Chilly outlook for the future?

The temperature probably won’t get above zero before the day after tomorrow. Then flurries are in the forecast for Wednesday. We’re paying a steep price for a little sunshine and blue skies but it’s not as bad as it was in 2019 when we hit -31 at the end of January. Getting back to seasonal highs in the low twenties gives us something to look forward to. I know, I don’t believe I just wrote that either. Spring equinox is still two months from tomorrow. Sigh!

We’ve not yet heard any spring calls from the chick-a-dees or cardinals. Maybe when this cold snap lets go? On a brighter note, the tulips in the “Spring Morning” forced bulb garden the Better Half gave me for Christmas are beginning to bloom. That and the other flowers will help perk me up until the real Spring thing is here.

last January's forced bulb garden

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re planning on a tv-less Monday tomorrow except for weather reports and, possibly, updates on the latest madness at the Minnesota legislature. It seems that, both locally and nationally, politicians are determined to prove the validity of Churchill’s observation:

‘No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

Another bit of good news, at least for me, is that the Daughter Person is now baking her own version oof one of my all-time favorite cookies, white chocolate and cranberries. I’m rationing my consumption to keep from exploding my blood sugar levels, but it’s hard!

This is about the time of year when bear cubs are born while mom is still hibernating. If humans were actually as smart as we like to believe we are, hibernation is a skill we would have acquired long ago.

Furry Bear

A. A. Milne

If I were a bear, 
   And a big bear too, 
I shouldn’t much care 
   If it froze or snew; 
I shouldn’t much mind 
   If it snowed or friz— 
I’d be all fur-lined 
   With a coat like his! 

For I’d have fur boots and a brown fur wrap, 
And brown fur knickers and a big fur cap. 
I’d have a fur muffle-ruff to cover my jaws, 
And brown fur mittens on my big brown paws. 
With a big brown furry-down up to my head, 
I’d sleep all the winter in a big fur bed. 

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Rowdy neighbors

This morning we hung a new bird house on a maple tree in front of our house. A pilot hole, drilled to facilitate inserting the screw holding the bird house, promptly began oozing sap, so that part of our seasonal phenology is still working. Warm days and cool nights make the sap flow.

I have no idea what species, if any, may use the house for nesting. In fact, the new house may be too close for comfort to an old bluebird house near the lilac and forsythia bushes, which are just across the driveway from where some species of birds build a nest on the housing for the heat and motion sensing "yard light” mounted on the outside corner of the garage.

bear(?) smashed bluebird house

Photo by J. Harrington

Last summer what we presume was a bear took down the bluebird house behind the house, we think to get at the fledglings inside. We had that house in that location for years without bear issues. Then a few years ago a 2" x 4” that held a house was snapped. The replacement was a 4” x 4” holding the house about 6 feet above the ground. Not enough!!

Later in the season, something broke up the bat house we have mounted about 10 feet up on an oak tree. Didn’t see any signs of bear claws and can’t imagine what else might have the strength to pull the front off the bat house. Someday soon we’ll take down what’s left and see if it’s worth repairing. Maybe it’s time to find somewhere to mount a trail cam and see who’s visiting us when we’re not looking. A 4” x 4” 6 feet high might be just the spot if a smashed bluebird house were removed.

Birds Again

Jim Harrison
1937 – 2016

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

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Summer sightings

We started the morning with the discovery that raccoons(?) had disassembled the freshly refilled hummingbird feeder. [Last night we absentmindedly forgot to bring the feeders in after participating in a mid-evening Zoom meeting.] I have no idea what he, she, it or they were trying to accomplish by unscrewing the bottom of the hummer feeder but, as we were in the midst of taking stock and deciding where to clean up next, a very large black bear walked across the field right behind the house. At least the bear didn’t destroy the sunflower seed feeder last night but we suspect it was probably the culprit the smashed a bluebird house a couple of weeks ago.

