Sliding toward High Spring!

Tomorrow, for many, is Beltane, midway between the Vernal Equinox and Summer Solstice, traditionally  the beginning of summer or the height of spring. This year, in  the north country, it feels like neither. The past winter set records for wettest and snowiest. Spring has followed that pattern. Even our local soil temperature is currently several degrees below our 10 year average. On the bright side, we now know to wait a week or more before spreading this year’s grass seed. Plus, such a delay fits with the guidance we read this morning, to wait until soil temperatures have reached 50℉  or air temperatures have remained above that for almost a week, to be kind to pollinators while managing to avoid killing a lawn. Why didn’t I learn these things in school? Possibly because, when I was in school, such knowledge was less critical than it is these days. Way back then we didn’t know how much trouble pollinators were in.

coming soon to local woods and roadsides

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we captured and killed the first tick of the season. I think one of the dogs collected it and deposited it on my chair, whence I subsequently discovered it walking on my arm. I can catch and release spiders from inside the house, but I won’t catch and release ticks or mosquitos or deer flies or ants, nor am I above using glyphosate on poison ivy. As a redeeming quality, I’m always ready to forego yard chores when the weather is nice and the fish are calling.

Today is the last day of national poetry month for this year. Today’s Star Tribune has a charming and educational piece by Peter M. Leschak, Let us now praise poetry. It nicely complements a similar piece from several years ago about one of Minnesota’s poet laureates, Joyce Sutphen, How poetry can lift us from our troubled times., written by Jennifer Imsande. Minnesota is blessed with a number of poets and a publishing sector to support them. In fact, Minnesota was home to a recent Nobel Laureate in Literature [poetry]. When he lived here his last name was Zimmerman. Other poets live in nearby states and teach in Minnesota. They also help us appreciate where and how we live.

RED WILLOW

Red osier dogwood,
the Indians called 
it kinnickinnic,
took inside their lungs
smoke from its bark
mixed with bear
root and tobacco
leaves.  Lime-green
during warm months,
a cut branch
can grow new roots
even in sandy soil,
earning red willow
its reputation
for resurrection.
At spring equinox
when the summer
yet to be born
has traveled midway 
on its long path
out of darkness,
I drive past fields
still sealed by snow,
where March clouds ruffle
like eaglets' down.
The most vivid color
above or below
is the crimson shine
of kinnickinnic
woven from the smoky
gray ditches.
My winter-
emptied heart
gathers itself,
a willow basket,
to catch that dark
alizarin burnish.
Then I too stand up
out of the scabbed ice
of a dead season,
ready to flower and leaf
again from a bare
red stick.

    --from Kinnickinnic, Parallel Press, copyright 2008, Thomas R. Smith

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April’s almost done

We collected our CSA share today. It contained:

• Winter Density Lettuce
• Pirat Lettuce
• Red Russian Kale
• Cilantro
• Pea Shoots 
• Sunflower Baby Greens
• Watercress

On our drive through the countryside, we saw a pair of tundra swans in a cornfield; lots of ditches full of water; several residual patches of snow(?); a flock or more of very small waterfowl resting on a small pond; a cooper’s(?) hawk; clouds that look more summery than wintery; several scattered rain showers.

a red-winged blackbird is back at the feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

None of the fields we drove past looked anywhere near dry enough to be worked. Next week is forecast to be mostly dry and partly sunny. Maybe by the end of the first week in May the ground will have dried enough. Maybe by then we’ll get some yard chores done with our own tractor. Meanwhile, I can walk the grounds and pick up sticks, not the kids’ game, the grown-up version, collecting downed branches and throwing them onto the burn pit embers. I believe the technical term may be “decluttering.” 

April is a coquettish month, flirting and teasing instead of sharing real warmth. Every year I get sucked in. Every year, by mid-May, I’ve begun to enjoy Spring, soon to become Summer. It could be a variation on the folk saying “We get too soon old and too late smart.” “We get too soon took and too late warm.” 

April

James Schuyler - 1923-1991

The morning sky is clouding up
and what is that tree,
dressed up in white? The fruit
tree, French pear. Sulphur-
yellow bees stud the forsythia
canes leaning down into the transfer
across the park. And trees in
skimpy flower bud suggest
the uses of paint thinner, so
fine the net they cast upon
the wind. Cross-pollination
is the order of the fragrant day.
That was yesterday: today is May,
not April and the magnolias
open their goblets up and
an unseen precipitation
fills them. A gray day in May.

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Treed!

