It's "Earth-is-heating" season

It's the season of thunderstorms, heat and humidity. Butterfly weed is in bloom. Day lilies have started to come into flower, something like a couple of weeks later than I remember from years past. Sheep sorrel has added a reddish tinge to some road sides and disturbed fields. June is about to become July. Days are already about two minutes shorter than a week ago at the solstice. We've started to enjoy this year's occasional sightings of turkey poults and whitetail fawns.

Common Sheep Sorrel (Rumex acetosella)

Photo by J. Harrington

Last week we ordered something unusual, buckthorn honey. It's the first time I recall seeing any beneficial use from this invasive species. There's also a relatively recent report that fungus / fungi can help provide biological control of buckthorn. It seems to me such an approach would be far preferable to the use of chemical herbicides. Finding or creating additional beneficial uses might also lead to better management decisions. I'm far from an expert, but it seems a goal of eradication of buckthorn in Minnesota may be an unrealistic goal.

I was pleased to read that Minnesota's environmental perspective(?) is becoming more holistic. We no longer have "rough [trash] fish" in this state. Even the much maligned carp is now a “regulated invasive species.”

The adjustments to how we practice environmental stewardship are, I believe, critically important because our planetary environment currently is changing at rates faster than historic evolution reflects. We are also a much more significant factor in creating planetary changes than ever before. It's past time we learned how to do it right.

 Salvage 

Ada Limón 1976 –

On the top of Mount Pisgah, on the western
slope of the Mayacamas, there’s a madrone
tree that’s half-burned from the fires, half-alive
from nature’s need to propagate. One side
of her is black ash and at her root is what
looks like a cavity that was hollowed out
by flame. On the other side, silvery green
broadleaf shoots ascend toward the winter
light and her bark is a cross between a bay
horse and a chestnut horse, red and velvety
like the animal’s neck she resembles. I have
been staring at the tree for a long time now.
I am reminded of the righteousness I had
before the scorch of time. I miss who I was.
I miss who we all were, before we were this: half
alive to the brightening sky, half dead already.
I place my hand on the unscarred bark that is cool
and unsullied, and because I cannot apologize
to the tree, to my own self I say, I am sorry.
I am sorry I have been so reckless with your life.

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

Sliding toward Summer

Today is the last day of this Minnesota legislative session. The evening weather forecast for today is full of thunderstorms. Some of us don't think that's coincidental. Democrats have a one vote edge in the senate and the house is evenly split with a Republican speaker. Will we ever grow up enough to elect those who believe solving problems is more important than win-lose? Should we only vote for those with knowledge about Multi-solving?

One of my long-time favorite authors has a (relatively) new book. Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, has written Bud Finds Her Gift. I'm planning on sharing it with our five year old granddaughter soon. Meanwhile, Ive been enjoying it myself. (Evidence I'm just an aged kid? Perhaps!)

Large-flowered Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum) in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Locally the trees are mostly leafed out with few bare branches visible. Lilac buds have developed on our bushes. It's about time to look for trillium in bloom. The rain we're supposed to get over the next several days should help bring some additional flowers into bloom but may make planting season messy and muddy for farmers in the area.

Yesterday, I baked a round loaf of sourdough bread full of blueberry jammies. The jammies turned the dough into a slippery, sticky mess, perhaps aided and abetted by suboptimal starter. The crust is darker than I like and the crumb more moist than I prefer. The bread is edible but I need to work on my technique. I'm not baking regularly enough to stay in shape; actually, to keep my loaves in shape. Time to adopt Samuel Beckett's perspective: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

For the Children

by Gary Snyder

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

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

May the Fourth be with you this week! (couldn't resist)

Wild plum and other bushes are in flower. Some farmers have begun field preparation for this growing season. Trees are in various phases of leaf out. We enjoyed a small ceremonial fire to celebrate Beltane last Friday. Dandelions are in bloom everywhere. Pocket gopher activity is obvious in the field behind the house. Deer are shedding their winter coats. Marsh marigolds, which some call cowslips, are blooming. Even though we had a couple of overnight freezes this week past, Spring is peaking as we watch. You are watching, aren't you?

marsh marigolds in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

The next time we post here it will be Mother's Day. We've managed to get organized early this year so we''re hoping to avoid, or at least minimize, last minute panics. We'll see how the count down to and the holiday herself play out. Meanwhile, we hope all Moms everywhere (actual and surrogate) feel loved and appreciated every day.

The Minnesota Legislature is in its final weeks for this session. They look as if they'll be about as productive and useful as Congress. How do we find ways to elect politicians who are more committed to solving problems than to scoring political points. Perhaps we could be better represented if more folks knew about the Center for Effective Lawmaking it could be a start. We're rapidly reaching a stage where a majority party spends most of its efforts trying to undo what was done to them when they were in the minority. That doesn't help most of US most of the time.

As we approach Mother's Day this year, let's think about the Seventh Generation principle and look for ways to make mothers proud of US and our descendants.

On the Fifth Day

Jane Hirshfield
1953 –

On the fifth day

the scientists who studied the rivers

were forbidden to speak

or to study the rivers.

The scientists who studied the air

were told not to speak of the air,

and the ones who worked for the farmers

were silenced,

and the ones who worked for the bees.

Someone, from deep in the Badlands,

began posting facts.

The facts were told not to speak

and were taken away.

The facts, surprised to be taken, were silent.

Now it was only the rivers

that spoke of the rivers,

and only the wind that spoke of its bees,

while the unpausing factual buds of the fruit trees

continued to move toward their fruit.

