First week of July #phenology

There are a couple of blossoms developing on the swamp milkweed that's growing in the "wet spot" in the back yard. We hope to see a few more, actually, lots more, monarch butterflies soon. Whitetail deer are wandering out of the woods into the open areas where the breezes may hinder the mosquitos and deer flies that have become major annoyances. Meanwhile, the population of dragonflies has diminished from the numbers visible a month ago.

swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)

Photo by J. Harrington

We find ourselves wishing that our location was much more boreal than it is. Today we read, for the first time that we remember, that pine martens, creatures of the boreal forest, are predators of red squirrels, of which we have an overabundance. They're harassing the birds at the feeders, or at least scaring them away, When red, or gray, squirrels aren't around, we're watching, in no particular order:

• cardinals
• rose-breasted grosbeaks
• goldfinches
• ruby-throated hummingbirds
• red-winged blackbirds
• downy woodpeckers
• hairy woodpeckers
• red-bellied woodpeckers

Yesterday we helped a little old lady Blanding's turtle cross the road. At least we presume it was a lady on her way back from laying eggs. She made reasonably speedy progress for a turtle so all we had to do was stand over her to make sure any traffic arriving couldn't inadvertently drive over her. The whole episode took little more than 30 seconds or so and no traffic appeared until a minute or so after she was in the roadside grasses and we were back in the Jeep.

Blanding's turtle on a road

Photo by J. Harrington

All-in-all, we're pleased to report that this first week of July has been close to normal, or at least as close to what used to be normal as things seem to get these days. Hot, humid, buggy, thunderstormy--pretty typical July conditions.

The Turtle

-Mary Oliver

breaks from the blue-black
skin of the water...
to dig with her ungainly feet
a nest...
and you think
of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do-
and then you realize a greater thing-
she doesn't consider
what she was born to do.
She's only filled
with an old blind wish.
It isn't even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind,
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.
she can't see
herself apart from the rest of the world
or the world from what she must do
every spring.
Crawling up the high hill,
luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin.
she doesn't dream
she knows
she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall trees are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

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