O tempora, o mores!*

We got five or six inches of snow late Friday and early Saturday. The birds have been pouring in to the feeders: goldfinches, juncoes, woodpeckers, cardinals, bluejays, nuthatches and chickadees for the most part. My aging shoulders ache from wrestling with the snow blower. Spring can’t arrive soon enough as far as I’m concerned. Unfortunately, we’re again looking at a week ahead full of days with high temperatures in the single digits, at least according to my smartphone weather app. The Weather Underground outlook is marginally more optimistic.

a forced bulb pot garden in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

On a more pleasant theme, we got an early start baking Irish soda bread this week, instead of waiting until next month for St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve almost finished reading a book the Daughter Person lent me (which the Better Half assures me she read to our kids when they were young): Wise Child by Monica Furlong. I have no memory of it but find the current reading to be delightful. I’ll be curious to see how I react to the other two books in the series. Mentioned previously on these pages has been the forced bulb garden the Better Half gave me for Christmas. Watching it bloom has helped my sanity immeasurably during this interminable winter season. A version from 2023 is shown above.

Despite the goings on in D.C., this is still Black History Month. As a matter of fact, here’s a link to this year’s presidential proclamation announcing it. (I took a screen shot as backup.) Today’s poem feels fitting for all of US during the times and goings on the administration is shoveling on US. I wonder how much “love of country” will be in the air come Friday.

*O tempora, o mores! [click for translation  and explanation]

Still I Rise

By Maya Angelou 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

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A winter of our discontent

After getting a couple of inches of snow during the past few days, the neighborhood is looking more seasonal. The little snow cover we had around Christmas melted during December's January thaw, leaving the countryside looking cold and bare. The 10-day forecast includes a couple of days above freezing around mid-month but many other days sliding back into single digits. Neither the dogs nor the dog walker much like that kind of cold, especially when combined with enough “breeze” to create “feels like” temperatures well below zero.

January's full moon

Photo by J. Harrington

The Minnesota Weather Guide notes that tomorrow’s full moon is called the Great Spirit Moon (Ojibwe) and Hard Times Moon (Lakota). Shortly after the moon starts waning, we’ll be halfway through the first month of the year. We’ve already noticed that the days are longer, a signal that sometime soon they should actually start to get warmer. Meanwhile, as of January 20, the world of politics is headed for a major heat up. I’ve already been wearing out the serenity prayer. I'm afraid it's going to be a lonnngg four years.

In light of the growing obsequiousness of tech bros to a dictator wannabe, perhaps it's time to consider recreating a version of the Luddite party. One of its primary responsibilities would be to be sure there are viable primary challengers for all politicians, of any party, that support corporate donors more than constituents. Cutting personal safety nets like sociall security and medicare to fund tax cuts for billionaires should never get a pass. A democracy and a corporatocracy are very far from versions of the same thing.

At least the occasional arrival of cardinals at the feeder brings some cheer these days, although we've yet to hear the male's spring song.

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet 

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark. 

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Summer scenes seens

I’m happy to announce that the fields behind the house are home to a handful of black-eyed Susans, plus an abundance of spotted horsemint and what I’m guessing is round-headed bush clover. As the soil slowly dries out, I’m again taking a crack at doing some yard work, without overdoing it. So I was driving the tractor this morning to dump a garden cart full of leaf rakings and grass clippings that had been unattended to because it has been either too hot, too wet, or I wasn’t in the mood. There’s most likely other plants that have grown and developed since I last was in the fields, but I was just noticing the obvious changes.

spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata)

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday afternoon, three wild turkey hens again escorted a mob of poults through the yard, this time they came right up to the house to check the droppings from the bird feeder that hangs on the deck railing. The feeder is constantly being visited by chick-a-dees, rose-breasted grosbeaks, goldfinches, hairy, downy, and red-bellied woodpeckers, white- and red-breasted nuthatches, occasional red-winged blackbirds, bluejays, and sometimes “others.” We even get ruby-throated hummingbirds at the sugar water feeders once or twice a day.