It’s Arbor Day. Purely guesswork and speculation on my part, but it may be one of Katie Holten’s favorite days. I have a copy of, and have read, one of her earlier books, About Trees. I’m also most of the way through Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree.

We’ve planted, and replanted, fruit trees a number of times on our little corner of the Anoka Sand Plain. If the deer don’t browse them, winter scald gets them or the pocket gophers eat the roots. We have one pear tree that may come into blossom soon. Last year it attracted no pollinators we could see and produced no pears. As noted elsewhere in these postings, I’m much more of a hunter-gatherer than a farmer-gardener. I have the failures to prove it.

pear tree in flower

Photo by J. Harrington

Back to Katie Holten. We have one of her tree fonts installed on the laptop that regularly helps us produce this blog but it’s not readily available through our blogger software so you should visit her web site for examples. Trees are one of several different alphabets she’s created. I’ve found the prospect interesting but not terribly useful, since most of us are limited in our ability to read “trees.” 

Without trees, we’d have no place to put tree stands; places to hang swings would be severely limited; almost all leaves would have no place to grow above ground level; and lots of birds would be without places to builds nests. Anything else? Oh, yeah!! Humans and other oxygen-breathing animals might be in a bit of trouble without trees. The other thing we haven’t much touched on here is the John Muir concept that: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” Simard explores variations on that theme in her book.

Last autumn we had several trees removed from in front of the house. Oak wilt and some disease that killed our large pine (and several others in the neighborhood) had turned the trees into a hazard. We’ll watch and see how the pear tree fares this spring and clean up the piles of dead branches that came down during the winter. As we keep at it, we’ll try not to think of our efforts as “love’s arbor lost.” 

Tree

By Jane Hirshfield

It is foolish

to let a young redwood   

grow next to a house.

Even in this   

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.   

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

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Is it real Spring this time?

Day lily leaves have emerged. They’re taller in sheltered areas that get more sun and barely out of the ground along the woods’ edges. Minnesota Wildflowers lists them as an invasive that should be eradicated. The Minnesota Extension Service provides guidance on how to plant and grow them. It seems politics isn’t the only area where we have difficulty attaining consensus. Meanwhile, in a couple of months, we’ll look for flowers on any lilies that haven’t been eradicated.

Since May begins after the weekend, we’re starting to get excited about the prospects of the return of hummingbirds and orioles and, maybe, tanagers and grosbeaks. That’s if the greedy squirrels haven’t destroyed every bird feeder we have by the time those migrants arrive. They’ve (the squirrels, not the birds) been prying covers off and chewing holes in the feeder tubes during the past couple of weeks. We’ve been feeding birds, and squirrels, for years now but this is the most obnoxious the red- and gray-furred critters have been. Another sign of a really tough winter?

hummingbirds on their way?

Photo by J. Harrington

The back yard forsythia now has some flowers and the lilac buds are beginning to swell. We’ve got our fingers crossed because, between heavy, wet snow loads and browsing by hungry deer, the bushes had a tough winter also. All of which was put in a very different perspective when I read the other night that many parts of the Midwest were, several thousand years ago, under something like two vertical miles of ice and we are, or were, officially in an interglacial period.

Unless tomorrow’s weather is exceptionally uncooperative, we’ll start our “summer” season at the local drive-in restaurant for dinner and follow that Saturday morning by picking up our first “ Spring greens” community supported agriculture share of the year. If we can manage to stay away from social media and online news for most of the weekend, we might even enjoy celebrating the return of seasonable weather, not that the season isn’t winter.

Spring

In the north country now it is spring and there 
Is a certain celebration. The thrush 
Has come home. He is shy and likes the 
Evening best, also the hour just before 
Morning; in that blue and gritty light he 
Climbs to his branch, or smoothly 
Sails there. It is okay to know only 
One song if it is this one. Hear it 
Rise and fall; the very elements of you should 
Shiver nicely. What would spring be 
Without it? Mostly frogs. But don’t worry, he

Arrives, year after year, humble and obedient 
And gorgeous. You listen and you know 
You could live a better life than you do, be 
Softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will 
Be able to do it. Hear how his voice 
Rises and falls. There is no way to be 
Sufficiently grateful for the gifts we are 
Given, no way to speak the Lord’s name 
Often enough, though we do try, and

Especially now, as that dappled breast 
Breathes in the pines and heaven’s 
Windows in the north country, 
Now spring has come, 
Are opened wide.

