Sweet autumn’s days slide away

This morning’s low temperatures, in the mid-20’s, brought the first ice cover of the season to shallow pools and ponds. Local families of Canada geese are beginning to flock up as migration season nears. Deciding how much of what to wear at any particular hour of almost every day is a challenge. Must be mid-November near mid-Autumn in southern North Country.

approaching a season of bare branches and murders of crows

Photo by J. Harrington

We took a drive along parts of the Sunrise River as we returned from a morning visit with the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law, and Granddaughter. I‘ve noticed my old habit of poking around just to see what’s there has faded over the past few years. Today seemed like a prime time to check out some places not recently visited. We do live in some pretty country and would no doubt appreciate it more if we explored more often. It seems entirely too easy to create ruts by going the same ways to the same places almost all the time. Then, again, the world at large, with local spillover, appears to be getting more chaotic by the day. Discovering how to balance on the bubble is never easy.

As ice forms, stays and thickens, many local critters enter some form of hibernation or diminished activity. No pollinators until Spring. But, also no mosquitoes or biting flies. Ticks can be active any time the temperature gets over 40℉, so next week should end their feeding season for the year. Once again I’m hoping to spend time between New Year’s and Valentine’s, maybe even St. Patrick’s, regrouping and getting organized. Most years recently, I’ve ended up spending too much of that time snow blowing and or sulking with cabin fever. Next year offers another fresh start. Once again I intend to “do better,” but first I need to figure out what I mean by that. If I succeed by Thursday, next week, I’ll really have something special to be thankful for.

The Flight of the Crows

Emily Pauline Johnson

The autumn afternoon is dying o’er
   The quiet western valley where I lie
Beneath the maples on the river shore,
   Where tinted leaves, blue waters and fair sky
   Environ all; and far above some birds are flying by

To seek their evening haven in the breast
   And calm embrace of silence, while they sing
Te Deums to the night, invoking rest
   For busy chirping voice and tired wing—
   And in the hush of sleeping trees their sleeping cradles swing.

In forest arms the night will soonest creep,
   Where sombre pines a lullaby intone,
Where Nature’s children curl themselves to sleep,
   And all is still at last, save where alone
   A band of black, belated crows arrive from lands unknown.

Strange sojourn has been theirs since waking day,
   Strange sights and cities in their wanderings blend
With fields of yellow maize, and leagues away
   With rivers where their sweeping waters wend
   Past velvet banks to rocky shores, in cañons bold to end.

O’er what vast lakes that stretch superbly dead,
   Till lashed to life by storm-clouds, have they flown?
In what wild lands, in laggard flight have led
   Their aërial career unseen, unknown,
   ’Till now with twilight come their cries in lonely monotone?

The flapping of their pinions in the air
   Dies in the hush of distance, while they light
Within the fir tops, weirdly black and bare,
   That stand with giant strength and peerless height,
   To shelter fairy, bird and beast throughout the closing night.

Strange black and princely pirates of the skies,
   Would that your wind-tossed travels I could know!
Would that my soul could see, and, seeing, rise
   To unrestricted life where ebb and flow
   Of Nature’s pulse would constitute a wider life below!

Could I but live just here in Freedom’s arms,
   A kingly life without a sovereign’s care!
Vain dreams! Day hides with closing wings her charms,
   And all is cradled in repose, save where
   Yon band of black, belated crows still frets the evening air.

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Earth awakens

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

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

local pond today and March 22, 2022

Photo by J. Harrington

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

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

An Earth Song 

Langston Hughes - 1901-1967

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

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S’no way to enjoy autumn

Tomorrow’s weather may include morning snow showers. Future overnight low temperatures will regularly be at or below freezing. Today we plugged in the heater for the bird bath. It will be at least another month, maybe two, before we start putting out suet feeders. We want to be sure the local bear population is snug in their winter beds before we hang such temptations.

Oct. 9, 2016: ice covered

Photo by J. Harrington

In what is likely the last time this year the front yard gets mowed, I discovered a dismaying number of mole tunnels in the soft, surprisingly moist feeling underfoot, soil. If we had a barn, I’d be sure we had several barn cats that might also catch an occasional mole. Mice continue to make the mistake after sneaking into the house and garage of nibbling on the peanut butter in the traps. I’ve not found a comparably successful strategy for managing moles. The one mole trap I keep moving and resetting seems to do no more than give the moles a good laugh.