After today we’re looking at a ten-day forecast full of temperatures in the upper 80’s+. That’s going to limit my yard work ambitions but we’ll see if we can just pick away at it before it gets too warm each day. Then we’ll sit in the air-conditioned house and read more of Sarah Kendzior’s They Knew. I’m checking to see if my cynicism is well-founded or misplaced. We are in election season you know.

July prayer to survive the summer

Robin Walter

Today was the first day I saw
the father of the chicks
come to the antlers—First,

he landed on the doorframe—looked at me
hard—before making the short flight
to nest—

The mother came busily on his tail-feathers—
a small grey worm in her beak—
ushered him out of her way—

                                    *

I wonder about the day
these birds will first
take flight—

which instincts they’ll suspend
& which they’ll trust—which of the tiny birds
will last the Fall—

                                   *

I am ahead of myself again—wanted
to tell you about instincts—how sometimes
they betray the body—no, sometimes
I betray the body—
 

                                  *

The father is back again—nothing in his beak.
Their chirps are so much louder today—almost like tiny bells,
or water spilling—

 

                                  *

Here, there is a father.
There are not always
fathers—

but always, birds,
& sometimes, yes,

a window.

                                  *

My mind flips to a line
I love: You can fall a long way in sunlight.
You can fall a long way in rain.

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Rapt or not?

Yesterday we had an afternoon visit for at least half a hour from a male American kestrel. He spent much of that time perched on the post that had held a bluebird house until a bear smashed it last year or the one before. We brought the bird feeders in early and will leave them down for a couple of days. So far today no kestrels have been in evidence but there are a number of hungry and disgruntled songbirds and woodpeckers on the deck railing.

male American kestrel in our back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we were greeted by bright yellow hoary puccoon and blue spiderwort blossoms on the hillside fields behind the house. An orange butterfly, monarch I think, was nectaring on the puccoon blooms.The flowers, and the butterfly, were observed as I transported garden carts full of leaves accumulated along the foundation on the north side of the house. The leaves were too many and too thick to try just mulching them with a mower. While hauling the leaves off to the wood’s edge, I noticed a distressing number of poison ivy sprouts that will get a dose of Roundup after tomorrow’s rain, or after Sunday’s. Sometimes the joys of country living are enough for me to almost consider moving to a highrise condo. [Not really]

I don’t think we’ve any serious plans for the holiday weekend. We’ll try to get some yard work done between rain showers / thunderstorms, drink coffee and read while it’s raining, and maybe squeeze in some practice with a fly rod when and if the sun shines, meanwhile, watching to be sure a kestrel hasn’t snuck back in for a free lunch at our feeders.

Dispatches from Devereux Slough

Mark Jarman
1952 – 

Black Phoebe

Highwayman of the air, coal-headed, darting
Plunderer of gnat hordes, lasso with beak –

"Surely, that fellow creature on the wing,"
The phoebe thinks, "should fly like this."

                     And loops
His flight path in a wiry noose, takes wing
Like a cast line and hits the living fly,

Ripping it from the fluid of its life.


Devereux Lagoon

Shiners leap ahead of diving cormorants
And killdeer cry, alarming one another.
In an egret's beak, the catch flashes like shook foil.

How well these field glasses scope out the place—
A kestrel sky, serrations of the Madres,
And sand flats darkened by a rare rain shower.

Such an odd peace, as creatures stalk each other


Dispatch from Devereux Slough
               Fall, 2008
The gulls have no idea.
The distant bark of sea lions gives nothing away.
The white-tailed kite flutters and hunts.
The pelicans perform their sloppy angling.
The ironbark eucalyptus dwells in ignorance and beauty.
And the night herons brood in their heronry like yoga masters, each balanced on a twig.
The world has changed. The news will take some time to get here.


From the Garden Toad

A cri de coeur of mud, a heartfelt groan
Of deep damp, mother rainfall and her sire;

A plea from underground, from drooping shade,
From memories of sunlight and clear water;

Reproach of an old grandparent half-forgotten –

All in that voice, announcing a desire
To have sex under the giant philodendron.