Mary Oliver

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just for giggles

 It’s funny how, sometimes, some things run in cycles. It happens naturally with seasons and weather patterns and such. More randomly in human life, at least mine. Yesterday we traipsed down memory lane thanks to Laurie Allman’s poem. Today, our national poet laureate, Ada Limón, took us back to our childhood and to when our children were young by sharing the poem below. We hope you enjoy it at least as much as we did. In case you didn’t know, poem-a-day is brought to us by the same folks that bring us 

poem-a-day

Throwing ChildrenRoss Gay

It is really something when a kid who has a hard time becomes a kid who’s having a good time in no small part thanks to you throwing that kid in the air again and again on a mile long walk home from the Indian joint as her mom looks sideways at you like you don’t need to keep doing this because you’re pouring with sweat and breathing a little bit now you’re getting a good workout but because the kid laughs like a horse up there laughs like a kangaroo beating her wings against the light because she laughs like a happy little kid and when coming down and grabbing your forearm to brace herself for the time when you will drop her which you don’t and slides her hand into yours as she says for the fortieth time the fiftieth time inexhaustible her delight again again again and again and you say give me til the redbud tree or give me til the persimmon tree because she knows the trees and so quiet you almost can’t hear through her giggles she says ok til the next tree when she explodes howling yanking your arm from the socket again again all the wolves and mourning doves flying from her tiny throat and you throw her so high she lives up there in the tree for a minute she notices the ants organizing on the bark and a bumblebee carousing the little unripe persimmon in its beret she laughs and laughs as she hovers up there like a bumblebee like a hummingbird up there giggling in the light like a giddy little girl up there the world knows how to love.

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Music to my ears

Not birds this time, childhood, poetry and folk music are today’s themes.

poetry and music, cornerstones

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning, early, I was reading a poem in Laurie Allmann’s delightful An Hour from Now, the last stanza of which reads:

I rise to go,
wanting to howl in protest like we did as
kids roaming the neighborhood,
always called inside too soon,
just when it was
getting good

That triggered memories and a return to my childhood, growing up in one of Boston's neighborhoods and recalling the unfairness of having to quit playing just when it was getting good. That brought to mind the phrase “ally ally oxen free” which I misremembered as part of a Peter, Paul and Mary song from high school and/or college days. Turned out, after some internet research, the line is actually from the lyrics of a song written by Rod McKuen and recorded by the Kingston Trio [see below].

As I was bemoaning my faulty memory, the Better Half reminded me that Paul Stookey of PP&M did end one of their songs with the line “Ally ally in free,” which is how we ended playtime in Boston when we were called in for supper. The PP&M song is It’s Raining and it’s heartily recommended you click the link and give it a listen.

I’ve not thought of my grammar and high school days for too long. When I was a junior or senior in high school, my mother managed to get me a pair of tickets to Peter, Paul and Mary’s concert at the Totem Pole ballroom in old Norumbega Park. That let me unduly impress my hot date of the summer but took me down a peg or too in my own eyes since my connections had failed to secure tickets for me. (I was working part time as a bell hop at a local restaurant / motel complex and thought I was “grown up.”)

The Kingston Trio’s song is titled Ally Ally Oxen Free and reminds me of how long we’ve been trying, and failing, to make a world safe for children. And am I the onlly one old enough to remember Rod McKuen?

"Ally Ally Oxen Free"

Time to let the rain fall without the help of man
Time to let the trees grow tall. Now, if they only can
Time to let our children live in a land that's free
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free

Time to blow the smoke away and look at the sky again
Time to let our friends know we'd like to begin again
Time to send a message across the land and sea
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free

Strong and weak, mild and meek, no more hide and seek
Time to see the fairness of a children's game
Time for men to stop and learn to do the same
Time to make our minds up if the world at last will be
Ally, ally, ally, ally, oxen free

Writer(s): Rod Mc Kuen, Yates Stephen

 

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As warblers warble and turkeys gobble

 If the weather around here follows a typical “spring” pattern, one day next month we’ll awaken to a day in the 90’s and thereafter it will be more like summer than spring. It’s not clear if that means we’ll also break the extended string of mostly cloudy days. Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been thinking a number of uncomplimentary things about those “science communicators” who first coined the concept of global warming instead of climate breakdown or disruption. We are a week from the beginning of May and the current temperature is 42℉, almost 20 degrees less than a normal daytime high for this date and location.

yellow-rumped warbler (Myrtle) male

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we managed to get a few photos and confirmed that our suspicion yesterday, that it’s a flock or so of Yellow-rumped Warbler Myrtle males that's passing through, correctly identified our visitors.