Today’s air quality is much improved over yesterday’s but still not “Good.” It is, nevertheless, just bad enough to continue to provide me with an excuse to avoid out door chores. Lack of “Good” air and a desire to not get eaten by a bear weigh equally in our efforts to stay inside today. 😉

Yesterday, or the day before, while working in front by the road, I watched a whitetail doe stand in the middle of that road for about five minutes. She was nursing a very tiny fawn. All three of us were grateful for a lack of traffic. This morning as I drove toward the Daughter Person’s abode, a couple of miles north of our place an older, larger fawn came bursting out of some roadside bushes near the ditch, noticed traffic moving at 55 or 60 mph, promptly reversed direction and bounded back into the woods. I can relate.

the time of year for fawns and does

Photo by J. Harrington

Several folks I was chatting with this morning were speculating whether does had dropped fawns later than usual this year. The consensus was “could be.” As this was being typed, a couple of wild turkeys wandered out of the woods and through the field behind the house. I’m not sure if it’s the smoke, the bugs, the alignment of the stars, or what, but there seems to be much more wildlife active during full daylight than I’d expect.

Poem

Blanche Taylor Dickinson    1896 – 1972

Ah, I know what happiness is. . . . 
It is a timid little fawn
Creeping softly up to me
For one caress, then gone
Before I’m through with it . . . 
Away, like dark from dawn!
Well I know what happiness is . . . !
It is the break of day that wears
A shining dew decked diadem . . . 
An aftermath of tears. 
Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy . . . 
I’ve played with them for years,
And always they will slip away
Into the brush of another day. 

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Circumstantial evidence

Yesterday we promised to share another bear story. We confess we think this is a bear story but do not have proof of such. Last Thursday we mentioned the destruction of the post on which our backyard bluebird house once was mounted. Yesterday we showed a bear visiting the feeder in the front yard about nine years ago. We also were troubled to notice that the back yard blluebird house had been smashed from its new, improved, stronger post. We didn’t see the perpetrator but can’t picture any local critter other than a bear, very hungry in June, that would have the inclination and ability to do this:

who but a bear would do this?

Photo by J. Harrington

We don’t know if there were eggs or fledglings in the house. We hope not although we suspect fledgling noises might have attracted the culprit’s attention. The remnants of the nest are on the ground between the lilacs and the post. Someday soon we’ll remove the nest and pull the post. Until and unless we figure out how to install a bear-proof bluebird house, we won’t set another adult pair up for the kind of frustration and failure the pair pictured below seem to experience. Pardon the anthropomorphism, but they look much like a “WTF happened?” pair.

bluebirds perched on smashed house

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year we had lots of conflict between the tree swallows that nested in a tall aluminum house up on a tall pole on the hill and the bluebirds. This year we didn’t mount the swallow house (supposedly designed for purple martins) back to the top of its pole. So far this year, neither swallows nor martins are resident. This summer we’ve gone from too much moisture to none locally and too many birds last year to none except at the feeders. I don’t like the pattern that shows.

THE BLUEBIRD

by 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?

Watch an animated version of the poem at the marginalian. 

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How bad is it?

I’ve noticed lots of comments (complaints) on social media about how bad the mosquitos are this year. Local, and, I think, national, news has done a story on it. Somehow, I think I recall similar stories almost every spring turning into summer. It all puts me in mind of one of my outdoor adventures from years ago.

The Better Half had given me, as a birthday present, maybe combined with father’s day, a bow and arrow bear hunting trip to a camp in Saskatchewan or Manitoba. One afternoon, as I was sitting 15 or 20 feet up in an aspen tree, a bear came to the bait. I drew my bow and, in my excitement, ended up shooting a little high. The bear disappear immediately after the arrow passed over his(?) front shoulder. When the guide later came to collect me, he decided we should track the bear to be sure I hadn’t drawn blood or, if I had, to fill my tag. Off we went on a late afternoon in June through scrub brush in Canada.

