Mid-September status #phenology

Before we proceed with today's status report on phenology events, we want to revist yesterday's posting for a moment. Strong Towns founder, Chuck Marohn, with whom we've briefly worked in the past, has a series on Understanding Growth that fits with and supports points we've been making about Minnesota's need for a "New Economy." It's definitely worth a read. Now, back to what's going on around here today.

• Hummingbirds continue to arrive at the nectar feeder through this morning.


• More and more milkweed plants have turned yellow.


• Goldfinches, over the past five, six or more weeks having raised the next generation, are reappearing at the sunflower seeds feeder.
  
  

  

  goldfinches at the sunflower seed feeder
  

  Photo by J. Harrington



• Daytime temperatures feel more like late August than mid-September.


• Still haven't seen any woolly bear caterpillars. If you've been more successful this September, and want to observe a transmogrification into a moth, check here. (We tried something akin to observing a captive woolly bear several years ago. We weren't quick enough to cover the container and never did locate that caterpillar again.)
  
  

  

  the woolly bear caterpillar before it went missing
  

  Photo by J. Harrington



• Based on early September's cool temperatures, we thought we might have an early onset Winter. Now we're not so sure, it looks as if warmer but diminishingly so temperatures will cover the Midwest through November.

Characteristics of Life

Camille T. Dungy, 1972

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
—BBC Nature News

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                                        of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                                                        I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
                        one thing today and another tomorrow
        and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

                        I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that’s all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
        between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                                                        I will speak
                        the impossible hope of the firefly.

                                                You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
        such wordless desire.

                                To say it is mindless is missing the point.

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