There's a season for that!

 You probably know that there's meteorological and astrological seasons. There's also the Eightfold Wheel of the Year. Here in the Midwest, especially in Minnesota, we have a different set of folklore seasons. In Minnesota, the two most basic seasons are road construction and winter. We recently came across a broader, but, we believe, still incomplete, list of seasons. We're going to work on a set of definitions for them and add a few to make the list more encompassing and accurate. Please feel free to offer suggestions in the comments.

• Winter
• Fool's Spring
• Second Winter
• Spring of Deception
• Third Winter
• The Pollening
• Actual Spring
• Summer
• Hell's Front Porch
• False Fall
• Second Summer
• Actual Fall

Now a quick review makes it clear the preceding doesn't include Mud Season, nor Indian Summer, nor planting season nor harvest season nor sugarbush season and, no doubt, a number of other seasons. For example, the Ojibwe and Lakota had a number of different names for the full moon, depending on what was observed happening in a region. We observed and photographed the full moon (below) this morning.

Ojibwe Namebini-giizis (Suckerfish Moon)

Photo by J. Harrington

We're going to play with some phenology wheel guides and see what we come up with for arranging the various seasons. It'll give us a pleasant way to pass the time during this year's Third Winter. (We believe we're currently in the Spring of Deception.)

Mud Season

Tess Taylor

stave the winter’s tangle.
Sad tomatoes, sullen sky.

We unplay the summer’s blight.
Rotted on the vine, black fruit

swings free of strings that bound it.
In the compost, ghost melon; in the fields

grotesque extruded peppers.
We prod half-thawed mucky things. 

In the sky, starlings eddying.
Tomorrow, snow again, old silence.

Today, the creaking icy puller.
Last night I woke

to wild unfrozen prattle.
Rain on the roof—a foreign liquid tongue.

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