Meanwhile, as we’re writing this, rain showers are interrupting the tom turkey displaying at the back corner of our field, accompanied by a jake while trying to impress two hens. A third hen, back near the house, is having none of it and headed off on her own into a different part of the woods. All this prompted me to go get my turkey calls that I had intended to practice with last winter and try them out. That resulted in the dogs giving me some very funny looks. If I were actually turkey hunting these days I probably wouldn’t have been wearing rain gear so now I’d be damp and cold and cursing a tom that won’t come within range ‘cuz he’s got a harem already. If turkey hunting weren’t so much fun it would be really frustrating, or is it the other way around?

This Saturday we’ll pick up our first Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share of spring greens. Maybe that will help us feel more in the spirit of the season instead of feeling like we’re trapped in the dregs of a never-ending winter.

Audubon Warblers

By Kevin L. Cole

The Audubon warblers keep the time of their coming,

Arriving on stillness of a storm,

Their breast and backs as dark as low bruised banks of cloud,

Rumps and throats as yellow as blooms of buckwheat.

 

They throng this evening in the newly-leaved

Tender-tipped canopies nervously weaving

Through the catkins like frantic prophets

Bearing some divine prophecy of the coming spring.

 

I wait, hoping for nothing too grave:

News of ruinous lands, of cutting and swarming locusts,

Of withering vines and empty granaries,

Of fasting, weeping, and rending of garments.

 

No, I wait for lighter fare:

Perhaps a promise that the green heron will nest

On the west end of the slough and that the ironweed

And wood lily will once again together bloom.

 

This would be an ample prophecy for another year—

This and a promise to keep the time of their coming.

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This spring is for the birds!

Yesterday we had a number of what I believe were warblers hopping around the back yard. For reasons that aren’t clear to me, I’ve seen so few warblers over the years that I haven’t really paid much attention to identification and I’m not enough of a birder to have a life list. That said, I think there may have been a Bell’s Vireo and a Yellow-rumped Warbler Myrtle among the usual suspects checking out the feeders and the ground thereunder.

a mixed bag of birds

Photo by J. Harrington

Today we saw the first blossoms in the front flower garden. The Better half tells me that helebores and scilla are the culprits that have the effrontery to bloom while the back yard pond still develops overnight ice cover.

A couple of young fellows asked permission to hunt turkeys at the edge of our property. They made me realize how unseasonably cold the spring has been for an extended period. I’m glad I’m not trying to hunt in the weather we’ve been having. Working a turkey call or trying to align a head shot while shivering severely is not a productive situation. Funny, though, I’d probably consider the recent weather at the warm end for duck hunting.

That’s about it for today. At least I’m not a fan of Minnesota’s professional sports teams. This spring that would definitely be likely to add insult to injuries such as frost bite.

For the Birds

By John Shoptaw

For the abundant along with the rare birds at my feeder of late

For all kinds of birds I’ve lived with here are turning rarer

For the chestnut-backed chickadee, who carries her sunflower chip to the buckthorn to dine on between her toes

For the chickadees once came to my feeder in bunches

For the big round plain brown pair of California towhees who eat in parallel from the bird-crumb table

For though they crumb it clean without a glance or a cheep, I believe this remote old couple is as entwined as any two polarized photons

For the fearsome indigo Steller’s jays, black hooded and crested, Tapper and Sly, as I call them

For Tapper taps twice on an overhanging plum branch at two clucks from my tongue so I’ll know him

For Sly hangs back and shrieks me over and only shows himself after I place on the table their morning quincunx of unsalted peanuts

For he knows Tapper will quack to announce them and then squawk indignantly when he slyly swoops in

For the vast majority

For the dark-eyed juncos, the wide-eyed titmice, the narrow-eyed redbreasted nuthatches, who feed right-side up as they see it, the other birds upside down

For Audubon’s yellow-rumped, Wilson’s and Townsend’s warblers, nobody’s birds, who feed, drink and breed as they can

For the song sparrow’s song and the sparrow who exults in singing it

For a song—how long will that phrase mean what it means

For them all I refill the feeder, even this morning, when all blown-down things crackle underfoot and the Diablo wind seems to growl diabolically and scrape from all corners at once against a sky the color of flint

For the lesser goldfinches, symbolically fierce, who part their beaks at any other kind who would peck a chip in their presence

For the pine siskins, their symbolic match, who used to expose their underwings back at them with its dreadful yellow stripe

