When do we all do better? (When we work together!)

The Minnesota legislative session is almost over for the year. By the time we’ve figured out what they’ve done to us, they’ll be back at it again next year. If legislatures were comparable to corporations, many would drive their states into bankruptcy, as Congress continually tries to do when the Republicans are in charge. Would it be possible to only vote for those, in whatever party, who have education, training and experience in win-win negotiating? Politics, in a democracy, should not be a zero sum game.

Are you ready to vote?

Photo by J. Harrington

If we consider the world as a model, nature creates synergistic benefits from the multitudes of different species and ecosystems. Why is it that we can’t manage our elected officials so that they do much better than we’ve been experiencing? Is it that we’re too tolerant of our officials' failures? Too accepting of results that benefit the 1% at the expense of the rest of US? This country was founded in rebellion against a government that treated colonies as an extraction zone. Aren’t we experiencing something similar with a system in which corporations and billionaires pay effective tax rates lower than most of US? Meanwhile, corporations continue to use our commons as a dumping ground for their toxic wastes, making more of US sicker while they profit and our health care system is breaking down. How many more years will we continue to allow political factions to kick down the road cans such as the definition of Waters Of The United States (WOTUS)? It’s all one interconnected water system!!!

Senator Sanders of Vermont has a piece in The Guardian that’s worth reading: We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat. The late Senator Wellstone of Minnesota had a slogan that: “We all do better when we all do better.” That reflects the qualities I’m espousing we look for in candidates. Ask yourself how many successful marriages are based on a zero sum, I win, you lose, relationship. Then ask yourself why we can’t do better next November than repeat past mistakes.

Let Them Not Say

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

Let them not say:   we did not see it.
We saw.

Let them not say:   we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say:     they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say:   it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say:     they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something: 

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned.

—2014

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Trillium time?

It’s time to watch for the blooms of trillium in roadside woodlands. Some of this year’s flowers and birds have arrived about on time, others seem to be a week to ten days or so early. If trilliums blossom a little early, we should see flowers maybe next week. I’m going to remember to watch for them starting tomorrow.

Trillium grandiflorum (Large-flowered Trillium)

Photo by J. Harrington

From the goose I saw walking along a road and having trouble flying, it looks as though Canada geese may be starting to molt. The goose was walking along a gravel road as my Jeep and I slowly approached from behind. First the bird tried to outrun us. Then it tried to fly but had trouble getting off the ground. Finally it flapped and glided 20 or 30 feet into an alfalfa field adjoining the road. Then we drove past.

As of this afternoon I’m feeling less unclothed. I went online and renewed / replaced our Wisconsin family fishing license(s). Tomorrow may provide for a trip to a local fly shop to get Minnesota licenses for the Better Half and I. I’m annoyed at myself that it’s so late in the season (I’m not referring to Minnesota’s recent walleye opener) and we’ve not yet wet a line. You could claim I’ve gotten old and lazy and I’d not have much of a comeback. I’d probably have to plead nolo contendere.

Gather

Rose McLarney

Some springs, apples bloom too soon.
The trees have grown here for a hundred years, and are still quick
to trust that the frost has finished. Some springs,
pink petals turn black. Those summers, the orchards are empty
and quiet. No reason for the bees to come.

Other summers, red apples beat hearty in the trees, golden apples
glow in sheer skin. Their weight breaks branches,
the ground rolls with apples, and you fall in fruit.

You could say, I have been foolish. You could say, I have been fooled.
You could say, Some years, there are apples.

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S'up planting?

Now that yesterday’s invasion of British Columbia smoke has passed through, the Better Half is planting annuals in the planters next to the front stoop. The question is: will we or won’t we have to cover them one or more nights during the next few weeks to protect them from frost? Only time and temperatures will tell.

our patchy back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

Yours truly has adopted a modified No Mow May regime. The back yard needed to get pocket gopher mounds harrowed level. Leaf cover was sparse compared to the nearby woods. We mowed after we harrowed and the place looks better and we can try over seeding bare spots and watch for fresh mounds so we’ll know where to set traps. Meanwhile, in the front yard, No Mow May continues because we don’t want to mow the violets among the ground ivy. I wonder if any native species of ground cover adapted to shade coud outcompete it.

The planting plan we were beginning to develop yesterday has hit a major setback. We can find neither plants nor seeds for either species of Draba we hoped to plant: Draba reptans (Carolina Whitlow-grass) and/or Draba nemorosa (Yellow Whitlow-grass). We’ll keep looking but it is discouraging. On the other hand, trying to sort out better alternatives to non-native turf grasses is kind of fun. I just wish I’d started 20 or 30 years ago instead of relying on benign neglect.

