Phenology's shoulder season

red maple buds

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks and feels as though we've entered what I'd call a shoulder season, not quite Winter, not quite Spring, just like a country road's shoulder is not quite road and not quite ditch. There's not a lot happening, unless you're tapping maple trees. Our local red maples haven't yet experienced budburst. I can't quite decide of the goldfinches have started to brighten or if it's my imagination. Except for a couple of purple finches, migratory songbirds haven't yet arrived although tomorrow could be an entirely different story, so we're keeping the feeders full.

hyacinth starting to bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Both hyacinths have been moved from the piano top to a sill on an East-facing window through which the red maples can be seen. One hyacinth has begun to bloom. There are now crocus on the piano replacing the hyacinths. If Spring won't hurry to this Minnesotan, this Minnesotan will hurry to Spring. That also means it's again time for the annual pondering: is this the year to go buy a kite? I've probably watched Charlie Brown and the Kite-Eating Tree too many times, and yet, like Charlie, I too have hopes that this Spring could be different once we get off this shoulder and back on the road. I wonder if I could handle a dragon kite?

Kites

By Robert Gibb

Come March we’d find them

In the five-and-dimes,

Furled tighter than umbrellas

About their slats, the air

In an undertow above us

Like weather on the maps.

We’d play out lines

Of kite string, tugging against

The bucking sideways flights.

Readied for assembly,

I’d arc the tensed keel of balsa

Into place against the crosspiece,

Feeling the paper snap

Tautly as a sheet, then lift

The almost weightless body

Up to where it hauled me

Trolling into the winds—

Knotted bows like vertebrae

Flashing among fields

Of light. Why ruin it

By recalling the aftermaths?

Kites gone down in tatters,

Kites fraying like flotsam

From the tops of the trees.

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