For two years running, no siskins at the feeder

For the brown-crowned, as-yet-unkindled sparrows, wintering from Oregon or the Farallon Islands, I sing my two-note welcome, hel-low, pointless

For they won’t learn it with my face masked against wild smoke migrating from the north

For the species too little or big or otherwise unsuited for the feeder

For Anna’s hummingbirds, who love to suck on our pineapple sage

For the red-tailed hawk perched in the smoke-fogged redwood

For soon it’ll be pestered by a twister of crows cawing hawkawkawkawkaw

For a red-tailed hawk I mistook it—something larger, ruffled molten

For the golden eagle it turned out to be—weird—hunched in the chill

For another flew up out of thick air and followed it south out of eyeshot

For those two—not migrants—evacuees clasping their emotional baggage

For the birds, then, what have I to offer

For what kind of refuge is my catalog

For I can’t reckon how to make good their losses

For I meant not to make a life list I meant

For others to partake in my pleasure

For it pleases me to look after the birds

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Earth, rise!

 

Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by 
Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders

That’s our home planet pictured above. The only one we have. It’s also our “Planet B,” as in there is no place we can move to if we burn down our house. From Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, through the Silent Spring of Rachel Carson, to the multitude of reports from the IPCC on climate disruption, we have thus far failed to sufficiently respect and respond to the guidance of those who would lead us to a sustainable future.

One of the "rules of thumb” I learned long ago goes something like “the proper definition of a problem is half the solution..” I continue to fail to understand why we continue to fail to follow the precautionary principle or even acknowledge the truth of Pogo’s observation from years ago:

"we have met the enemy..." - ©Walt Kelly

Did Pogo get it wrong? I don’t think so. Another old saying I remember my mother using to describe me is “too smart for his own good.” That may well be true of all of us who don’t have enough smarts to get out of our own way and to stop choosing to follow those who place their best individual interest ahead of our collective good. No, I’m not promoting Ayn Rand. Why is it, do you think, that more of us aren’t promoting Elinor Ostrum’s work about managing our commons?

Or, you could read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. If you’ve read it once, reread it. If you want or need something with pictures, try Bimaadiziwin Nibi - Water is Life. Why? Look again at Earthrise. That gray, lifeless area at the picture’s lower section is the moon, which is lifeless as far as we’ve been able to .tell. It’s also pretty much waterless. Have you heard about desertification? Hard to picture after the local winter we’ve had but Minnesota (and California) are undergoing a really tough solution to their recent droughts. Our weather is getting more volatile as we disrupt our climate. Now, go back and reread the first paragraph in today’s posting. How soon do you think you could move to Mars? Does that really seem like a better idea than restoring Earth?

Remember

Joy Harjo - 1951-

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Bear with us

Yesterday I noticed that the empty trash and recycling cans had been tipped over. The small garden cart wasn’t where we had left it near the cans. This morning I saw that the compost tumbler, full of compost, had been tipped over. It appears, based on circumstantial evidence, we have a hungry bruin in the neighborhood. I will henceforth be more rigorous in my efforts to being the bird feeders in at night.

Snow showers fell again this morning. Sigh. This spring the weather seems to offer a clear example of what can go wrong with seasonal changes that used to be more in synchrony so that there was more to eat when critters came out of hibernation or migrated back north. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' web site section on climate has a page on Spring phenology for this unusual year.

early May: back yard bear paw print

Photo by J. Harrington

April foods for bears include "flower parts of aspen, willow, maple, ash, and hazel....” Last week’s hot spell helped bud burst and the growth of catkins on many local trees, but oaks (not listed for April food) are developing this year’s leaves and flowers on a slower schedule than those trees mentioned above. Last year’s acorn crop was sparser than usual and hungry deer have been feeding on all kinds of bushes, short trees and, we believe, our feral oregano, for several weeks now.

So, the trash can is back to living in the garage. The recycling can has to take its chances. Bird feeders MUST be brought in at night. We’ll hold the dog leashes extra tight during our early morning walks. We’ll also cross our fingers that natural food for bears, like berries and such, develops a little earlier than usual so the bears will stop checking the trash and recycling cans.

The Truro Bear

by Mary Oliver

There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaven,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?

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Going to the dogs

Lots of lightning and thunder last night. That makes SiSi nervous, so I did some paw holding until things quieted down. According to her paper work, SiSi is eleven years old this month and has been living in her forever home with us for the past ten years. Now that we’re “empty nesters” with children turned into grownups, it’s nice to be needed again when the thunder booms. It would be even nicer if the storms only made noise before eight or nine in the evening so we didn’t end up slightly sleep deprived the next day.

