Casting some light on Winter Solstice.

As this is written, we're midway through the briefest day of the year, leading to the longest night. Local sunrise this morning occurred at 7:48 am. Sunset will be 4:35 pm. If we've calculated correctly, that provides 8 hours and 47 minutes between sunrise and sunset today. We have no expectations of seeing any sunshine during that period although we've read somewhere on the internet (so it must be true) that December of last year was even more cloudy than this month has been. Sigh. Clear proof that less bad isn't the same as good.

Furthermore, we just noticed that yesterday's sunrise was at 7:48 am and sunset at 7:34 pm. That appears to give yesterday a minute less daylight than today. Tomorrow's sunrise and sunset are at 7:49 and 4:35, again a minute less daylight than today. Could our Minnesota Weatherguide be in error? It's time and dates are for the Twin Cities. The (online) Time and Date Calculator informs us that, at St. Croix Falls (about 30 to 35 miles North of St. Paul), today's sunrise was at 7:47 and sunset will be at 4:30 for a total of 8 hours and 43 minutes of daylight. The differences in day length at this time of year are measured in seconds (or less) and the Weatherguide doesn't reflect that level of sensitivity, but you may be heartened to know that, by month's end, we will have gained 47 seconds of daylight locally. No guarantee how much sunlight we'll actually get to enjoy, but that's standard operating procedure these days.

THE SHORTEST DAY BY SUSAN COOPER

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

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This Summer Day #phenology

I checked in my copy of the Minnesota Weatherguide Engagement Calendar this morning. Sunrise is now about forty-five minutes later than it was on the Summer solstice. Sunset has shrunk by about the same amount. We're now enjoying an hour and a half less daylight than we did about eight weeks ago.

butterfly and bee nectaring

Photo by J. Harrington

We have lots of goldenrod in bloom around the "wet spot" in the back yard. The swamp milkweed is attracting butterflies and bees. Today's temperatures and humidity have dropped enough that it's a pleasure to have windows and doors open around the house to let a very pleasant breeze waft through. In response to the lower humidity and temps, I'm beginning to show a few indications of ambition but nothing serious enough  to warrant concern.

I have no idea what species they were, but today, while doing some outdoor chores, I noticed two different dragonflies in the back yard. There are several dozen possibilities for this time of Summer, according to the cheatsheet I created from Kurt Mead's Dragonflies of the North Woods, but it's been awhile since I've noticed any dragonflies flying about. Maybe I need to pay more attention and spend more time outside.

spotted horsemint

Photo by J. Harrington

The first tumbling seed heads from the purple love grass started bouncing across the fields today. Or, today was the first time I saw any pretending to be tumbleweeds. Late afternoon sun has the grass stems glowing pinkish-purple. If it was growing closer to the spotted horsemint's green-tinted white leaves, the combination would be spectacular.

Earlier today it dawned on me that, as I've written these posts over the years, I've identified quite a few different plants that are growing on our property, but haven't tried to list them all in one place. That probably means I know more than I know I know. I'm going to start a consolidated listing as a way to focus on what I've learned rather than how much there still is to discover. I suspect that will let me feel at least a little better about the state of my own little world. It has more biodiversity than I've acknowledged.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

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It's mud season! #phenology

a gravel road early in mud season

Photo by J. Harrington

One week from today is March 1, the first day of meteorological Spring. Today the temperature is in the mid-40's, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. That combination leads to melting snow turning into rills and rivulets which, on gravel roads and unpaved shoulders makes mud and puddles. I don't doubt that we'll see more snow this season and, perhaps, well into astronomical Spring. But we know it won't last, at least that's what we hope. I'll try to not spoil it all by becoming too optimistic.

some leaf buds balloon in early Spring

Photo by J. Harrington

In two weeks Daylight Savings will return, bringing with it longer evenings and later sunrises. I've yet to settle on the details for planting a Three Sisters garden, so that needs to move near the top of the list. There's a couple of branches on one of our oaks that  catch the roll over protection on the tractor each time I mow under the tree. If I'm going to trim them I need to do it in the next week or so to minimize the chances of exposing the trees to oak wilt. Can you tell I'm getting excited about spending time outside? A poet that I probably don't read often enough has a wonderful poem about this time of year. Here's e.e. cummings on Spring:

[in Just-]

By E. E. Cummings

in Just- 

spring          when the world is mud- 

luscious the little 

lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 

running from marbles and 

piracies and it's 

spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 

old balloonman whistles 

far          and             wee 

and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it's 

spring 

and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 

far 

and 

wee

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A North Country Winter status report

