Memorial Day weekend #phenology

On this, the Friday starting Memorial Day weekend, we enjoyed our first thunderstorm of the season overnight. Looks like more thunderheads may be towering to the West, although the forecast doesn't call for rain. Here's a status report for the "start of Summer."

this is what the beardtongue will look like in a week or two

Photo by J. Harrington

• Beardtongue (Penstemon grandiflorus) flower buds have developed and look like they'll burst soon
• Dandelions' first flowers have become faery-cloud seed heads. Second flowers are blooming
• A large cluster of hoary puccoon has blossomed in the field
• Creeping Charlie is creeping across the yard
• Wild strawberries are flowering
• Trillium in a patch of woods down the road is in bloom
  (we missed most of the woodland ephemerals this year)
• So far, no signs of snakes warming themselves on or turtles crossing the roads to lay eggs
• The pear tree has finished flowering
• Poison ivy has emerged along the ditch and been sprayed so wilting is now underway
• Lilac flowers are in abundance
• Columbine is starting to bloom
• The yard is full of something that looks like a violet that we need to identify

columbine is starting to bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Still to do, maybe this weekend:

• Check if prairie smoke has blossomed
• See if the bluebirds have eggs or hatchlings in their nest box
• Keep hoping that some exotics will show up at the feeders
• Get out fly fishing (after the weekend crowds)
• Change the oil in the tractor (after fly fishing?)
• Cut the grass
• Set pocket gopher trap

With luck and some cooperation from the weather, we'll make further progress this weekend with our belated reading of Wendell Berry's "The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture." This morning we read a passage we want to share. We're not sure we completely agree with it, but it is worth careful consideration.

...There can be no such thing as a "global village." No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship the world and to humanity. We thus come again to the paradox that one can become whole only by the responsible acceptance of one's partiality."

“The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer”

   by Wendell Berry, Special Contributor

 I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my
 inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission
 to go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it.
 I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts,
 and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing,
 and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor,
 in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught
 so often laughing at funerals, that was because
 I knew the dead were already slipping away,
 preparing a comeback, and can I help it?
 And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed
 my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom
 had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not
 be resurrected by a piece of cake. ‘Dance,’ they told me,
 and I stood still, and while they stood
 quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.
 ‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself
 in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray
 into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan.
 When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’
 I told them, ‘He's dead.’ And when they told me
 ‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day
 in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’
 When they asked me would I like to contribute
 I said no, and when they had collected
 more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had.
 When they asked me to join them I wouldn't,
 and then went off by myself and did more
 than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said
 ‘go and organize the International Brotherhood
 of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing
 everybody who was against peace?’ So be it.
 Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony
 thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what
 I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest
way to come to the truth. It is one way.

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