UnSAD weather for flying dragons

Our Better Half refuses to concede there's such a thing as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), despite having to tolerate our foul moods come mid-January and most of February. On the other hand, much of our typical Eeyore gloom and doom has been severely diminished the past couple of days. Low humidity, sunshine, pleasant temperatures and refreshing breezes tend to have that affect on us, unless we're anxious to go fly-fishing. Then the refreshing breezes should be very gentle zephyrs.

The pleasant weather encouraged us to get most of the overgrown back yard grasses cut. We'll give it a couple of days to dry out some more and then go back and recut the cuttings so they can decompose more quickly and completely and enrich our Anoka Sand Plain soils. The storms that came through yesterday and the day before left many more blown-down dead broken branches from our oaks scattered in the drive and at the edges of the grass. We'll get those cleaned up before we recut. The post-storms refreshing breezes we mentioned have induced an abundance of caution on our part so we haven't yet burned either the back yard brush pile or used the fire ring to burn the collected branch pieces. There must be a name for blown down branches, other than fuel, one that we haven't yet learned.

the dragonfly that landed on our finger

Photo by J. Harrington

We're pleased to report that dragonflies and hummingbirds are still hanging around. In fact, we had a relatively small dragonfly land, only too briefly, on our right index finger today. That's a first. No way could we take a picture single-handed with our left hand so you'll have to take our word for it. We also saw a large blueish dragonfly cruising around a cedar tree when we walked our dog midday. In many ways we'll miss dragonflies during Winter more than the hummingbirds, since the feeders will still be visited by chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and, sometimes, whitetail deer. There's no Winter substitute for dragonflies that we know of. Part of this premature waxing nostalgic for not yet departed dragonflies is due to the report we saw a bit ago that dragonflies are on the move around the Chicago region. As the prevailing winds come from the Northwest, we finally may get around to flying our dragon kite, making it the largest dragon fly we ever expect to see.

The Vanity of the Dragonfly

By Nancy Willard

The dragonfly at rest on the doorbell— 

too weak to ring and glad of it, 

but well mannered and cautious, 

thinking it best to observe us quietly 

before flying in, and who knows if he will find 

the way out? Cautious of traps, this one.

A winged cross, plain, the body straight 

as a thermometer, the old glass kind 

that could kill us with mercury if our teeth 

did not respect its brittle body. Slim as an eel 

but a solitary glider, a pilot without bombs 

or weapons, and wings clear and small as a wish

to see over our heads, to see the whole picture. 

And when our gaze grazes over it and moves on, 

the dragonfly changes its clothes,

sheds its old skin, shriveled like laundry, 

and steps forth, polished black, with two 

circles buttoned like epaulettes taking the last space 

at the edge of its eyes.

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