While 15 or 20 feet in the air, exposed to what breeze there was, I hadn’t noticed any mosquitos. On the ground, tracking a bear, I was literally coated and crawling with them. For fear of spooking a possibly wounded bear, I did minimal swatting while we walked. After 45 minutes or an hour, with no sign of the bear or any blood, the guide accepted that I had indeed missed. We headed for his truck and I swatted freely.

this bear visited our front yard in June, 9 years ago

Photo by J. Harrington

Since that afternoon, Minnesota has produced mosquito swarms thick enough to annoy me, but not in sufficient numbers to impress me as much as the Canadian skeeters had. I’ll share another, more current, bear story tomorrow. Just remember, no matter how bad something is, it might well find a way to get worse. Find something that’s going ok (like not encountering a wounded bear) and be thankful for that.

Mosquitoes

By Katherine Hauth

Mosquitoes,

with needle-noses

sucking blood

from elbows, cheeks, and chin

why were you not

designed to thrive

on brine, on swine,

or likewise-spiny

porcupines?

                       SLAP!

SLAP!

                                          SLAP!

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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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Earth awakens

There is now open water in the Sunrise river at County Road 19, east of Stacy. The pools a couple of miles to the south are still completely ice covered, or they were this morning. Spring is arriving on a slow train this year.

The Better Half noticed and called to my attention that at least some trees are taking on the first faint blush of spring color, accompanied by a very slight  softening of their winter outlines. The pond north of our property has again attained open streaks of water but is still about three-quarters ice-covered. It looks about the same as it did last year at this time.

local pond today and March 22, 2022

Photo by J. Harrington

We’re enjoying enough signs of early spring that whatever I pass off as patience has disappeared. I want the snow and ice GONE NOW! That and five dollars will get me a decent cappuccino someplace.

Reports are that some local bears have left hibernation and are snacking at local bird feeders. I’ve started bringing ours in at night. With the amount of snow still covering the ground, there can’t be many other options for bruins to break their winter fasting.

An Earth Song 

Langston Hughes - 1901-1967

It's an earth song,—
And I've been waiting long for an earth song. 
It's a spring song,—
And I've been waiting long for a spring song. 
    Strong as the shoots of a new plant 
    Strong as the bursting of new buds
    Strong as the coming of the first child from its mother's womb. 
It's an earth song, 
A body song, 
A spring song, 
I have been waiting long for this spring song. 

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What’s hiding in your corn field?

Returning from picking  up our Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share this morning, after dropping off the Daughter Person’s half share, we were, as usual for such trips, slowly cruising a rural road. We’d already noticed that some of the bird flocks (starlings?), despite having grown really large, can still disappear into a field of maturing field corn. A mile or so west of the disappearing birds, we had a big surprise. A black bear, looked like a yearling, hopped across the road in front of us and disappeared into a different corn field. We’ve seen, on several occasions, whitetail deer crossing the road in that vicinity, but this is the first time, in several years of driving that stretch on a weekly basis, that we’ve seen a bruin.

field corn’s looking about like this

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the local cities is having their summer celebration this weekend. We had been anticipating fireworks nearby troubling one or both dogs tomorrow night. Now it looks like thunderstorms or plain, old, rain showers, may preempt the fireworks. We’ll have to pay attention to the weather, the western skyline, and the dogs to see if we need to feed one or both a dose of happy time treats. I’m not sure  I ever pictured life getting complicated along these lines. The good news is, we should be getting some much needed rain. That should make the new hydrangeas behind the patio happy.

Most years I find myself surprised noticing, after the fact, that summer has faded and autumn's come on. This year I can almost sense the seasons shifting on a daily basis. I think I like it. It proves I’m paying attention and also yields more opportunities to enjoy the “now” of life, something I’ve rarely been accused of. Now that I’m doing some of it, it’s clear that it’s not the same as living in the future or wishing my life away, as my mother used to warn me against.