Sans segue, I’ve noticed, over the past several years, comparable increases in the volatility of our weather, the stock market, and our politics. It’s reached a point at which I have no idea what’s coming next. Ordinarily, this would cause me untoward amounts of fretting. I’m working hard on an alternative to that unproductive mode of being. I’m doing my best to address what’s in front of me at the moment and telling the remainder of my worries to “take a number!” It took most of us to mess up the climate, the biosphere and our politics. No matter how effective I might be, or how hard I might try, one of me isn’t going to compensate for all of us. Meanwhile, I intend to enjoy at least some of what’s left of my life, which I can’t do if I’m always fretting.

First Snow

By Arthur Sze

A rabbit has stopped on the gravel driveway:

           imbibing the silence,

           you stare at spruce needles:

                                          there's no sound of a leaf blower, 

                                          no sign of a black bear;

a few weeks ago, a buck scraped his rack

           against an aspen trunk;

           a carpenter scribed a plank along a curved stone wall.

                        You only spot the rabbit's ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,

but when it stops, it blends in again;

           the world of being is like this gravel:

                        you think you own a car, a house,

                        this blue-zigzagged shirt, but you just borrow these things. 

Yesterday, you constructed an aqueduct of dreams

                        and stood at Gibraltar,

                                                but you possess nothing.

Snow melts into a pool of clear water;

     and, in this stillness,

                        starlight behind daylight wherever you gaze. 

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A day for hope

The sun is shining; temperatures are above freezing; snow is melting! Eternal springs the hope that spring may return. To realize that, in the nadir of winter, bear cubs are being born while the mother is in hibernation; that many animals and birds are in the beginnings of mating and nesting season; that life is in preparation to continue, is more than enough reason to hope.

Maria Popova has shared a wonderful quotation by Rebecca Solnit on the idea of hope:

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes — you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.

sunshine brings hope of melting frost

Photo by J. Harrington

The quotation above also captures something I learned late in life about meaning and the future. Once I believed that meaning was something out there that we needed to find. Instead, I now believe the meaning is something we create through what we do and how we do it. I no longer accept that what the future holds  is some independent given but something we create through each action we take each moment we live.

Tomorrow may bring the return of cold, cloudy, snowy, dreary weather that makes the return of spring seem hopeless. It won’t, however, cause the bear sow to abandon her cubs; the great horned owl to abandon her eggs and nest; just as it shouldn’t cause us to abandon our efforts to make a better life for ourselves and those who will come after US.

An Old Story

By Tracy K. Smith

We were made to understand it would be

Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,

Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 

 

Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 

Dream. The worst in us having taken over 

And broken the rest utterly down. 

 

                                                                 A long age 

Passed. When at last we knew how little 

Would survive us—how little we had mended 

 

Or built that was not now lost—something 

Large and old awoke. And then our singing 

Brought on a different manner of weather. 

 

Then animals long believed gone crept down 

From trees. We took new stock of one another. 

We wept to be reminded of such color. 

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Here comes caterpillar season #phenology

woolybear caterpillar climbing screen

Photo by J. Harrington

We're starting to come into woolybear caterpillar season. I know that because:

1. the photo of the woolybear above was taken on August 24 some years ago; and,
2. the Minnesota Seasons web site says flight season of the Isabella tiger moth (Pyrrharctia isabella) lasts until late July and it takes about two weeks for eggs to hatch, which would bring us to mid-August or sooner

Despite the folk lore about wooly bears foretelling Winter's severity, "the truth is that this caterpillar can't predict what Old Man Winter has in store for us in the upcoming winter."

To be honest, when I think of insects in August, usually it has to do with grasshoppers and trout fishing. But, now I realize August is as much monarch, woolybear, and other caterpillars as it is grasshoppers and beetles falling into streams and rivers.

One of the strange things about woolybear caterpillars is how they Winter-over.

Once settled in, the caterpillars hibernate, creating a natural organic antifreeze called glycerol.  They freeze bit by bit, until everything but the interior of their cells are frozen.  These interior cells are protected by the hemolymph.  Woollybears can - and do - survive to temperatures as low as -90℉. 

