It's gosling time? #phenology

At least some of the neighborhood Canada geese have produced gaggles of goslings. We're confused. The picture below, from several years ago, shows goslings of about the same size we saw this morning, but the picture was taken about the third week in June. We haven't considered a six week flux in a Spring event to be within a normal variation, but then we're, at best, very amateur phenologists.

gosling time: mid-May to late June?

Photo by J. Harrington

The weather is slowly shifting into a Summer pattern. Temperatures near 80 and thunderstorms are in the forecast for later this week, until or unless the forecast changes. Hanging flower baskets, that can be quickly brought in when and if frost reappears, have returned to the front porch. Fern fiddleheads are unfurled and the straightened stems have opened into fronds. One of the freezy/frosty nights we had a bit ago hit our new bush plantings. We've got our fingers crossed realizing that we pushed our luck since the average last date for frost around here is about a week from now.

We're not sure if it's something in the air, or the water, or both, or what, but nationally both our weather and our politics have become less and less stable over the past few decades. It's almost as if Gaia has decided to push back against those who believe perpetual growth on a finite planet is the way to perpetual success. If we had our druthers, all economics and business courses would have mandatory content on how to assess decisions effects on seven generations. Geese don't need to do that because their ability to screw up the planet's systems is much more limited than ours.

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

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