Much of this morning’s snow has melted. (I hope my screams didn’t disturb anyone.) Repeat after me: We need the moisture! Yesterday’s bag of bergamot seeds has been joined by two planting trays. Those should get seeded today or tomorrow. Planting is scheduled for the first or second week of June (if the snow cover is shallow enough by then). This year's efforts are very different than the years when we harrowed the field, scattered seeds, and prayed for rain. We’ll see if the extra effort is worth it in terms of success.
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| will we see green-up anytime soon?
Photo by J. Harrington
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Although I’m not exactly looking forward to it, I suspect it’s going to feel good to get outside and do chores other than snow blowing, especially if they’re done under a shining sun. I’ve been spending way too much time on my butt and in my head, reading and thinking, with little actual doing. It’s not an optimum combination, at least for me.
There was a flock of what I think were bufflehead on the Sunrise river pools near County 36 in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area today. I didn’t get a really good look but they were riding low in the water like divers and there were white patches on at least some heads. The neighborhood lawns are overrun with robins. Increasing numbers of Canada geese are loafing on local ponds and feeding in fields. Mother Nature must be thinking it’s time for Spring. Even one of the local big box stores is stocking its garden center.
Our Singing Strength
It snowed in spring on earth so dry and warm
The flakes could find no landing place to form.
Hordes spent themselves to make it wet and cold,
And still they failed of any lasting hold.
They made no white impression on the black.
They disappeared as if earth sent them back.
Not till from separate flakes they changed at night
To almost strips and tapes of ragged white
Did grass and garden ground confess it snowed,
And all go back to winter but the road.
Next day the scene was piled and puffed and dead.
The grass lay flattened under one great tread.
Borne down until the end almost took root,
The rangey bough anticipated fruit
With snowball cupped in every opening bud.
The road alone maintained itself in mud,
Whatever its secret was of greater heat
From inward fires or brush of passing feet.In spring more mortal singers than belong
To any one place cover us with song.
Thrush, bluebird, blackbird, sparrow, and robin throng;
Some to go further north to Hudson's Bay,
Some that have come too far north back away,
Really a very few to build and stay.
Now was seen how these liked belated snow.
the field had nowhere left for them to go;
They'd soon exhausted all there was in flying;
The trees they'd had enough of with once trying
And setting off their heavy powder load.
They could find nothing open but the road.
So there they let their lives be narrowed in
By thousands the bad weather made akin.
The road became a channel running flocks
Of glossy birds like ripples over rocks.
I drove them under foot in bits of flight
That kept the ground, almost disputing right
Of way with me from apathy of wing,
A talking twitter all they had to sing.
A few I must have driven to despair
Made quick asides, but having done in air
A whir among white branches great and small
As in some too much carven marble hall
Where one false wing beat would have brought down all,
Came tamely back in front of me, the Drover,
To suffer the same driven nightmare over.
One such storm in a lifetime couldn't teach them
That back behind pursuit it couldn't reach them;
None flew behind me to be left alone.Well, something for a snowstorm to have shown
The country's singing strength thus brought together,
That though repressed and moody with the weather
Was none the less there ready to be freed
And sing the wildflowers up from root and seed.
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Please be kind to each other while you can.
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