In service to the Serviceberry

Last Spring, about the time our pear tree was in bloom, I finally stumbled onto a local source of serviceberry bushes, of a species noted for producing good fruit, Saskatoon serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia). I drove to northern Dakota county and bought two at Gertens. Some time thereafter, I managed to plant them in accord with the directions. Several weeks later, despite watering them regularly between rainy spells, both bushes were leafless and dead. Rabbits? Deer? Pocket gophers? I wasn't sure but I was unhappy since the bushes were, to my mind, expensive plus the physical cost of planting them. I was slightly consoled by remembering the story by one of the Aldo Leopold kids about planting, and replanting, hundreds or thousands of conifers on their sand county farm.

pear tree in bloom, May 2025

Photo by J. Harrington

I spent bits and pieces of the Summer mumbling and grumbling about Amelanchier failures until the Better Half got tired of listening to me and called Gertens to confirm that my bushes were covered by a warranty. I could get replacements if I showed up with a receipt and photos of the dead bushes. Several weeks after getting the confirmation, I did so and the replacement process actually went better than I expected. It was smooth and pleasant.

Today's plantings added the prompt installation of wire cage protectors and the addition of bark mulch around the outside of each cage. The serviceberry bushes are supposed to show their own white flowers about the time the pear tree does, but won't grow nearly as tall. Now that the replacement planting is done, I'm now typing up this posting and will then keep my fingers and toes crossed that these bushes make it through the Autumn and Winter and Spring etc. Stay tuned and, if you haven't read Robin Wall Kimmerer's latest book, The Serviceberry, here's the original essay as a sample. It's the one that started me on this adventure.

Tobacco Origin Story, Because Tobacco Was a Gift Intended to Walk Alongside Us to the Stars

By Joy Harjo

From a story of how the tobacco plant came to our people, told to me by my cousin George Coser Jr.

It was way back, before there was a way back

When time threaded earth and sky.

Children were conceived, were born, grew, and walked tall

In what we now call a day.

There must have been two suns, a bright moon, somehow

We had more light than now, sheen

Of falling in love playing about Earth’s body

In a wild flicker which lit

Us up. We who were this planet and yearned for touch.

Every planted thought grew plant

Ladders to the stars, way back, before there was

No way back, Miss Mary Mack.

We used to sing along the buttons of her

Dress. Our babies are always

Our babies. Even back then when time waved through

The corn. We knew our plants like

Relatives. Their stories were our stories, there

Were songs for everything — I

Should say “are” songs for every transformation

They link between way back and

Now, the forever now, a time when a young

Mvskoke man and woman

Walked through the shimmer of the early evening.

They had become as one song.

They lay down when it was dark. I can hear their

Intimate low-voice talking.

How they tease one another with such gut love.

Earth makes a bed, with pillow

Mounds. And it is there as the night insects sing

They conceived their first child. They

Will look back as they walk East toward the sunrise.

The raw stalks of beginning

Will drink the light, root deeply dark into earth.

In the tracks of their loving

The plant-child emerges, first the seed head, then

Leafy, long male body and the white female

Flowers of tobacco, or

Hece, as the people called it when it called

To them. Come here. We were brought

To you from those who love you. We will help you.

And that’s how it began, way

Back, when we knew how to hear the songs of plants

And could sing back, like now

On paper, with marks like bird feet, but where are

Our ears? They have grown to fit

Around earbuds, to hear music made for cold

Cash, like our beloved smoke-

Making threaded with addiction and dead words.

Sing this song back to me, girl.

In the moonlight, tobacco plant had silver

Moon buttons all up her back.

We’re getting dressed to go plant new songs with words.

Our sun is dimming faster.

