Mid-August #phenology

We're half-way through August. Have you noticed the wild cucumber showing and growing, almost like a Northern version of kudzu? Well, not really, since kudzu is a non-native invasive and wild cucumber is native and doesn't seem to harm much.

The Minnesota wild rice season is now open.

The waning crescent moon becomes new in a couple of days. In fact, it will be a Black Moon. The past few early mornings the crescent moon has been gorgeous, hanging low in the Eastern sky about 4 or 5 am. Early evenings now we can watch for common nighthawks, looking like stunt fliers as they feed on insects and head toward the South for the Winter.

Even though mid-day temperatures today were in the 70's, that's warm enough to quickly and easily work up a sweat doing outside chores. Well, it was for me anyhow. I was "policing" the yard and then pruning a downed oak tree so the way will be clear to reduce the larger branches to firewood.

male ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

From the numbers we've been seeing st the feeders, it looks like this Summer produced a bumper crop of ruby-throated hummingbirds. Past years we've noticed 3 or 4 hummers. This year up to half a dozen have been chasing one another, or chased by "bees," around the nectar feeder on the deck. The front feeder has seen about the usual one or two at a time. All told, the hummers, with the assistance of some woodpeckers, have been consuming between 1/2 and a full pint of sugar water daily. The is the first year we've had to refill the feeder with that frequency.

female ruby-throated hummingbird

Photo by J. Harrington

We've now reached a time of year to reacquaint ourselves with An illustrated guide to the signs of Minnesota fall, brought to us by the multi-talented Greta Kaul at MinnPost and the Minnesota Phenology Network.

Summer Story

by Mary Oliver

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine
and the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in the world

that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power–
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money–
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines
and how here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird
with a terrible hunger
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking
and I am the hunger and the assuagement
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight and shaking

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