Corn Maze

By David Barber

Here is where 

You can get nowhere 

Faster than ever

As you go under

Deeper and deeper

In the fertile smother

Of another acre

Like any other

You can’t peer over

And then another

And everywhere

You veer or hare

There you are

Farther and farther

Afield than before

But on you blunder

In the verdant meander

As if   the answer

To looking for cover

Were to bewilder

Your inner minotaur

And near and far were

Neither here nor there

And where you are

Is where you were

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The bird feeder bearly survived

 Last night what we can only assume was a bear climbed the stairs to the deck and drained the nectar feeder of sugar water and the squirrel-proof bird feeder of coarse sunflower chips. [It was my own fault for being absent-minded about taking the feeders down.] S/he also knocked the bird bath off of its railing mount. Neither of our dogs uttered a peep, acting on the premise that discretion is the better part of valor? Alternative feeders have been filled and hung. The bird bath has been replaced and repairs to the squirrel-proof feeder initiated.

Interestingly, the alternative feeder is not squirrel-proof but has a tray as its base. Within an hour of hanging it, the first scarlet tanager of the year arrived. The squirrel-proof feeder had its “cardinal ring” mounted around its base, but the cardinals rarely used it. We wonder if the tanager was also waiting for a feeder more to its liking before showing himself.

male scarlet tanager on deck railing

Photo by J. Harrington

Poison ivy has appeared along the roadside where we walk the dogs. Today it got a dose of RoundUp because we are all out of poison ivy killer. We’ll see if the RoundUp is effective. We hate to use glyphosate but know of no better way to eliminate poison ivy. The dogs haven’t the sense to stay away from it and it’s enough of a challenge keeping up with the ticks they bring into the house. Having poison ivy oils distributed on the carpets and furniture or adhering to coats adds potential injury to insults.

We used to get perturbed when a bear would hit our bird feeders. Then, one year, we discovered that a whitetail deer knocked a sunflower seed feeder off its hanger and kicked the daylights out of it. That put a whole different perspective on the damage bears accomplish. Bambi as a vandal was a new one on us.

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 heaver,
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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Bearly country living

The Better Half and I were semi-watching Sunday morning tv when the dogs went crazy with barking and dashing back and forth. There in the back yard were two black bears, wandering around looking for something to eat. I was only quick enough to get a picture of one of them, the one checking out the composting tumbler, and I inadvertently "auto-focused" on the branch rather than the bear.

black bear behind black compost tumbler

Photo by J. Harrington

Last night's tv news had a piece about all the bear sightings in the Twin Cities metro area, and the local neighborhood social media has been full of reports of bear sightings. We bring the bird feeders into the house and night, and will move the trash  can into the garage for several weeks. All of that's standard summer operating procedures when most of our neighbors are other than human persons, but it doesn't always solve the problems. A couple of years ago a bear shredded several panels on the screened patio when s/he climbed up to see if maybe we had left a feeder hanging someplace.

Bears at Raspberry Time

By Hayden Carruth

Fear. Three bears

are not fear, mother

and cubs come berrying

in our neighborhood

like any other family.

I want to see them, or any

distraction. Flashlight

poking across the brook

into briary darkness,

but they have gone,

noisily. I go to bed.

Fear. Unwritten books

already titled. Some

idiot will shoot the bears

soon, it always happens,

they’ll be strung up by the paws

in someone’s frontyard

maple to be admired and

measured, and I'll be paid

for work yet to be done—

with a broken imagination.

At last I dream. Our

plum tree, little, black,

twisted, gaunt in the

orchard: how for a moment

last spring it flowered

serenely, translucently

before yielding its usual

summer crop of withered

leaves. I waken, late,

go to the window, look

down to the orchard.

Is middle age what makes

even dreams factual?

The plum is serene and

bright in new moonlight,

dressed in silver leaves,

and nearby, in the waste

of rough grass strewn

in moonlight like diamond dust,

what is it?—a dark shape

moves, and then another.

Are they ... I can’t

be sure. The dark house

nuzzles my knee mutely,

pleading for meaty dollars.

Fear. Wouldn’t it be great

to write nothing at all

except poems about bears?

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Happy May Day and Beltane blessings!