Mvto hece, mvto hvse, mvto e — 

Kanvchaga, mvto ah

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On the transformation of plants

It’s time for the weekly report on our community supported agriculture [CSA] share. Here’s what was in our box this morning:

• Broccoli Raab
• Summer Squash
• Tomatoes
• Green beans
• Onions
• Cucumbers
• Carrots with tops
• Parsley

Meanwhile, a messy field of weeds that was growing along the northern side of our driveway a couple of days ago has become a beautiful field of wild flowers that’s attracting several butterflies who enhance the attractiveness of the blossoms. One of the advantages of being a procrastinator is that it sometimes keeps me from making horrible mistakes. The “weed field” now looks like this:

our transformed "weed field"

Photo by J. Harrington

The picture, and the flowers, remind me of the paintings in our copy of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide. As I recall, some of the a field guide entries include recipes for wildflowers good enough to eat. I wondered if anyone had focused a field guide on edible wildflowers when I remembered we used to have a copy of Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus. A quick online search revealed the existence of several more recent volumes of a similar nature but they also cover wild plants rather than primarily wildflowers. This may be fun to explore some rainy day (or next winter).

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

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Oh! Deer!

It started yesterday afternoon with a doe munching the lower branches of the elderberry bush in the back yard’s “wet spot.” She then proceeded to knosh her way across that wet spot, then to the barren pear tree, and finished with a few tastes of oak at the edge of the woods. Later, a forkhorn(?) buck browsed across the top of the hill behind the house while two does nibbled around the wet spot. Finally, early evening visitors were a pair of does checking the back yard next to the house. I don’t know and couldn’t tell if the does were one pair or five individuals. Why the visitors chose our place with, presumably, lots of other forage available, isn’t at all clear but they were fun to watch.

the first of yesterday’s visitors

Photo by J. Harrington

This summer there appears to have been an underground explosion in the vole / mole(?) population. There are way more tunnels than usual, due to the mild winter? I would be very happy to see a substantial increase in predators but may settle for getting some “new and improved” mole traps. The one I have has caught only one or two moles in the last twenty years or so. Of course, that may be because I’m never sure if a tunnel is active when I set the trap.

The live trap that was repositioned to catch the chipmunk that moved under the front stoop has been unproductive so far. Maybe we have a chipmunk that doesn’t care for chunky peanut butter. Would an apple slice do the trick? We’ll soon see if the critter isn’t caught in a day or two.

Varmints like moles and pocket gophers make a mess of the grounds but they don’t bite us and suck our blood the way mosquitos and deer flies do. The Better Half hasn’t fussed about deer eating her flower plants since she started hanging mouse/deer repellant I bought to protect the wiring harness of the tractor from mice. I’ve been reading a fair amount about treating all of nature as relations, which I suppose works if we accept the old adage about being able to choose our friends but not our relatives.

Catching the Moles

By Judith Kitchen

First we tamp down the ridges 

that criss-cross the yard 

then wait for the ground 

to move again. 

I hold the shoe box, 

you, the trowel. 

When I give you the signal 

you dig in behind 

and flip forward. 

Out he pops into daylight, 

blind velvet. 

We nudge him into the box, 

carry him down the hill. 

Four times we’ve done it. 

The children worry. 

Have we let them all go 

at the very same spot? 

Will they find each other? 

We can’t be sure ourselves, 

only just beginning to learn 

the fragile rules of uprooting.

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Do you harvest honorably?

In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I want to share a resource I recently discovered. NYU, a few years back, chose Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass as their NYU Reads Book. One section of their online resources focuses on the Honorable Harvest. I hope you follow the link, explore, learn, and enjoy. It’s now about six weeks until Thanksgiving. We have much for which we should be thankful, plus much work to do to share, with honor, the blessings we have harvested.

Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis

Photo by J. Harrington

Once the World Was Perfect

By Joy Harjo

Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.

Then we took it for granted.

Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.

Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.

And once Doubt ruptured the web,

All manner of demon thoughts

Jumped through—

We destroyed the world we had been given

For inspiration, for life—

Each stone of jealousy, each stone

Of fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.

No one was without a stone in his or her hand.

There we were,

Right back where we had started.

We were bumping into each other

In the dark.

And now we had no place to live, since we didn't know

How to live with each other.

Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on another

And shared a blanket.

A spark of kindness made a light.

The light made an opening in the darkness.

Everyone worked together to make a ladder.

A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,

And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,

And their children, all the way through time—

To now, into this morning light to you.