So, if you have taken to going for outdoor walks as a way to limit going stir crazy during our COVID-19 pandemic, you can now look for monarch caterpillars munching their way across the undersides of milkweed leaves and, soon, you can watch for woolybears as they search for a dark, comfortable place to spend the Winter. Maybe, by the time we can look for next Summer's Isabella tiger moths, we'll have a better handle on our pandemic and on our government. But then, my mother often used to accuse me of "wishing my life away."

The Caterpillar

Robert Graves - 1895-1985

Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.

Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man's-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.

Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I'll mind my business: I'm a good worm.

When I'm old, tired, melancholy,
I'll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.

Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I'll miss my share.

Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.

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How sweet it is!

It's World Bee Day!

Today bees, pollinators, and many other insects are declining in abundance. This day provides an opportunity for all of us – whether we work for governments, organizations or civil society or are concerned citizens – to promote actions that will protect and enhance pollinators and their habitats, improve their abundance and diversity, and support the sustainable development of beekeeping. 

To bee, or not to bee: that is the question. Paraphrasing Hamlet, the slings and arrows of pesticides, insecticides, mites and land use changes have caused honeybee and other pollinator populations to suffer and encounter a thousand shocks. Minnesota is claimed to be home to at least 455 species of bees. That's many more than the 146 listed in the Minnesota Bee Atlas. Just last year, the rusty patched bumblebee beecame Minnesota's state bee. The University of Minnesota's Bee Lab has a growing abundance of information about our native bees. Bee sure to  check the Learn More page.

bee on yellow flower, not dandelion

Photo by J. Harrington

We saw a few bees, or what we think were bees, on the dandelions today. Still no sign of bees on the  pear tree flowers. There's lots of bushes in bloom, but, except for the dandelions, few flowers have bloomed to provide nectar or pollen. This  afternoon I'll take a look at the bee house we hung last Summer and see if any of the tubes appear to be occupied. Haven't yet seen any monarch butterflies either. None have been reported much North of Milwaukee.

Bees Were Better

By Naomi Shihab Nye

In college, people were always breaking up.

We broke up in parking lots,

beside fountains.

Two people broke up

across a table from me

at the library.

I could not sit at that table again

though I did not know them.

I studied bees, who were able

to convey messages through dancing

and could find their ways

home to their hives

even if someone put up a blockade of sheets

and boards and wire.

Bees had radar in their wings and brains

that humans could barely understand.

I wrote a paper proclaiming

their brilliance and superiority

and revised it at a small café

featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers

in silver honeypots

at every table.

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Why aren't hungry bears still hibernating? #phenology

We had a visitor last night. S/he tipped over the compost drum, snapped off the 2" X 4" the bluebird house was mounted on, trashed the bluebird house, and then trashed two of the screen panels while climbing onto the deck to see if we forgot to bring in the bird feeders. We obviously have a very hungry bear in the neighborhood, but one that didn't bother to eat the fresh, new fern fronds.

The question that serves as the title for today's post is an honest one. Bears awaken from hibernation at a time when there's almost never much to eat. They do it almost every year. Why, if evolution conditioned bears to basically sleep through the Winter months, didn't it bring bears to the point that they don't become more active until there's more forage for them to eat? Although this article on the essentials of hibernation has lots of interesting information, it doesn't enlighten us as to why bears seem to become active prematurely in the Spring.

sometimes, hungry bears visit during the day

Photo by J. Harrington

There are at least two elements of irony we can think of in regard to last night's visitor. First, we just started rereading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Gathering Moss. The bear's nocturnal visit may have occurred as we were reading the description of the bear clan of the Potawatomi, found in one of the early chapters. Second, the bluebird house has lived on its 2" X 4" for more than 20 years. We installed the stand ourselves and mounted the birdhouse on it. Yesterday, for the first time ever, the Son-In_Law person borrowed our post hole digger. Although far from critical, the loss of the house the very same evening we're missing the tool needed to readily replace it is ironic to the point that we're wondering if there's a larger message here and, if so, what it might be.

In more straightforward activities, the first dandelions are appearing in the yard and the first hummingbirds, ruby- throated, have appeared at the nectar feeder on the front window. We've our fingers crossed that soon we may see scarlet tanagers or indigo buntings or some other semi-exotic transient. The large nectar feeder is now hanging on the deck, adding one more thing to bring in each night to keep from wandering, hungry, curious bears.

Sleep

Twyla M. Hansen

Adult: I have trouble falling asleep at night.
Child: But don’t you close your eyes?