We've no livestock ro turn out to summer pasture, so our Beltane bonfire was subdued, but we did one. The winter Solstice greens by our stoop finally have been replaced with spring and summer flowers. As we broke winter's fallen branches and added them to the fire, we thought about the recent Minnesota Depaertment of Natural Resources request, that folks chip and/or compost, rather than burn, leaves and brush . We bet whoever wrote that didn't live where there's lots of older oak trees doing their self-shading routine. We pictured ourself trying to feed our dead oak branches "brush" into a chipper's chute and had a good laugh.

Later, while taking a look at our compost tumbler, we noticed a large pile of this spring's bear scat near the tumbler. It was full of the seeds of something, but we couldn't identify what, unless it was last autumn's blackberries. Two years ago the neighborhood bear tipped the tumbler over. This spring almost all that's still in it is now composted, more dirt like than garbage. Country living can get complicated. A bear-proof compost bin would have to be about as sturdy as a bear-proof chicken house, we imagine. Have you noticed how messy Mother Nature often is?

squirrels have been eating oriole's grape jelly

Photo by J. Harrington

No bluebirds in the bluebird house, but no one else is in it either. Still no orioles, hummingbirds, etc. The Better Half gave us an early birthday and/or Father's Day present, a "squirrel-proof" bird feeder to replace the one we lost a couple of years ago when one of the local whitetails got annoyed that it couldn't readily feed on the sunflower seeds and bent the hanger and smashed the feeder. It's been interesting watching the reaction of the birds to the "new? style feeder. Chickadees were the bravest in checking it out first, followed by goldfinches and, eventually, a female cardinal.

will a "squirrel-proof" feeder succeed?

Photo by J. Harrington

Tomorrow we'll add to the branch pile (it doesn't fit our idea of "brush") when we pick up some more of the winter's windfall branches. We'll also drag harrow the fresh collection of pocket gopher mounds and try to decide where to till for the three sisters garden we want to grow this summer.

May Day

Sara Teasdale - 1884-1933

A delicate fabric of bird song
  Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
  Is everywhere.

Red small leaves of the maple
  Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
  The pear trees stand.

Oh I must pass nothing by
  Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
  The grass with my touch;

For how can I be sure
  I shall see again
The world on the first of May
  Shining after the rain?

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Can you bear country living?

There was a report last weekend that a bear trashed a couple of bird feeders in a subdivision in nearby  Lindstrom. Up around Duluth reports of a "poor berry season" have bears searching for food in neighborhoods. Today, mid-day, Franco, the Better Half's [BH] border collie crossbreed, exploded into frantic barking at the deck walkout door. The BH went to see what set off her excitable dog this time and saw a pair of black paws hanging onto the deck railing.

BH and both dogs chased the bear away with lots of barking and yelling. I, of course, ignored the dogs because they're half crazy half the time and most of the time one or another erupts with little or no cause that we humans can discern. Today was an exception. The bear decided it was outnumbered and outmatched and ambled off into the woods North of the house.

bear scat on deck

Photo by J. Harrington

I take the bird feeders in at night, every night, and have been doing so for several years. The trash can is kept in the garage during the Summer months. One year a bear left a pile of scat on the deck. Another year one trashed the bird feeder we used to hang in the front yard. Yet another year a bear shredded our screens as it climbed onto the deck to see if there was anything to eat. (There wasn't.)

bird feeder eaten by bear

Photo by J. Harrington

I am not going to stop feeding birds during the day time. For the foreseeable future, I'll be armed while doing outside chores. I'm not looking for trouble, but neither do I expect the neighborhood bears to help pay my property taxes.  The bear(s) and the deer are welcome to the windfall pears under the pear tree. Local bears don't get room and / or board at the house unless they can pass a background check and start to pay rent.

