Only five months late with May! Soon I’ll be posting pics from 2025!
Walks and Sights in New Hampshire
Exciting month. We did a 1K, our very first intentional such race, which required four .6-mile walks/hikes around the region during the month of May, but we knocked it out in one day if you can believe it. And won a great raffle prize!
1K TRAILS
Amelanchier canadensis (serviceberry) flower 
Erythronium americanum (trout lily) 
violets 
bloodroot 
red trillium in bud 
Lake Sunapee
In other trail walking and field trips: Clark Pond Trails, home of many pink lady’s slippers and trilliums, three times; Kezar Lake three times as well; and The Fells twice. We visited three other places once, and of course walked around town many days.
KEZAR LAKE (SUTTON)
honeysuckle flowers 
hobblebush flowers 
healing stump cairn 
loon 
ferns unfurling 
red trillium 
false hellebore 
kingbird 
mallard with ten ducklings 
Clintonia bloom 
Jack-in-the-pulpit 
painted trillium 
lady’s slippers 
asparagus shoot
CLARK POND TRAILS (NEW LONDON)
Uvularia sessilifolia (wild oats, bellwort) 
mayfly 
white violet 
Indian cucumber root buds 
hobblebush 
lady’s slippers 
Canada mayflower 
painted trillium
THE FELLS (NEWBURY)
primrose 
white trillium 
phlox along steps 
Jeffersonia diphylla (twinleaf) 
Oxalis (wood sorrel) 
starflower 
rhodora 
Iris cristata 
Cypripedium parviflorum (yellow lady’s slippers) 
Also at The Fells, on 23 May, we happened onto this Luna moth (Actias luna) drying its wings on a tree trunk after emerging from a cocoon! Can you spot it in the first photo? The second two photos were taken about an hour apart.
OTHER NH TRAIL AND TOWN WALKS
starflower 
marsh marigold 
mating dragonflies 
‘Leonard Messel’ magnolia 
great blue heron 
Rhodora 
Chamaepericlymenum canadense (bunchberry) 
Ctenucha virginica moth caterpillar 
beetle 
killdeer 
giant orange tulips 
poppy 
yellow azalea 
dandelion 
Solomon’s seal 
Polygaloides paucifolia (fringed polygala) 
Food
With the exception of dinner with one couple inside their home (we’ve been eating outside with them as much as possible throughout the pandemic), we’re otherwise eating only outside, including at the reopened-for-the-season Polyculture Brewing beer garden in Croydon and on the front porch of the New London Inn.
cod in coconut-cilantro sauce with rice 
Polyculture Brewing beer garden open again 
massive banana split at friends’ house 
view from dinner on front porch of New London Inn
Zoom — and non-Zoom! with warmer weather
Still mostly on Zoom with friends far and near, but one group, a local poetry group that never met virtually, started meeting again, outside [photo of that by Loa W.].
I took part in many webinars this month, including ones on native plants (NH Audubon), gardening for wildlife (National Wildlife Federation), whales (New England Aquarium), circus art (Shelburne Museum, VT), “Mindful Looking” (Denver Museum of Art), and “Looking At Art” (Currier Museum, Manchester NH).
gardening for wildlife 
looking at art (Helen of Troy) 
native plants 
mindful looking 
whales presentation 
circus art 
poetry group outside by fire 
flowers at friends’ house (for dinner)
Cat
fang 
looking out sunroom door 
on my chair 
hanging out in sunroom with us on warm days
House & Garden
HOUSE
evening in sunroom 
evening reading by fire 
GARDEN
bear on motion camera 
porcupine on motion camera 
azalea 
chives and ferns 
shade garden 
woodland phlox 
yellow trillium 
centaurea 
‘Luwig Spaeth’ lilac 
amsonia 
amsonia 
first of the large rhodos 
French lilac 
sand cherry flowers 
Trollius 
Jack-in-the-pulpit 
daffs by driveway 
‘Olga Mezitt’ rhodo 
red lily leaf beetle 
‘Beauty of Moscow’ lilac 
curved tooth geometer moth (Eutrapela clemataria) 
Lathyrus vernal (spring bush pea) 
mounring cloak butterfly in weeping ‘Red Jade’ crabapple 
tulip 
chipping sparrow 
house wren 
Fritillaria meleagris (checkered lily) 
dandelion with pollinator
