au revoir, Summer! Time to cool our heads?

Tomorrow ends meteorological Summer. The onset of Autumn brings ripening pears to windfall and whitetail deer to enjoy the bounty. The past few evenings we've enjoyed watching what looks like several whitetail "families," does and fawns (born this year) or yearlings (born last year) checking under the pear tree to see if the "pear fairies" left anything in the grass.

whitetails under pear tree (October)

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning, after the rain had eased, a flock of about  half-a-dozen turkey hens made their way through the  spotted horsemint and pearly everlasting on the hill behind the house and into the woods to the North of our field. This is the first time in weeks (months?) we've seen turkeys in the neighborhood. We would have been happier if they had had some poults with them. 

spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata)

Photo by J. Harrington

I can't begin to tell you how much seeing the deer and the turkeys helps return a sense of normalcy to the world these days. It's going to be a long 64 days until the election and, I fear, that won't bring the insanity to an end,  but we live in hope. Maybe the cooler weather will help chill out some of the hot-heads on the political front? (I know, there's a certain pot-kettle element to that question.) I'm going to be watching closely to see what happens during and after tRUMP's planned visit to Kenosha, WI tomorrow.

The Unknown Citizen

W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

This frog wasn't in my throat

 This is the weekend for herps. Yesterday we posted about our adventure with a snapping turtle hatchling. Early this morning, while SiSi was feeding her face and I prepared for our early walk, with the Better Half and her dog were still sleeping, I noticed, to my surprise, a gray tree frog on the kitchen counter. As I went to grab it and put it outside, it leapt to the floor and then, as I reached again, it jumped over my hand. By now, SiSi was anxious to get outside and  take care of some pressing business. I left the frog to its own devices.

tree frog on deck railing

Photo by J. Harrington

Ten minutes or so later, SiSi and I returned. By now, I had enough sense, even without my first cup of coffee, to have collected my clear plastic cup and piece of thin cardboard that I use to capture spiders and moths. (Fishing nets serve for birds and bats that find their way into the house.) This time the frog was squatting near the middle of the kitchen floor. I stealthily placed the cup over the frog and then slid the cardboard under the cup. The frog was now entrapped and transportable to the bird bath on the deck. I went back to the kitchen and poured my coffee. SiSi pointed out that her water dish was empty.

I suspect that the ability of a frog to breach the walls of our fortress is on my shoulders. Last night, as I was bringing in the bird feeders, I left the walkout door to the deck open. That's probably when the frog hopped in. Fortunately, neither dog noticed it for herding or snacking purposes.

Later this morning, what I believe is the same frog was back climbing up the walkout sliding glass door. I shooed it away. It's probably lurking under the bird bath again, waiting to see if I slip up again this evening.

The Tree-Frog Pedigree

by John B. Tabb

Our great ancestor, Polly Wog,
With her cousin, Thaddeus Pole,
Eloped from her home in an Irish bog,
And crossing the sea on the "Mayflower's" log,
At the risk of body and soul,
Married a Frog; and thus, you see,
How we come by a place in the family-tree
And the family name, Tree-frog.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

A hatchling's adventure #phenology

Have you ever seen a snapping turtle the size of a quarter? I did this morning while walking my dog SiSi. At least I'm pretty sure it's a snapping turtle, based on the shell and general appearance. Why it was walking along the pavement of our township road, away from the nearest ponds will forever remain a puzzle. Since, for the past few days, we've had to walk past the corpse of a small snake that was run over, I promptly picked up the little turtle by the edges of its carapace and brought it back to the house along with SiSi.

snapping turtle hatchling placed in bird bath

Photo by J. Harrington

When I placed the little one on the deck railing for a mug shot, it promptly attempted to scurry (can turtles scurry?) off the railing into a one storey fall. I didn't want that to happen so, again grabbing carapace edges, I picked up our little snapper and placed it in the bird bath, where it quickly made itself right at home. Shortly thereafter, the hatchling was transported to the weedy edge of a nearby pond North of the house and released. We hope all goes well for it while doubting we'll ever see "hide nor hair" of it again. At least we didn't see it headed South on the tarmac as we drove past the release point a couple of hours later. I sort of understand how sea turtles all head down the beach to the sea but I can't begin to picture how a recently hatched turtle has any idea of which way to go.

