Winter Solstice – Alban Arthan

Tonight is the longest night of the year. Soon the days will begin to lengthen as the sun returns to our northern skies, followed, many weeks later, by the return of warmth. But first comes Christmas and the New Year. And we have an extra celebration on Christmas because it is also the birthday of our very own son. Our Christmas ends at noon after which the festivities become our son's birthday celebration.

as the sun turns northward

Photo by J. Harrington

For too much of the world, including US, the past year has been too dark. Although resisters and rebels have had their moments, the Dark Side of The Force has prevailed too often. After Santa's visit, may the New Year bring a return of Yoda, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker, and may the Democrats find Jedi Knights to lead their rebel alliance to brighter days. What more could we ask for this holiday season?

This week I am expecting early presents from Mother Nature, temperatures above freezing scattered over several days between Solstice and New Year. There's even the threat of sunshine in the forecast. May the forecast portend better days  ahead.

This will be our last posting before Christmas. We hope each of you has a happy, healthy, holiday, full of hope, warmth and love that continues through 2026.

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper 

 

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

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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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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Shining some light on the season

Sunrise in our area is clearly returning toward the north. Around Christmas it rose far enough south that it didn’t get in my eyes when I was at my desk looking out the window facing east. This morning I had to draw the drape on the southern side of that window to keep the sun out of my eyes so I could see the computer screen in front of me. By May, sunrise will have moved far enough north that it once again won’t be bothersome but for the next couple of months it will be rising in the middle half of the window.

February sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

Many of the oak trees around the house are still holding onto their dead leaves. Some will loosen their grip from time to time but many will hold on until this year’s leaf buds begin to swell along about late April. I’m not sure if any foresters have checked, but I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that Minnesota oaks drop leaves almost every one of the eleven months of the year that it snows in this state.

Based on what I glimpsed late yesterday afternoon after posting the day’s blog, I’m not the only one anticipating spring’s arrival. I saw what I think were four sandhill cranes fly over the house and treeline toward the Sunrise river pools in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area. Alternatively, it might have been four Canada geese but the wing shapes looked more like cranes. By the time I noticed them they were too far away to be sure of the size/distance relationship. In either case, it was a sign of spring even if somewhat premature. I’ll be keeping my eyes and ears open to affirm any  additional arrivals in the weeks ahead.

Day After Daylight Savings

By Margaret Hasse

Blue numbers on my bedside clock

tell I forgot to change the hour.

This sets routines on haywire.

 

Like a domestic goat staked

to its circle of earth,

I don’t do well untethered.

 

I have no hunger for early dinner,

become confused by the sound

of children who seem out

 

too late for a school night.

They’ve found an extra helping

of daylight to romp on new grass

 

and can’t contain themselves,

strip off jackets, scatter

like a rag of ponies.

 

Whatever time says,

their joy insists

on springing forward.

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Coming into bloom #phenology

We now have about 25 minutes less daylight than we did back at Summer Solstice. Our daylight is now decreasing at 2 minutes or so a day. Personally, I've noticed it more in the mornings than evenings because, for a very brief period, there was light  in the sky when SiSi and I took our early morning walks back in June.

Spotted Horsemint (Monarda punctata)

Photo by J. Harrington

Earlier today I was fussing about how, in years past, our fields behind the house were full of spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata) and there's none to be seen this year. Silly me! When I checked the dates on my pictures of the spotted horsemint, they were all taken in very late July to late August. Minnesota Wildflowers web site says Monarda blooms from July - September, and a more detailed chart of what's blooming by week of the month shows it blooming each week of July. This prompted me to take a quick look through binoculars at our fields and I think I saw a few blooms beginning to show. We'll keep an eye open and see what, if anything, develops further. As Minnesota Wildflowers notes "Factors such as temperature and precipitation play a large role in how a plant fares year after year." This year we're ahead on temperature and behind on precipitation.

There's still no sign of swamp milkweed flowering around our wet spot, although there seem to be more common milkweeds flowering in ditches this year than I remember seeing in past years. That may, or may not, explain the increased number of butterflies flittering over and around township gravel roads these days. At a risk of jinxing us, I'll note that the deerfly population seems diminished these days, but then so does the dragonfly population.

Today

Mary Oliver

Today I’m flying low and I’m

not saying a word

I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,

the bees in the garden rumbling a little,

the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.

And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.

Quiet as a feather.

I hardly move though really I’m traveling

a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors

into the temple.

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The wonder of Christmas and a new year

Some begin a new year with the Winter Solstice; others wait until January 1. Jewish new year is sometime in September we think; and Chinese around mid-February next year. Lately we've been thinking a lot about how to make 2021 better than the past four years, even allowing for all the things we can't control.

One way we know of, but haven't been doing enough of, is to focus more on the things we can control. Here's an example: during 2020 we let the weather control our decisions about going fishing. Too windy? Don't bother. Too wet, wait for a dryer, less windy day. We missed a lot of fishing trips with that approach. For next year we're going to plan on going when  we can, regardless of weather. If it's too windy, we'll use the time to scout new locations. Too wet? We've already got better rain gear, now we'll get to wear it.

each dawn brings the wonder of a new day

Photo by J. Harrington

Much of this comes under the heading of giving ourself a Christmas present/promise of better self-care in 2021. Recently we began reading for the fifth or seventh or eleventy-nineth time one of our favorite writers, Gene Hill, who portrays much about why this change is important in this excerpt:

But the truth, to my way of seeing it, is that those who love the bits and pieces of being there—the sweetness of a singing lark, the way one whitetail can suddenly fill up a clearing, the fearsomeness of a sudden storm, and the almost unbelievable sense of relief when we’ve gotten out of a very sticky situation—have to have a sense of the magic of it all, a belief in the intangible and unknown, and no small degree of unquestionable wonder.

The other night we gave our copy of Rachel Carson's The Sense of Wonder to the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law to share with their two and a half month old daughter, our granddaughter. We've probably never given our parents enough credit, or thanks, for helping us develop and keep our own sense of unquestionable wonder, nor have we accepted enough responsibility for how much we've allowed it to become run down and worn out over the years. Christmas is a time for children and we've let ourself become too adult too much of the time, so one of our presents to ourself this Christmas is to start to fix that by getting out more to collect more of those important bits and pieces of being there for no better reason than it's a wonder-full place to be, this world of ours.

Loving the World

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

by  Mary Oliver

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.