Now it’s time to replant bergamot seeds and see if there's success this round.

Planting the Meadow

By Mary Makofske

I leave the formal garden of schedules 

where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs 

of thought, and day after day, a boxwood 

topiary hunt chases a green fox 

never caught. No voice calls me to order 

as I enter a dream of meadow, kneel 

to earth and, moving east to west, second 

the motion only of the sun. I plant 

frail seedlings in the unplowed field, trusting 

the wildness hidden in their hearts. Spring light 

sprawls across false indigo and hyssop, 

daisies, flax. Clouds form, dissolve, withhold 

or promise rain. In time, outside of time, 

the unkempt afternoons fill up with flowers.

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Hatching a plan

Technically, we, together with much of Minnesota, are no longer in or under drought conditions. Our cumulative year-to-date precipitation is a little above normal as we approach what has historically been our wettest month, June. Within the past week, local insects have been hatching or emerging in disgusting numbers. I know, birds and dragonflies and bats need to eat too.

male bluebird perched on mullein stalk

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve been talking with a staff person at the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District about improving the ground cover on our little corner of the Anoka Sand Plain. The fields behind the house are sunny with sandy, well-drained soils. As rhe SWCD staff person noted: “It’s a tough site.” Maybe we need more details of what Aldo Leopold and his family planted, or discovered, on their Sand County property in Wisconsin. The wonderful Almanac makes reference to Draba, “a humble, easily overlooked plant,” “Altogether…of no importance.” A quick check at Minnesota wildflowers web site reveals that there are six species of Draba native to Minnesota, including some counties contiguous to ours. So, why not try some on our sand plain? We’ll do some more exploring before we decide, but it looks very interesting, to borrow a phrase from Arte Johnson.

Another interesting prospect is/are bristle-berry plants. Maybe some could help the elderberries defeat (shade out?) the reed canary grass growing around the wet spot in our back yard.

Our property was part of a farm field. Its natural state was probably like the oak savannah/ mixed coniferous woodlands on the east, north and west side of the property. The south is dominated by a pine plantation that looks like it was planted years ago. If we treat all of these rehabilitation efforts like a hobby and not a project, this may even turn out to be fun. Have you ever read A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm?

The Grass

By Jeffrey Yang

Bouteloua black

grama grass red

chino side-

oats blue grama grass

hairy buffalo-

grass toboso three-awn

land’s dawn 旦 sun

over sand, tumble

wind-

mill witch- cup- saltgrass

plains love- indiangrass, prairie

cordgrass, pink pappusgrass, sprangle-

top green knotroot

bristle, bluestem, tangle-

head, sacaton

panicles

open, golden drop-

seed blooms desert winter-

grass, awns twist, un-

twist, such

syllables flicker

out of grass

: Nanissáanah

thirst, ghost dance

native

spirits, active

roots, footstalks

to soil as to site, stems

bend, range-

lands wave, seiche

fields sway, clouds

pass over-

grazed grass

staked, fenced

dries, weakens, dies,

fallen

crowns, the grasslands

what

comes to pass, ranch-

hand lands, live-

stock livelihood

wildlife gone, displaced, migrations

impeded, scales im-

balanced

the years

spread, each itself

hitched to everything else

in the universe

nodes

hollowed, drought-

land years, drops

on the hardpan

nature

is endless

regeneration

trichloris, muhly, switch-

grass, wind misses

沙 沙 shasha through the pass-

es, whispering seeds

will pass, will pass

within leaves

listening

grasses, not only

the revelation

but the nature behind

to sustain it, over-

land grasses seeds

spread and grow, rhizome,

stolon to sod, curly

mesquite cotton-

top, draft

to draft 草

ten thousand

grasses, 草 dancing

culms 草 of grass

florescence, sheaths

and blades whorl

flower to

flower, wild

grass, knowing

wind strips, slips

of time, the leaves

words weave, un-

weave the

grass

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How about a Mother Nature’s Day?

Wishing a happy day to all the Mothers out there and those who made them such. On the way home from a visit with our son, the Jeep was reporting air temperatures of 87℉. The rest of the week is forecast to be more seasonable. Unfortunately, these days the season includes wildfires and we’re under an air quality alert due to smoke from British Columbia fires that’s being brought in on the cold front that’s chilling the temps. At least no one is dropping bombs on or shooting artillery at US (yet).

