Say goodbye sugartime?

The Minnesota Weather Guide Calendar tells us that today, tonight  actually, the full moon is called Maple Sap Boiling Moon (Ojibwe) or Fattening Moon (Lakota). The Ojibwe name is self evident for those of us who grew up in maple syrup country. The Lakota name appears to be a shortened version of when wives cracks bones for marrow fat.

I find the Native American names for full moons to be much better seasonal descriptors than those of the calendar months. Here’s a listing for the Ojibwe and one for the Lakota. There appear to be more and more folks claiming we need to return to living closer to nature to live healthy, sustainable lives in a culture that has the potential for a future. Learning the full moon names used by the Native Americans who once occupied wherever you live seems like a fairly easy and good way to acknowledge seasonal changes noted by those who lived in the area before US.

maple syrup time

Photo by J. Harrington

I’ve not been out to take a peek at any of the local sugar bush. With today’s wind, any bucket not full could be blown loose and maybe, in some gusts, even those that are full might be at risk. If you look carefully at the picture, you’ll see several trees have a number of lichen growing on them. As the weather warms and we get more moisture in the air (warm air holds more water than cold air) lichen became active again. Looking at the extended forecast, this week could be the end of sugar season for this year. we’ll watch and see if cold nights return after our upcoming warm spell.

Goddess of Maple at Evening

Chard deNiord - 1952-

She breathed a chill that slowed the sap 
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field 
where the distance crooned in a small 
blue voice how close it is, how the gravity 
of sky pulls you up like steam from the arch.
She sang along until the silence soloed 
in a northern wind, then headed back 
to the sugar stand and drank from a maple 
to thin her blood with the spirit of sap. 
To quicken its pace to the speed of sound 
then hear it boom inside her heart. 
To quicken her mind to the speed of light 
with another suck from the flooded tap.

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Phenology's shoulder season

red maple buds

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks and feels as though we've entered what I'd call a shoulder season, not quite Winter, not quite Spring, just like a country road's shoulder is not quite road and not quite ditch. There's not a lot happening, unless you're tapping maple trees. Our local red maples haven't yet experienced budburst. I can't quite decide of the goldfinches have started to brighten or if it's my imagination. Except for a couple of purple finches, migratory songbirds haven't yet arrived although tomorrow could be an entirely different story, so we're keeping the feeders full.

hyacinth starting to bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Both hyacinths have been moved from the piano top to a sill on an East-facing window through which the red maples can be seen. One hyacinth has begun to bloom. There are now crocus on the piano replacing the hyacinths. If Spring won't hurry to this Minnesotan, this Minnesotan will hurry to Spring. That also means it's again time for the annual pondering: is this the year to go buy a kite? I've probably watched Charlie Brown and the Kite-Eating Tree too many times, and yet, like Charlie, I too have hopes that this Spring could be different once we get off this shoulder and back on the road. I wonder if I could handle a dragon kite?

Kites

By Robert Gibb

Come March we’d find them

In the five-and-dimes,

Furled tighter than umbrellas

About their slats, the air

In an undertow above us

Like weather on the maps.

We’d play out lines

Of kite string, tugging against

The bucking sideways flights.

Readied for assembly,

I’d arc the tensed keel of balsa

Into place against the crosspiece,

Feeling the paper snap

Tautly as a sheet, then lift

The almost weightless body

Up to where it hauled me

Trolling into the winds—

Knotted bows like vertebrae

Flashing among fields

Of light. Why ruin it

By recalling the aftermaths?

Kites gone down in tatters,

Kites fraying like flotsam

From the tops of the trees.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

The sweetness of Spring

It's Friday, late in March. The sun is shining. The wind has stopped blowing, at least for now. Warmer temperatures are in the forecast, although that part's easy since this morning's low around here was 16F. The frost crystals sparkled beautifully in this morning's flashlight beam when I walked SiSi. Yesterday's open waters that refroze over night should be open again soon. The snow that fell earlier in the week is gone. The Department of Natural Resources has officially declared "ice out" at some metro area lakes. Song birds, raptors and waterfowl are flocking in. The Minnesota legislature is on spring break for almost two weeks. We just learned that we're due a refund on both our federal and state taxes. This may be about as good as it gets at this time of year.

I have a small favor to ask. Can any of you help me identify the reddish-brown plants growing around the trunks of the tamaracks in the photo below? I was too busy being enchanted by the overall effect and foolishly neglected to take any closeups or grab a small sample. A quick search on the internets has yielded nothing helpful. If I finally learn to be more attentive, and mindful, I may end up having to reveal my ignorance less often. But if I become more mindful, I probably won't be as troubled at having to reveal what I don't know. That sounds like a win-win.

