Backporch Almanac

A forecast for living things

Coming soon to the App Store

for iPhone and iPad

If someone sent you a card from Backporch, this is where it came from. It keeps an almanac for your county: roughly when the boxelder bugs will crowd onto the south wall, when the first frost is likely, which day of the week the ragweed is worst and when the monarchs come through. Tap the bell on any of them and it'll remind you the day before, usually at 4:00 pm, while there's still time to seal the gap under the door or get the tomatoes in.

What's close

Today opens on your weather, drawn in ink, and a barometer that reads the air outside. Under it is everything due in the next thirty days, soonest first, each with a photograph.

Pests, a month at a glance

Stink bugs, camel crickets, deer mice, yellowjacket queens looking for a winter gap. Each one sits on the day it's expected, so you can see a busy week coming, and a tap tells you what to do about it. For house mice that starts with walking the foundation with a pencil: any gap it slides into is a way in.

Follow 152 species

From the ruby-throated hummingbird to the humpback whale. Each route is drawn month by month, spring and autumn, with recent sightings marked on the map.

What is that?

Point your camera at a plant, a bug or a bird, take a photo or choose one you already have, and Backporch will put a name to it. Everything you name goes into your specimen cabinet, filed by kind and dated.

On iPad it opens like a ring binder, the list on the left page and whatever you picked on the right.