Canada goose with goslings

Photo by J. Harrington

The yard is beautified by lots of white violet blooms with dark centers. Lilacs have begun to blossom. Canada goose goslings and sandhill crane colts have been observed in the vicinity. Soon it will be time for does to drop their fawns and wild turkey poults to hatch. Mornings are not as full of birdsong as they were a week or two ago. Nature is doing her best to rejuvenate our biodiversity, with insufficient help from us.

What would it take to get humans to honor Mother Nature as much as many (most?) do their own mothers? When is it Mother Nature’s Day and what does that mean? We need her as much as we need our own mothers, don’t we?

The Raincoat

Ada Limón
1976 – 

When the doctor suggested surgery
and a brace for all my youngest years,
my parents scrambled to take me
to massage therapy, deep tissue work,
osteopathy, and soon my crooked spine
unspooled a bit, I could breathe again,
and move more in a body unclouded
by pain. My mom would tell me to sing
songs to her the whole forty-five minute
drive to Middle Two Rock Road and forty-
five minutes back from physical therapy.
She’d say, even my voice sounded unfettered
by my spine afterward. So I sang and sang,
because I thought she liked it. I never
asked her what she gave up to drive me,
or how her day was before this chore. Today,
at her age, I was driving myself home from yet
another spine appointment, singing along
to some maudlin but solid song on the radio,
and I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet.

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A roar, a...?

The first dragonfly of the year appeared in front of the Jeep’s windshield and flew over the roof yesterday. Since we’re half-way plus through spring, summer is beginning to shoulder in. Mother’s Day forecast is for a high of 83℉. I doubt the Better Half will approve of that since I’m the one that prefers warmth leaning toward heat.

We missed the aurora last night but have been enjoying photos and reports on social media. Some of the reports noted significant traffic jams in our general area as others tried to find better lines of sight. It’s hard to see much beyond the tree tops where we live and a visual check early this morning revealed a glow in the northern sky much like the urban light pollution to our south.

first a fiddlehead, then a fern

Photo by J. Harrington

Somehow this year, when I wasn’t watching, the ferns across the yard in front of the house, along the edge of the woods, snuck past the fiddlehead stage and are now mature ferns. It probably occurred while I was looking up at the trees for bud burst and leaf out. If I had decided to mow the front yard already, no doubt I would have seen the fiddleheads. I’m still reading and pondering the pros and cons of no mow May. It occurs to me that, with all the trees around, and all the leaf fall in the woods, it’s hard to rationalize leaving leaf cover for critters like caterpillars who have an abundance of options on where and how to overwinter around here. Plus, we’ve accumulated too many brush piles during the past few years and haven’t managed to torch enough of them. I’m losing the yard along with my personal filing system and the stacks of books that have leapt beyond my meager efforts to manage them. I think I need a fairy godmother with a magic wand.

Letter to the Northern Lights 

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy: a fire
in central Pennsylvania still burns bright since 1962.

Whole squads of tiny squid blaze up the coast of Japan
before sunrise. Of course you didn’t show when we went

searching for you, but we found other lights: firefly,
strawberry moon, a tiny catch of it in each other’s teeth.

Someone who saw you said they laid down
in the middle of the road and took you all in,

and I’m guessing you’re used to that—people falling
over themselves to catch a glimpse of you

and your weird mint-glow shushing itself over the lake.
Aurora, I’d rather stay indoors with him—even if it meant

a rickety hotel and its wood paneling, golf carpeting
in the bathrooms, and grainy soapcakes. Instead

of waiting until just the right hour of the shortest
blue-night of the year when you finally felt moved

enough to collide your gas particles with sun particles—
I’d rather share sunrise with him and loon call

over the lake with him, the slap of shoreline threaded
through screen windows with him. My heart

slams in my chest, against my shirt—it’s a kind
of kindling you’d never be able to light on your own. 

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Thought for Food

For quite some years, we’ve been purchasing shares in a community supported agriculture farm. Rarely have we shopped at a farmer’s market; sometimes at a roadside stand. We’ve bought quarter or half an animal for meat (beef and lamb) in bulk from local producers. Long ago we tried our hands at growing our own vegetables. That was a course in frustration involving poor soil, wildlife freeloaders, uncooperative weather, lack of training, plus excessive biting insects.

there’s more than one way to harvest sunshine

Photo by J. Harrington

Something like a dozen or so fruit trees have been sacrificed in our efforts to start a small orchard of apple and pear trees. At this time of year I deeply regret not having planted any crab apples for just their blossoming beauty. The fruit tree deaths appear attributable to sandy, excessively drained soil and the taste pocket gophers have for fruit tree roots.

