Our Summer day #phenology

This morning, about 10:00 or 10:30 ish, we were cutting grass in front of the house. (People with that invasive Kentucky Blue Grass may mow lawns, we just cut grass around here.) As we backed up the tractor, we glanced down the road to be sure we weren't about to get run over or into. To our surprise, we saw, about 4 or 5 telephone poles North of us, our neighborhood black bear. S/he looked like s/he wanted to check out our neighbor's trash can (roughly halfway between us) but we were making to much commotion with the tractor. For several minutes or so, we watched the bear. The bear occasionally glanced at us but mostly shuffled back and forth and around before heading off into the brush.If we had seen the bear at dawn, as we were dog-walking, we would have filed it under normal sightings. Mid-morning, on a hot, bright, sunny day, is not when we expect to see a bear walking across and along our country road, although that is when we got visited by a bear several years ago.

mid-June, mid-day, bearly-visible visitor

Photo by J. Harrington

Perhaps the bear was mostly avoiding the mosquitos and ticks lurking in the woods and fields. There's a superabundance of both this year in our territory. That's one of the reasons we're being more diligent than usual with our grass cutting. We hate the creepy-crawly feeling we're left with after we've picked off the first, and perhaps only, tick of the day. The other day we obviously missed one. After complaining for half-a-day about an itchy toe on our left foot, thinking it was a mosquito bite, we discovered a tick embedded between the second and third toe of that foot. Pondering how we had ended up with a tick bite in that location, we remembered that we do tend to slide our bare feet into slip-on jungle mocs while walking a dog or doing some other innocuous chore around the property. We will now add a rigorous between the toes check to the rest of our tick inspection routine. We share this in case it has never occurred to you that there's more than one good reason to wear socks and to do a thorough and careful inspection for the little varmints.

This afternoon we'll make our first pick-up of the year at our CSA. It's the North Circle on-line farmer's market, order what you want arrangement offered as a program of the Women's Environment Institute. We ordered locally produced pork shops and some sausage. According to Project Drawdown:

The Food Sector includes agricultural production (crops and livestock) as well as food preparation, consumption, and waste. This essential human activity is responsible for a major share of greenhouse gas emissions today: crop and livestock production is the source of about 1/8 of anthropogenic emissions. Land clearing (which is mostly for agriculture) is the source of another 1/8 of emissions (IPCC, 2014). Many of Project Drawdown’s supply-side agricultural solutions reduce emissions from farming and ranching, while also sequestering significant amounts of carbon. Demand-side solutions like a plant-based dietand reduced food wastereduce the need for land clearing.

We're working on minimizing our food waste and getting as much of our food as we can through farmers markets and food co-ops. Each time we've tried a CSA membership, the production of kale and zucchini exceeded our ability and willingness to consume it. The food part of our carbon footprint is an ongoing challenge. While the bear(s) are out and about, we end up sacrificing garage space to the trash and recycling receptacles because neither the bear(s) nor the raccoons believe our printed signs that there's no food scraps in those cans, so they pull out all the contents just to check, leaving the mess for us to tidy up.

The Summer Day 

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

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