The art of sleep isn’t tough for those who have the gift—
they’re puzzled at the rest of us with trouble in the night.

And during the day, that tumbling sensation, anxious, sad,
the blues, the sun slipping low beyond our grasp.

Tossing and taking forever, we conjure the ancient ones
whose lives revolved around the same sun—sun worshipers—

who discovered fire, calculated the heavens, tracked stars,
who likely slept through most of this gloomy season.

We can’t help but wonder how they’d react to light—
fake light—the stuff we do to trick our body-clock

into believing we are more than some grand experiment—
superior, in fact—to the pull of nature, however quaint.

It’s all we can do to force ourselves out the door in the dark,
overcome the urge to curl into a book and hibernate.

And that child—remember? how we tiptoed not to wake—
a now impossible teen in all her tough circadian torpor.

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It's bearly Spring!

This is a tough time of year for many creatures. New growth is just starting. Last year's fruits and nuts are few, far between and well past ripe. Deer browse on twigs. According to Audubon Guides:

"Spring is very challenging for bears. When they emerge from their dens in April, they may have lost up to twenty percent or more of their weight over the winter. They are ravenous at a time when there is very little vegetation, the mainstay of their diet. Wetland plants such as swamp thistle are a primary source of food in early spring. Other foods include the tender, unfurling leaves of deciduous trees, catkins (pendant flowers) from early-blooming trees like aspen and willow, grasses, insect larvae and snowfleas."

Yesterday, at dusk, a little before full dark, we were curled up with a book, and the dogs were lying quietly digesting a recent snack. Suddenly, Franco, the Better Half's border collie cross, a dog known to be hyperactive much of the time, and hypersensitive to intrusions on "his" territory, went nuts. We bellowed at him and walked over to the family room / office walkout door, arriving just in time to see a black, role-poly furry rump rumbling down one slope and up another into the woods on the North side of the house. One of the neighborhood black bears had come looking to see what might be available in the local sunflower seed supply. We had already taken in the feeders for the day, but some spillage from the Winter months still hasn't been cleaned up.

late Spring (early June) midday raid

Photo by J. Harrington

Today, the Daughter Person and Son-In-Law stopped by earlier. They reported as they returned from a perimeter walk, that they saw a pile of bear droppings along the edge of the woods. No comment on what the bear had been feeding on. It's annoying, but worth the effort, to bring in feeders each evening and put them back out in the morning. Unfortunately, several years ago, that wasn't enough. One June, about mid-day, a local bruin decided that s/he couldn't get by without sunflower seeds for a snack and, in broad daylight, bent the hanger, trashed the feeder, and licked up the seeds. We went and spoke harshly to the intruder at the time. S/he grudgingly sauntered off in search of something else to nosh on. After we post today's blog, we'll go and park the trash can in the garage for the Summer. It's once again the time of year when predawn dog walks are more exciting.

The Truro Bear

by Mary Oliver

There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaver,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?

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Bearly Spring #phenology

As we were sipping our first cup of coffee this morning, we noticed that the bird feeders were missing from their deck hangers. Then we saw the feeders were perched on top of the galvanized trash can where we store the sunflower seeds. Our guess was that the Daughter and Son-In-Law had decided it was time to bring in feeders at night so any neighborhood bear is less tempted to nosh. Last year we were a little slow to change our seasonal pattern. The wear and tear on the feeder was noteworthy.

how to tell when bears leave hibernation

Photo by J. Harrington

There's still lots of snow covering grasses which aren't even close to greening. Not much good to eat in the woods these days. The young'uns had also put the trash can in the garage. When we finally got the full story, it turns out that as they were walking their dogs last night, one of the dogs went stiff, hackles up on its back, all that good stuff. Then the kids heard and smelled the bear. So, we're back into the season where one more chore gets added to the daily list for first thing in the morning and last at day's end: put feeders out, take feeders in.

We're hoping that tonight's and tomorrows "wintry mix" won't set the season back too far. Today we did manage to get Wisconsin fishing licenses for ourselves and the Better Half. On the way back, we saw a pair of sandhill cranes looking for a nesting spot. Spring--we're gettin' there, but bearly so.