The Better Half [BH] and I share two memberships in local food co-ops, if we are liberal in our use of the term local. The BH took out a membership in a central city co-op back in the days when one or both of us were working in one Twin City or another. After we moved to the exurbs and headed “downtown” less frequently, I took out a membership in a Greater Minnesota city co-op next to a favorite book store.

We annually make what we consider meaningful contributions to a regional food shelf. I usually shop for native harvested, Minnesota grown wild rice. For several years we traveled to rural areas in the state to buy, roast, and eat at Thanksgiving a heritage breed turkey. In the years when I was more active as a waterfowler, we occasionally enjoyed a roast Canada goose at Christmas. We consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to indulge our food and taste preferences and to limit our dependence on industrial scale agriculture.

All of the preceding is lead up to my pleasant surprise at finding in my email inbox this week several announcements from organizations I’ve been following for some time. Rhey are now emphasizing their focus on food as part of a response to reducing greenhouse gases. For example:

Welcome to Drawdown Food

Food is the forgotten frontier of climate action. While energy, transportation, and industry garner much of the attention, what we eat and how we grow is one of the biggest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions. To equip those in the food systems sector with the tools and insights they need to reduce emissions, Project Drawdown is launching a major new initiative: Drawdown Food.

“Using available technologies and practices, we can meet every person’s food needs while also neutralizing the food system’s impact on climate,” says Project Drawdown executive director Jonathan Foley, who is leading the initiative. “We just need to apply the right combinations of solutions in the right place at the right time.” Be sure to follow along – and invite those in your network to do the same – as we advance food-based solutions in the weeks and months to come. Learn more >>

and

🌸 Announcing the 2024–26 Rural Regenerator Fellowship

Calling rural artists in the Upper Midwest: Applications are now open for Springboard's 2024–26 Rural Regenerator Fellowship! We are excited to announce that this year’s Fellowship will focus on supporting artists whose work is connected to land, environment, and/or food systems.Rural artists who are using their creative practice to explore environmental justice, land and food sovereignty, agriculture, foodways, climate solutions, and/or sustainability are welcome to apply. We will select 12 fellows total. What the two-year Fellowship offers: Unrestricted $10,000 stipend to continue or expand rural artist's existing work. Opportunities for exchange and learning with other Rural Regenerator Fellows across the Upper Midwest. A supportive platform to build solidarity across rural geographies. This year’s new effort to amplify and support the urgent work of environmental stewardship aims to bring a new level of focus to the Fellowship in order to collectively contribute to long term change and support existing movements. Applications are open now through June 24, 2024. Interested in applying? Join our virtual info session on Friday, May 31 to learn more about the application and the fellowship.

Learn more and apply

I’m encouraged by the concurrent serendipity evidenced above because for years I’ve experienced how challenging, and expensive, it can be to eat healthy while limiting one’s climate (and related) footprint. If we really want to see widespread systems change, we need to make it much easier for families and individuals to do the right thing. Maybe we’re finally headed in that direction.

The Farmer

By W.D. Ehrhart

Each day I go into the fields to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don’t complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.

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Easing into warmer days

Yesterday, the first hummingbird of the year, a female ruby-throated, showed up at the nectar feeder. Today, I noticed an abundance of trees covered in blossoms, roadsides and medians highlighted with bright yellow floral accents, but no sign, yet, of Canada goose goslings, at least for me. The Better Half claims to have seen some near the Sunrise River pools during the past few days. Spring continues to triumph over winter in more and more ways, with ephemeral wildflowers and downy goslings still to come. Meanwhile, we’re still working up to getting this year’s fishing licenses. That’s next week’s priority, after we celebrate Mother’s Day.

Canada geese on a small pond, no goslings visible yet

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve been enjoying reading Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Learning from Indigenous Practices for Environmental Sustainability. I got a copy through a non-renewable interlibrary loan and doubt I’ll finish it before the due date. That probably means a request for a copy of my very own goes on a list for Father’s Day or my birthday next month. It was very shortsighted of me to manage to get born so close to Father’s Day that sometimes all the celebrations (and presents) get jumbled into one. Our son out did me though. He was born on December 25.

Our major accomplishments for today are likely to be getting the first half of the year’s property taxes paid and using elbow grease and Bartender’s Friend to remove 80% plus of the calcium ring around the inside of the downstairs toilet bowl. One or two more episodes and the remains should end up just about invisible. It had gotten to be a continuing point of annoyance to get the bathroom essentially clean but still have that stain staring up at us. Hard water, even with a good softening system, can be a pain to live with.