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Two bee, two bee, doo

It is the season of drowning bees, when many wasps and hornets and bees gather at the sugar water feeders. Some get greedy and force their way through the feeding port guards into the reservoir of sugar water. They can’t fly nor swim so eventually, they drown from too much of a good thing. Most people only notice the critters that sneak into their cans of sugar water through the pop tops. Those often get shaken out.

I spent some time yesterday watching several kinds of wasps or hornets or bees trying to feed at the red hummingbird feeder on a front window. Hummers, with their long bills and tongues, get some sort of nourishment. I have no idea if the buzzers could reach any of the sugar water or not. The feeding ports in the red feeder are just large enough to accommodate a hummingbird’s bill and too narrow to allow even small bees entrance. What also fascinates me is the feeders are rarely visited by insects at other times of the year. This year, in fact, the ants never discovered the feeder hanging from the deck railing.

bee on Blue Giant Hyssop

Photo by J. Harrington

Bees are also availing themselves of what’s left of the season’s flowers. I much prefer seeing them in a more natural setting like the one above, rather than on or at a hummingbird feeder. (The bee is about dead center in the picture.) Both honeybees and wild bee populations are declining at unacceptable rates, even in a state like Minnesota, home to more than 500 species of bees.

Last year we left many of the fallen leaves in place to provide overwintering habitat for at least some pollinators. Then came spring with “No mow May.” The yard has taken on a much more natural look. That’s been compounded by the past summer’s drought. We have our fingers crossed that some reseeding the Better Half did the other day will help create a bee friendly lawn. She had some really encouraging reports on the thyme that’s replacing “bluegrass” and rye in the yard. I think that got planted / seeded last year.

[If you haven’t by now recognized today’s title, go listen to Frank Sinatra’s Strangers in the Night.]

Bees, so many bees.

By Anna Jackson

After twenty years of marriage, we walked out

of the bush and on to a rough dirt road

we followed till we saw a pond

we might be able to get to.

The ground was boggy and buzzing.

The pond was thick with weed

and slime. It was not

the sort of pond anyone would

swim in, but we did — picking and sliding

into the water over the bog and bees,

bees we suddenly noticed were

everywhere, were settling on our hair

as we swam, ducks turning surprised eyes

our way. After twenty years of marriage

what is surprising isn’t really so much

the person you are with but to find

yourselves so out of place in this scene, cold

but not able to get out without

stepping over bees, so many bees.

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Home away from home

Today’s weather, so far, on top of last night’s rain showers, is a treat. Blue skies, breeze, warm not hot. sunshine... maybe thunderstorms this evening, we’ll see. We’re definitely doing a lot better than Maui and Phoenix.

The other day I once again started picking my way through a book titled Exploring a Sense of Place. A few years ago I began working through sections of the book but it never seemed to jell. After intermittently thinking about it, I believe I now know why. The places I feel most connected to are places where I was doing things I loved doing, especially hunting and fishing things. I’ve never felt comfortable enough with, or interested enough in, botany to be really good at foraging, never mind collecting mushrooms. Then again, I tried and didn’t persist in fly-tying, maybe because I didn’t get sufficiently interested in aquatic entomology?

We’ve lived in the same place for about a quarter century. I like the place but, especially in years like this one, wish it were more interesting. Not much grew in the back yard due to a droughty summer after a very wet spring and preceding winter. We’ve seen few whitetail fawns or wild turkey poults this year. It was interesting, and very disappointing, to discover late spring or early summer that a bear had destroyed one of the bluebird nesting boxes. As with much of life, most of the time very little happens day to day and then there’s a minor or major crisis. I believe the high point so far this season has been the sandhill crane visit, and they haven’t been back.

recent visitors to the back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

I think what I’m fussing about today is I don’t seem to be able to find a satisfying balance between learning and doing and thinking and the rest of living. Uncooperative weather patterns has something to do with that. Aging in a less than graceful manner is a coconspirator. (Lots of effort goes into teaching children to to grow and become productive, but precious little to teaching us how to age gracefully, as if we were born knowing that.)

