Blue skies, blue birds, blue #phenology?

Amidst the strife and tribulations of daily life, blue skies, warm temperatures and the bluebirds of happiness have returned to the neighborhood. My solitary sighting today was validated by the Daughter Person's mention of having seen a pair yesterday. It's getting to be time to dig out the feeders for the orioles and hummingbirds, but no meal worms this year. What a failure last year!

the bluebirds have returned, Happiness!

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow we can expect thunderstorms if the weather forecast is to be believed. Is Minnesota learning how to do a proper Spring? Even the daylilies are starting to peek up from the thawed ground, but they sprouted much earlier  in 2012. This no doubt means I need to go check (again) on the skunk cabbage soon. Spring's "early" this year, but there's a benefit to having time-stamped photos from other years to refresh my frequently faulty memory about the sequence of seasonal events, all, that is, except for Spring cleaning in and around the house. There's been no discernible pattern to that over the years, demonstrating that we humans can be, and sometimes are, less consistent than Mother Nature, or is it simply a sign that we are part of nature and her variability?

emergent daylilies, late March 2012

Photo by J. Harrington

The Daring One

By Edwin Markham

I would my soul were like the bird   

That dares the vastness undeterred.   

Look, where the bluebird on the bough   

Breaks into rapture even now!   

He sings, tip-top, the tossing elm   

As tho he would a world o’erwhelm.   

Indifferent to the void he rides   

Upon the wind’s eternal tides.

He tosses gladly on the gale,

For well he knows he can not fail—

Knows if the bough breaks, still his wings   

Will bear him upward while he sings! 

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