Each year

Dora Malech

                  I snap the twig to try to trap
the springing and I relearn the same lesson.
You cannot make a keepsake of this season. 
Your heart’s not the source of that sort of sap,
lacks what it takes to fuel, rejects the graft,
though for a moment it’s your guilty fist 
that’s flowering. You’re no good host to this
extremity that points now, broken, back at
the dirt as if to ask are we there yet.
You flatter this small turn tip of a larger 
book of matches that can’t refuse its end,
re-fuse itself, un-flare. Sure. Now forget
again. Here’s a new green vein, another
clutch to take, give, a handful of seconds.

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A chrysalis to come? #phenology

Often, it doesn't take much to make us happy, as long as it's the right "not much." Today we're in that situation. Earlier this Autumn, we found a woolly bear caterpillar in the yard. S/he was destined to be captured and observed during the Winter so we could watch the chrysalis and the moth emerge. We've never done that.

We left the woolly bear where it was because we hadn't prepared a suitable home for it. Next day, home prepared, potential occupant was gone. You saw that coming, didn't you? While not devastated, nor heartbroken, we were disappointed, until yesterday. While letting out one or another of the dogs, we discovered a woolly bear on the cement floor of the screened porch. This time the caterpillar was promptly captured using the same equipment and techniques we use to transport barn spiders and their ilk from inside to outside. (See Method 2.)

the dark spot at the bottom of the green leaf is Woolly Bear

Photo by J. Harrington

We promptly prepared a suitable Winter home for the critter, replete with potting soil, twigs, dried and fresh leaves. Today we "misted" the inside using the same sprayer we use for our loaves of sourdough bread. We're still not sure if it's a him or a her. The jar now lives on a shelf in the garage. We'll check daily until s/he goes into hibernation, which we suspect won't be long.

S/he is more obvious in this close-up

Photo by J. Harrington

The preceding more than compensates for the fact that, after a long string of outstanding successes with our sourdough experiments, we hit one that isn't a favorite. We think we know why it's lacking flavor and we won't use that combination again, especially if we go and write it down, right now!

A Caterpillar on the Desk

by Robert Bly

           Lifting my coffee cup, I notice a caterpillar crawling over my sheet of ten-cent airmail stamps. The head is black as a Chinese box. Nine soft accordions follow it around, with a waving motion, like a flabby mountain. Skinny brushes used to clean pop bottles rise from some of its shoulders. As I pick up the sheet of stamps, the caterpillar advances around and around the edge, and I see his feet: three pairs under the head, four spongelike pairs under the middle body, and two final pairs at the tip, pink as a puppy's hind legs. As he walks, he rears, six pairs of legs off the stamp, waving around the air! One of the sponge pairs, and the last two tail pairs, the reserve feet, hold on anxiously. It is the first of September. The leaf shadows are less ferocious on the notebook cover. A man accepts his failures more easily-or perhaps summer's insanity is gone? A man notices ordinary earth, scorned in July, with affection, as he settles down to his daily work, to use stamps.  

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Some migrations are local #phenology

Monarch butterflies, hummingbirds, sandhill cranes, many songbirds and most waterfowl undertake moderate to lengthy migrations to avoid Winter in the North Country. Even some of those that live here year round undertake local migrations. We've been coping this week with some of those. In another sign of Autumn's impending arrival, barn spiders, or, maybe barn funnel weavers, or parson spiders, or one of each, we're really not sure, have been appearing (or apparating if you're a Harry Potter fan) in the house. So far we've captured and transported three of them (or the same one three times) back outside. The first one was under some clean clothes on a bed; the second on the wall of the stairs going down from the front hall; the third on a wall in the front hall itself. Each time we used the cup and paper method (see method 2 on the linked page). Since we aren't likely to take up eating spiders, and can safely remove them, there seems little point in killing them. We even hope this approach improves our karma.

It's still early in the seasonal change, so we may find more spiders looking for a mate or whatever motivates them to head indoors. (There's a wide range of opinions online about whether or why spiders head indoors in Autumn.) If we do have more invaders this year, we'll try to take a picture before cupping the culprit. (Did McGarrett ever say "Cup 'em Danno" do you suppose?)

bull snake on garage floor

Another creature that we sometimes find looking for a place to spend the Winter is a gopher snake or bull snake in Minnesota. Last year the one pictured above was seeking refuge in our garage, or perhaps it was just looking for a wayward rodent. As if it were a misguided spider, the snake too was transported back outside, but we used our hands instead of a cup. With luck, it eventually found, or made, an empty pocket gopher tunnel in which to hibernate.

