This week: Spring; next week: Summer!

Yesterday, around sunset, a tom turkey honored us with a mating display in the field behind the house. Only one hen has been seen from time to time in the neighborhood. It’s far from clear if the turkeys have found other locations more to their taste or if the entire population has been reduced. It’ll be interesting to see the hunting success rates after the spring we’ve (not) had.

tom turkey mating display

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m pleased to announce that the front yard is now mostly ready for seeding with a bee friendly mix. We’ll try to get that done before next  week’s rain. Now that the temperatures are reaching into the 60’s, we’ll begin cleaning up some of the winter’s leaf piles but not try to get the yard and drive all done over a day or two. As Lao Tzu tells us, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

Last week our usual Thursday CSA share pickup wan’t ready until Friday, so this week we’ll just wait and go tomorrow morning. Then, in the afternoon, we’ll take the Better Half off to St. Croix Chocolates for a Mother’s Day treat. One of these days very soon we’ll get to picking up this year’s fishing licenses. Meanwhile, we’re learning to enjoy, as much as we can, whatever we’re working on. Today’s lesson is that I’d be less stiff and sore if I hadn’t abandoned daily exercises during our miserable spring.

Now that we appear to have moved into almost summer, 80’s and thunderstorms in next week’s forecast, spring reminds us of the old joke about the guy who beat his head on a brick wall because it felt so good when he stopped. Time to get back to some yard work.

Bees Were Better

By Naomi Shihab Nye

In college, people were always breaking up.

We broke up in parking lots,

beside fountains.

Two people broke up

across a table from me

at the library.

I could not sit at that table again

though I did not know them.

I studied bees, who were able

to convey messages through dancing

and could find their ways

home to their hives

even if someone put up a blockade of sheets

and boards and wire.

Bees had radar in their wings and brains

that humans could barely understand.

I wrote a paper proclaiming

their brilliance and superiority

and revised it at a small café

featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers

in silver honeypots

at every table.

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