Warm days warm hearts

The sun is shining. The snow is melting. Thoughts are turning to planting and fishing and things to enjoy when it's warm. Even the snow fleas have decided it's time to make an appearance.

snow fleas (little black specs)    © harrington

We're slated over the next week to have several consecutive days in the 50's and 60's. Life in My Minnesota can be good. Have you been hearing the chickadees singing this Spring? fee-bee and / or chick-a-dee-dee-dee. Yesterday it seemed as though we had every chickadee in six counties at the feeder. Some posed nicely for a portrait photograph.

black capped chickadee in oak tree   © harrington

Joyce Sutphen

Home to the Late Late Movie

This landscape like a supermarket aisle
draws me on. Flat and stocked
rows of suburbia, matchbox cars parked
in the driveways, frail little trees
strung tight and anchored to the yards.

and the chainlink fence with the shadow
lunging back and forth all morning, and the
plastic big-wheels on the graveled edge
of the road, white-blond hair of blue-eyed

boys flirting with speed, pedaling their way
into traffic, looking over their shoulders
to the houses set uncertainly in the cornfields
their mothers held captive by afternoon TV,
loneliness seeping through the vinyl blinds.

Until the fathers come home from the car shop,
from the lumber yard, from the freezer factory,
garage doors lifting, chains jerking in tracks,
the blond boys running across fat patches of grass,
the daughters glancing up from their books.

And sighs like ovens and the clatter of dinner
plates coming from kitchens, a sizzling in the pan,
stainless steel lifted to the mouth, the smoke of
conversations drifting from the chimneys, dissipating
over the gray branches of the leafless wind.

And later on these streets: in each house with
its drapes parted slightly, wafer of lamplight
caught on bare walls, blue of a video eye
flickering its gaze back into the night, the
refrigerators are opening, letting out the cold.

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

Marching into Spring?

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Thanks for coming. Welcome. The photo above is one of the greenest in my collection, a promise of days to come and a great hiding place for leprechauns. When I got up this morning, the outside temperature was -1, the average low is 25. Winter seems to be strengthening. Since we're still enjoying persistent snow cover, I'm going to share with you the fact that, thanks to my wife's keen eye, I actually have my very own personal photos of snow fleas, right in the front yard of my house. You might recall that back in January I questioned the existence of these critters. I now have unphotoshopped proof. Those teeny, tiny little specks are snow fleas. (No, I did not sprinkle the pepper shaker on the snow.)

One of the local papers yesterday had an article about how this snow and (freezing) rain in March might help My Minnesota's drought and soil moisture come planting time [next month, doesn't seem possible]. Since the ground is still frozen, and it's my understanding that frozen ground means water runs off, not sinks in, I have my doubts. What I'd really like to see, and think we could use, is soft, bare ground being bathed in a gentle Spring rainfall. I'm looking forward (oh! how I'm looking forward) to trading snow fleas for dwarf trout lilies and rising trout in gently flowing streams. Until then, stop back soon. Reflections, raves and rants served daily.