Autumn oak leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning's rain brought some oak leaves down onto the driveway. Oaks will continue to drop leaves now for about the next forty-eight or fifty weeks or so, unlike more "honest" deciduous trees, that drop their leaves over a relatively short time frame, oaks, like our dogs, shed almost year-round. Many oak leaves hold on (it's called marcescence) until next Spring's expanding leaf buds swell with new growth. There's a couple of theories why marcescence may offer an advantage to oak-like trees. There's also many reasons humans sometimes migrate.

Peace Path

Heid E. Erdrich

This path our people walked
one hundred two hundred              endless years
since the tall grass opened for us
and we breathed the incense that sun on prairie
                                                             offers to sky
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep           out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal   remediation                     restoration
Peace flag of fringed prairie orchid
green glow within white froth
calling a moth who nightly
seeks the now-rare scent                 invisible to us
invisible history of this place
where our great-grandfather         a boy
beside two priests and 900 warriors
gaze intent in an 1870 photo       
                                                             his garments white as orchids
Peace flag                                           white banner with red cross
crowned with thorns                       held by a boy            
at the elbow of a priest 
beside Ojibwe warriors                   beside Dakota warriors
Peace offered after smoke and dance
and Ojibwe gifts of elaborate beaded garments
thrown back in refusal
by Dakota Warriors                         torn with grief
                                                             since their brother’s murder
This is the path our people ran
through white flags of prairie plants
Ojibwe calling Dakota back
to sign one last and unbroken treaty
Peace offering with each breath
each footstep                out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal   remediation                     restoration
Two Dakota    held up as great men
humbled themselves
to an offer of peace
before a long walk south
before our people entered the trail
walking west and north
                                                           where you walk now
where we seek the source
the now-rare scent
invisible as history
history the tall grass opens for us
                                                            Breathe the incense of sun on prairie
                                                            Offer peace to the sky

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"Book 'em, Danno" #NPM17 #phenology

The title of today's posting borrows an iconic line of dialog from the original tv program "Hawaii 5-0." It incorporates by reference both the bear that ate our front bird feeder last night, and a way to celebrate the seventh day of National Poetry Month.

Photo by J. Harrington

As to the bear, there's a photo of the evidence above. There's not much in the woods to eat these days so I understand the raid. Then I went to see if s/he had also helped him or her self to the feeder on the back yard deck. As I opened the walkout sliding door, I spooked a turkey gobbling at the top of the ridge behind the house, which, in turn, as it ran from the sound of the door sliding, startled a whitetail deer that had been ambling along farther away, through a field between two patches of woods. So, at the start of the day, aided and abetted by a bear, I caused quite a ruckus in the neighborhood. There you have one of the innumerable pleasures of country living.

Back to #NPM17. Today, please try to go "Buy a book of poetry from your local bookstore." (The link to the immediate left takes you to Indie Bound's web site.) Minnesota has a number of book stores that are poetry-friendly listed on the Academy of American Poets web site (scroll to the third page for Minnesota book store listings), including many I can personally vouch for. (The list doesn't include the book store at Fitger's in Duluth, which has a decent selection of local poets' works.) The Better Half [BH] has banned me from entry to any of my known haunts until I have reduced my current stack of unread poetry books by at least 50%. (This conflicts with my belief that I can't die if my stack of unread books is high enough. [height unspecified] For any of you familiar with the Vietnam War, BH and I are currently negotiating the shape of table for further negotiations regarding unread stack heights.) Meanwhile, poets like Mary Oliver keep writing more poems, like the one below about a bear and the seed on Cape Cod.

The Truro Bear

A poem by Mary Oliver

There’s a bear in the Truro woods.
People have seen it - three or four,
or two, or one. I think
of the thickness of the serious woods
around the dark bowls of the Truro ponds;
I think of the blueberry fields, the blackberry tangles,
the cranberry bogs. And the sky
with its new moon, its familiar star-trails,
burns down like a brand-new heaver,
while everywhere I look on the scratchy hillsides
shadows seem to grow shoulders. Surely
a beast might be clever, be lucky, move quietly
through the woods for years, learning to stay away
from roads and houses. Common sense mutters:
it can’t be true, it must be somebody’s
runaway dog. But the seed
has been planted, and when has happiness ever
required much evidence to begin
its leaf-green breathing?