Back to my lack of a sense of place. While I acknowledge the truths of Heraclitus’ [via Plutarch] metaphor “It is not possible to step into the same river twice,” perhaps I’m past due to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s Always Coming Home. For some time I’ve been haunted by the line from Neil Diamond’s I am I said: But nowadays, I'm lost between two shores. Duluth is not Boston and Lake Superior isn’t the Atlantic ocean. Maybe I need to discover familiar home waters where I am to complement those where I was. 

Lines Written at Castle Island, Lake Superior

Jane Johnston Schoolcraft
1800 – 1842

^{translated from the Anishinaabemowin}

Here in my native inland sea 
From pain and sickness would I flee
And from its shores and island bright
Gather a store of sweet delight.
Lone island of the saltless sea! 
How wide, how sweet, how fresh and free
How all transporting—is the view 
Of rocks and skies and waters blue
Uniting, as a song’s sweet strains 
To tell, here nature only reigns. 
Ah, nature! here forever sway 
Far from the haunts of men away
For here, there are no sordid fears, 
No crimes, no misery, no tears
No pride of wealth; the heart to fill, 
No laws to treat my people ill. 

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And the seasons, they go round and round...

Some of the trees in our neighborhood have almost completely changed color. In anticipation of Autumn Equinox? Due to drought stress? We may never know for sure. but that doesn’t keep us from appreciating their beauty.

maple turned maroon

Photo by J. Harrington

I doubt very much I’d ever be happy living somewhere that didn’t have four seasons. I’ve lived all my life in either New England or Minnesota. Each has the requisite seasons and, I may be biased, but I believe New England does a better job of it. Minnesota rarely, if ever, has a Spring worth celebrating. It’s usually short, full of mud and unseasonable snow storms and ends abruptly with a series of days in the upper 80’s or low 90’s. Climate change now seems to be messing with autumn. Of course, since I’ve not lived in Massachusetts for some decades, I can’t be sure seasons there haven’t deteriorated too.

All of the preceding has me wondering if I would enjoy and appreciate living with something I just learned about last night. While reading a book the Better Half lent me some weeks ago, I discovered that the Japanese take the same four seasons and subdivide them again and again, ending up with 72 seasons, each about 5 days long.

On one hand, the more I learn and experience in phenology, the more I enjoy seasonal change. On the other hand, I’m not sure how I’d respond to having a new season once a week. I’ve been getting accustomed to the Celtic/Druid eightfold wheel of the year, but it’s a big, big, almost ten fold, jump from 8 to 72. What I am now really curious about is if local phenology can provide some sort of equivalent to the Japanese microseasons. I think I’ll see if I can cobble something together. There’s an Aldo Leopold Foundation phenology calendar and the Journey North web site for resources. There’s also the Minnesota Weatherguide calendar and a handful of local books about seasonal events sitting on my shelves (the books, not the events).

[If you’re curious, the book that started all this is Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer.]

The Human Seasons

By John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

     There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

     Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

     Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

     Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

     He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness—to let fair things

     Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

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There’s a fungus among us!

The other day I mentioned the abundance of mushrooms that have recently erupted in our woods. The Better Half and I haven’t yet collaborated on identification, but the latest issue of Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine came partially to the rescue with an article about ‘shrooms. The tentative identification below is based on the photos in that article. Only one seemed to align with the MCV pictures. Photos without an identification are still under study. If you want to offer suggestions, feel free to submit a comment.

chicken of the woods(?)

Photo by J. Harrington

It would be nice if the Minnesota Mycological Society offered suggestions to a field guide or even provided one online. From a different source, there are a couple of recommended field guides here. The Minnesota Seasons web page on fungi has lots of missing photos so that may not be the best place for identification assistance.

unidentified mushroom

Photo by J. Harrington

unidentified mushroom

Photo by J. Harrington

unidentified mushroom

Photo by J. Harrington

unidentified mushroom

Photo by J. Harrington

Mushrooms

by Mary Oliver

Mushrooms

Rain, and then
the cool pursed
lips of the wind
draw them
out of the ground -
red and yellow skulls
pummeling upward
through leaves,
through grasses,
through sand; astonishing
in their suddenness,
their quietude,
their wetness, they appear
on fall mornings, some
balancing in the earth
on one hoof
packed with poison,
others billowing
chunkily, and delicious -
those who know
walk out to gather, choosing
the benign from flocks
of glitterers, sorcerers,
russulas,
panther caps,
shark-white death angels
in their town veils
looking innocent as sugar
but full of paralysis:
to eat
is to stagger down
fast as mushrooms themselves
when they are done being perfect
and overnight
slide back under the shining
fields of rain. 

