Country living's joys #phenology

Yesterday, before we thought we noticed snowflakes, we though we saw a rose-breasted grosbeak at the feeder, Today, the grosbeak sighting was confirmed. Apparently the snow flakes we "enjoyed" yesterday didn't reverse the grosbeak migration. If it doesn't rain too hard this weekend (or snow again) we'll get a hummingbird feeder and a Baltimore oriole/hummingbird feeder hung. Spring keeps inching ahead despite setbacks from time to time, like yesterday's snow and tonight's frost forecast.

grosbeaks arrive about this time each year

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, after making our first half property tax payment, we undertook the first crack at cutting grass / mulching leaves for the year. The grass cutting worked fine. The leaves, in only slightly smaller pieces, are still all over the yard, but in neater rows from the discharge chute. It's becoming clear we either need to vastly lower our standards on how we want the place to look, or we need to repair or replace our pull-behind lawn vacuum. Is it really worth investing 50% of the cost of a new one in a machine that's 20+ years old? Probably not. Then again, no one locally seems to be selling a new one all set up ready to go. Ah, the joys of country living outside mainstream American life. Then again, we've been less than thrilled with how our mainstream Apple computers and iPhones have worked over the years. We think we may have noticed millennials have a higher tolerance for technological malfunctions than us older generation types, especially for a company that makes products that are supposed to "just work."

The question of leaves versus wildflower ground cover doesn't appear to have received much attention in the natural landscaping community. Raking and/or mowing doesn't seem compatible with plantings of shade tolerant wildflowers, but maybe it is. Or, maybe the wildflowers just grow up through each year's leaf fall. The things we haven't paid attention to over the years. Fortunately, none of this is life-threatening, at least not to us. Once again we will drag out Beckett's wonderful approach: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." He would have been right at home living in the country these days.

Mowing

By Robert Frost

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,

And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.

What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;

Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,

Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—

And that was why it whispered and did not speak.

It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,

Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:

Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak

To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,

Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers

(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.

The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.

My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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