A matter of perspective

This morning a brightly colored Baltimore oriole male arrived at the grape jelly feeder. We hope he hangs around and isn’t just passing through. And later, we saw our first ruby-throated hummingbird of the year. Now the questions become: will any of the bulbs we planted last autumn grow this season and will we see scarlet tanagers or purple finches this year?

Baltimore oriole male at grape feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

I’m embarrassed to confess we have yet to wet a line this season. Of course, until recently, snow melt has affected the trout streams we would have been fishing. The current plan is to get licenses this Wednesday and hope that action doesn’t trigger a spring blizzard. Then I get to curse myself for never getting around to having finished cleaning and organizing my fly-fishing gear last winter. Oh well, there’s always the theory that the best way to get gear organized is to use it.😉

The Better Half [BH] likes to actually fish on a fishing outing whereas I also enjoy getting out and just poking around. I suspect that means some solo scouting trips for me in the days ahead while BH is watching the Granddaughter. That will probably turn out to be good for all three of us, especially if I remember to spray permethrin on my fishing shirts in anticipation of mosquito season. It seems like only weeks ago that the ground was snow covered and now... oh, wait! It was!

As we drove past a recently plowed farm field this morning, we noticed half a dozen or so swans and a couple of Canada geese. Rarely do I think about how large swans really are, but seeing  them next to the  geese provided an often lacking scale. Swans are BIG!

The Swan

by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

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They've arrived!

Today saw the arrival of a pair of Baltimore orioles, male and female. Of course, we promptly rehung the grape jelly feeder, which was immediately visited by a gray squirrel and a couple of black-capped chickadees. Meanwhile. the orioles were enjoying sipping from the nectar feeder. At the moment, a male oriole is feeding on the grape jelly and a hummingbird has whipped in to grab a quick drink from the nectar feeder. It would probably be helpful if I separated the feeders along the railing rather than keep them all where I can watch from my napping writing chair.

male Baltimore oriole feeding on grape jelly

Photo by J. Harrington

Sometime between now and Memorial Day, we might get lucky enough to be visited by scarlet tanagers. Dragon flies should be in evidence by then, too. We've not yet done any tilling for the  three sisters garden we're hoping to grow this summer. Maybe in a week or so we'll feel up to it. Meanwhile, we'll keep watching the birds and collecting the ticks the dogs are bringing into the house this year and leaving on the furniture. We caught another one, tick, not dog, crawling up our arm this morning.

Ballad of Orange and Grape

By Muriel Rukeyser

After you finish your work

after you do your day

after you've read your reading

after you've written your say –

you go down the street to the hot dog stand,

one block down and across the way.

On a blistering afternoon in East Harlem in the twentieth

    century.

Most of the windows are boarded up,

the rats run out of a sack –

sticking out of the crummy garage

one shiny long Cadillac;

at the glass door of the drug-addiction center,

a man who'd like to break your back.

But here's a brown woman with a little girl dressed in rose

    and pink, too.

Frankfurters frankfurters sizzle on the steel

where the hot-dog-man leans –

nothing else on the counter

but the usual two machines,

the grape one, empty, and the orange one, empty,

I face him in between.

A black boy comes along, looks at the hot dogs, goes on

    walking.

I watch the man as he stands and pours

in the familiar shape

bright purple in the one marked ORANGE

orange in the one marked GRAPE,

the grape drink in the machine marked ORANGE

and orange drink in the GRAPE.

Just the one word large and clear, unmistakeable, on each

    machine.

I ask him : How can we go on reading

and make sense out of what we read? –

How can they write and believe what they're writing,

the young ones across the street,

while you go on pouring grape in ORANGE

and orange into the one marked GRAPE –?

(How are we going to believe what we read and we write

    and we hear and we say and we do?)

He looks at the two machines and he smiles

and he shrugs and smiles and pours again.

It could be violence and nonviolence

it could be white and black          women and men

it could be war and peace or any

binary system, love and hate, enemy, friend.

Yes and no, be and not-be, what we do and what we don't

    do.

On a corner in East Harlem

garbage, reading, a deep smile, rape,

forgetfulness, a hot street of murder,

misery, withered hope,

a man keeps pouring grape into ORANGE

and orange into the one marked GRAPE,

pouring orange into GRAPE and grape into ORANGE forever.

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Poor year for pears (and poults?) #phenology

In August, two years ago, our back yard pear tree looked like this.

a prosperous pear tree

Photo by J. Harrington

This year, even when standing directly underneath the tree, it's hard to see any pears, and those that can be seen are severely dwarfed and misshapen. We think much of the problem relates to some fierce storms we got just as the tree was coming into bloom. This year's "new normal" weather pattern doesn't seem to have done to a local apple orchard what it's done to our pears. Since much of our pear crop usually gets consumed by the local whitetails, they'll be more disappointed than we will, except that probably means we won't get to see as much of this year's yearlings as we have in the past.

a pair of hen turkeys with their poults

Photo by J. Harrington

The local turkey flocks have also been making themselves scarce this Summer, or, in point of fact, they actually may be scarce. We've seen hens with poults but once or twice. Perhaps they're running a couple or three weeks behind what we used to think was normal.

We did, very briefly, see a flash of bright orange at the nectar feeder yesterday. The orioles are still around but probably busy with fledglings. We didn't put out any meal worms this Summer. The year that we tried dried meal worms for orioles didn't produce much except a mess and left over meal worms. Purple finches are in a "now you see them, now you don't for a few days" pattern. So far, the Summer seems to be right smack dab in the middle of a "could'a been betta, could'a been worse" status and, before it's over, probably will be. At least some years, some pear trees produce pears and pleasure for people in poems.

