caterpillars look about the same fuzziness for us here in MA. The sneak peak Farmer's Almanac prediction map shows us at "sheets of sleet" though the text summary says temps will be close to normal. I haven't seen any of the woolly bear caterpillars to see how thick their bands are or not. We don't tend to get many wasp nests on our property, so I can't speak to the height of those, though I have been keeping a close eye inside the garage since we found a tiny paper one in there last year (likely a solitary). Nothing new so far.

A lot of plants did not fare well for us here this year, as we had erratic hotter than average spurts in June and July after the May snows holding up planting, though right now we're getting a hint of fall as well. Temps even dropped to high 70s though they'll soon go back to 80s, and last night and the next few are predicted to be 50s, but again, will bounce back up. We did see some heavy rains that made the hot spells more miserable, though of late except for the remnants of the one Tropical Storm, it's mostly been lighter showers. Our small city currently has "significant" drought limits on water use since late July, no outside city sourced watering from 9-5. Since we have rain barrels, that doesn't inhibit our garden watering.

Our milkweed patches have never looked so fried, and they've only done as well as they have for the most part because they get partial shade a few hours of the day. Curled edge leaves, and the milkweed eating caterpillars have been very picky so it's been tough to feed the youngest Monarchs I take in because the tougher curled edge leaves they simply don't like to eat, so it's been a challenge finding good younger top leaves for them. (In weather like we had June/July, it concentrates the poisonous aspect of the sap and can actually kill young cats and insects--I've found a few while leaf hunting.)

Both our black and red raspberry have also gone fall shades early, and wildflowers went to seed earlier as well. Some of the saplings we've been meaning to pull too, but the older trees so far are not yet turning so obviously. We did have more bigger branches fall this year in the earlier storms, and I've never seen the leaves turn brown on any fallen branches as fast as I have this year.

[phil]

Where we live I mow the three acres of fields with a walk behind Gravely tractor

at our summer property we hired a machine with a flail mower, because we have a lot of willows.

My brother got a gravely tractor. he was running it last weekend. to trim the willows. you can almost watch them grow as they spring up like crazy from the roots or even from stray branches. they block our lake access so we have to keep them under control and it's an ongoing issue.

we just have the blade, its a really heavy blade, not like a lawnmower. i got ahold of a bunch of super heavy giant saw blades but we just use the blade it has.
they have a following and a lot of neat attachments.
we have an older John Deere garden tractor that we use to cut everywhere else. It's been very good as well. we also have a case tractor , its a worn out old front end loader from the early 50's. it runs and we use it to move stuff around but its so old and worn and the ground is so hard it's hard to dig with. my dad took a link out of the tracks and welded hundreds of nuts to them to try to keep them working. He and my brother did a farmer rebuild on the motor. Its a case 310.


My other brother has a little 5 acre farm, he recently bought a old Massey Ferguson tractor. it has a leaky rear main oil seal so he has to take it all apart to get that seal changed but it runs.
I think the procedure basically involves splitting the machine in half so hopefully he can do that.

another interesting item is an old water pump. it was used to fill the trains in the days of steam. Its a hit and miss stationary engine, made by fairbanks morse. My dad had it going, It has a water jacket around the piston, it got a crack from frost so needs some work.