There's still some ruby-throated hummingbirds at the feeder and, we think, some monarch butterflies in the vicinity. Whitetail fawns have grown remarkably over the Summer and the one we say yesterday evening under the pear tree still had its spots, as did another one we saw along a nearby roadside yesterday or the day before.

The Little Turtle

By Vachel Lindsay

There was a little turtle.

He lived in a box.

He swam in a puddle.

He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito.

He snapped at a flea.

He snapped at a minnow.

And he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito.

He caught the flea.

He caught the minnow.

But he didn't catch me.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Does it average out?

While skimming through some photos, I noticed that, near the end of September a couple of years ago, the bird bath was covered by a skim coat of ice. The normal high temperature for today, August 28, is 76℉. The normal low: 60. A month later, which is when the photo in question was taken back in 2018, the normal high and low are 66 and 47, respectively. So, the bird bath icing was premature and out of the norm. In light of what passes for normal weather in Minnesota, residents of this state have developed a high degree of tolerance and coping mechanisms. I know I have. What I haven't been able to figure out is if weather exhausts our ability to tolerate and cope with wide differences among people and behavior (Minnesota Nice, anyone?) rather than provide us with the fortitude and serenity to simply accept a number of attitudes and actions we might not adopt or engage in ourselves.

bird bath: September surprise

Photo by J. Harrington

If you've looked around our state, you may have noticed that we include portions of a number of different ecoregions, depending on who's providing the framework. Each of those regions is inhabited by a wide variety of flora and fauna and has significant weather and climate variations. As I was taught after I moved here, that variety is part of the state's strength. If one sector of our economy is down, a different sector in a different part of the state helps hold things together. There's the logging economy and the mining economy and the farming economy and the urban economy and.... Like a healthy ecosystem, we depend on a variety of actors and activities to help meet our needs for clean air, clean water, shelter and healthy food.

Audubon Center of the North Woods

Photo by J. Harrington

And yet, as I've noticed over the past decade or so, Minnesotans seem to be getting less and less tolerant of each other, to the significant detriment of all us who live, work and play here. In fact, it seems to me we've become about as intolerant of each other as our neighboring Wisconsinites are reported to be. I spent a fair portion of the morning looking at summaries and reviews of Katherine Cramer's The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker. I suppose I'll now have to actually read the book because there's a lot to unpack in it and referring to the source is always advisable. One of my major take-aways though is that the growing fracture between urban and rural perspectives isn't helping any of us. In fact, I was prompted to dig out a book I haven't read for decades, The Intellectual Versus the City. I wondered if the rural folks described by Cramer as resenting the "urban elites" realized that the city has a number of urban detractors also. But, we now live in a world where, for the first time in the history of humans, the majority of us live in an urban area. Much of the world we've created depends on the availability of either a labor force (urban) or natural resources (rural).

Healthy ecosystems derive from interdependence. So do healthy economies and cultures. Much as I dislike cliches, I'm going to close today with one from Minnesota's former Senator, Paul Wellstone. I believe this is true as much as I believe anything: "We all do better when  we all do better." I wish more of our politicians believed that. We have an opportunity to do something about it in about 60 days. Do we favor division or distribution? The choice is ours.

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Autumn is in the waiting room

 Another sign that Summer is transitioning into Autumn: this week our Summer Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share ends. The Better Half has been exceptionally creative in finding ways to hide veggies so that I'll eat them. In fact, she recently baked a loaf of zucchinni bread that I actually enjoyed (although her banana bread is better). I admit that I much prefer the idea of helping to support a local, sustainable food system more than the reality of eating all my vegetables every day. That's probably true of many things in my life: the idea is more enjoyable than the reality. (Why is life like politics?) Unlike reality, ideas rarely have to be cleaned up after or put away, although, some of the ideas I've had, or come across, seemed to shed as much as my cross breed rescue yellow lab, whom I've yet to train to run a vacuum.

Autumn leaves arrive

Photo by J. Harrington

Since many of our Minnesota Winters seem to go on for thirteen or fifteen or more years, I can understand the reluctance with which many Minnesotans greet an all-too-brief Autumn. Others, for reasons I'll never comprehend, get exuberant about snow and ice and cold and sledding and skating and skiing and snowmobiling. I tend to spend Winter brooding and looking forward to what passes for Spring around here.