Marine Layer

No one is out tonight, but just in case,
A tubaphone's deep echo, like a seine net,
Sweeps under darkness and pulls darkness in
The way a trellis shadow cages light.

To hear the foghorn is to hear your childhood,
If you were lucky to have lived near ocean,
Moving again into your neighborhood.


Overcast on Ellwood Mesa

Hawks like it. Wings cast no shadow, hovering,

And white crowned sparrows are easier to pick out
Among the foxtails, scurrying like mice.

Under the gray cloud cover, blue birds course
Like running water through the fennel stalks,

And the shrike, color of the sky, keeps watch
From the barbed wire of the startling green golf course.


September Song

Those phosphorescent shoulders of the night surf
Passing beneath the pier,
                     as we looked down,
Were an agitation in the falling water
Of creatures set to glowing,
                     all together,
By sudden apprehension, which we perceived
As incandescent wonder,
                     our eyes feasting,
Our hearts filled by the light of crashing down.


Shorebreak, 3 a.m.

At night the swell and crash, the swell and crash,
As waves rush forward, peak, and then collapse
Gasping and giving up a ghost of spray,
Sounds from a distance like a low-voiced hush.

Awake, alone, at the right hour to hear it,
That hush, for all the sleeplessness behind it,
Can lead one, walking wounded, back to sleep.


Sundowner

Waking at nightfall like the other monsters,
The vampire and the moonstruck wolfman, arson
Is hardly required to set your body burning,

Thirsting for dryness, dry brush, stucco houses.

Flame wind, ember wind, wind of moonlit smoke,
Rolling a fog of ash downhill to sea,

The sun's down is the harsh fur of your burning.


Surgeons

The egret is more patient than any watcher
And lances its incision when its stillness
Has made one look away.
                     Its anesthetic
Is stillness, and it numbs the water's skin.

The pelican takes a hatchet to the water,
The egret plies a scalpel.
                        They extract fish,
But one by smash and gulp, and one by stillness.


The Crystal Ship
       Sands Beach, Goleta

The famous rock star thought up his famous rock song
While gazing out at the oil derrick offshore.

Lit up at night it might look, to stoned eyes,
Like a faceted galleon perfect for a song.

Tonight, as sunset gives off its green flash,
The derrick has that look.
                     And so does the oil barge
Docked to it, dead black, filling up with cargo.


To a Dead Sea Lion at Sands Beach

You had returned from dry land back to water,
Preferring it, and welcomed the new limbs,
Webbed to conceal your toe and finger bones.

You rolled along the surf, all memory
Of other motion swept back in your wake,
And ended here, among fly-buzzing kelp.

Sleek swimmer drowned,
            and with your unwebbed bones.


Heaven

When we are reunited after death,
The owls will call among the eucalyptus,
The white tailed kite will arc across the mesa,
And sunset cast orange light from the Pacific
Against the golden bush and eucalyptus
Where flowers and fruit and seeds appear all seasons
And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us.

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A rare day

It’s been a productive day. The Better Half and I acquired resident (MN) fishing licenses to go with yesterday’s acquisition of non-resident (WI) licenses. Now we need to get out and get our money’s worth by going fishing. We (I) also confirmed sightings of trilliums in bloom and Canada goose goslings along the roadside near the Carlos Avery Sunrise River pools. For reasons that aren’t clear, someone had decided to brush out the understory where the trilliums grow and wiped out many wildflowers in the process. Sigh!

a trillium covered hillside before “cleanup"

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning I noticed a ruby-throated hummingbird checking the outside of a window where we had a feeder last year. I’ll mount and fill one over the weekend. We seem to have distinct front hummers and back hummers who are dedicated to chasing each other away from feeders. There’s also a pair of Baltimore orioles enjoying the grape jelly feeder when it’s not occupied by male rose-breasted grosbeaks.

At the risk of jinxing us, this may be the one year in 10 or 25 that Minnesota experiences actual Spring-like weather. It’s been a mild roller coaster warm-up with some rain. The first plantings of bergamot seeds failed. A weekend’s task is to replant and hope the late May weather is more conducive, due to more warmth, to successful germination and growth.

