Colors come, colors go #phenology

For the record, I want to note that there were a couple of ruby-throated hummingbirds still coming to the feeders yesterday and today. The numbers of hummers does seem to be noticeably diminished over the past week or so. I strongly suspect the nectar feeders may have been filled for the last time this season. Looking at last year's reports on Journey North, very few hummingbirds were reported after about mid-September.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

While male hummingbirds and monarch butterflies have been disappearing this month, more and more native asters have come into bloom over the past week. Roadsides are brightening up with pale blues and purples (asters), bright golds (goldenrod) and reds (mostly sumac). We hereby resolve to focus our energy on enjoying Autumn's fleeting beauty rather than worrying about the impending woes of upcoming Winter. Of course, that presumes we're all here after mid-month and potentially apocalyptic asteroids continue to miss us.

sky-blue aster (Symphyotrichum oolentangiense)

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of avoiding apocalypse, today we gratefully acknowledge that John Bolton is out as POTUS #45's National Security Advisor. Having a Security Advisor for a chief executive who doesn't seem to give much of a damn about national security seems more than a little absurd to us. What about you? Day by day I'm leaning more and more toward taking back my life from the talons of social media and politics. Do you remember the saying, attributed to George Herbert, that "Living well is the best revenge?" I've reached the point where it's time to try it. With that in mind, I'm heading out to plant the last two New England asters that need planting this Autumn. Brightening up the drive may help brighten my outlook too.

Near-Earth Object

By John Shoptaw

Unlike the monarch, though

the asteroid also slipped

quietly from its colony

on its annular migration

between Jupiter and Mars,

enticed maybe by

our planetary pollen

as the monarch by my neighbor’s

slender-leaved milkweed.

Unlike it even when

the fragrant Cretaceous

atmosphere meteorized

the airborne rock,

flaring it into what might

have looked to the horrid

triceratops like a monarch

ovipositing (had the butterfly

begun before the period

broke off). Not much like

the monarch I met when I

rushed out the door for the 79,

though the sulfurous dust

from the meteoric impact

off the Yucatán took flight

for all corners of the heavens

much the way the next

generation of monarchs

took wing from the milkweed

for their annual migration

to the west of the Yucatán,

and their unburdened mother

took her final flit

up my flagstone walkway,

froze and, hurtling

downward, impacted

my stunned peninsular

left foot. Less like

the monarch for all this,

the globe-clogging asteroid,

than like me, one of my kind,

bolting for the bus.

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