[UPDATE: (It's not just country living) From the August Friends of the Mississippi River Newsletter:

Bear aware in the cities

We’re not the only ones enjoying the metro river this summer. In June, a black bear roamed through St. Paul's Battle Creek area. Another was spotted heading toward Union Depot. And in early August, a jogger saw a black bear lumbering along Mississippi River Boulevard near Shadow Falls and the river gorge. Black bear range doesn’t typically extend this far south, but sightings are becoming more common. If you see one, treat it with respect and let the DNR know. 

Read more from the Pioneer Press  >>]

Bears at Raspberry Time

By Hayden Carruth

Fear. Three bears

are not fear, mother

and cubs come berrying

in our neighborhood

like any other family.

I want to see them, or any

distraction. Flashlight

poking across the brook

into briary darkness,

but they have gone,

noisily. I go to bed.

Fear. Unwritten books

already titled. Some

idiot will shoot the bears

soon, it always happens,

they’ll be strung up by the paws

in someone’s frontyard

maple to be admired and

measured, and I'll be paid

for work yet to be done—

with a broken imagination.

At last I dream. Our

plum tree, little, black,

twisted, gaunt in the

orchard: how for a moment

last spring it flowered

serenely, translucently

before yielding its usual

summer crop of withered

leaves. I waken, late,

go to the window, look

down to the orchard.

Is middle age what makes

even dreams factual?

The plum is serene and

bright in new moonlight,

dressed in silver leaves,

and nearby, in the waste

of rough grass strewn

in moonlight like diamond dust,

what is it?—a dark shape

moves, and then another.

Are they ... I can’t

be sure. The dark house

nuzzles my knee mutely,

pleading for meaty dollars.

Fear. Wouldn’t it be great

to write nothing at all

except poems about bears?

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Helping to ensure there will be bluebirds for our tomorrows!

It was mid-May of last year when a neighborhood bear attacked one of our bluebird houses. That house has now been reinstalled on a sturdier 4" X 4" post. We'll add a predator baffle soon. Or, perhaps further research may indicate a preferred solution. It's possible that waiting until a hot mid-day during one of the hottest days of the year so far may indicate that my judgement is further diminishing with age. Or, it may just be a signal that I'm as stubborn as I've ever been. With any luck, the reinstalled house may attract a bluebird pair set on raising a second brood this Summer. If not, it certainly will be ready come next Spring, barring lightning strikes.

bluebird perched on bird feeder hanger

Photo by J. Harrington

I haven't taken a peek to see if anyone is nesting in the box we have in front  of the house. That might be a fun thing to do tomorrow. We have had some other cavity-nesting bird use the front house, but I'm not sure what nondescript, brownish bird it was. I'm pretty sure it wasn't any kind of sparrow. Meanwhile, today I still have to finish putting away some tools, add the left over dirt to the compost tumbler, and mow where the tumbler used to sit before the bear knocked it over a couple of days ago. With luck, I'll get these chores finished without being harassed by any more insects like the green bottle fly, or was it a sweat bee, that landed on my hand and behind my ear while walking SiSi earlier today.

Then, I think it may be time to do some pleasurable work in the air-conditioned house, like organizing fly rods and reels and putting a new fly line on a rod we haven't fished nearly enough since we got it. It's once again breezy enough that accurately casting a fly to a trout would be aggravating, so we prepare for better days.

The Call of the Wild 

Alexander Posey - 1873-1908

I’m tired of the gloom  
In a four-walled room;  
Heart-weary, I sigh  
For the open sky,  
And the solitude  
Of the greening wood;  
Where the bluebirds call,  
And the sunbeams fall,  
And the daisies lure 
The soul to be pure.  

I’m tired of the life 
In the ways of strife;  
Heart-weary, I long  
For the river’s song,  
And the murmur of rills  
In the breezy hills;  
Where the pipe of Pan— 
The hairy half-man— 
The bright silence breaks  
By the sleeping lakes.   