Green Pear Tree in September

By Freya Manfred

On a hill overlooking the Rock River 

my father’s pear tree shimmers, 

in perfect peace, 

covered with hundreds of ripe pears 

with pert tops, plump bottoms,  

and long curved leaves. 

Until the green-haloed tree 

rose up and sang hello, 

I had forgotten. . .  

He planted it twelve years ago, 

when he was seventy-three, 

so that in September 

he could stroll down  

with the sound of the crickets 

rising and falling around him, 

and stand, naked to the waist, 

slightly bent, sucking juice 

from a ripe pear.

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Summer's end marks Autumn's beginning -- the Circle Game #phenology

We hope you're enjoying this last day of meteorological Summer. We're starting to wonder if we should spend Labor Day weekend building an ark. The weather forecast for the next week or so includes rain every day except tomorrow. Getting the brush pile torched isn't looking very promising, but we live in hope. The cottontail runny babbit whose home is under the pile would be grateful for the rains if s/he knew what a day or two of dry weather would bring. Rather than leave a rabbit homeless at the start of cooler weather, we intend to consolidate several smaller piles that are currently perched elsewhere on the property. We can't add all of them to the current pile without taking a chance on having a fire too large  to comply with DNR's regulations.

food fit for a deer

Photo by J. Harrington

We keep seeing pairs and family-sized small flocks of sandhill cranes in some local fields. If there are any larger flocks assembling nearby, we haven't yet noticed them. The oak trees near the front corner of the drive have been dumping lots of brown acorns onto the ground. Seems early for that. None one seems interested in feeding on them yet. at least we haven't noticed tracks in the mud near the acorns. Then, again, a yearling whitetail doe did stop under the pear tree a bit ago. Checking for fallen fruit we suspect.

early September acorns

Photo by J. Harrington

September's full  moon will be almost a month from now, on the 24th. The Ojibwe call it manoominike-giizis, rice moon. In his wonderful A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold calls to our attention what is mostly no longer there in September: the early morning chorus of birdsong. Come September the southerly migration begins for many songbirds. The feeders around the house have been getting emptied much more quickly than when the fledglings were being fed insects rather than finding their way to sunflower seeds and sugar water nectar, and the last bit of grape jelly for the soon to depart Baltimore orioles.

September Midnight

By Sara Teasdale

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, 

Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,  

Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,  

Ceaseless, insistent.   

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,  

The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence  

Under a moon waning and worn, broken,  

Tired with summer.    

Let me remember you, voices of little insects, 

Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,  

Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us, 

Snow-hushed and heavy.   

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction, 

While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest, 

As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,  

Lest they forget them.

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The orioles return #phenology

Sometime within the past few days, the Aldo Leopold Foundation < @aldoLeopoldFdn > shared this Tweet:

"Noticed Baltimore orioles have disappeared from fruit & jelly feeders? They change their diet to insects for more protein as they rear their chicks. Spot one of their "hanging basket" nests & look for adults feeding nestlings. Soon, the whole fam may visit your feeder! #Phenology"

 Today, as we were starting this post, a male Baltimore oriole arrived at our feeders. He drank some nectar from the hummingbird/oriole feeder and took a taste of grape jelly. His arrival, as foretold above by one of our favorite orgs, was a very pleasant surprise. We'd like to get his picture, since the only orioles we've photographed so far are females. Anyhow, maybe there is something to this phenology stuff? 😇

female Baltimore oriole at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

We have no idea where the orioles' "hanging basket" nest may be located. There's a multitude of trees around here. That leaves us looking forward to the arrival of more orioles at the feeders. In fact, we'll put out fresh grape jelly tomorrow. The female rose breasted grosbeaks have been nipping at it from time to time and, with no orioles in sight until now, we saw little point in freshening the jelly since it was clearly a second choice, after sunflower seeds, for the grosbeaks. Some of the local squirrels check out the taste of jelly from time to time also. The dogs love to chase squirrels off the deck into the branches of the overhanging tree. The squirrels are safe until and unless the dogs learn to climb trees.

We hope our recent wave of overly hot, excessively wet weather (6" to 12" or more a county or two North of us) over the weekend hasn't disrupted your life. The claims of climate scientists, that climate change will result in more volatile, intense storm patterns, seem to be pretty well reflected by recent weather events. Sigh!

That Woman

Sarah Getty, 1943

Look! A flash of orange along the river’s edge--
“oriole!” comes to your lips like instinct, then
it’s vanished--lost in the foliage,

in all your head holds, getting on with the day.  
But not gone for good. There is that woman     
walks unseen beside you with her apron
  
pockets full.  Days later, or years, when you least    
seem to need it--reading Frost on the subway,    
singing over a candled cake--she’ll reach

into a pocket and hand you this intact    
moment--the river, the orange streak parting 
the willow, and the “oriole!” that leapt

to your lips.  Unnoticed, steadfast, she gathers      
all this jumble, sorts it, hands it back like 
prizes from Crackerjack.  She is your mother,

who first said, “Look! a robin!” and pointed,   
and there was a robin, because her own
mother had said to her, “Look!” and pointed, 

and so on, back to the beginning: the mother, 
the child, and the world.  The damp bottom 
on one arm and pointing with the other: 
       
the peach tree, the small rocks in the shallows,    
the moon and the man in the moon.  So you keep on, 
seeing, forgetting, faithfully followed;   

and you yourself, unwitting, gaining weight,
have thinned to invisibility, become
that follower.  Even now, your daughter

doesn’t see you at her elbow as she walks
the beach.  There! a gull dips to the Pacific,
and she points and says to the baby, “Look!”

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Please be kind to each other while you can.