If I’m estimating correctly, in the time SiSi has lived with us she’s shed enough to make at least three or four more of her, or stuff a dozen or so pillows. Didn’t there used to be horsehair pillows? Do you suppose there’s a market for dog hair pillows? Our dogs could be profit centers!

SiSi, April 2013

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m grateful she’s rescued us, helps keep us honest and active, and gives us reason to get outside into the real world several times a day. There are few that I know of that write about dogs as well as the late Gene Hill. SiSi and I are each old enough that we’ve shared few days afield, but other than that, Mr. Hill captures us rather nicely (thunder and lightning are clearly demons that wait in the dark)

“I cannot imagine living in a house without a couple of dogs,” he once wrote. Without them, “my nights would be more restless and the demons that wait in the dark for me would be less easily fended.” He reckoned that nothing “brings me closer to tears than when my old dog—completely exhausted after a hard day in the field—limps away from her nice spot in front of the fire and comes over to where I’m sitting, puts her head in my lap, a paw over my knee, closes her eyes, and goes back to sleep. I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve that kind of friend.” No doubt experiences of that sort explain why Hill believed “we never really own a dog as much as he owns us.”

Other than getting a gender wrong in SiSi's case, he captures most of the past ten years and all those before that I’ve been lucky enough to be owned by a dog:

“He is my other eyes that can see above the clouds; my other ears that hear above the winds. He is the part of me that can reach out into the sea. He has told me a thousand times over that I am his reason for being; by the way he rests against my leg; by the way he thumps his tail at my smallest smile; by the way he shows his hurt when I leave without taking him. (I think it makes him sick with worry when he is not along to care for me.) When I am wrong, he is delighted to forgive. When I am angry, he clowns to make me smile. When I am happy, he is joy unbounded. When I am a fool, he ignores it. When I succeed, he brags. Without him, I am only another man. With him, I am all-powerful. He is loyalty itself. He has taught me the meaning of devotion. With him, I know a secret comfort and a private peace. He has brought me understanding where before I was ignorant. His head on my knee can heal my human hurts. His presence by my side is protection against my fears of dark and unknown things. He has promised to wait for me... whenever... wherever - in case I need him. And I expect I will - as I always have. He is just my dog.”

I’m often grateful to be sharing days with SiSi and, not quite as often, grateful to Gene Hill for helping me find words to understand what living with dogs, rescue or other, are all about.

If Feeling Isn't In It

By John Brehm

You can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .  
                                                                                   Howard Moss

Dogs will also lick your face if you let them.

Their bodies will shiver with happiness.

A simple walk in the park is just about

the height of contentment for them, followed

by a bowl of food, a bowl of water,

a place to curl up and sleep. Someone

to scratch them where they can't reach

and smooth their foreheads and talk to them.

Dogs also have a natural dislike of mailmen

and other bringers of bad news and will

bite them on your behalf. Dogs can smell

fear and also love with perfect accuracy.

There is no use pretending with them.

Nor do they pretend. If a dog is happy

or sad or nervous or bored or ashamed

or sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.

They make no secret of themselves.

You can even tell what they're dreaming about

by the way their legs jerk and try to run

on the slippery ground of sleep.

Nor are they given to pretentious self-importance.

They don't try to impress you with how serious

or sensitive they are. They just feel everything

full blast. Everything is off the charts

with them. More than once I've seen a dog

waiting for its owner outside a café

practically implode with worry. “Oh, God,

what if she doesn't come back this time?

What will I do? Who will take care of me?

I loved her so much and now she's gone

and I'm tied to a post surrounded by people

who don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”

And when she does come, what a flurry

of commotion, what a chorus of yelping

and cooing and leaps straight up into the air!

It's almost unbearable, this sudden

fullness after such total loss, to see

the world made whole again by a hand

on the shoulder and a voice like no other.

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On English and other than English poems

Remember the old saying about not saying anything at all if you can’t say something good? Today we’re not going to mention the weather. Instead, let’s talk a little about poetry, since this is national poetry month. I’m in the midst of reading a couple of non-American poets together with a handful of Americans. Sometimes, cultural references can throw me off any sort of comprehension. Other times it’s the English language that does me in. Here’s an example of the latter.