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Natural foragers

We have one swamp milkweed in bloom. I just noticed it today while doing some chores. It’s just a few feet away from several clusters of elderberries which may, or may not, be beneficially consumed by humans, depending on which source we give the most weight to. Birds and small mammals are reported to feed on the berries, so they probably won’t go to waste if we don’t cook ‘em.

Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)

Photo by J. Harrington

Meanwhile, I’ve convinced myself that there are, indeed, a number of milkweed plants without flowers that eventually turn into seed pods. But, despite repeated efforts at internet searches, I can find no mention of the significance or causation of why some plants flower and produce seed pods while others don’t. Feel free to share a resource or two in the comments if you can provide a clue.

The bur oak at the end of the drive has been dropping green acorns for more than a week now. And yet, every other day or so, there are no acorns on the ground. Squirrels? Deer? Chipmunks? The fact that today I noticed several wild turkey feathers around the yard and along the drive provides some clues as to who the primary culprits may be.

We are now in the midst of our second downpour this afternoon. Fortunately, there’s been little thunder so far which means SiSi’s anxiety hasn’t yet been triggered. We’ll keep our fingers crossed that the rest of the day continues in a like vein. We’ll also keep them crossed that we continue to be able to schedule our walks between, not during, the downpours. When Dylan wrote A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall he may well have been imagining precipitation like today’s. As I look at the morning headlines these days, I truly wish he hadn’t been so prescient.

Milkweed

by Philip Levine

Remember how unimportant
they seemed, growing loosely
in the open fields we crossed
on the way to school. We
would carve wooden swords
and slash at the luscious trunks
until the white milk started
and then flowed. Then we'd
go on to the long day
after day of the History of History
or the tables of numbers and order
as the clock slowly paid
out the moments. The windows
went dark first with rain
and then snow, and then the days,
then the years ran together and not
one mattered more than
another, and not one mattered.

Two days ago I walked
the empty woods, bent over,
crunching through oak leaves,
asking myself questions
without answers. From somewhere
a froth of seeds drifted by touched
with gold in the last light
of a lost day, going with
the wind as they always did.

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In memory of the late, great(?) spring of 2022 #phenology

This is often a hungry time of year for many wild creatures in the North Country. It’s also the time of year when the root cellar can be mostly empty and, with the season running two to four weeks behind “normal,” it could be even longer than usual before a new season’s harvest offers respite from last year’s preserves. April can be a productive time for foraging, but this year there are few, if any, signs of new growth. Much as I like the idea of a local food system, season’s like this one make me wonder how well a local system can avoid seasonal shortages. But then, with Governors like Abbott of Texas, we can experience shortages as part of a disrupted global system controlled by oligarchs and wannabes.

April 30, 2021

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we visited the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter. On the way home, I slowly drove along a ditch that, by the end of April last year, was bursting with new growth [see above]. I saw no glimpse of green anywhere. It’s going to be interesting to see how spring develops this year since we again have a week of cloudy, cool weather forecast.

North of us the season is at least as far behind according to reports from the KAXE phenology group.

It's a late spring, probably not going to be our latest ever but will fall into the top 10. He reminds us to look for those little signs of spring that bring us all a little bit of hope! In the meantime, check out the student phenology reports from this week- they're a treat!

On the brighter side, our Spring Greens CSA first share is due April 29. I believe they rely on greenhouses for the early season shares. Will we get fresh greens by month’s end? Will the ditches on the way to the farm have marsh marigolds in bloom? Stay tuned!