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Time for pussy willows, catkins and colors #phenology

The sun is shining in a blue, cloudless sky. National Weather Service informs us that frost has left the ground in several Minnesota locations. At nearby Saint Paul, frost remains from 14" to 4" below the surface. The difference between Chanhassen (no frost) and St. Paul rather surprises me. St. Paul is only about 5 to10 miles North of Chanhassen. Other than that, and some unusually early ice-out patterns, the frost report seems to be a sign that Spring is progressing through a relatively smooth South to North transition this year. In case you're interested, here's one way to measure frost depth.

mid-March, catkin time

Photo by J. Harrington

Have you seen any pussy willow catkins yet this Spring? How about any snakes that have come out of hibernation [brumation]? It's the time of year to look for increasing activity and growth in local plants and animals, including humans. The daily dog walks get longer in Spring than during Winter's colder temperatures. Soon, I'll be spending time sitting outside in a sunny, sheltered spot watching the neighborhood wake up and grow. The Better Half reported hearing sandhill cranes yesterday or the day before, but still we've only enjoyed that brief transitory glimpse last week. We've definitely reached the time of year when those who practice Zen would have each of us spend 20 minutes a day sitting in nature, unless we're too busy; then, we should spend an hour. I have to frequently remind myself of that as, all too often, my focus shifts to anticipating future pleasures instead of enjoying what I have now.  In very different ways, both the ground and I need to "chill out." How about you?

stop, sit, watch the colors return

Photo by J. Harrington

I have, from time to time, shared some thoughts and feelings about degrees of feeling at home along the Massachusetts coast compared to living in Minnesota. As, this week, I finished reading Joan Didion's South And West, I was very pleased to note her very last paragraph. Didion was born in California and now lives in New York. Of California she writes:

Part of it is what looks right to the eye, sounds right to the ear. I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look "right" to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way I am not easy in other places.

That says much about how I feel about coastal Massachusetts and much of the rest of New England. I'm still coming to feel that way about Minnesota. Perhaps "easy" is a birthright, imprinted during our youngest years? Something to explore some other time.

Emily Dickinson (1830–86).  Complete Poems.  1924. Part Two: Nature LXXXV A LIGHT exists in spring   Not present on the year At any other period.   When March is scarcely here    A color stands abroad         5   On solitary hills That silence cannot overtake,   But human nature feels.    It waits upon the lawn;   It shows the furthest tree         10 Upon the furthest slope we know;   It almost speaks to me.    Then, as horizons step,   Or noons report away, Without the formula of sound,         15   It passes, and we stay:    A quality of loss   Affecting our content, As trade had suddenly encroached   Upon a sacrament.         20

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Where Winter's grip is loose #phenology?

Several times in the past few weeks we've driven Highway 95 between North Branch and Cambridge. Each time we've noticed open water in some of the low, swampy areas along the highway. Several ponds and one lake along the same stretch of road are entirely frozen over. It's possible that there's just enough current flowing through the swampy spots to keep the water open, but from the quick view we get driving past, there's no current visible. We know there's a current where the Sunrise River flows through the pools in Carlos Avery WMA, but there's no open water visible in those pools. The explanation of the flowages along Highway 95 remains a mystery, which is probably good for us.

Winter's icy grip at Carlos Avery

Photo by J. Harrington

Although we're entering the nadir of Winter, part of my New Year's inventory was a recognition that this year I know of several places where trillium bloom in the Spring, places I didn't know of five or ten years ago. Just last Spring, the Better Half and I stumbled into several fields full of ephemerals located a short drive north of home that we hadn't know of before. As the snow piles up, we can look at Spring's photos and anticipate warmer days and flower-filled fileds. Well, I can. The Better Half claims to really enjoy Winter. It's one of her few character flaws.

Trout lilies in Spring

Photo by J. Harrington

I've been enjoying the slower pace of this brief time between the holidays being over and life's regular speed returning. Much of nature is frozen and moving a a slowed, Winter speed. Even the local flocks haven't been as frantic at the feeder the past few days. I imagine that will change as the really cold spell forecast for later this week arrives. For now, I hope you can gently ease into 2017 and have a year in which we all thrive.

Lines for Winter

By Dave Lucas

Poor muse, north wind, or any god   

who blusters bleak across the lake   

and sows the earth earth-deep with ice.   

A hoar of fur stung across the vines:   

here the leaves in full flush, here   

abandoned to four and farther winds.   