The scientists and climatologists tell us that our Winters are warming more than our Summers. I won't quibble with that but our Summers seem to have become considerably more consistently humid than I recall from several decades ago. I'll not complain too much though, since the last report I saw had parts of Louisiana suffering from Hurricane Laura while a fire at chemical complex near Lake Charles prompted orders to keep windows and doors closed and AC turned off! On the Gulf Coast! In late August!

autumn fire, have s'more?

Photo by J. Harrington

Next week evenings may be cool enough that we can enjoy a fire or two in our fire pit. Maybe we can even get the makin's and put together some s'mores to celebrate the beginning of meteorological Autumn. Even though September 1 isn't any kind of Druid holiday that I know of, honoring the first day of Autumn, meteorological speaking, seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

Fall Parties

Becca Klaver

I cannot wait for fall parties.
The invitations have begun to roll in.

I used to think I loved summer parties
until they got this year so sweaty and sad,

the whole world away at the shore,
sunk in sweet and salt.

Goodbye, summer: 
you were supposed to save us

from spring but everyone just slumped
into you, sad sacks 

pulling the shade down on an afternoon 
of a few too many rounds. 

Well, I won’t have another.
I’ll have fall. The fall of parties

for no reason, of shivering rooftops,
scuffed boots, scarves with cigarette holes.

I’ll warm your house.
I’ll snort your mulling spices.

I’ll stay too late, I’ll go on a beer run,
I’ll do anything 

to stay in your dimly lit rooms 
scrubbed clean of all their pity.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Where have all our communities gone?

Last year, or the one before, I read Elizabeth Rush's Rising, Dispatches from the New American Shore. Today's warnings and evacuation notices for Hurricane Laura (now Category 4 and 18 - 20 foot storm surge) reminded me of a "blurb" by Elizabeth Kolbert for Rising "Sea level rise is not some distant problem in a distant place...." Although we have no seas to rise, Minnesota is struggling with major questions and projects that will reduce, or increase, green house gases and further, or help abate, climate breakdown's effects.

 

Prior to reading Rising, I had read Strangers in Their Own Land - Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild, much of which is focused on the Lake Charles area in Louisiana, near the current bullseye for Hurricane Laura. More recently, I've (belatedly) read the first section of James McPhee's The Control of Nature, which relates the efforts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and others, to keep the mouth of the Mississippi River from moving itself several hundred miles West of its current location. Earlier today I skimmed through a piece about "the pivotal life and work of Rachel Carson, the author of the 1962 book Silent Spring." I found it telling and disheartening to read, again, how

The chemical industry and its powerful allies in government set out to destroy Carson, often insinuating that she was a Communist. Her book, published as Soviet ships sailed toward Cuba with ballistic cargo, sought to weaken American productivity, they said. The nightmare might be Americans waiting in bread lines like the Soviets.

Here we are, 60 some odd years later, and what's happening in response to climate breakdown, a response to COVID-19, election tampering and a variety of other significant, critical, perhaps existential issues, hearkens back to the response of "chemical industry and its powerful allies in government." Do you wear a mask when in public and indoors these days?

This November, and following, we must, unequivocally and for the foreseeable future, repudiate misinformation, disinformation, self-serving and hateful ideologies in all their forms. We need to consider, reconsider, and create answers to this question:

HOW DO WE CREATE COMMUNITIES TO WHICH ALL OF US CAN BELONG?

The United States is one country comprised of many people and cultures that are part of one world, the only home we have. We are living on our only available Planet B and, as Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the United States, pointed out: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." These challenges are not new. They are interrelated. A wonderful folk singer captured them years ago in the lyrics below. We are long overdue for providing answers.

Where have all the flowers gone

Lyrics:  Pete Seeger

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young girls have picked them everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?

Where have all the young girls gone?

Gone for husbands everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?

Where have all the husbands gone?

Gone for soldiers everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Gone to graveyards, everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?

Where have all the graveyards gone?

Gone to flowers, everyone

Oh, when will they ever learn?

Oh, when will they ever learn?

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Yes, Virginia, there is some good news!

