Return of the driveway

This may be the week the ice finally melts off the driveway and the bare ground returns. That means I won’t have to change shoes every time I step out to walk the dogs or empty the trash. I have even less patience for putting a pair of yak trax on and taking them off every time I go out and come in than I do for changing shoes. Even my cold-weather-loving Better Half has had enough of winter by now.

At the risk of being unduly and prematurely optimistic, I’m going to start planning on spending time outside to check for signs of impending spring, over and above being able to walk on the driveway without slip-sliding away. Waterfowl should begin to arrive in numbers as open water appears and snow disappears. Several years ago, Greta Kaul at MinnPost published a delightful piece on Minnesota’s Spring phenology accompanied by her own drawings. I need to recheck my listings of which trout flies are likely to be hatching after the Spring runoff has headed down local streams toward the Gulf. I may also be able to check for emergent skunk cabbage and British soldier lichen by week’s end.

British soldier lichen (red spots)

Photo by J. Harrington

If you didn’t already know that April is National Poetry Month, you read it here first. Our current Poet Laureate is Ada Limón. Her current book is The Hurting Kind, in which there are four sections, each named after a season. The first season is Spring and the first poem in that season is today’s poem. May each of us find more delight this season than we have reason to expect.

Give Me This

Ada Limón - 1976-

I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog
slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still
green in the morning’s shade. I watched her
munch and stand on her haunches taking such
pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed
delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts
on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth,
as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled
spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead,
I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes
me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine
when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest,
and she is doing what she can to survive.

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