May to April

Philip Freneau
1752 – 1832

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,
    Each field a barren waste appears;
If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,
    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,
    So I must part with all that’s mine:
My balmy breeze, my blooming trees
    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

O’er April dead, my shades I spread:
    To her I owe my dress so gay—
Of daughters three, it falls on me
    To close our triumphs on one day:

Thus, to repose, all Nature goes;
    Month after month must find its doom:
Time on the wing, May ends the Spring,
    And Summer dances on her tomb!

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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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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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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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Saturday mornin’ comin’ down*

Have you visited your local independent bookstore today? We have, to help celebrate Independent Bookstore Day. The Better Half picked up a book. I’m still hacking away at my tsunduko stack(s). That visit was part of a loop that also included a stop at our local feed store where we purchased more coarse sunflower seeds for the birds and another jug of honey for my morning coffee. Finally, we swung by the farm and picked up this year’s first community supported agriculture [CSA] share. It includes:

• GREEN INCISED LETTUCE,
• RED KITTEN SPINACH,
• SUNFLOWER MICROGREENS,
• WATERCRESS, and
• BRIGHT LIGHTS CHARD

Today is special for at least a couple of other reasons. SiSi, the twelve year old yellow lab cross who rescued us, came to live with us in her forever home eleven years ago this week, when she looked like this. We’ve enjoyed each other’s company since then and are looking forward to more years together. SiSi and the Better Half’s rescue beagle, Harry, are an interesting, although sometimes noisy, combination.

SiSi our yellow lab cross at 1 year old

Photo by J. Harrington

Today is also the first time this year we’ve seen marsh marigolds in bloom. They’re growing and blooming in a ditch along a township road near the CSA pick up barn.

*with apologies to Kris Kristofferson

How It Begins

A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He’s probably in a basket with a bunch
of other puppies.
Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing
but a bundle of longing.
He doesn’t even understand it.

Then someone picks him up and says,
“I want this one.”

-Mary Oliver, in “Dog Songs”

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

There’s good news and ....

Because it is both depressing and irritating these days to try to comment intelligently on either politics or public policy, I’m pleased to report that we’ve recently learned that there’s a small flock of pine siskins visiting the feeder this winter. I confess to not paying much attention and thinking they were goldfinches until a couple of days ago. Cornell’s All About Birds notes the two species can be seen as similar.

some years it’s really hard to tell who’s there

Photo by J. Harrington

The other piece of recent good news is that a person or persons unknown have been using our Little Library [L.L]. I find it really encouraging when folks actually take and leave books instead of just one or the other. I’m only aware of one other L.L. on the routes we regularly travel here in the exurbs which probably says something. Then there’s also the issue that those of us whose reading taste strays far from the best seller list find it challenging to get a hard copy of what we’d like to read through our local public libraries.

Speaking of books and reading, at the moment there are two books I’m looking forward to reading once they’re published this year. In March, Rose McLarney’s Colorfast will be released on the 5th. Later this year, Chris La Tray’s Becoming Little Shell is scheduled for publication on August 20. In the interim, I’m rereading some of Thomas R. Smith’s poetry and Linda Legarde Grover’s latest novel, a song over miskwaa rapids.

All told, things could be much worse and I’m slowly learning to be grateful for what I have instead of being frustrated and aggravated by what’s missing. At least I’m not a pregnant woman in Texas or Tennessee, nor a family in Gaza. If only we had a Congress that understood they’re supposed to earn their pay by solving problems, not making them worse.

I wanted to be surprised.

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

To such a request, the world is obliging.

In just the past week, a rotund porcupine,
who seemed equally startled by me.

The man who swallowed a tiny microphone
to record the sounds of his body,
not considering beforehand how he might remove it.

A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.

How easily the large spiders were caught with a clear plastic cup
surprised even them.

I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended.
Or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war.
Or that no one kept being there when the doorknob had clearly.

What should not have been so surprising:
my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others.

