(Re)Springing #phenology

For at least the second time this Winter, we're enjoying a major snow melt. Local "gravel" roads will once again turn to mud. Meanwhile, several of our oak trees still have numerous dead leaves attached to their branches, we're now up to about 10 hours and 17 minutes of daylight, male Cardinals should be starting their Spring song defending territory and at least one pickup truck has been in the news for breaking through the ice on a nearby lake. Spring is getting resprung.

once again, mud season

Photo by J. Harrington

The USA Phenology Network has several online resources available for our learning about fundamentals. The three I find most helpful are the Botany Primer, the How to Observe Handbook, and the (draft) Phenophase Primer. If you want to check out other resources, follow this link.

male Cardinal with oak leaf cluster

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm finding my old aversion to learning through memorization kicking in, but I'm also hoping that engaging in regular, structured observations and actually learning and being able to promptly apply what I'm learning will help overcome that aversion. When I was in school, there was little (no?) attention paid to experiential learning, but that's what a lot of "life-long learning" is about, right? Plus, it is no doubt a mentally and emotionally more healthful expenditure of time and effort than tracking the goings-on in St. Paul and Washington, D.C. Remember the old saying about "he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day?" That's why this is probably a good year for me to really tackle phenology. It can serve as one form of self care.

Hunger Moon

By Jane Cooper

The last full moon of February

stalks the fields; barbed wire casts a shadow.

Rising slowly, a beam moved toward the west

stealthily changing position

until now, in the small hours, across the snow

it advances on my pillow

to wake me, not rudely like the sun

but with the cocked gun of silence.

I am alone in a vast room

where a vain woman once slept.

The moon, in pale buckskins, crouches

on guard beside her bed.

Slowly the light wanes, the snow will melt

and all the fences thrum in the spring breeze

but not until that sleeper, trapped

in my body, turns and turns.

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