re: "I was sitting out enjoying the fireflies tonight."
I saw very few fireflies in NH this year. That's unusual for the first two weeks of July. I think that perhaps the firefly season is running a little later than usual.
Of wildlife, there was the usual assortment. I had 16 turkeys in my front yard at one point. At another, there were both a grey fox and two deer. I guess deer, which are cautious creatures, have no fear of foxes. There was a skunk odor one evening when I turned on the whole house fan. The next day I found egg shells from my compost had been moved about 20 feet. From now on, that pile will need to be further from the house.
As always, there are lots of hornets and deerflies in NH. (Deerflies bite, painfully, leaving a bloody mark behind. They seem to have a penchant for elbows.) And there's some kind of fly that likes to attack my head, hammering it at full speed over and over when I walk the field mid-day. They'll follow me for 100 yards at times. REALLY annoying. The mosquitoes this year were the worst ever - which is curious since they aren't bad at all in Virginia. (Last year, they were horrible in Virginia.) I set up a couple of citronella torches while were doing fireworks. They didn't seem to help at all.
The Coleman head nets I've acquired are invaluable, but stinging and biting insects still go after arms and legs if they're exposed, which they generally are on hot days. I've still never been in NH when the black flies are out, and everyone tells me that they're the worst. So far, so good on that count.
Due to our visitors, we only went to the new property one time. I didn't accomplish anything! In that respect, the trip was a little bit of a failure. Ah well. I learned to use the brush hog, and this was the first time I put the tractor to serious use. My comfort level is growing, but you'd be surprised how scary it is whenever the tractor is going sideways on even a slight hill. Sitting in it, you feel top heavy - which the tractor is even when the bucket is down. I'm well aware of how easily tractors can roll, so I'm trying to always go straight up and straight down the hills. Even so, most of my mowing was through 3 and 4 foot scrub, so I was nervous about a wheel going into a hole that couldn't be seen, making the tractor topple.
Then, there are times when you have to turn around... unless you want to reverse back up or down a hill (at about 0.25 mph, the top speed in that direction.)
I'm not sure why the things are designed with such a high center of gravity. My wife thinks it's so they'll have clearance above young plants, and that their wheels are spaced as appropriate for crop furrows. She's probably right, but it still seems like a design that could be improved.
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