Bless us, any god who crabs the apples   

and seeds the leaf and needle evergreen.   

What whispered catastrophe, winter.   

What a long night, beyond the lamplight,   

the windows and the frost-ferned glass.   

Bless the traveler and the hearth he travels to.   

Bless our rough hands, wind-scabbed lips,   

bless this our miscreant psalm.

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The hole truth #phenology

If you were walking through a wood lot or forest and saw a tree with holes like the one pictured below, would you know who made the holes or why? The odds are that, if the hole is rectangular, it was made by the North Country's largest woodpecker, the Pileated. These holes are usually easier to see in Winter, when the foliage makes more of tree trunks visible.

rotted tree wood with Pileated Woodpecker hole

Photo by J. Harrington

We've had one, part of a pair?, coming to the Winter suet feeder for several years now. (To minimize visits from the neighborhood bears, we don't feed with suet while the temperatures are above freezing.) It's rare that we can get a close enough look at the bird's cheek to tell whether we're seeing a male (red cheek streak) or female (no red cheek streak). Carpenter ants are reported to be the preferred food for Pileated Woodpeckers, although the Minnesota Extension Service doesn't mention that. Carpenter ants are not good for the wood in your house. One of the reasons we decided on cementitious siding when we re-sided is we had some smaller woodpecker holes in the old siding and hope the cement content will be a major discouragement for Downies, Hairies, Red-bellied, etc., up to and including Pileateds.

Pileated Woodpecker female

Photo by J. Harrington

Our "wood lot" is essentially unmanaged. It has a number of downed tree trunks feeding mosses, fungi, insects, bacteria and heavens knows what else. There's likely to be some carpenter ant nests in there somewhere. That means we're looking to see portly, well-fed, pileateds. The nest holes they make, not the ones made while searching for ants, can also serve as roost sites for bats, birds and other critters. Bats help keep down the local mosquito population. The carpenter ant holes sometimes serve as attractions for amature photographers. With luck, it all works out for the better, if not the best.

The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

By Jane Hirshfield

The woodpecker keeps returning

to drill the house wall.

Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:

he has found in the house

a resonant billboard to post his intentions,

his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,

the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

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Feeding peace, happiness and birds #phenology

Snow is still coming down. The Son-in-Law is running the snow blower on the driveway. White Christmas is on the TV. More Christmas cookies are being made. Lists of Christmas wishes are being scribbled or typed. Yesterday's photos pretty well capture the look and feel of the neighborhood. It's beginning to look a lot like Chr__________. (I bet you can fill in the blank.)

Earlier today I read an interesting piece on how Joni Mitchell's River came to be a Christmas song. For some folks, Christmas time can be depressing. This year I'm finding it to be more irritating than depressing, almost entirely for political reasons. Could be it's time to follow the old advice from doctors: "Doc, it hurts when I do that!" Dr.: "Don't do that!" Peace on Earth probably needs to start with Peace of Mind (no, not as in giving a piece of mind!) Seeing how our PEOTUS behaves tells me all I need to know about how I don't want to be. I wonder what he'd think of May Sarton's poem.

Chickadee feeding on sunflower seeds

Photo by J. Harrington

Chickadees and their feathered friends help my peace of mind because they seem to really appreciate a full feeder when the weather gets wintry. The smaller woodpeckers will eat sunflower seeds if there's no suet, but show a strong affinity for suet. (I just wish it wasn't so pricey, but then we only offer it when the bears are in hibernation.) The pileated only shows up when there is suet to be had. Like our feathered friends, I need to appreciate what I have more than concentrate on what else I want. I could end up with peace and happiness to spare.

downy woodpecker feeding on suet

Photo by J. Harrington

The Work of Happiness

By May Sarton

I thought of happiness, how it is woven

Out of the silence in the empty house each day

And how it is not sudden and it is not given

But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark

Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.

No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,

But the tree is lifted by this inward work

And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours

And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:

The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,

White curtains softly and continually blown

As the free air moves quietly about the room;

A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall—

These are the dear familiar gods of home,

And here the work of faith can best be done,

The growing tree is green and musical.

For what is happiness but growth in peace,

The timeless sense of time when furniture

Has stood a life's span in a single place,

And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir

The shining leaves of present happiness?

No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,

But where people have lived in inwardness

The air is charged with blessing and does bless;

Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.

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