There Will Come Soft Rains

Sara Teasdale - 1884-1933

(War Time)

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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Labor Day weekend ponderings

Within the next couple of weeks, I expect maple and oak leaves to begin showing color. Staghorn sumac began a couple of weeks ago. The three weeks or so between the start of a meteorological season and the beginning of its astronomical equivalent is, or at least has been, a defined transition period between seasons.  wonder if our reset on climate will be sufficient to trigger a revised definition of when actual seasons start. Since the astronomical seasons are based on the relationship between Earth and the sun, that’ll probably stay the same. Could warmer, longer summers become dominant enough to move the beginning of meteorological autumn to October 1? The nice folks at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Environmental Information have some helpful background information if you want to consider a plunge into the black hole of potential, unreal season change. Follow this link.

staghorn sumac in autumn colors

Photo by J. Harrington

It’s been too many years since I’ve hunted ruffed grouse or waterfowl, and so the knowledge I’d gathered about weather, game movement, and related phenology has diminished with lack of use. This fishing season I’ve yet to wet a line, and if that happens again my awareness of aquatic insect hatches by season will, no doubt, slowly erode. Remember the old saying about “use it or lose it?” Knowledge of and sensitivity to natural events is based, in part, on our dependence on and active participation in natural, out-of-doors occurrences. I’ve yet to hook a trout or shoot a goose while sitting at home looking out a window. People who live “closer to nature”, those who are both  hunters and gatherers, those who forage, are much more likely to know when the local blueberries are ripe than those who gather blueberries by the prepicked pint in a grocery store.

Yesterday, mid-afternoon, I got a glimpse of great numbers of vehicles headed north on I-35 in Forest Lake. I presume many of those folks were headed “up north to the cabin” for summer’s last weekend. Then there’ll be a weekend or to to close up that cabin for the winter. That made me wonder why it is that an exceptional population such as we have in this country can’t find a way to arrange life so that much more pleasure is experienced closer to home. Wouldn’t that help reduce carbon footprints and miles travelled? Might it not also help reduce an urban-rural split? Think about it while you enjoy a healthy, happy, safe Labor Day weekend.

Labor Day

By Rodney Koeneke

So I say to my friend at the day job

“We are bored sometimes, and scented like realtors

but if everyone’s equally disconsolate

under labor’s gooey caul

then nuance can be stitched more vividly

to secrets lodged inside of everyone

until it becomes your own country

with highways that carry you silently past the jetty

which, from their heavy drinking, the case managers come out to

failing to be stable and badly attempting to sing”

We’re pushing our barques past the mansions

as I say this, near the dwellings of persons

whose lives have no mooring

outside the slow fact of our passing—

huddled arrogantly under their air-conditioning

they want us to be users

moved by advertisers

enticing the constituency

to join them and sit there and weep

But we’re too busy pulling

toward centers where workers assemble.

While time for them is a melody

played at long intervals across condominiums

we who are the power

know our systems so much better

now come to this hour outside it

now give it new form on guitar

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Bloomings and hatchlings #phenology

Yesterday, early, I drove past a hen turkey and her clutch of poults. They were working their way through the roadside weeds and grasses and lots of common milkweed in bloom. So far this year that's the first and only sign of turkey nesting success we've seen. Later in the summer we hope for visits by several hens and their offspring pecking through the field behind the house, feeding on ticks and grasshoppers. Some of us think it would be great if turkeys hatched earlier and taught their poults to feed heavily on ticks.

a mullein beginning to bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Mullein is starting to come into flower. A quick search on the internet indicates that mullein has limited use by wildlife and substantial medicinal uses by humans. We tend to ignore the scattered plants growing in our fields and those of the neighbors.

scarlet tanager male at grape jelly feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

We've been delighted several times this week to see a male scarlet tanager at the feeders. There have also been occasional visits by purple finches, plus the usual cast of characters including American goldfinches, rose-breasted grosbeaks, chickadees, and nuthatches. During the past few days we've noticed a few more hummingbirds at the feeders. Not sure what that's all about unless young of the year are now showing up.

The other day, the Better Half reported seeing a whitetail doe and a pair of fawns in the field across the road. None  have yet visited our back fields but it's getting to be time for that.