 Common milkweed leaves are turning yellow as seed pods form. Ripe cherries drop from a black cherry tree. Some hummingbirds, probably juveniles, still visit sugar water feeders. "Tumblegrass" inflorescence are blown across local fields and pastures. Meteorological Autumn begins one week from today.

gray tree frog in bird  bath

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning a gray tree frog greeted me from the birdbath as I rehung the bird feeders. I can't begin to surmise why a tree frog would be interested in climbing up onto the deck to find a birdbath in which to become immersed, although other years we've found tree frogs in the shaded spaces under the birdbath, where it's attached to the railing. That may be where s/he spends days, hiding from birds. We'd never have suspected had we not been clumsy one time when we were cleaning and refilling the bowl.

common milkweed seed pods

Photo by J. Harrington

We may not wait until Meteorological Autumn to cut the grass, but cutting will be deferred until the heat and humidity have declined, maybe this weekend when the RNC has finished?  I'm sure I'm not the first to note that it would be really great if we could find a beneficial, productive, use for all the hot air generated by political speeches.

I'm planning to spend the afternoon in the cool, air conditioned house carefully reading a recent report from Trout Unlimited [TU], on the topic of critical minerals, responsible mining, and fishing, and people. Perhaps some of the paradigms from western states could prove to be helpful in Minnesota. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area is prominent in the report's description of "Special Places" and known critical minerals deposits. I'm particularly curious to see how the Tenets for Responsible Critical Mineral Development and the Best Practices compare to the guidance and requirements established by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance. The publication of TU's Critical Minerals report at about the same time that a decision the Pebble Mine's permit has been delayed until a mitigation plan has been submitted almost gives me hope for a future that includes sane, rational, scientifically-based decision making in the mining industry and the agencies that regulate it. With luck, we'll survive such a shock.

Today’s News

By David Tucker

A slow news day, but I did like the obit about the butcher   

who kept the same store for fifty years.   People remembered   

when his street was sweetly roaring, aproned   

with flower stalls and fish stands.   

The stock market wandered, spooked by presidential winks,   

by micro-winds and the shadows of earnings.   News was stationed   

around the horizon, ready as summer clouds to thunder--    

but it moved off and we covered the committee meeting   

at the back of the statehouse, sat around on our desks,   

then went home early.   The birds were still singing,   

the sun just going down.   Working these long hours,   

you forget how beautiful the early evening can be,   

the big houses like ships turning into the night,   

their rooms piled high with silence.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

A pleasant alternative to the RNC

Hot! Humid! Thundershowers! Last week of it for this season? Let's hope so. I am looking forward to comfortably wearing my chamois shirts again. Nevertheless, artisan sourdough bread will go into the oven tomorrow morning and, a little more than an hour later, will be placed on a cooling rack. Meanwhile...

wild cucumber on cattails

Photo by J. Harrington

The pleasant alternative we promised starts with the picture above. As we headed for the county household hazardous waste facility today we noticed that more sumac leaves are turning red. A few other trees are also beginning to show color. Roadsides are showing lots of bright yellow flowers such as goldenrod and smooth oxeye plants and several species of sunflowers. Wild cucumber is still climbing and Joe Pye weed is in bloom. I'm at the point of admitting that it's time to follow the old advice about "he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day."

goldenrod and smooth oxeye(?)

Photo by J. Harrington

If you can, as you can, get outside. Go for a walk, or a bike ride. Bring a camera and maybe a field guide. Before we know it, we'll be shoveling walks and driveways. But first we get to enjoy wildflowers and apples and pumpkins and autumn leaf colors and ... oh, yeah, fresh cider and asters in bloom. Just don't forget to request your absentee ballot, complete it and return it, preferably without relying on the USPS. Enjoy nature, then nurture democracy by voting blue across the board. Both of these will undoubtedly be better for all of us than watching or reading about the madness and incompetence the RNC is promoting, because that's all they  have to offer.

Autumn

By Alice Cary

Shorter and shorter now the twilight clips 

   The days, as though the sunset gates they crowd, 

And Summer from her golden collar slips 

   And strays through stubble-fields, and moans aloud, 

Save when by fits the warmer air deceives, 

   And, stealing hopeful to some sheltered bower, 

She lies on pillows of the yellow leaves, 

   And tries the old tunes over for an hour. 

The wind, whose tender whisper in the May 

   Set all the young blooms listening through th’ grove, 

Sits rustling in the faded boughs to-day 

   And makes his cold and unsuccessful love. 

The rose has taken off her tire of red— 

   The mullein-stalk its yellow stars have lost, 

And the proud meadow-pink hangs down her head 

   Against earth’s chilly bosom, witched with frost. 

The robin, that was busy all the June, 

   Before the sun had kissed the topmost bough, 

Catching our hearts up in his golden tune, 

   Has given place to the brown cricket now. 

