It’s beginning to look a lot like...

We already got a dusting of snow last month, but it soon melted. It’s now supposed to snow, off and on, for the next several days. The temperatures aren’t forecast to get above freezing for more than a week. I suspect that, just about the time that folks remember how to drive in the snow, it will melt a little more than a week from now and the next thing we’ll be reading about is whether we’ll have a white or a brown Christmas. I’m betting it will be one or the other.

November 6, 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

Birds are piling in to the feeder today. I’m thinking we may need to try a different feeder since sightings of cardinals have been much less frequent than usual. I don’t think they like the feeding ports on the “squirrel-proof” feeder, even with a cardinal ring circling the perches. Cardinals are one of the brighter sights in our winter landscapes so I’m willing to put up with some squirrels mooching if it brings cardinals in. It’s not just me that’s noticing a decline in cardinals in our neck of the woods. Cornell’s ebird site is recording a decline in cardinals in the vicinity of St. Paul.

We lucked out on one front. The balance of the Better Half’s peony order finally arrived yesterday. The top inch or so of soil was frozen where she wanted to plant them so I used a posthole digger to break the crust and dig the planting holes. At least we didn’t have to shovel snow to get at the dirt. 

I’ll wait another couple of weeks before we hang the suet feeder. The neighborhood bears may still be trying to fatten up before they start their deep winter napping. Suet often attracts a pileated woodpecker, another neighbor we haven’t seen much of all summer.

All in all it looks like the road construction season is over for another year. For that we can be thankful on the 24th of this month and ask Santa for an early, extended, and gradual spring to compensate for early onset winter, if that’s what we now have.

Poems

by Rita Joe

Our home is this country
Across the windswept hills
With snow on fields.
The cold air.
I like to think of our native life,
Curious, free;
And look at the stars
Sending icy messages.
My eyes see the cold face of the moon
Cast his net over the bay.
It seems
We are like the moon --
Born,
Grow slowly,
Then fade away, to reappear again
In a never-ending cycle.
Our lives go on
Until we are old and wise.
Then end.
We are no more,
Except we leave
A heritage that never dies.

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