As you can see from today’s report, one of the problems with retirement is you never get a day off. We’ll just try to make the best of it that we can, for as long as we can.

First Warm Day in a College Town

Beth Ann Fennelly
1971 – 

Today is the day the first bare-chested
          runners appear, coursing down College Hill 
                      as I drive to campus to teach, hard 

not to stare because it’s only February 15, 
          and though I now live in the South, I spent 
                      my girlhood in frigid Illinois hunting Easter eggs 

in snow, or trick-or-treating in the snow, an umbrella 
          protecting my cardboard wings, so now it’s hard 
                      not to see these taut colts as my reward, these yearlings 

testing the pasture, hard as they come toward my Nissan 
          not to turn my head as they pound past, hard 
                      not to angle the mirror to watch them cruise 

down my shoulder, too hard, really, when I await them 
          like crocuses, search for their shadows as others do 
                      the groundhog’s, and suddenly here they are, the boys 

without shirts, how fleet of foot, how cute their buns, 
          I have made it again, it is spring.  
                      Hard to recall just now that these are the torsos 

of my students, or my past or future students, who every year 
          grow one year younger, get one year fewer 
                      of my funny jokes and hip references

to Fletch and Nirvana, which means some year if they catch me
            admiring, they won’t grin grins that make me, busted, 
                      grin back--hard to know a spring will come 

when I’ll have to train my eyes 
          on the dash, the fuel gauge nearing empty, 
                      hard to think of that spring, that 

distant spring, that very very very 
          (please God) distant 
                      spring.

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Pacing the seasons

A month or so ago, the crowns of trees around the house were all bare and skeletony looking. Now they’re mostly filled in, or out, as you prefer. and the tree-line is looking almost solid, although we know it isn’t.

tamaracks leafing out

Photo by J. Harrington

All of a sudden, it’s too warm (70℉) to comfortably do yard work. I know, for some of us it’s almost always too cold or too wet or too dry or too warm. There are those of us who are more in the hunter-gatherer mold than in the farmer or suburbanite mold. I should be standing in a river, waving a stick, to borrow from John Gierach. Instead, I’ve been mowing last year’s leaves into the mower’s bag and putting the contents onto the Better Half’s lily garden as mulch. Mother’s Day is Sunday, you know.

The older I get the more I find that the transition from a largely sedentary winter to more active, warmer, seasons to be full of discomforts. It reminds me of the old saying “I’m not the man I used to be, never was.” Although I know better than to expect to return to the vim, vigor, and resilience I had twenty or thirty years ago, I remain hopeful of remaining ambulatory and then some for at least a few years more. Under the heading of teaching an old dog new tricks, I think I’m finally learning to pace myself and quit before I collapse. I have taken to heart the Lao Tzu observation Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Way back when I was in high school and learning Latin, I came across a description of someone who wanted to enjoy all the bonus [good] with none of the onus [work]. We know that, except for politicians and the 1%, that’s not really viable.

Cloud

By Kay Ryan

A blue stain

creeps across

the deep pile

of the evergreens.

From inside the

forest it seems

like an interior

matter, something

wholly to do

with trees, a color

passed from one

to another, a

requirement

to which they

submit unflinchingly 

like soldiers or 

brave people

getting older. 

Then the sun 

comes back and

it’s totally over.

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Quandary after quandary

In the course of my life, I’ve encountered a number of supposedly helpful aphorisms or lyrics or parts of poems that leave me questioning their applicability to today’s world and the issues we face. Here’s a few examples:

• Perfect is the enemy of good


• ... faced with selecting from two immoral options, the least immoral one should be chosen


• Ring the bells that still can ring
  Forget your perfect offering
  There is a crack, a crack in everything
  That’s how the light gets in.

I’m not disagreeing with the intent of any of the preceding or similar elements of guidance, but the recovering planner in me asks if we “settle for” these approaches, how do we make progress? Is choosing the lesser of two evils the same kind of progress as selecting the better of two goods, or is it simply a holding action until a better choice is available, and how do we get to that better choice?

Is May the “best”month? (serviceberry?) bushes blooming in May.

Photo by J. Harrington

The wonderful Buckminster Fuller captured much of my dilemma in this quotation:

“I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.”

Of course, he also noted that: “Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked” 

As I look toward next November, it’s clear to me that we have a choice, not between the lesser of two evils, but between a lesser good and a greater evil. Perhaps, in this universe, thats the best we can hope for. Maybe progress is an emergent property of the systems we’ve inherited. Perhaps we need to learn to be happy that we have choices while we work to create a new, different, and better system. Would ranked choice voting or a parliamentary system work better? How would we know?

