A hungry time

Snow looks to be about 95%+ melted. Day is overcast, cloudy and damp. The ground is wet. Many leaf buds have burst, but there's little in the way of new food sources available to the birds, bees, those critters awakening from hibernation or those who made it through the cold season on short rations.

hairy woodpecker feeding on suet

Photo by J. Harrington

That may help explain the rarity we just saw at the front bird feeder. There were at least five (5) hairy woodpeckers, about four on the ground pecking their way through the pile of Winter droppings of sunflower seeds and suet. Seeing one or two hairy, downy, pileated or red-bellied woodpeckers is fairly common in just about all seasons here. We've discontinued suet feeding in anticipation of local black bears waking hungry.

While many of us who now have access to year-round food supplies probably haven't experienced much in the way of food scarcity between the dregs of Winter stores and the appearance of fresh greens, indigenous peoples and about all their relations often knew it all too well. For us, fiddlehead ferns and Spring mushrooms like morels are culinary treats. For many, they could be a means of surviving from Winter through Spring, aided and abetted by maple sugaring etc. What might encourage us to become more aware of seasonal options available in our local food shed? One possibility is learning about local foraging opportunities.

April 6, 2012: some Springs come earlier than others

Photo by J. Harrington

The Marine Mills Folk School offers such a course. Were it not for prior obligations, as they say, we'd have signed up this year. Maybe, as Twins and Vikings fans say, next year will b e a different story. Between now and then, think about planting some native nectar sources for local pollinators, including butterflies, and don't forget to clean the hummingbird and oriole feeders. They'll be back in just a few weeks.

What I Would Like to Grow in My Garden

Katherine Riegel

Peonies, heavy and pink as ’80s bridesmaid dresses
and scented just the same. Sweet pea,
because I like clashing smells and the car
I drove in college was named that: a pea-green
Datsun with a tendency to backfire.
Sugar snap peas, which I might as well
call memory bites for how they taste like
being fourteen and still mourning the horse farm
I had been uprooted from at ten.
Also: sage, mint, and thyme—the clocks
of summer—and watermelon and blue lobelia.
Lavender for the bees and because I hate
all fake lavender smells. Tomatoes to cut
and place on toasted bread for BLTs, with or without
the band the l. I’d like, too, to plant
the sweet alyssum that smells like honey and peace,
and for it to bloom even when it’s hot,
and also lilies, so I have something left
to look at when the rabbits come.
They always come. They are
always hungry. And I think I am done
protecting one sweet thing from another.

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