What did not surprise enough:
my daily expectation that anything would continue,
and then that so much did continue, when so much did not.

Small rivulets still flowing downhill when it wasn’t raining.
A sister’s birthday.

Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence.
That even today please means please,
good morning is still understood as good morning,

and that when I wake up,
the window’s distant mountain remains a mountain,
the borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing.

Its alleys and markets, offices of dentists,
drug store, liquor store, Chevron.
Its library that charges—a happy surprise—no fine for overdue books:
Borges, Baldwin, Szymborska, Morrison, Cavafy.

—2018

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January’s half gone!

Yesterday we left some of you in suspense about our bread in the oven. The best way to describe the outcome, after the Better Half [BH] and I taste tested the results, is to say we’ve found a different rye bread recipe that looks promising. That’s probably what I’ll try next.

Baking with rye flour is very different than with wheat. I hadn’t realized how much rye dough lacks oven spring. I think I over misted the dough and the crust turned out excessively crusty. So the end result was overly dense and moist with too firm a crust and a taste I found more okay than did the BH. My most significant “learning experience" in more than a decade of baking artisan bread reminds me of the ancient saying “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” That leaves me with six downs and seven ups to go.

Although we’ve passed the below zero high temperatures, single digit highs are barely better. When gassing the Jeep today, I sat in the vehicle instead of cleaning the windshield. We’ll tackle the cleaning chores next week when the temperatures are forecast to climb above freezing and we may get some rain mixed with snow. Does it seem to you it’s almost like someone has broken the climate?

winter evening: red bird

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday evening, after sunset, I got a glimpse of two cardinals perching in the trees behind the house. Since we’ve seen nary a sign of such birds for weeks, I was heartened by the sighting. It may be one of the  few good things to come out of our current cold spell.

Red Bird

By Mary Oliver

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

Those dun-colored darlings,

So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know he has many children,

Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-

Perhaps because the winter is so long

And the sky so black-blue,

Or perhaps because the heart narrows

As often as it opens-

I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else can do.

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Cast your bread upon the weathers?

In a couple of hours, the dough that’s proofing in the refrigerator will be transferred to a cloche and put in the oven to bake. Fresh artisan sourdough bread with leftover homemade bean soup for dinner has lots of appeal on yet another cloudy, snow-showery day. Yesterday I spent some time poking through a sourdough book I got about a year ago, looking for recipes to try this winter. The book is Sourdough by Science, from Karyn Lynn Newman, PhD. I’ve been practicing on the basics: simple boule, crusty boule, and rustic boule for some months and feel ready to try my wings. The recipes I’ve chosen are for San Francisco sourdough, a rye raisin bread, something called slow and easy and something else titled the bomb, plus a demi-miche. Those options ought to keep me busy through the winter and into early spring since I’m guessing each will require more than one attempt. We’ll report back here from time to time about progress or lack thereof.

rustic, artisan sourdough boule

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we saw the year’s first dark-eyed junco, a sign that winter has indeed arrived. Still no purple or house finches, nor pileated woodpeckers, and cardinals have been absent for several weeks. Maybe the deep cold that’s on the way come the weekend will bring more visitors to the feeders.

I’m not ready to surrender to “cocooning,” but I am more than ready to reclaim my own focus and severely limit intrusions on my attention, even though (especially because?) it’s an election year. I’ve got my phone set so that calls from those not in my contacts go straight to voicemail. Now I’m getting unsolicited texts soliciting support. Those promptly become “delete and report junk.” I wish I could figure out how to bill folks for trying to claim my attention. I have agency and know how to look around for something I want. Not enough folks these days seem to remember Fritz Perls' wonderful Gestalt prayer:

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful.
If not, it can't be helped.

— Fritz Perls, "Gestalt Therapy Verbatim", 1969

I'm happy to close for today with a report that we are making a little progress in bringing a slight semblance of order to ancient household files and long neglected fly fishing gear. As we sort and file and decide what to keep and what not, we constantly keep in mind the observation from China that "The longest journey is started with a single step.”