One of the non-American poets I’m reading is Eavan Boland. This morning I started reading Elegy for a Youth Changed to a Swan from her New Collected Poems. The second stanza begins with a line that threw me into momentary chaos: “Urchins of the hurdled hawthorn, sparrows,” created massive cognitive dissonance as I tried to envision sea urchins hurdling hawthorn. I was through the third stanza and into the fourth before the miasmic mess that passes for my brain triggered the recollection that “urchin” is also a term for a playful or mischievous youngster. Only in English(?) would we find such an incongruous combination of definitions. The difficulty in comprehension in this case is, I believe, far more attributable to the language than to the poet.

“No Ideas But in Things”

Photo by J. Harrington

The other non-American poet I’m currently working my way through, I’m reading in translation from the Polish, is Czeslaw Milosz. I had already read and enjoyed his Road-side Dog and, on that basis and something I came across on the internet recently, decided I should explore his poetry. Unbeknownst to me, the Better Half took my expressed interest and gave me two volumes of Milosz’ poems. I’m not sure it’s the translation that’s giving me heartburn and far be it from me to be presumptuous enough to suggest that a Nobel laureate in literature isn’t writing great poetry, but, so far, most of what I’ve read is incomprehensible. I understand each of the words but the combination and sequence leaves me grasping for meaning, other than experiencing a sense of diminished expectations that makes Beckett seem like an optimist. (Oops, I think I just blew up that old saying about saying something good, didn’t I?)

For today, let’s close with a recommendation that, if you haven’t already, you should find and read Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual. Mr. Kooser and I have very similar preferences and / or taste in the poetry we prefer. It’s there in A Poet’s Job Description in chapter 1.

A Song on the End of the World

By Czeslaw Milosz

Translated by Anthony Milosz

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

         

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

Warsaw, 1944

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Spring, sprang, sprung!

The sun is shining. Fields are greening. Birds at the feeder are catching up on meals missed due to recent weather. This morning I finished rereading The Boy, the mole, the fox and the horse with our granddaughter. At two and a half, she’s more interested in an iPad screen than looking at pages in a book. I’ve discovered that the book has been animated and is available on Apple tv and, I believe, a cd version. We will do some exploring and cross-checking to determine if presents for her third birthday will include access to the A-tv version, a cd, or both. The story is too important to let my bias toward platforms [books over screens] deprive her of a fuller enjoyment of the tale of friendship, not that I believe in that old saying about the mountain and Mohammad.

If you’re out and about in farm country, be sure to keep your eyes open for lambs. Today was the first day this year we noticed some out with the rest of the flock. Up until now it’s been too cold and/or wet and/or hot to let lambs go gamboling in the fields. Rams and ewes look like they’ve recently been shorn so warmer, dryer weather is healthier and more comfortable for the grownups too.

how long unti dandelions arrive?

Photo by J. Harrington

Rivers are running more than bank full. Marshes are still flooded. Low spots are full of pooled water. All day rain is forecast for tomorrow and Thursday. I think that’s an invitation for me to start the first branch fire of the year in the fire pit. But wait! The hoses may still be full of ice or slush and the outside faucets haven’t yet been turned on. Maybe next week, if we reliably enjoy overnight low temperatures that stay above freezing. This afternoon’s progress may be limited to removing the back blade from the tractor, a small but significant measure of seasonal change.

An April Day

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. - 1895-1919

On such a day as this I think,
      On such as day as this,
When earth and sky and nature’s whole
      Are clad in April’s bliss;
And balmy zephyrs gently waft
      Upon your cheek a kiss;
Sufficient is it just to live
      On such a day as this.

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It’s complicated!

Several times we’ve posted about respecting and following the recommendations for “No Mow May.” We were, therefore, more than a little annoyed when we saw a reference to What not mowing in May could mean for your lawn, guidance from UMN Extension. Today we took time to read (skim through) the whole article for these take-aways:

• The idea of not mowing a lawn during the month of May in order to promote flowers for early season pollinators was first promoted by a research paper that has since been retracted. 
• The lawn folks at UMN talked with the Bee lab folks about pollinators and lawn care 
• If you are interested in promoting pollinators in your lawn year round, we have several resources on planting and maintaining a bee lawn.

Quick facts

• Bee lawns have flowers mixed in with turfgrasses such as fine fescues and Kentucky bluegrass.
• The flowers of a bee lawn provide food (nectar and pollen) for pollinators.
• Bee lawns are environmentally friendly because they are managed using low-input methods that generally use less fertilizer and pesticides.
• Bee lawns can still be used recreationally by your household like a regular lawn.
• A bee lawn can attract over 50 species of native bees.