Perfect

By Kenn Nesbitt

Today I managed something

that I’ve never done before.

I turned in this week’s spelling quiz

and got a perfect score.

Although my score was perfect,

it appears I’m not too bright.

I got a perfect zero—

not a single answer right.

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Learning to sing between rain drops

Today we saw the first sunning snake of the year as we headed to the post office. It looked like a large bull snake but the glimpse we caught as we drove past wasn’t enough to be certain. The good news is there was no squished snake on the road as we returned home. I’ve grown old and creaky enough that I now appreciate the concept of just stretching out and lying in the sun much more than I did in my younger days.

snake sunning at edge of gravel road

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, there’s male rose-breasted grosbeak at the grape jelly feeder we put out for orioles that have yet to show themselves; downey woodpeckers are at the nectar feeder; red-winged blackbirds at the sunflower chip feeder; and bluejays drinking from the water-filled ant trap hanging above the nectar feeder. We continue to await a first of season visit from a hummer or anyone more exotic, such as a scarlet tanager.

Although we’re not really a sports fan, our son is, and the fact that the Twins baseball team were on an extended winning streak and climbed to second place in the Central division while the Timberwolves basketball team just defeated Denver in the first game of their playoff series, has him beside himself with glee. I’ve lived in this state long enough to be reasonably sure that heartbreak will come soon enough (but I won’t say that to him).

Yesterday’s fussing about the condition of the aspen grove turns out to look like it was premature. (What do you mean that’s true of many of my rants?) The Better Half and I took a closer look around dinner time. The leaves look like they’re there and developing slowly, in part due to heavy shading by the nearby conifers.

If we get enough dry days between rainy ones, I may get last year’s leaves cleaned up just before autumn’s leaf fall occurs this year. It’s not quite enough to put me at Macbeth’s level of despair, but the phrase “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...” keeps resonating as I look at the yard. I do seem to be slowly learning that all the fussing in the world has yet to mulch a single leaf nor burn a single branch.

Spring, the sweet spring

By Thomas Nashe

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king, 

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring, 

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: 

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! 

The palm and may make country houses gay, 

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, 

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay: 

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo! 

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, 

Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit, 

In every street these tunes our ears do greet: 

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!

            Spring, the sweet spring!

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Where’s the reset button?

Now that leaves are opening, it’s easier to see where winter kill has affected some of our trees. There seem to be more blowdowns this year than in any past year I can recall. Both conifers and deciduous are dying, presumably from different causes. I’ve heard of oak wilt and we had several oaks taken down and out last year. Something killed a large, mature white pine that was growing in front of the house and that was taken down along with the oaks. Other, smaller confers have died and been left standing. Now, this spring, it appears that a cluster(?) of aspens has died over the winter. Our woods are smalll enough that any commercial options are very limited I believe and I don’t feel like paying the rates for local crews to come in, cut down trees, go and sell the fire wood, and leave me with another mess of small branches to clean up. Dying tree management and disposal is one of the down sides of country living. Plus, we’re still trying to find someone to fix the flue in our fireplace which broke pre-pandemic.

did these trees die last winter?

Photo by J. Harrington

These, and similar malfunctions, make me yearn for the days of yesteryear when a tv repairman would come to the house to replace a burnt out vacuum tube so I could watch The Lone Ranger. In those times, all bills came in the mail and were paid by mail or in person. I wasn’t being harassed by some damn utility company to sign up for auto payment, thereby exposing not only personal, but banking information via incompetent corporate IT departments, so when hacking occurs, some overpaid CEO can tell those personally affected how “deeply sorry” he is.

It’ could be worse. I could be trying to live in Gaza or Ukraine. It could also be better if, for example, those in authority did a good job of enforcing the laws we have instead of passing more laws that will only inconvenience, and possibly criminalize, innocent folks while being ignored by scofflaws and criminals. How about if parents let their offspring have unsupervised access to loaded firearms, we let the parents keep the firearms and take the child(ren) permanently and place them in responsible foster homes. We seem to be moving more and more to a society that’s soft on criminals, especially ex-presidents, at the expense of everyone else. All of this is making it harder and harder for me to maintain my record of voting Democratic and coulld make it impossiblle for US to maintain a democracy..

While I Wash My Face I Ask Impossible Questions of Myself and Those Who Love Me

Charif Shanahan

Specks of toothpaste fleck the mirror.

A fan spins dust in the hall.

I find this is it impossible to accept

So I wait for a new starting point

As though life will begin there and then.

Do you know what I mean?

Not what I’m saying, what I mean.