Photo by J. Harrington

Many places are offering maple syruping demonstrations this weekend. I admit that until I read Braiding Sweetgrass, I hadn't thought about tapping and syruping as something that could be done in small quantities. We never did get around to identifying our maples. That's still something to be done before this time next year. Have a great weekend!

Cold Spring

By Lawrence Raab 

The last few gray sheets of snow are gone,   

winter’s scraps and leavings lowered   

to a common level. A sudden jolt

of weather pushed us outside, and now   

this larger world once again belongs to us.   

I stand at the edge of it, beside the house,   

listening to the stream we haven’t heard   

since fall, and I imagine one day thinking   

back to this hour and blaming myself

for my worries, my foolishness, today’s choices   

having become the accomplished

facts of change, accepted

or forgotten. The woods are a mangle

of lines, yet delicate, yet precise,

when I take the time to look closely.

If I’m not happy it must be my own fault.   

At the edge of the lawn my wife

bends down to uncover a flower, then another.   

The first splurge of crocuses.

And for a moment the sweep and shudder   

of the wind seems indistinguishable   

from the steady furl of water

just beyond her.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

Bid (meteorological) Winter adieu

To wish the last day of meteorological winter good-bye, this afternoon I drove by one of the two sugarbushes nearby. There were no buckets hanging yet. Last year the taps were in and the buckets hanging by the third week in March so there's time to get it done yet this year. Everything should be in place by the time we get to days above freezing and nights below 32F. The extended forecast offers hope of that in a couple of weeks. I haven't ever tapped a tree, but I've hand drilled holes and driven nails. I'd guess no more than 10 minutes a tree, six trees and hour. That would make what was there last year appear to be less than half a days work for one person. What do you think?

sugarbush in March

Photo by J. Harrington

It felt good to be back in a part of the county I haven't visited for several months. The country was pretty much as I'd left it including a few cornfields still standing unpicked. We'll try to work in at least weekly trips to see if sap gets gathered this year.

The Forest at the Edge of the World

By Rynn Williams 

Today I left groceries by the playground on Hudson

and tried to haul, up toward my block,

a cross section of a maple grown too large,

chainsawed into manhole covers. Alphonso,

Super for All Buildings east of the projects,

stopped sweeping. He leaned his bald broom

against the stoop, nudged the wood with his toe.

“Nothing to do but roll it,” he said, hands

deep in his pockets. I nodded,

barely believing my luck in the midst of asphalt,

transistor radios, and the wet smell of dogs

as he squatted eye level with the log, heaved it

against his shoulder like a man who bears

a handmade cross for miles on his pentitent back.

I saw a kind of glory in his eyes, he understood

the heft of the trunk, nicks in the damp bark.

I stood on the side and righted the thing

and together we rolled this boulder of tree

past the Indian deli, the Russian shoe repair,

the Caribbean bakery. “You can smell the forest,”

he said, as we reached my stoop, wood

in the crook of his neck, sawdust and humus and sweat.

And we hoisted the thing, one step at a time, stopping

only to breathe the scent of sap and after a good half hour

it was filling the whole of my apartment—

the shade, the damp smell, that enormous presence—

light brown rings so perfect my whole life

fell right down inside them, concentric circles,

tree within tree, the single slab a world within itself—

suddenly it was thirty-five years ago:

I stood on the edge of a forest, someplace upstate,

and looked up into the branches of my first

true and majestic tree, in the first real forest—trees

instead of buildings. Oh the breadth of those limbs—

after the taut geometry of elevator, fire escape, lobby,

to see through branches to the sun—I believed

the world was mine, there was sap in my veins,

the tree was limitless, the scent of the tree,

the bark and the branch and the six-year-old sightline,

which goes on to the edge of the known world.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.

More daylight brings melting, mud, and maples

Yesterday we shared with you the Phenology Checklist from the Annanberg Learner Journey North web site. The first set of questions has to do with how much our photoperiod (daylight) increases each month from January 20 through May 20. For our local neighborhood, it looks like this:

So, on average we gain just a little more than an hour of daylight per month, or about two minutes a day. From my now vague recollections of grammar school days, I recall learning that the days got longer in the Spring and shorter in the Autumn. I don't remember learning anything about how much per day or month. I find it's more satisfying to know it's about a minute in the morning and another in the evening than to just grasp the general concept.

melting at the dark edges

Photo by J. Harrington

The local road is starting to absorb some warmth from the sun and melt ice and snow patches at their edges, even though the temperature is staying well below freezing. If I'm not careful, I could start to get encouraged. There's a local sugarbush or two about 15 or 20 miles from here. This weekend might be a good time to see if they've got their buckets hung yet. Sap might start flowing in the next few weeks.

[the snow is melting]

By Kobayashi Issa

Translated By Robert Hass 

The snow is melting

and the village is flooded

      with children.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.