The very cock crows lonesomely at morn— 

   Each flag and fern the shrinking stream divides— 

Uneasy cattle low, and lambs forlorn 

   Creep to their strawy sheds with nettled sides. 

Shut up the door: who loves me must not look 

   Upon the withered world, but haste to bring 

His lighted candle, and his story-book, 

   And live with me the poetry of Spring.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Is MNDNR's role on invasive species just information and enforcement?

Have you read the recent article about a new invasive species that threatens Minnesota's forests? ("University of Minnesota botanist discovers feared invasive Japanese stiltgrass in Wisconsin") It appeared shortly after I took some pictures of nearby wild cucumber and Joe Pye weed and some other local wild flowers. On the way home, I noticed some purple / lavender streaks in the rushes along the Sunrise River in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area South  of County Road 36. I fear the streaks may be made by sizable stands of purple loosestrife.

is that a purple loosestrife stripe?

Photo by J. Harrington

I've noticed over the course of a number of internet searches, that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources [MnDNR] provides lots of information to Minnesotans to help us manage invasive species, but I've yet to find a description of their own invasive species management programs for state parks, wildlife management areas and similar public properties for which DNR is responsible. And yet, since we live at the edge of a large wildlife management area, and near several state parks and Scientific and Natural Areas, we frequently see stands of buckthorn and loosestrife(?). According to one of DNR's web pages

Common buckthorn and glossy are listed as Restricted noxious weeds (link is external) in Minnesota. It is illegal to import, sell, or transport buckthorn in Minnesota.

But, apparently, there is no requirement to eradicate it although a number of responsible conservation organizations do organize buckthorn removal activities.

Perhaps it's just me but I find it more than mildly annoying and hypocritical that DNR' s aquatic invasive species [AIS] program is focused on enforcement of the prohibition of transporting such species, but DNR does not seem to feel obligated to remove AIS, or terrestrial invasive species, from their own properties. As long as major reservoirs of invasive species exist in Minnesota, we'll constantly be playing catch up and our efforts to manage invasive species are likely to be further hindered by the effects of climate breakdown.

Japanese Knotweed Killers 

By Jan Wrede

We smote and killed.

No broken needle.

Some chemical remains.

Needle too large for small stalks.

Injector refill problematic.

 

Victim mortally wounded.

Time for mercy

And finishing spray?

When is the coup de gras?

Killers are ready

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Watching butterflies flutterby

We have what I consider to be a fair amount of common milkweed growing in our unkempt fields. I keep expecting to see more monarch butterfly caterpillars than we do. For that matter, I keep hoping, more than expecting, to see more adult monarch butterflies than we do. Are we missing some secret ingredient? We do seem to be near the Northern limits of the monarch's range?

There are even fewer egg sightings listed so far this year. The dots on that map are more sparse than the adult sightings above. I wonder if a limiting factor might be a lack of nectar flowers. I've yet to see a butterfly at the hummingbird feeder and the places where I see nectar flowers such as Joe Pye weeds don't seem to have many milkweed plants.

monarch butterflies on Northern Plains Blazing Star

Photo by J. Harrington

Perhaps a Winter project might be to make a butterfly feeder for next Summer, although I'd rather plant some Northern Blazing Star and Joe Pye weed instead, but that would be a Spring project, wouldn't it? 

The Caterpillar

Robert Graves - 1895-1985

Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.

Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man's-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.

Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.

When I'm old, tired, melancholy,
I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.

Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I'll miss my share.

Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Heading South so soon? #phenology

For the past week or two, I've been refilling the oriole / hummingbird nectar feeder, hanging from the deck railing, with sugar water every day or every other day. There's been up to a half  dozen ruby-throated hummingbirds at a time trying to guzzle it down plus, I think, an occasional young of the year oriole and several downy woodpeckers helping out. So far today I've noticed only a few hummingbirds at that feeder. Have some of the adults decided to head for warmer climes? Audubon Guides notes that:

As early as July, ruby-throated hummingbirds start accumulating fat.  According to Cornell’s The Birds of North America Online, a ruby-throated hummingbird’s body weight can double in just seven to ten days.  Research has shown that the average amount of weight gained by hummingbirds prior to migration is sufficient to fuel a 500-mile flight – a necessity if they choose to cross the Gulf of Mexico.  For those who wonder if leaving their hummingbird feeders up late into the fall might delay the birds’ departure, fear not.  The hummingbirds visiting feeders in the fall are probably migrants, not residents, and will help, not hinder, their migration.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

The Journey North web site has announced this week that Fall Migration Season is Underway! I've noticed a male or two this week so, if the local birds are leaving, it's just begun yesterday or today. Comparing the size of a hummingbird with the distance of their journey leaves me just as astounded, perhaps more so, that the migrations of monarch butterflies. Butterflies migrate using different generations to run legs of a relay migration. Hummingbirds do it in one generation; the youngsters have never done it before; and both parents leave ahead of the young'uns. How does that work?

