Prairie burning, prairie smoke #phenology

We're reporting on two very different kinds of "prairie smoke". One is filling much of Minnesota's skies with smoke from fires in Alberta, CA. Alberta is one of our Northern Neighbor's three prairie provinces. So, this year, if the skies aren't cloudy all day, they're full of smoke. Sunshine is getting to be damn hard to come by.

The other kind of prairie smoke we're reporting on is a wildflower that, this year, is blooming almost a month behind the way it had developed in 2017.

Geum triflorum (Prairie Smoke) May 10, 2017

Photo by J. Harrington

Geum triflorum (Prairie Smoke) May 28, 2017

Photo by J. Harrington

We stopped today and checked on this stand(?), patch(?) of prairie smoke plants. The flower development is about the same as it was on May 10, 2017. That puts it about three weeks behind 2017's phenology.

If you're interested in the timing of the natural signs of Minnesota's Spring and Summer, we'd like to point you towards the recent work of Greta Kaul, a reporter for MinnPost. We're now looking forward to seeing what she produces for Autumn and Winter, she's portrayed Spring and Summer so nicely. We especially like the early / late occurrence dates and her sketches are a delight.

Prairie Sure

By Carol Light

Would I miss the way a breeze dimples

the butter-colored curtains on Sunday mornings,

or nights gnashed by cicadas and thunderstorms?

The leaning gossip, the half-alive ripple

of sunflowers, sagging eternities of corn

and sorghum, September preaching yellow, yellow

in all directions, the windowsills swelling

with Mason jars, the blue sky bluest borne

through tinted glass above the milled grains?

The dust, the heat, distrusted, the screen door

slapping as the slat-backed porch swing sighs,

the hatch of houseflies, the furlongs of freight trains,

and how they sing this routine, so sure, so sure—

the rote grace of every tempered life?

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