A pair of sandhill cranes flew over the house this morning. The last decade or so has seen a notable increase in the local crane population. It's one of the few indications of things improving for those of us who are nature lovers.

The Origin of Birds

Nicole Callihan

For hours, the flowers were enough.
Before the flowers, Adam had been enough.
Before Adam, just being a rib was enough.
Just being inside Adam’s body, near his heart, enough.
Enough to be so near his heart, enough
to feel that sweet steady rhythm, enough
to be a part of something bigger was enough.
And before the rib, being clay was enough.
And before clay, just being earth was enough.
And before earth, being nothing was enough.
But then enough was no longer enough.
The flowers bowed their heads, as if to say, enough,
and so Eve, surrounded by peonies, and alone enough,
wished very hard for something, and the wish was enough
to make the pinecone grow wings; the wish was enough
to point to the sky, say bird, and wait for something to sing.

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Some like it hot!

I think the vetch  growing in our fields is hairy vetch (Vicia villosa). It's coming into bloom, as are more and more of the large beardtongue. All in all, though, I doubt we'll see a lot of wildflowers among the grasses this year. It's not like some past years when the sandy soil benefitted from lots of spring rains preceded by winter snowmelt. The current, extended, unseasonably hot, dry, windy period isn't helping either.

hairy vetch

Photo by J. Harrington

According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, "The average number of days in a year to reach at least 90 degrees is 12.9." We've exceeded 90℉ on June 4, 5, may reach it today, and are forecast to exceed 90℉ Monday through Friday next week. That would yield 7 or 8 days of at least 90℉ before mid June. It's no wonder the "spring" yard work is taking longer to get done this year. I think we've missed a planting window for the three sisters garden we wanted to try, but after I knocked down lots of pocket gopher mounds and cut the grass, the Better Half scattered some wildflower seeds we've been accumulating onto the bare earth where the gopher mounds used to be. We'll see if anything grows this year or next.

dame's rocket

Photo by J. Harrington

The dame's rocket flowers have been visited by bumblebees, hummingbirds and butterflies during the past few days. This gets us into the question of distinctions among non-native plants. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is responsible for the Minnesota Noxious Weed List which includes: 

State Prohibited Noxious Weeds listed as either

• Eradicate
• Control
• Restricted, or
• Specially Regulated

Then there are separate county and federal lists. Dame's Rocket isn't listed on the Minnesota Noxious Weeds lists. Buckthorn is and yet the state seems to do little to control infestations in state parks or wildlife management areas. Plus, the implications and adaptations to climate breakdown have the potential to disrupt most of the efforts to stabilize plant communities through restoration efforts. It's once again time to dig out and refresh our memory on Beyond the War on Invasive Species, A Permaculture Approach to Ecosystem Restoration.

Native Trees

By W. S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew

the names of the trees

where I was born

what is that

I asked and my

father and mother did not

hear they did not look where I pointed

surfaces of furniture held

the attention of their fingers

and across the room they could watch

walls they had forgotten

where there were no questions

no voices and no shade

Were there trees

where they were children

where I had not been

I asked

were there trees in those places

where my father and my mother were born

and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they

but both my father and my mother

said they never knew

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It's "whatever works" time!

It's bread baking day, to go with the cassoulet we're having for dinner. I don't remember ever having cassoulet before. There's an increasing clash going on between trying new foods and what our taste buds are used to. Often we find the new tastes good, just different. That necessitates adjustment to our normal hierarchy of good, better, best or the binary distinction of good versus not good. The phrase "good, but not to my taste," is getting used these days so is the concept of "it depends."

Back in the last millineum, when we were first learning to fly fish, we thought we had learned about fly lines and rods and flies and fish types. Weight forward for bluegill poppers and largemouth bass bugs. Five or six weight line and matching rod of six feet (fiberglass) for panfish; eight feet and six or seven weigh for bass; four or five weight double taper for trout. Over the years we accumulated different rod lengths and tried sinking and sink-tip lines and picked up on the idea of using one line weight more than the rod was rated for if we were making short casts, which was the case on many small, local trout streams.