In meteorological terms, we'll hit mid-Winter in a few days, on January 15. Astronomically it'll be a couple of weeks longer, on February 4. That's at least mildly encouraging. Winter is like a deep, dark forest. We can only go halfway in before we're on our way out.

a January sunrise

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the nice things about Winter in the North Country is that the sunrises and sunsets are often spectacular, and sunrise these days is late enough (about 7:45 am) to make it pretty painless to observe. On several recent days the dreary cloud cover that hangs around all day was, at sunrise, broken enough along the horizon and the tree line to permit enjoyment of our part of the earth turning toward the sun again. The rest of the day the sky and the sun were pretty much hidden behind a veil of clouds.

Another nice thing about Minnesota Winters is that they provide more guilt-free time for reading, and writing, when I don't feel I should be outside doing something else. Over the past Winters, I've enjoyed reading several of Terry Tempest Williams books, most particularly Finding Beauty in a Broken World. Late last year I read her most recent book, Erosion: Essays of Undoing, and a couple of years before that When Women Were Birds. This morning I stumbled into an essay by TTW on Why I Write. When I couldn't find that essay on TTW's web site, I discovered an internet blogger who had reformatted the essay into a manifesto which, to my eye, looks, and reads, suspiciously like a poem. I love it. What do you think?

"Why I Write"

by Terry Tempest Williams

I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.
I write to create fabric in a world that often appears black and white.
I write to discover. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts. I write to begin a dialogue.
I write to imagine things differently and in imagining things
differently perhaps the world will change.
I write to honor beauty. I write to correspond with my friends.
I write as a daily act of improvisation. I write because it creates my composure.
I write against power and for democracy.
I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.
I write in a solitude born out of community.
I write to the questions that shatter my sleep. I write to the answers that make me complacent.
I write to remember. I write to forget. I write to the music that opens my heart. I write to quell the pain.
I write with the patience of melancholy in winter. I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know.
I write as an act of faith. I write as an act of slowness.
I write to record what I love in the face of loss. I write because it makes me less fearful of death. I write as an exercise in pure joy.
I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt.
I write out of my anger and into my passion.
I write from the stillness of night anticipating -- always anticipating.
I write to listen. I write out of silence. I write to soothe the voices shouting inside me, outside me, all around me.
I write because I believe in words.
I write because it is a dance with paradox.
I write because you can play on the page like a child left alone in
sand.
I write because it is the way I take long walks.
I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness.
I write with a knife, carving each word from the generosity of trees.
I write as ritual.
I write out of my inconsistencies. I write with the colors of memory.
I write as a witness to what I have seen. I write as witness to what I imagine.
I write by grace and grit.
I write for the love of ideas.
I write for the surprise of a sentence.
I write with the belief of alchemists.
I write knowing I will always fail. I write knowing words always fall short.
I write knowing I can be killed by own words, stabbed by syntax, crucified by understanding and misunderstanding.
I write past the embarassment of exposure.
I trust nothing especially myself and slide head first into the familiar abyss of doubt and humiliation and threaten to push the delete button on my way down, or madly erase each line, pick up the paper and rip it into shreds -- and then I realise it doesn't matter, words are always a gamble, words are splinters from cut glass.
I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.
I write as though I am whispering in the ear of the one I love. 

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Sunrise, Sunset

Do you remember the lyrics from the song in Fiddler on the Roof, especially the refrain?

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

This morning and yesterday we started our day watching spectacular, sky-searing sunrises while walking one of our dogs. Today, while we were sipping our first post-walk cup of coffee, a ghostlike hummingbird visited the window-mounted nectar feeder in our office. The barely visible gray-tone flutters startled us because, for no particularly good reason, we didn't think hummingbirds fed before full daylight. At least that's the only time we've seen them at feeders prior to today.

late July sunrise, DSLR

Photo by J. Harrington

Unfortunately, once again we were frustrated by the apparent inability of our smartphone camera to capture deep fire colors from dawns like today's, about the shade of candy on this color thesaurus, or the bright band near the middle of the picture above, without washing them out. According to at least some folks, "The problem is that the auto white balance of digital cameras will typically try to cancel out any shift in color temperature, with the aim of producing results that are more neutral. As a result, the AWB setting can leech all the orange light out of sunset and sunrise shots, giving rise to insipid, neutral images as a result." (Problem #8) We'll see what happens after we spend some time reviewing iPhone camera tips and tricks, and maybe try a third-party camera app. Or, we could remember to take our DSLR for early morning walks in late Spring and early Summer, although we've had similar issues with that camera. Time to learn more about how to use a DSLR? Isn't technology wonderful, the way it "just works?" Conversely, we'd like it if our DSLR included GPS info the way our smartphone does.