Is it possible my function is to hold

All the intricate, interstitial pain

And articulate clarity?

Tie a boat to my wrist, I sprout wings.

Give me a pair of shoes, I grow fins.

Once an hour I trick myself into focus:

I look into the glass as I look through it.

When the new beginning comes, what then?

Does life suddenly reset like an Atari?

Does meaning emerge

Assertively and without invitation?

The task is to live well enough with you.

But how? How do you know what you want

If you don’t tell you? If you don’t hear you?

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May the fourth must be reckoned with

Before we get into today’s themes, let me be among those greeting you with the salutation:

May the Fourth Be with You! Happy Star Wars Day!

Yesterday farmers were working fields that had standing water in the low spots and, sometimes, elsewhere. I suppose there’s only so many days in a growing season no matter how much it rains in springtime and that means fields need to be readied for planting. I wonder if having cover crops has any effect on working fields that otherwise might be too muddy to work.

a barn at our CSA farm

Photo by J. Harrington

Intermittent rain and sun have brought full leaf out to about three quarters of the trees in the area. Wild plum bushes / trees have developed ivory blooms to beautify rural roadsides almost everywhere we drive. Meanwhile, our efforts to germinate wild bergamot seeds has proven to be mostly a failure, compounded by one seeding tray getting blown off the deck railing yesterday. I think we’ll try replanting at least one of the trays. There’s plenty of seeds left in the bag but we’re not sure what went (or we did) wrong, although even in the house the temperature has been at or less than ideal for germination.

This morning we picked up week #2 of our Spring Greens community supported agriculture [CSA] shares. Week two’s box contains:

• GREEN GARLIC
• TANGO LETTUCE
• BABY RED RUSSIAN KALE
• SUNFLOWER MICROGREENS
• LAMB'S QUARTERS, and
• A DOZEN ORGANIC EGGS!

cutting greens

By Lucille Clifton

curling them around

i hold their bodies in obscene embrace

thinking of everything but kinship.

collards and kale

strain against each strange other

away from my kissmaking hand and

the iron bedpot.

the pot is black,

the cutting board is black,

my hand,

and just for a minute

the greens roll black under the knife,

and the kitchen twists dark on its spine

and I taste in my natural appetite

the bond of live things everywhere.

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This May work out

Daybreak today brought a crescent moon hanging in a shades of fading deep blue sky. It was about the prettiest dawn and sunrise I’ve ever seen. As the sun rose and the moon disappeared, the season’s first bluebirds arrived to check out both nesting boxes in front of the house. For a little while we had bluebirds twittering, squirrels skittering, and dew-covered grass gleaming. Locally it was indeed enough to make me think: what a wonderful world. It’ll probably be a few days or more until we learn if either bird house has been deemed suitable for raising a bluebird family.

female bluebird on bare, leafless branch

Photo by J. Harrington

A purple finch (or house finch?) was briefly at the seed feeder yesterday. Most of our visitors have been goldfinch, chickadees and woodpeckers. Now that the bluebirds are here, I’ll fill and hang a nectar feeder for hummingbirds and orioles. Maybe a grape jelly feeder would serve as an additional enticement. Then I have to remember to bring each feeder in every night so the bears don’t think we’re serving them a free lunch.

I suspect that sometime later this month the temperature will exceed 85℉. Then, after a brief cool down, it will jump to 90℉ or more and then stay at summer levels pretty much through September. Let’s watch and see what really happens as we go about enjoying our road repair season.

Bluebird

Charles Bukowski

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

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Too big to fail = too big

Once upon a time, I believed that big government was the the way to control big business, i.e., mega corporations. Then came regulatory capture and Citizens United. Now I’m of the opinion that too big to fail is simply too big and we can't afford that kind of oligarchy. The recent example of UnitedHealth and the damage being done through their failures confirms my opinion. The recent behavior of a number of college and universities, calling police riot squads to disperse peaceful student protesters doesn’t do anything to make me rethink my assessment.

small, but beautiful, bird, scarlet tanager

Photo by J. Harrington

If a business has only one customer, that customer can essentially control the business. If a customer has only one source for a critical element, the customer is totally dependent on that source. Neither is a healthy situation. For example, look at the status of downtown high-rise office towers now seeking new tenants after the recent pandemic triggered lots of work from home options. For too long, business consolidation has been see as a way to control prices through increased efficiency. Remember the 2007-2008 economic crisis? Were financial institutions bailed out because they were “too big to fail?” Are we now watching similar developments in our health care and insurance and information system(s)?

