Topic #2 - Season & Climate

Springtime - Spring starts around March 20th.  However, there
is about a one month lag until the season takes form.  This
shot is of forsythia bushes that bloom their yellow flowers
around mid-April.

This small white wildflowers grow among a field of grass
for a short time in early May.

These purple flowers only grow among our Civil War (1861-65)
Veterans graves in our local cemetery.  It is unknown
who or when these special flowers were planted, but the
grown there like a blanket each first week of May.

Also in May, the pear trees bloom to fertilize the forth-
coming pears of Fall.

Our Pennsylvania State Flower is the Mountain Laurel.
These mountain shrubs bloom each mid-June.

Near the beginning of July, our wild
huckleberries (blueberries) ripen.  These
are low shrubs, about two feet tall, and grow
on rocky mountain sides where tall trees have
either been timbered or where a forest fire
thinned out the forest.  In old days, mountain
people would burn the woods every few years
to increase the huckleberry yield.  Many people
who live in our mountain areas would pick them
to sell at market for extra money, sometimes
known as "pin money." 

Here is the Lehigh Gorge.  Our town Lehighton is named
after this river.  It was originally named by the Algonquin
people who lived here long before European settlers arrived
here in the 1700s.  "Lehigh" meant "at the forks," because
the Lehigh River was considered the west branch of the
Delaware River.  The Delaware river starts along New Jersey
Pennsylvania somewhat close to New York City.  It then
flows past Philadelphia on out to the Atlantic Ocean.  This
picture was taken from a rocky outcrop known as "Hetchel's
Tooth."  It overlooks an old railroad bed that is now a
trail for bicycles.  It can lead about 25 miles north to White
Haven and onward to the town of Mountain Top.  This
view is facing south toward Jim Thorpe, then Lehighton.
The trail goes past Lehighton another 25 miles, all the way to
the city of Bethlehem!

This is a view of the Lehigh River from the
biking trail during the Fall.  Pennsylvania is
widely known as a state with a wide
variety of deciduous trees.  When the light
gets shorter, the trees know when winter is
coming.  The trees then drop their leaves.
Before this happens, the leaves stop making
food for the tree and lose their chlorophyll.
Without the green chlorophyll, the tree colors
of the trees can be seen. 

Early fall among some sugar maples, beechnut,
cherry, and red oak trees in northern Carbon County.

This is along the Lehigh Canal.  This canal ran parallel to
the Lehigh River from Jim Thorpe (once known as Mauch
Chunk, Algonquin for "Sleeping Bear") to Easton, Pennsylvania.
It was completed in 1829 and operated carrying coal to Philadelphia
and New York City into the 1930s.  By the late 1800s, railroads
were carrying more coal quicker and cheaper than the canals.

And winter comes to Pennsylvania - This 150 year old oak tree dominates the view of an old farm field.  Our area was
once quite rich in farming.  Most families lived on farms around here 120 years ago.  Then slowly, the children of these
farmers opened small stores or went to work on the canal or railroad or at Bethlehem Steel.  Many of these workers then
ran a much smaller farm known as a "truck patch" farm.  What you see here is what is left of Herman Ahner's small 20-acre farm he started in the 1930s.  This section of the farm was given to his son Keen who worked in a sand quarry.  At night he
would run his tractor on this patch of ground.  Most farmers were quite poor.  Early tractors were actually old trucks.  So this
is how these small farm patches/large gardens came to be known as "truck patches."