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Here comes Summer! #phenology

With less than a week to go until Summer solstice, it's time to take a look at what once was thought to be "normal" for that season. Back in January, the National Weather Service Twin Cities Office shared the following chart (ignore the "You Are Here" message from January). Starting Saturday, we will be entering a Summer season of 93 days, 15 hours and some odd minutes. During that period, our normal daily high temperature should be 70℉ or above. In fact, the actual daily high is likely to be much more variable than the average daily high. Tuesday and Wednesday are forecast to be 90℉ or more. Either or both of those days are up for consideration of standing  in a cool trout stream for several hours if the wind ever stops blowing.

Summer sunflowers in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Greta Kaul at MinnPost has created some delightful seasonal guides for Minnesota. Her signs of Summer include:

• wild prairie rose blooms
• showy lady's slipper blooms
• Canadian service berry fruit
• harebell blooms
• brown-eyed Susan blooms
• orange day lily blooms
• sunflower blooms
• bee balm blooms
• prairie blazing star blooms
• rattlesnake master blooms
• Virginia strawberry fruit
• New England aster blooms

The Summer months are prime time for seeing most of our dragonflies of the North Woods. June is also the month when our local black bears begin to check yards and trash barrels for snacks. Our compost tumbler was tipped over last night or the night before. We didn't see the culprit, but I doubt anyone but a bear is likely to and capable of tipping over the mostly full compost tumbler. We learned the hard way to bring in bird feeders during Spring, Summer and Fall but, a couple of years ago lost our patio screening to a bruin that wanted to be sure there was nothing to eat on the deck. Country living has its annoyances, but, so far, the rewards greatly outweigh them.

Summer in a Small Town

By Tony Hoagland

Yes, the young mothers are beautiful,

with all the self-acceptance of exhaustion,

still dazed from their great outpouring,

pushing their strollers along the public river walk.

And the day is also beautiful—the replica 19th-century paddle-wheeler

perpetually moored at the city wharf

                with its glassed-in bar and grill

for the lunch-and-cocktail-seekers

who come for the Mark Twain Happy Hour

which lasts as long as the Mississippi.

This is the kind of town where the rush hour traffic halts

                to let three wild turkeys cross the road,

and when the high school music teacher retires

after thirty years

the movie marquee says, “Thanks Mr. Biddleman!”

and the whole town comes to hear

                the tuba solos of old students.

Summer, when the living is easy

and we store up pleasure in our bodies

like fat, like Eskimos,

for the coming season of privation.

All August the Ferris wheel will turn

                           in the little amusement park,

and screaming teenage girls will jump into the river

with their clothes on,

right next to the No Swimming sign.

Trying to cool the heat inside the small towns

                                               of their bodies,

for which they have no words;

obedient to the voice inside which tells them,

“Now. Steal Pleasure.”

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A different kind of bear market #phenology

Last night, for the first time this year, the bird feeders were brought into the  house. They were rehung this morning. According to my instincts, we've reached the time of year when a neighborhood bear begins to wander in search of food. Past years have provided unfortunate examples of the hazard to bird feeders (inanimate, not human) of being one night too late anticipating a visit. An abundance of caution, as they say, minimizes the need to replace a trashed feeder that had been full of sunflower seeds. Then, this morning the Better Half mentioned that she thought she could smell bear when she walked her dog. Real, or power of suggestion?

early April, bear visit

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year a tipped over compost tumbler was the first sign the "midnight visitors" were about. Bird feeders were brought in the first night we noticed the tipped tumbler. Nevertheless, several days later, someone climbed up one of the deck posts, shredding the screen cloth in the process, to see if we had missed or forgotten anything. Our "ferocious guard dogs" never let out a peep all night. Sigh!

telltale sign

Photo by J. Harrington

Having bears in the neighborhood complicates some things we'd like to do on the property. I'm pretty sure I could rig up a coyote and fox proof chicken coop. The pictures and schematics I've seen for a bear-proof coop make Fort Knox look like child's play and I have more confidence in electric wires or netting keeping chickens in than bears out. Regardless, the bears we've had for neighbors have been less trouble and caused less aggravation than some human neighbors I've had over the years.