Because we're much better at fantasy than at organization, over the years we ended up with a handful of fly lines and spare spools that weren't clearly labeled. That makes it challenging to match rod and line, even though all of our rods, but one, are clearly labeled. That one is a bamboo rod we made from an Orvis kit. It's 7' 6" long and takes what we seem to remember is a four or five weight line, but we're not sure.

a range of fly lines

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday we were researching if there's a proper way to match a known line weight to an unknown rod rating. It appears the world of fly lines has become considerably more nuanced (complicated and confusing) since we started out. The Orvis Streamside blog summarizes the situation thusly:

In conclusion, there are few hard and fast rules. Fly casters have a wide range of opinions about these issues. Rods vary greatly, lines are available in a huge variety of designs, and fishing applications are endless. The only truly hard and fast rules are the dynamics that govern the end result. To form a tight loop, one must move the rod tip in a straight path and avoid abrupt application of power. Find the rod and line that enable you to accomplish that, and you’ll be happy.

A similar assessment is provided by a different fly-fishing blog, but the most significant find made during our brief search of the internets was provided by a magazine we used to subscribe to, Fly Fisherman: How To Fly Cast:

The old way (and the wrong way) to teach fly casting is to have a beginner move his arm like the arm of a metronome back and forth from the 10 o'clock position to the 2 o'clock position. This was quaint in the movie and book A River Runs Through It, but in real-life situations, your arm will need to move along different paths to deal with different situations.

We became self-taught in the days of the old, wrong way. This also fits together nicely with the advice that practicing casting is the best know way to improve, even more so than buying a new rod or reel or line. Maybe it would be a good idea to start subscribing to Fly Fisherman and/or join the Federation of Fly Fishers / Fly Fishers International.

 

The Song of Wandering Aengus

By William Butler Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

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Is it maple syruping season yet?

If not this week, the syruping season will be upon us soon. Those who inhabited this land before us continue to have rights to harvest maple syrup in many locations. There's an interesting article at Indian Country Today on some of the history of maple syrup and Native Americans teaching the early colonists how to produce it.

sugarbush and sap buckets

Photo by J. Harrington

Today's temperatures have climbed above freezing. We took advantage this morning and went for a ride. We wore a light coat over a vest and regular shoes, not snow boots. It was a delightful change. As we drove around looking at the melting snow and the growing puddles we begin to think about the thaw / freeze cycle needed to get maple sap flowing. As you know, an extended Spring thaw also helps minimize the likelihood of Spring flooding although our local snow cover, so far, presents minimal threat to rivers exceeding their banks.

Climate weirding and global warming are expected to affect maple sugar production, but, by how much, and the extent to which the trees and the syrup producers can adapt is still being researched. In Minnesota, the center of maple tree density has already moved North (#21). That isn't likely to diminish local syrup production, but we may see a loss of the temperature variability needed to generate sap flow if Spring continues too warm. Even someone like yr out svt, who abhors winter, would not want to lose maple syrup and maple candy in exchange for less winter. Plus, less sugar might be related to less colorful Autumns? That would also be terrible.

Apocalypto for a Small Planet

By Tess Taylor

1

 

& the radio reports how in 2050

farming Massachusetts will be like farming Georgia—

all’s flux, no one can say what will grow in Georgia,

 

where maples will grow then or whose fine taps

will sap sugar from the cold in spring. Will we get syrup

from the boreal forest, peaches from Massachusetts?

 

 

2

 

Drone strikes & opium poppies.

Oil spills & poisoned wells.

Drought zone. Famine. War zone.

 

 

3

 

Artisanal, this

 

                                              intervention:

 

what gift

                                              this day.

 

 

4

 

My inner cynic says

don’t bother this is navel gazing

 

& my friend at Yale says my hunger

to be near zucchinis

 

will not save the planet from real hunger

except I remember in the film on gleaning

 

when the priest in his compassion says:

those who glean now out of spiritual hunger

 

also should be fed.

 

 

5

 

Ecosystem of yard or field or mind:

 

these cucumbers are more art than science,

more daydream

 

than global action (if we separate the two).

But digging now I feel an otherness—

 

life, a great inhuman freedom—

here I work a plot that also grounds—

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