Flour Is Firm

By Sandra Beasley

The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, line 4234

Baking two parts flour to one part water 

could stop a bullet. So good soldiers 

carried their hardtack over their hearts. 

Break it down with a rifle butt, flood it, 

fry it in pig fat to make hellfire stew.

Gnaw it raw and praise the juice.

Does wheat prepare for this as it grows,

seeking the light in a half-thawed field?

Do stalks know their strength is merely 

in their number? What is ground down

we name flour in promise that it will be 

made useful. Otherwise, it’s just dust. 

Sheet iron crackers. 

Teeth-dullers.

Would you call it starving, if a man dies

with hardtack still tucked in his pocket?

Can you call it food, if the bullet comes only

at the moment he gives in and swallows?

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Finding the season’s warmth

If this year is like most years, we’ll realize at some point we’re short a present for some certain someone or other, but for now, after cross-checking with the Better Half [BH], it appears we’re down to wrapping, putting under the tree and helping the elves on Christmas Eve with stocking stuffing. Yay! Oops! Almost forgot about Christmas cookies, plus I’lll be getting back into a bread baking rhythm. A levain is rising and dried cranberries are soaking. Tomorrow, with luck, sourdough will get assembled for baking late in the day or, more likely, Wednesday.

The seasonal CDs, while not as exuberant as Brenda Lee’s rockin’ ‘round the Christmas tree, provide mostly mellow sounds that fit the season well. We’ll listen to such songs as we wrap presents and the BH tends to cookies. I may even break out an original 33 1/3 rpm Elvis’ Christmas Album one of these days if I need to boost my energy level. (Told ya’ I’m that old!)

woodpecker at suet feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Mother Nature is delivering an early present, the sun trying to break through through a persistent cloud cover. Warmer temperatures are promised for later this week. December’s full moon occurs the day after Christmas, following a "better late than never" pattern set by the three wise men. Meanwhile, the marshes are frozen but we saw several flocks of airborne Canada geese earlier this week. I’ve no idea where they’re roosting. Snow covered fields are empty of sandhill cranes. We’ve seen few turkeys and no deer for a week or more. Woodpeckers and chickadees have been enjoying the suet feeder. The official start of winter is almost here and critters are acting accordingly, except, of course, for us humans, who try to largely ignore the effects of seasons.

The Sun in Bemidji, Minnesota

Sean Hill

The sun isn’t even a pearl today—
its light diffused, strained gray
by winter haze—this the grayest
day so far, so when I enter the Wells
Fargo parking lot the last thing I expect
is to see the sun in the car next to mine.
I watch a woman make out with the sun,
and I’m jealous of the sun. Beautiful
beyond her desire—wanting the sun
so—she almost glows as she tugs
sweetness from his whiskers with
her teeth, and his drool runs down
her chin. I think the sun is a man,
but it’s hard to tell in this light. No,
it’s a mango, and I’m jealous of her.

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Christmas is for kids

Yesterday afternoon, the three-year-old Granddaughter did her very first visit to Santa. Reports are, and photos confirm, it went well. This coming Wednesday, she’ll get to enjoy her first meal at a restaurant, to help Mom celebrate a birthday. We weren’t there for the Santa visit but plan to join for the restaurant trip.

Christmas tree up but unadorned

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, back at our home front, the tree that had been selected for this year turned out to be too tall. Fortunately, I had had an inspiration to use one of my fly rods [8’ 6”] to estimate how a tree prospect might fit the living room.The selection would have had to be cut at head height and that didn’t seem right. Last year we ended up having to make several trimming cuts and I didn’t want to go through that again this year. Anyhow, another Charlie Brown Christmas tree has come to visit for the holidays. Lights will go on later today and decorations over the next few days.

Yesterday, or the day before, we reported on a flock of birds, alleged by the Better Half [BH] to be cedar waxwings, that descended on the feeder. Today we can, and do, confirm that they are what the BH claimed. A half dozen or so landed around the bird bath while I was looking out the window. In another update, I’m better than halfway through the promised reread of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. I’ll finish after this is posted and be more in the spirit of the season.