Hummingbird Abecedarian

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Arriving with throats like nipped roses, like a tiny
bloom fastened to each neck, nothing else
cuts the air quite like this thrum to make the small
dog at my feet whine and yelp. So we wait—no
excitement pinned to the sky so needled and our days open
full of rain for weeks. Nothing yet from the ground speaks
green except weeds. But soon you see a familiar shadow
hovering where the glass feeders you brought
inside used to hang because the ice might shatter the pollen
junk and leaf bits collected after this windiest,wildest of winters.
Kin across the ocean surely felt this little jump of blood, this
little heartbeat, perhaps brushed across my grandmother’s
mostly grey braid snaked down her brown
neck and back across the Indian and the widest part of the Pacific
ocean, across the Mississippi, and back underneath my
patio. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been silent in my lungs,
quiet as a salamander. Those times I wanted to decipher the mutter
rolled off a stranger’s full and beautiful lips. I only knew they
spoke in Malayalam—my father’s language—and how
terrific it’d sound if I could make my own slow mouth
ululate like that in utter sorrow or joy. I’m certain I’d be
voracious with each light and peppered syllable
winged back to me in the form of this sort of faith, a gift like
xenia offered to me. And now I must give it back to this tiny bird, its
yield far greener and greater than I could ever repay—a light like
zirconia—hoping for something so simple and sweet to sip.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

It's Earth Overshoot Day, 2020!!!

“All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts.The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants and animals, or collectively the land.” The Land Ethic, A Sand County Almanac.

1972 was the year the Clean Water Act amendments became law. In anticipation of their enactment, Massachusetts had been engaged in a pilot study with the USACE looking at how areawide water quality management plans, as called for by Section 208 of that act, could appropriately be implemented. The United States has yet to meet the water quality goals called for in the act, despite massive expenditures of public dollars to collect and treat urban and industrial wastewater. Little has been done to address agricultural water pollution. Neither has much been done to respond to the issues and challenges identified in the 1972 report: Limits To Growth.

Blue Marble,
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Although I once debated, on MIT radio, Dennis Meadows, one of authors of that report, it would be presumptuous of me to attempt to summarize the report here, Instead, I offer the following excerpts from: The History of The Limits to Growth

A pioneering report, The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, marked a turning point in thinking about the environment, selling some 30 million copies in 30 languages.¹ The two-year study behind the report took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the request of the Club of Rome, an international group of distinguished business people, state officials, and scientists founded by Aurelio Peccei, a former Fiat executive and president of Olivetti.

What have Western societies been doing in the thirty-five years since the appearance of LtG and similar warnings from the same period?^17,18 When it comes to taking serious action, little has been done to reach a sustainable form of development, with the exception of some modest technical adjustments. On the other factors, such as population, consumption, and production, the political steps taken have generally been in the opposite direction from sustainability, and they have more than offset any benefits of technical progress. The result is that global environmental pressure, as for example indicated by humanity’s ecological footprint,¹⁹ is today much worse. And there are few signs of significant action toward changing this trend.

A sustainable future is not a matter of technology alone, partly because of the rebound effect.³³ It must build on new ways to live and organize societies, for instance recognizing that today “corporations have even less incentive than individuals to keep the Commons in order; in fact they have a (legal) clear line of responsibility to their shareholders alone and have continuously resisted government and international efforts to regulate the Commons.”³⁴ This is referring to G. Hardin’s classical paper on the problems of sharing the limited capacity of the Commons.³⁵ Elinor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics for her analysis of economic governance, and especially of the commons, that understands this conundrum. She shared the prize with Oliver A. Williamson, who was lauded for his analysis of economic governance, especially in regard to the boundaries of the modern corporation.³⁶ Both study how individuals can work together and share scarce resources, an ethos shared by the authors of LtG.³⁷

