Some New Hampshire Haiku

Fall leaves turn colors
Animals turn to mating
Beware where you step

New Hampshire Seasons

If you don't like New England weather, don't worry, it'll change in a minute anyway -- so goes the old saying. Actually, I've heard that saying applied to just about everywhere I've ever lived, or visited for that matter. I'd like to meet the guy who first started that one, and ask what region he originally meant. It was probably something like Sandusky, Ohio.

Anyway, southern New Hampshire apparently drew the short straw when it came to topography. While northern New Hampshire gets all the press for being the romantic mountainous country, great for skiing and hiking and scenic getaways, southern New Hampshire ended up with the less romantic swamps. Mind you, some states like Louisiana and Georgia can somehow make swamps seem romantic, but with the picturesque hilly country just to the north, with all its exciting outdoor activities and made-for-wine-dinners scenery so close by, well, what can southern New Hampshire do? Old New Hampshire farmers who tried to eke out a living in these swamps were derisively called "Swamp Yankees" by their northern brethren, and were seen to be both impoverished and whiny. Neither a native nor a farmer, I do not qualify as a genuine Swamp Yankee but I'll defend my swampy homestead nonetheless. Indeed, driving up my long driveway, you could be made to believe if only for a few moments that you were in fact in Louisiana Bayou country. Sadly, when you reached the end of the drive, there was no Cajun food awaiting you. Still, I love my swampy corner of New Hampshire all the same -- although how one gets swamps in a state made of granite is still a mystery to me.

In any event, there is one peculiarity about swampy southern New Hampshire: In early August -- in fact this year, on August 1st -- you may be driving along on a hot summer's day, with let's say a temperature of over 90 degrees with humidity at 75%, and though visions of a nice, cool pool dance in your feverish brain, well, imagine your surprise when you drive by a stretch of swamp and see a bunch of trees already turning color, with a few of them already a bright, screaming fire engine red! Swamps in New Hampshire harbor floral critters known as Swamp Maples (Acer rubrum), which are the earliest trees to change color in the autumn -- indeed, some get a head start in late summer. This can be quite disconcerting but the buggers are everywhere so that by mid-August, sometimes whole swamps will be outlined with bright red fall colors. We are currently at that stage now. Now, as a lover of autumn and winter, these swamp maples are harbingers of happiness for me after toasting and sweating through a long, humid New Hampshire summer, but understandably for the more sun-inclined, seeing trees turning color already can be quite distressing.

Well, summer's had a good run and it's almost over, but a consolation of having these leafy banshees portending the coming change of seasons is that they also give out good brown, gooey stuff -- which we'll explore more later.

BTW, the picture above came from this website here.

Pumpkins in New Hampshire

It's slowly coming up on autumn, and so I figure I should mention the pumpkin thing. My wife, who wasn't born in the U.S., once asked me how to make pumpkin pie. "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling...." This answer was not what she wanted to hear; she wanted to make 'authentic' pumpkin pie from scratch. She called a friend of mine who used to do a lot of baking, and his response to her was, "Well, first you open a can of pumpkin filling..." Non-plussed, she turned to the internet and in short order had a recipe for pumpkin pie from scratch, which involved me gutting several pumpkins and handing her the orange goo, minus the seeds. (We bake the seeds.) I did end up with a pumpkin pie for all that work (with home-made whipped cream too!), but it certainly was one of my more labor-intensive pumpkin pies.

Which brings us to our thought for the day, which is what exactly should you be doing with a pumpkin, if not gutting it for pie or carving it for Halloween? (Those two are not mutually exclusive, mind you.) One thought is that you could, well, chuck it. Far. Really far. In fact, while you're at it, you could build yourself a medieval-style trebuchet and chuck that sucker really, really far. (Note: This is not recommended if you want to maintain hospitable relations with any nearby neighbors.) This is the thought process that Steve Seigars, Patrick Seigars, Michael Seigars, and Kathy Seigars -- four self-described "Yankee Farmers" -- apparently went through a few years back in Greenfield, New Hampshire when they built Yankee Siege, a modern day trebuchet designed specifically to lob pumpkins great distances, which they do for enthusiastic audiences all summer long. Not content to simply bombard fake castles (and the odd old pickup truck parked out back in the field), Yankee Siege competes every year in the World Championship Punkin Chunkin -- because they apparently managed to find a bunch of like-minded folks who somehow came to similar conclusions about what to do with spare pumpkins. Yankee Siege has won its category (adult trebuchet)at the World Championship Punkin Chunkin for the past six years. Yet another thing New Hampshirites do well: chunkin' punkins.

Incoming!!!!!!!!!!