The folks at the Xerces Society and at Bee City are now referring to No Mow May; No Mow April; and Low Mow Spring. They also note that “Though no organization officially oversees No Mow May, many Bee City USA and Bee Campus USA affiliates choose to participate. And while not mowing in May isn’t right for everyone or every region, the campaign can be a good tool for getting new people involved in pollinator conservation.” 

bee on dame’s rocket

Photo by J. Harrington

I should have suspected that a less work, less thinking, more loafing approach to conservation might be way too good to be true. Turns out it is. If you’ll excuse me now, I have more reading to do. At least that’s less strain inducing than mowing (or blowing snow, for that matter.) I am in favor of pollinator conservation since I like berries, fruits and butterflies [and many other conservation dependent activities like fishing]. For now, I’ll read as I wait for the last of yesterday’s snow to melt. Then the ground has to dry out some before I’ll even think of mowing. Besides, almost everything that passes for lawn around here is still mostly flattened from winter’s snows.

The Tuft of Flowers

Robert Frost - 1874-1963

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a ’wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o’er night
Some resting flower of yesterday’s delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name, 
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me here the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

‘Men work together.’ I told him from the heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’

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Spring arrives in stuttersteps

A pathetic robin skittered across the snow-covered yard this morning, wondering how to find a worm under the snow. The dame’s rocket leaves we noticed greening the ground in the woods yesterday are now under a layer of snow. We’re still trying to figure out how to adapt or adjust to weather conditions that go from snow too deep to look for skunk cabbage to temperatures to hot to look for skunk cabbage and back to snow cover again, all in less than a week. Give us a couple of months and we’ll probably be complaining about the heat again, but by then it will be seasonal.

It looks as though we may get away with letting Mother Nature clean up her own mess this time. Roads are in decent shape so far. The driveway’s easily passible and doesn’t need clearing. Unless we get a lot more snow overnight, locally we seem to have dodged this bullet. Meanwhile, water is way up almost everywhere locally and there are more flocks of coots in the local marshes than I think I’ve seen ever before at one time, but perhaps not. We did finally see a red-winged blackbird.

many trees are starting to look like this

Photo by J. Harrington

This is the week we're going to ease into Spring. There's rain in the forecast but we've got boots and a rain jacket. There's lots of tidying to be done after winter's winds and storms. The dogs can get to run around in their run again. I think I need to shop for a few more "gopher” traps before we get overrun or undermined. Driving home from a visit with our son, we noticed lots of trees, especially poplars, have budburst, the beginning of leaf out, and or catkins. We’re going to act as though spring is finally here to stay, regardless of the current snow showers or any that pop up in the forecast. Wasn’t it one of the romantic poets who claimed “If Spring is here, can Winter be far behind?” or something like that?

Morning Warming

By Joyce Sidman

sun

sunwarm

sunwarm on back

sunwarm on back legs

sunwarm on back legs loosens

            my heart

            my heart beats

            my heart beats faster

            in sunwarm my heart beats faster

                        I flex

                        I flex legs

                        I flex legs loose with sunwarm

                        I drink dew from dripping leaves

                        I beat

                                    flex

                                                crouch

                        leap!

 

                                                What am I?  

(grasshopper)

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Budburst time

We’re back to seasonal temperatures, more or less. Rain today, snow tomorrow, plus the wettest winter on record have eased the drought in eastern Minnesota. The Sunrise river marshes are all flooded. If more wetlands had been left alone and not filled or drained, would the state have five rivers with flood forecasts?

maple tree: April budburst

Photo by J. Harrington

Sometime during the past few days the maple tree leaf buds have exploded. Budburst, that we’re used to seeing occur over several days, happened overnight thanks to several consecutive days of very unseasonably hot temperatures in the mid to low 80s. We are now back to soup and stew weather and I hope I don’t have to dig my heavy parka back out of the closet until next January.

All the water has brought migrating waterfowl back, some to nest here, others just passing through on their way North. A pair of Canada geese flew over the back yard last evening, not much more than roofline high. Earlier, what looked like a mating flight, with a handful of drakes chasing one hen, hustled across the sky a little above the tree top high. We noticed a pair of teal resting on the neighborhood pond a couple of days ago.

Meanwhile, our barred owl neighbor seems to have disappeared. Busy helping feed owlets, perhaps. Despite erratic weather, spring appears to be proceeding on something like its usual pace, although we’ve not seen any of the usual song bird spring migrants at the feeder yet.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale - 1884-1933

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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