Seasonal(?) chores #phenology

Today, while cutting the grass for what I expect to be the last time this year (not counting leaf mulching), I noticed something that shook me to my roots. There are yellow blossoms on the forsythia bush. They're only on a cluster of branches, but they're there! See for yourself:

forsythia blooms in mid-October?

Photo by J. Harrington

While taking the forsythia pictures, I happened to glance at the lilac bush next to it. The lilac has a single cluster of flowers! This is approaching mid-October. What's going on? There weren't many blossoms on either the forsythia or the lilacs last Spring. I wrote that off to what was once considered an anomalously wet season. I may have been overly optimistic. We're supposed to get more precipitation tomorrow, Friday and Saturday. Today's temperature is almost 10℉ above the average for this date and place. Saturday may see snow mixed in with the rain. I'd wave a white flag and surrender but no one will admit to being in charge.

lilac bloom in mid-October?

Photo by J. Harrington

Today's breeze has the tumbleseed heads of our purple love grass flying around like lost souls seeking heaven's entrance. By the end of the month, the danger of oak wilt is supposed to drop to zero %. That's when some oak branches will get trimmed. If the rain stops and the wind quiets for a bit, we'll also see if we can manage a Samhain brush pile fire. Between then and now there are some dead branches on the pines that need trimming. Plus, it may become necessary to rake up acorns along with the oak leaves that fall over the next couple of weeks.

Leaf colors still have not developed as much as I would have expected by this time of year, especially since several pundits predicted spectacular leaf color in response to our wet spring. It's almost as if the whole climate that we've been used to is changing. Could that be (he asked sarcastically)? I'm contemplating a major adjustment to my attitude. As Joan Didion once wrote, I may soon "Play It As It Lays."

Storm

by Michael Longley

Wind-wounded, lopsided now
Our mighty beech has lost an arm.
Sammy the demolition man
(Who flattened the poet’s house
In Ashley Avenue, its roof
Crashing into that homestead,
Then all the floors, poetry
And conversation collapsing)

Slices the sawdusty tons,
Wooden manhole-covers,
An imagined underground.
Beneath a leafy canopy
The poet, on my seventieth,
Gazed up through cathedral
Branches at constellations.
Where is he now? Together
We are counting tree-rings.

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