Valentine's minus 2

It’s Valentine’s weekend. Our tax organizer is almost complete but the HP inkjet printer won’t print a black and white copy of our driver’s licenses because the printer is out of cyan and yellow ink. That design “feature” makes me see magenta (red to normal folks). [We’ll pick up some ink tomorrow, finish copying the licenses and deliver the tax papers to the preparer early next week.]

male cardinal [scarlet, not magenta] feeding on snow

Photo by J. Harrington

At least we’re not up in northern Minnesota, where I read it reached -43℉ last night. That would definitely turn me cyan (blue) with cold. As for yellow, there’s no sunshine to be seen in our cloudy skies today. Meanwhile, last evening a male cardinal (red) arrived at the feeders a short while after a large, mostly black, pileated woodpecker landed on the deck railing only to discover that smaller relations, downey and hairy, had finished off the suet chunk earlier in the day.

As we look forward to warmer weather (oh, do we!) and the eventual arrival of spring, we recently remembered that last autumn the Better Half and I planted much of the slope behind  the  house with wildflower seeds. There’s no way they’ll sprout in time for Valentine’s Day, but Mother’s Day and Father’s Day offer some promise of colorful patches of wildflowers mixed in with the usual grasses. If we’re lucky, the flowers won’t attract more than the typical number of pocket gophers. None of that will happen until after the snow and ice has melted, of course. Would it be easier to accept the almost constant transition from season to season if we didn’t have specific days on a calendar marked asthe start of each season? Valentine’s, or Presidents’ Days are one day events. Seasons don’t now, and probably never have, started or ended as abruptly as calendars would indicate. Something to contemplate during a late winter, early spring, snow storm.

Barn Owl

By Ted Kooser

High in the chaffy, taffy-colored haze 
of the hayloft, up under the starry 
nail-hole twinkle of the old tin roof, 
there in a nest of straw and baling twine 
I have hidden my valentine for you: 
a white heart woven of snowy feathers 
in which wide eyes of welcome open 
to you as you climb the rickety ladder 
into my love. Behind those eyes is 
a boudoir of intimate darkness, darling, 
the silks of oblivion. And set like a jewel 
dead center in the heart is a golden hook 
the size of a finger ring, to hold you 
always, plumpest sweetheart mouse of mine.

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