Mixed bag on an Autumn day

After our past few rainy days, it was actually a rewarding change to get back at the buckthorn removal project. We've actually reached a point where the difference in understory is noticeable. If we don't finish before snow and cold, and frozen ground, make progress too difficult, we'll have a good shot at finishing in the Spring, before planting season. We'll either try one bag of wildflower seeds on top of the snow and the other come Spring, or wait until Spring and use both. Flexibility is beneficial after years of benign neglect on controlling buckthorn. Eradication is unrealistic since there  remain reservoirs of the invasive outside, but near, our property lines and birds that eat buckthorn berries have no respect whatsoever for such lines. The brush pile that may yet get burned this season has its own replacement stockpiles, so any critters that may have come to rely on it, such as runny babbit, won't be homeless this Winter. Meanwhile, we'll read through Prairie Restoration's reports on seasonal buckthorn management and see if we can pick up any helpful hints.

buckthorn disposal

Photo by J. Harrington

AGATE magazine has an encouraging, all things considered, article on Adaptation as Acceptance: Toward a New Normal in the Northwoods. Some day soon, or more likely over the Winter, we'll take a careful look at some of the adaptation tools [Tools for Embracing Change] listed at the article's end. If we read it correctly, part of the adaptation theme is about replacing conifers with deciduous trees. We wonder how that will fit with the growing concern about the effects of earth worms in the North Woods and what all of these watershed land use changes may have on the water quality in northern Minnesota. We all know that what happens on the land (and in the air) affects what's in the water.

replacement brush pile (habitat)

Photo by J. Harrington

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is beginning to identify and map geographic areas of environmental justice [EJ] concern. We look forward to the day when MnPCA further breaks down their topical and geographic silos and lets viewers access EJ layers together with the Impaired Waters Viewer and whatever is relevant from the superfund and air quality related data. And then, if Commerce or the PUC provided layers on pipelines and oil train routes, we might actually "get the picture." Progress seems to come in such halting steps.

                     Cheer

By Stanley Plumly

Like the waxwings in the juniper,

a dozen at a time, divided, paired,

passing the berries back and forth, and by

nightfall, wobbling, piping, wounded with joy.

Or a party of redwings grazing what

falls—blossom and seed, nutmeat and fruit—

made light in the head and cut by the light,

swept from the ground, carried downwind, taken....

It's called wing-rowing, the wing-burdened arms

unbending, yielding, striking a balance,

walking the white invisible line drawn

just ahead in the air, first sign the slur,

the liquid notes too liquid, the heart in

the mouth melodious, too close, which starts

the chanting, the crooning, the long lyric

silences, the song of our undoing.

It's called side-step, head-forward, raised-crown, flap-

and-glide-flight aggression, though courtship is

the object, affection the compulsion,

love the overspill—the body nodding,

still standing, ready to fly straight out of

itself—or its bill-tilt, wing-flash, topple-

over; wing-droop, bowing, tail-flick and drift;

back-ruffle, wingspread, quiver and soar.

Someone is troubled, someone is trying,

in earnest, to explain; to speak without

swallowing the tongue; to find the perfect

word among so few or the too many—

to sing like the thrush from the deepest part

of the understory, territorial,

carnal, thorn-at-the-throat, or flutelike

in order to make one sobering sound.

Sound of the breath blown over the bottle,

sound of the reveler home at dawn, light of

the sun a warbler yellow, the sun in

song-flight, lopsided-pose. Be of good-cheer,

my father says, lifting his glass to greet

a morning in which he's awake to be

with the birds: or up all night in the sleep

of the world, alive again, singing.

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