So, here we are on Earth Overshoot Day, 2020. We are living in a world faced with

• climate breakdown, and all that brings with it
• a sixth extinction, and breakdown of the ecosystems on which we depend for clean air and water
• a pandemic disrupting global economies, with the prospect of more pandemics on the horizon
• no quick solutions in sight to any of the above
• several long-standing democracies faced with economic and/or civic collapse

It looks more and more as if Western knowledge and economics alone isn't sufficient to motivate us to change our ways enough to save ourselves from each other. It's encouraging that some communities are adapting Doughnut Economics to a local scale. Personally, I believe we'd all be better off, as, certainly, would any descendants we have, if we also adopted and adapted to Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

A Map to the Next World

By Joy Harjo

           for Desiray Kierra Chee

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for

those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged

from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It

must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it

was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the

altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our

children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born

there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to

disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to

them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the

map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-

ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do, little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s

small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a

spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking

from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh

deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world

there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song

she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you

will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they

entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the

destruction.

Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our

tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was

once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

 

 

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Can you bear country living?

There was a report last weekend that a bear trashed a couple of bird feeders in a subdivision in nearby  Lindstrom. Up around Duluth reports of a "poor berry season" have bears searching for food in neighborhoods. Today, mid-day, Franco, the Better Half's [BH] border collie crossbreed, exploded into frantic barking at the deck walkout door. The BH went to see what set off her excitable dog this time and saw a pair of black paws hanging onto the deck railing.

BH and both dogs chased the bear away with lots of barking and yelling. I, of course, ignored the dogs because they're half crazy half the time and most of the time one or another erupts with little or no cause that we humans can discern. Today was an exception. The bear decided it was outnumbered and outmatched and ambled off into the woods North of the house.

bear scat on deck

Photo by J. Harrington

I take the bird feeders in at night, every night, and have been doing so for several years. The trash can is kept in the garage during the Summer months. One year a bear left a pile of scat on the deck. Another year one trashed the bird feeder we used to hang in the front yard. Yet another year a bear shredded our screens as it climbed onto the deck to see if there was anything to eat. (There wasn't.)

bird feeder eaten by bear

Photo by J. Harrington

I am not going to stop feeding birds during the day time. For the foreseeable future, I'll be armed while doing outside chores. I'm not looking for trouble, but neither do I expect the neighborhood bears to help pay my property taxes.  The bear(s) and the deer are welcome to the windfall pears under the pear tree. Local bears don't get room and / or board at the house unless they can pass a background check and start to pay rent.

[UPDATE: (It's not just country living) From the August Friends of the Mississippi River Newsletter:

Bear aware in the cities

We’re not the only ones enjoying the metro river this summer. In June, a black bear roamed through St. Paul's Battle Creek area. Another was spotted heading toward Union Depot. And in early August, a jogger saw a black bear lumbering along Mississippi River Boulevard near Shadow Falls and the river gorge. Black bear range doesn’t typically extend this far south, but sightings are becoming more common. If you see one, treat it with respect and let the DNR know. 

Read more from the Pioneer Press  >>]

Bears at Raspberry Time

By Hayden Carruth

Fear. Three bears

are not fear, mother

and cubs come berrying

in our neighborhood

like any other family.

I want to see them, or any

distraction. Flashlight

poking across the brook

into briary darkness,

but they have gone,

noisily. I go to bed.

Fear. Unwritten books

already titled. Some

idiot will shoot the bears

soon, it always happens,

they’ll be strung up by the paws

in someone’s frontyard

maple to be admired and

measured, and I'll be paid

for work yet to be done—

with a broken imagination.

At last I dream. Our

plum tree, little, black,

twisted, gaunt in the

orchard: how for a moment

last spring it flowered

serenely, translucently

before yielding its usual

summer crop of withered

leaves. I waken, late,

go to the window, look

down to the orchard.

Is middle age what makes

even dreams factual?

The plum is serene and

bright in new moonlight,

dressed in silver leaves,

and nearby, in the waste

of rough grass strewn

in moonlight like diamond dust,

what is it?—a dark shape

moves, and then another.

Are they ... I can’t

be sure. The dark house

nuzzles my knee mutely,

pleading for meaty dollars.

Fear. Wouldn’t it be great

to write nothing at all

except poems about bears?

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.