Meanwhile, governments and economies are responding with too little, too late to a number of global environmental crises such as the sixth extinction and loss of biodiversity, climate breakdown and its ramifications, and overconsumption. Lip service to responses is paid while too much business as usual continues. We need to pay more attention and only vote for those who have demonstrated they walk their talk, although for now we are limited to the lessor of two evils.

If you think I’ve been too negative today, see if you can get a copy of Small Is Beautiful and read it. These days we’re experiencing the consequences of not following Schumacher’s guidance.

A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

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Welcome, May!

 So far, May 1 is shaping up as better than average. A book, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, I had requested through an interlibrary loan, is now sitting next to my chair. (I was getting eyestrain reading a pdf on my computer screen.) On my way home from the library, I had an opportunity to help an old turtle, Blanding’s, I think, cross the road. It’s the time of year when turtle’s look for just the right spot to nest and lay eggs. For some reason, that seems to require an inordinate number of road crossings.

why did the turtle cross the road?
to lay some eggs!

Photo by J. Harrington

While we’re on the topic of living dangerously and “enjoying” the excitement, I put my winter weight pjs into seasonal storage this morning. Feel free to blame me if we get a spring blizzard in the next few days. Then again, it probably won’t be long until we’re fussing about heat and humidity. Let’s focus on enjoying as much as we can of this wonderful transition season. It’s my favorite, after autumn.

The unidentified small, blue flowers recently mentioned on these pages are probably violets, at least most of them. Today there’s a long row of dandelions sunning themselves next to the road. Next to the front door, hanging baskets of pansies add a welcoming touch, untouched, so far, by frost. Just remember, where we live it’s turtles all the way down.

Turtle

by Mary Oliver

Now I see it--
it nudges with its bulldog head
the slippery stems of the lilies, making them tremble;
and now it noses along in the wake of the little brown teal

who is leading her soft children
from one side of the pond to the other; she keeps
close to the edge
and they follow closely, the good children--

the tender children,
the sweet children, dangling their pretty feet
into the darkness.
And now will come--I can count on it--the murky splash,

the certain victory
of that pink and gassy mouth, and the frantic
circling of the hen while the rest of the chicks
flare away over the water and into the reeds, and my heart

will be most mournful
on their account. But, listen,
what's important?
Nothing's important

except that the great and cruel mystery of the world,
of which this is a part,
not to be denied. Once,
I happened to see, on a city street, in summer,

a dusty, fouled turtle plodded along--
a snapper--
broken out I suppose from some backyard cage--
and I knew what I had to do--

I looked it right in the eyes, and I caught it--
I put it, like a small mountain range,
into a knapsack, and I took it out
of the city, and I let it

down into the dark pond, into
the cool water,
and the light of the lilies,
to live. 

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Say “good-bye” to April, fools!

The roadsides have developed a rash of blue flowers that I can’t identify. I didn’t even manage to take a picture because I noticed them while walking the dogs. A leash in each hand isn’t conducive to good photos. I’ll do some checking in field guides later today but I don’t need to know a name to enjoy the beauty of a flower.

The Red Wheelbarrow, WiIliam Carlos Williams

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s been amost a decade since I drove by the barn outside Osceola, WI where the picture above was taken. It seems like a good way to close out the month of April and National Poetry month.

Back home, the year round effort to keep this place minimally decluttered was (re)engaged today. Christmas greens made it into the burn pit and the trailer we use to haul the tractor had the air pressure in its tires checked. The coupler needs some lubrication, and the hitch ball needs polishing. It’s covered in rust and may even need to be replaced. Back in the days when I was a practicing planner, from time to time I was known to observe that the problem with building infrastructure is that, once built it needs maintenance and politicians never held ribbon cutting ceremonies for resurfacing etc. At a personal level, I note that the more stuff we have, the more stuff we have to take care of. That’s not a complaint as much as it is an observation.

Tomorrow, April's showers turn into May flowers. National Poetry month will end for another year but we can, and should, make every day a poetry day. If you’ve not read the works of Heidi Barr, a local poet, I suggest you check them out. The last time I looked, a few weeks ago, Prairie Restorations in Scandia had copies on their bookshelves. She’s the source of today’s poem and if you follow the poem’s title link, you can check out two more.

RAINY DAYS IN SPRING

Rainy days in spring

are for walking quietly

through gently falling water

are for well-thumbed books

read in early afternoon

are for tea steeping

while drops drum the roof

are for land and sky

working together

through mess and necessity

to keep the world turning

ice and mud eventually coming

to an agreement that’s green

with potential for growing

with potential for blooming

with potential for feeding

weary souls wandering

on rainy days in spring.

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