Mole: What do you want to be when you grow up?....     Kind, said the boy

To be candid, I have to fantasize about the days when I believed in Santa. It was too long ago, and the world too different, to actually remember. I do better remembering when our kids were young believers, and now there’s a Granddaughter whose dreams of Santa need to be sheltered. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

 

When Santa Claus Comes

A good time is coming, I wish it were here,
The very best time in the whole of the year;
I’m counting each day on my fingers and thumbs —
the weeks that must pass before Santa Claus comes.
Then when the first snowflakes begin to come down,
And the wind whistles sharp and the branches are brown,
I’ll not mind the cold, though my fingers it numbs,
For it brings the time nearer when Santa Claus comes.

– unknown

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A season’s progress

 The suet feeder is now hung for the first time this season. We want it to feed the birds, not bears, so we wait until we’re pretty sure hibernation is underway. A large flock of somethings, the Better Half [BH] claims cedar waxwings, I didn’t get a good glimpse of anything that looked like a waxwing, descended on the seed feeder earlier today. The extended cold spell seems to be moving folks southward, although I’ve still not seen any dark-eyed juncos.

woodpecker at suet feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Thanks to the BH, Christmas music is now next to the stereo and Amy Grant has brightened the morning. This afternoon we picked up several Advent Calendars at the international award-winning St. Croix Chocolates {link near upper end of right-hand column}. [We knew them back when they were just as tasty but not world famous!] Then we stopped at the Gammelgården Museum on the way home and did some more Christmas shopping. My seasonal mood isn’t yet overflowing, but it has improved markedly over the past few days.

Somewhere still to be dragged from a closet are our Christmas books, including two different versions of Christmas in Minnesota and the annual, mandatory, read, A Dog Named Christmas. We’ll look for those after we harvest our tree and get it in the stand. I think that may be the morrow’s expedition. Before heading off this afternoon, the BH accompanied me on a walk through a small patch of our woods to see if there was a tree more to our liking than the one we picked out a week or so ago. There wasn’t, but it feels better to have checked.

The week upcoming brings the Daughter Person’s birthday and delivering some seasonal goodies, plus tree decoration. Let’s hope that’s enough to help me keep out of trouble so Santa doesn’t have to leave just coal in my stocking, adding to my carbon footprint and a disappointing Christmas morning.

Christmas Trees

By Robert Frost

(A Christmas Circular Letter)

The city had withdrawn into itself

And left at last the country to the country;

When between whirls of snow not come to lie

And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove

A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,

Yet did in country fashion in that there

He sat and waited till he drew us out

A-buttoning coats to ask him who he was.

He proved to be the city come again

To look for something it had left behind

And could not do without and keep its Christmas.

He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees;

My woods—the young fir balsams like a place

Where houses all are churches and have spires.

I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas Trees.

I doubt if I was tempted for a moment

To sell them off their feet to go in cars

And leave the slope behind the house all bare,

Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon.

I’d hate to have them know it if I was.

Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees except

As others hold theirs or refuse for them,

Beyond the time of profitable growth,

The trial by market everything must come to.

I dallied so much with the thought of selling.

Then whether from mistaken courtesy

And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether

From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said,

“There aren’t enough to be worth while.”

“I could soon tell how many they would cut,

You let me look them over.”

                                                     “You could look.

But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.”

Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close

That lop each other of boughs, but not a few

Quite solitary and having equal boughs

All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to,

Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one,

With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.”

I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.

We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over,

And came down on the north. He said, “A thousand.”

“A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”

He felt some need of softening that to me:

“A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.”

Then I was certain I had never meant

To let him have them. Never show surprise!

But thirty dollars seemed so small beside

The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents

(For that was all they figured out apiece),

Three cents so small beside the dollar friends

I should be writing to within the hour

Would pay in cities for good trees like those,

Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools

Could hang enough on to pick off enough.

A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had!

Worth three cents more to give away than sell,

As may be shown by a simple calculation.

Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.

I can’t help wishing I could send you one,

In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

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