tamarack

Juan destroyed plenty of NS forest. Mills as far a way as Maine had trouble with wood supply in the months following the storm, because so many NB loggers were cleaning up the mess. And since I don't think Maine hasn't recorded anything stronger than Cat 1 since 1900, hitting 100 mph is really impressive for a place nearly as close to the pole as to the equator. Being so much closer than Maine to the Gulf Stream helps (or hurts.)

No, though I've read snippets about that year. Used to have (lost in a move?) a "disasters" book that included the fires at Hinckley (MN) and Peshtigo, and still have "The Week Maine Burned" about the fires of 1947. (Which burned through a couple entire downtowns in SW Maine along with the "cottages" at Bar Harbor. Caused 15 fatalities, but thankfully nothing like the above pair, 500+ at Hinckley and more than 1500 at Peshtigo where the flames rode the same winds that spread the Chicago fire.)

Perhaps get a firm ID on the bugs, then look for the appropriate variety of BT, the biological insecticide which has been adapted for numerous insect families, each working only on that family (BT for Diptera [flies and mosquitos], as an example, won't harm bees.)

Cannot argue with that. Though I like "interesting" wx, I'm also happy to live in the land of little hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes and big snowstorms.

Somewhat related, I've always found ice storms exciting and beautiful (the NNJ event in 1953 probably triggered my interest in both wx and trees), but that excitement is tempered by foreboding since I entered the forestry profession.

The leaves in your pic (right side) look a bit wider than cherry leaves around here, but the bark is cherry - no other tree in the area has that blocky black skin. If you can reach a twig, a scrape of the bark offers that "bitter almond" aroma diagnostic for the genus, which includes chokecherry (more a bush than tree) and pincherry, also called fire cherry as it's often on of the first trees after fire or clearcut. It grows about as large as striped maple though it cannot tolerate shade.

Agree. The sinuses are too deep for black oak, and though the full tree pic doesn't show pin oak's frequent horizontal (or lower) branch character, that facet is usually seen in open-grown street trees. In the forest the tree grows much like other oaks, though it's prone to epicormic branches (none seen in the pic) unless it's in dense woods.

Not PC In the plant nursery business, trees like striped maple are called "snakebark maple." And slippery elm is relatively uncommon in the Northeast, such that I've never bothered to learn how it's different from American elm.

I don't think so - no new lesions or fruiting bodies visible. Looks like that tree had some early issues with wet snow and/or ice, but was able to grow out of it.

If you do any clearing near that tree, be super carful not to cause any damage to it. The blight is out there and I've been disappointed by minor wounds leading to blight numerous times.

Definitely not black cherry - too wide and too glossy. One test for the cherry genus is to scrape some bark and sniff for "bitter almond". The bottom 2 pics look something like glossy buckthorn (which despite the name has no thorns) but the little points on the leaves in the top 2 don't match as well. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Have you seen any berries or such? The buckthorns have small berries that run from dark green to red to almost black. That chestnut is larger than some (blighted and gone now) from which I've picked nuts, but those were getting more sun than yours appears to get. Since chestnuts are monoecious, both male and female trees would need to flower in order to get nuts, though a lone female will produce sterile husks.

EAB has also slipped across into Maine, from NH in the south and from NB in the north. On my woodlot, about 100 miles from the southern Maine beetle beachhead, white ash is the 3rd most abundant species - red maple is 1st and fir 2nd - plus there's a considerable amount of brown ash. Without human assistance the insect population is said to advance about 2 miles per year - much faster when people carelessly move infested wood. WA appears to include a very small percentage that survive EAB while no such resistance has been seen for brown. Given the cultural importance of brown ash to Maine's indigenous peoples, the beetle could be a real disaster for them.

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.

I think that practice was a tip (pun intended) from "Crockett's Victory Garden."

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

Too small for yellowjackets. Ginx is probably correct, and there are many such species native to our region.

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.

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.

More importantly (since they may have already bred by beechnut time), they make the bears fat.

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.

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.