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 heaver,
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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Damping down Summer's spirits

Someone, or something, tipped over the recycling barrel last night. The top was still closed tight so there was no mess to pick up. The trash can, once it gets used, gets moved into the garage. That's inconvenient but less so than cleaning up the mess after a visit from the neighborhood bear. At least we continue to assume it's a bear and not raccoons. We doubt that a raccoon or two would have bent the hanger pole for the front of house bird feeder. That was the visit signature a week or so ago. Maybe it is time to consider adding a trail cam so we can see what, or who, is going on, if it's not too misty or foggy.

Summer: misty morning

Photo by J. Harrington

Early this morning the fields were full of mist, or, maybe it was ground fog. Windows stayed covered with condensation for most of the morning. We're not sure what left the "track" through the condensation shown below, but suspect it may have been a tree or gray frog. We're hopeful that today marks the peak of Summer's humidity and temperatures. Next week looks promising for getting some outdoor chores done, temperatures should be cooler and the dew point lower. All of which presumes we all make it safely through this afternoon's heat advisory and severe thunderstorm warnings.

whose track in the condensation covering the window?

Photo by J. Harrington

Those Summer Evenings

My father would, with a little squeak
and a shudder in the water pipes,
turn on the garden hose, and sprinkle
honeysuckle bushes clipped
to window height, so that later,
as we slept atop our rumpled sheets
with windows open to the scritch
of crickets, whatever breeze
might flirt its way between
our house and the neighbors’
would brush across the honeysuckle,
sweet and wet, and keep us cool.

– Ted Kooser, from Splitting an Order

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#PollinatorWeek is This Week!

According to the Pollinator Partnership web site,

Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food. They also sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants reproduce.

monarch butterflies on Northern Plains  Blazing-star

Photo by J. Harrington

We've a number of wild flowers (and some tame ones) on our property. We sometimes see a butterfly or a bee, but not very often. Years ago we hung a bat house, and when that finally came down in a storm, we relplaced it in a different location. Bats used the first house, but, as far as we can tell, none have moved into the second house during the past several years. We've not had any better luck with the "solitary bee house" we built from a kit a couple of years ago. No one moved in the first year and so we moved it to where it gets better morning sunlight. Still, it appears that we have no takers.

Our Better Half recently gave us a handful of New England aster seeds as a gift. The instructions call for planting the seeds in "well-drained moist soil." It is no doubt due to our lack of soils education, but we're having problems wrapping our head around "well-drained moist." Those seem to us to be mutually exclusive adjectives that we will need to reconcile to enjoy germination success and please ourselves by providing late Summer sustenance to migrating butterflies.

bee hives behind electric fence

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the continuing challenges we face in making our property more pollinator friendly is that many of the flowers we plant to attract pollinators are also considered tasty by the local whitetails. We think that's where our annual plantings of this perennial disappear to. On the other hand, we've avoided the potentially escalating issues of having a few bee hives, which would then need to be protected from the local bear(s) by installing electric fencing, such as the arrangement we saw several years ago near the Audubon Society's North Woods Center near Sandstone.

Butterflies

By Samuel Green

Some days her main job seems to be

to welcome back the Red Admiral

as it lights on a leaf of the yellow

forsythia. It is her duty to stop & lean

over to take in how it folds & opens

its wings. Then, too, there is the common

Tiger Swallowtail, which seems to her

entirely uncommon in how it moves

about the boundaries of this clearing

we made so many years ago. If she leaves

the compost bucket unwashed to rescue

a single tattered wing from under the winter

jasmine or the blue flowers of the periwinkle

& then spends a whole afternoon at our round

oak table surrounded by field guides

& tea until she is sure—yes—that it belongs to

a Lorquin's Admiral, or that singular

mark is one of the great cat's eyes

of a Milbert's Tortoiseshell, then she is

simply practicing her true vocation

learning the story behind the blue beads

of the Mourning Cloak, the silver commas

of the Satyr Anglewing, the complex shades

of the Spring Azure, moving through this life

letting her sweet, light attention land

on one luminous thing after another.

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