A matter of balance

I suppose I could wash the Jeep and leave it parked in the driveway instead of in the garage. That might make it rain, but I have my doubts. We’re again being teased with a less than 50% probability of rain tonight. I’lll take a chance and hold off on watering the asters and other spring plantings up on our little piece of the Anoka Sand Plain. If things don’t look damp in the morning, I’ll fill the watering cans tomorrow before we head off to pick up our week 2 Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share. This week we’ll get:

• BILKO CABBAGE
• BRENTWOOD LETTUCE
• GREEN ONION
• BOK CHOY (Large)
• SUMMER SQUASH, and
• GREEN BEANS

One of these days it might be interesting to compare this year's produce by week with what we got last summer. If anything looks wildly different or otherwise interesting, you’ll read about it here first.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our continuing lack of precipitation has a bit to do with the fact that this summer our sightings of reptiles and amphibians has been substantially less that usual. Most years we’ll have had a tree frog or two loafing in the bird bath or hanging our on one of the railings. I don’t recall seeing any this year, although frog songs last (wet) spring were abundant. Neither have we seen any snakes or turtles as we’ve been out and about doing chores, and only one turtle crossing a road anywhere in the neighborhood this year. Even though we’re not getting flooded like the Northeast, nor trapped under a heat dome like the South, and the roads haven’t (yet) begun to buckle from this summer’s heat, I’m becoming suspicious that climate weirding is having its effects on the local wildlife.

bottom 3 rows are tricos

Photo by J. Harrington

Among the local wildlife that seems to be thriving this summer are smallish grasshoppers. Each time I walk the dogs along the road ditch, handfuls (handsful?) of them jump all around our feet. July is the beginning of grasshopper season for trout fishing. It’s also the start of trico season. Now, the average grasshopper fly is many times larger than the average size trico fly, and fly size is a major factor in using an appropriate weight fly line and rod. I’ve just begun to ponder if can can rig one of my rods to properly cast a large hopper fly and a smallish trico or if I need two outfits for that. The idea would be to fish hoppers in the afternoon and tricos in the evening. I’ll give it a bit more thought but don’t want to turn what’s supposed to be fun into a problem. Overanalysis would also be unbalanced.

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

Billy Collins
1941 – 

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

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