mid-May sunrise, iPhone 6

Photo by J. Harrington

As happens all too often with us, and, we suspect, many others, we spend time fiddling around with alternative technologies rather than settling down and mastering any one. We noticed that our artisan sourdough improved markedly the more we studied and practiced baking bread. Our fly casting improves the more we practice. But, with a camera or a computer, we expect to be able to pick it up and have it read our mind. When will we act on the recognition that spending $$ on a hobby is not a valuable substitute for spending time engaged in that same hobby? What else might this apply to?

An American Sunrise

By Joy Harjo

We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves. We

were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to strike.

It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were straight.

Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We

made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could sing

so we drummed a fire-lit pathway up to those starry stars. Sin

was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We

were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them — thin

chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little gin

will clarify the dark and make us all feel like dancing. We

had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz

I argued with a Pueblo as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June,

forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We

know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die

soon.

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Celebrate the Equilux #phenology

Where we live, sunrise today was at 7:03 a.m. and sunset will be at 7:03 p.m., according to the U.S. Naval Observatory. That means that today is equilux, equal amounts of day and night, although this morning's cloud cover severely limited the daylight. My whole life, I've known about equinoxes and solstices. I've also known that sunrise and sunset times vary by geographic location. That comes from years of duck hunting and being aware of legal shooting times.

Autumn sunset

Photo by J. Harrington

I hadn't put the difference between equinox and equilux together until today. I'll spare you the recitation of "unknown knowns," etc., but from a personal perspective, this factoid seems to neatly split the hair of the observation that "It ain't what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we think we know that just ain't so." (Unless, of course, you're Donald Trump, in which case you can get in trouble both for what you don't know (but should) and for what ain't so that you claim is.)

September dragonfly

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of such claims, yesterday afternoon, on the eve of this year's autumnal equilux, I noticed behind the house what I think may have been the year's last butterfly. It didn't want to let me get close enough for a good look, so I make no claims. I didn't see much white along the wings but I couldn't judge size of see a black band. Several mosquitoes, but less than Summer's multitudes, attacked me as I wandered after the butterfly. There was also a late season dragonfly, no doubt trying to feast on the mosquitoes that were trying to feast on me while I was trying to identify a butterfly. It is all hitched to each other. Muir is correct as is Joni Mitchell -- "...and the seasons they go round and round..."

Besides the Autumn poets sing (131)

Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

Besides the Autumn poets sing, 
A few prosaic days 
A little this side of the snow 
And that side of the Haze - 
  
A few incisive mornings -         
A few Ascetic eves - 
Gone - Mr Bryant’s “Golden Rod” - 
And Mr Thomson’s “sheaves.” 
  
Still, is the bustle in the brook - 
Sealed are the spicy valves -         
Mesmeric fingers softly touch 
The eyes of many Elves - 
  
Perhaps a squirrel may remain - 
My sentiments to share -
Grant me, Oh Lord, a sunny mind -        
Thy windy will to bear!

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That time of year

Don't forget there's a Lunar Eclipse tonight! Tomorrow is the Ides of National Poetry Month. Yesterday the weather and my mood were a pretty good match. I spent more time than is good for me grumping about the gray, cloudy day. It wasn't a bad day for reading and getting caught up on some filing but I'd yet to buy this season's fishing license or get any rods and reels ready for an outing. I wanted to be out in sunshine and warmth doing something less productive but more fun than filing. I took a late afternoon walk, to confirm whether the pond up the road was ice free. It was. Back home, as the day was coming to it's close, one of the most spectacular sunsets I've seen in a long time exploded onto the western horizon. See for yourself (as is often the case, the reds in the "save for the Internet" version are washed out compared to the original).

One of Spring's spectacular sunsets          © harrington

We've now reached that time of year when we bring the bird feeder from the deck into the house each evening. The evening I get absent-minded and forget will be the night the local bear decides to visit. Such is life in the country. Scott County poet Frances March Davey has a poem in County Lines that captures one of my character flaws that often becomes particularly prevalent at this time of year.

Frances March Davey

Perversity

Why do I always wish
For other things—
For Indian Summer's smoky haze
In quiet Springs?

Why do I want the gentian's blue
Instead of hepatica's silvery hoods?
Why do I want the grebe's call?
Why do I long for Autumn woods?

Why do I always want some other thing?
In the Spring the Fall,—in Fall the Spring.

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