The silence spoke loudly of silence,

and the rivers kept speaking

of rivers, of boulders and air.

Bound to gravity, earless and tongueless,

the untested rivers kept speaking.

Bus drivers, shelf stockers,

code writers, machinists, accountants,

lab techs, cellists kept speaking.

They spoke, the fifth day,

of silence.

—2017

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

Sometimes, days just hummm!

Even though Minnesota has an early season for teal and geese, I don't (won't) hunt waterfowl when the temperature's in the 70's and 80's. It would feel so unright to not be freezing sensitive parts of my anatomy while in a duck or goose blind. The current forecast includes temperatures at or above 80℉ through mid-week. Archery deer season opened yesterday when the high reached 82℉. That's weather for standing in a trout stream, maybe even wet wading, rather than sitting and sweating on a deer stand. At least that's according to me but judging by the number of parked vehicles in the area, some folks see it otherwise.

female ruby-throated hummingbird at feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of deer and warm weather, I'm please to note that the replacement serviceberry bushes are still showing green leaves inside their wire protective cages. Deer and/or rabbits and/or pocket gophers haven't yet done any obvious damage. Our fingers remain crossed but, to be honest, with the current state of the world, I feel a little like Merwin in the poem below. I heartily look forward to being proven wrong by events (or lack thereof).

Despite the return of summer after a recent cold front, I don't think I've seen a hummingbird at the feeder for a day or two now. It's about that time of year, for them to follow orioles south. UPDATE: as I was typing the previous sentence, a female ruby-throated hummingbird landed on the sugar water feeder. That pleases me almost as much as yesterday's discovery that we have some wild asters (perhaps silky asters) in bloom up on the slope behind the serviceberry bushes. I noticed them as I was watering the bushes.

Perhaps fall weather will arrive, and stay for a while, as we get to the autumn equinox a week from tomorrow, at 1:19 pm CDT. I've had enough of heat, humidity, and wildfire smoke for this year. Maybe cooler weather will also help cool some rhetoric and hot heads. That would be a help to avoid triggering the last day of the world.

Place

By W.S. Merwin

On the last day of the world
I would want to plant a tree

what for
not for the fruit

the tree that bears the fruit
is not the one that was planted

I want the tree that stands
in the earth for the first time

with the sun already
going down

and the water
touching its roots

in the earth full of the dead
and the clouds passing

one by one
over its leaves

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

back to the future? again?

The field behind the house is full of Spotted Horsemint, with scatterings of black-eyed Susans and a few compass plants. Purple Lovegrass provides a colorful, mist-like understory, if prairie-like fields can have an understory. Our wet spring seems to have prompted an abundance of late Summer natural beauty for this last week of August.

a cluster of Black-eyed Susan flowers

Photo by J. Harrington

Speaking of late Summer, the weather has taken a definite autumnal turn. Highs are forecast to be in the 70s all week with lows feeling as cool as forties and fifties, thanks to freshened breezes and last night's (early this morning's?) cold front that came through. Good weather for getting caught up on some yard chores that've been deferred due to heat, humidity or thunderstorms.

The elderberry bush in the wet spot behind the house has numerous clusters of berries replacing its midsummer blooms. Our lilac bushes have a few small clumps of flowers that feel out-of-season. We think there's at least one rough(?) blazing star in bloom in a spot not visible from the house. Learning to appreciate little things and natural beauty around us is taking some effort but is worth it, especially during these days when there's so much ugliness in our world. 

From time to time I find myself drifting back to the 1960s and 70s when some of my close friends were semi-hippie, back-to-the-land types. My iPhone has lots of folk music from those days, copied from my CDs. So many of Bob Dylan's lyrics seem prescient and traumatically relevant to today's situations. Or, to quote a refrain from one of Pete Seeger's classics: "When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?" Money isn't speech. Corporations aren't people any more than artificial intellligence is. We are all in this together and all of US need to learn to act that way, as of yesterday.

Back Up Quick They’re Hippies

By Lani O'Hanlon

 

That was the year we drove

into the commune in Cornwall.

“Jesus Jim,” mam said,

“back up quick they’re hippies.”

Through the car window,

tents, row after row, flaps open,

long-haired men and women

curled around each other like babies

and the babies themselves

wandered naked across the grass.

I reached for the handle, ready, almost,

to open the door, drop out and away

from my sister’s aggressive thighs,

Daddy’s slapping hands.

Back home in the Dandelion Market

I unlearnt the steps my mother taught,

bought a headband, an afghan coat,

a fringed skirt — leather skin.

Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.

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

Can Summer have a nadir?

Heat, humidity, thunderstorms, tornado watches, deer flies, smoke from Canadian wildfires -- must be Summer in the North Country. At least the air conditioning has kept working so far, although that hasn't done much to dissipate the heat under my collar generated by all the nonsense emanating from the political sector this week.

four-spotted skimmer dragonfly

Photo by J. Harrington

I did a quick check yesterday and learned that many (but not enough to satisfy me) creatures feed on deer flies. Last summer and this one we've had a superabundance of deer flies and a sparsity of dragon flies. I have no idea what's going on there except I like it better when there's more dragonflies eating deer flies so there's fewer deer flies trying to eat me. Plus, I just like dragonflies.

We've finally started to see some wild turkey poults with the hens. It's obvious the poults have no idea wnat a motor vehicle is all about but they do a pretty good job of following "mom" into the weedy roadside ditches and disappearing. The pale bracts of spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata) have become obvious in the fields behind the house. 

We're rapidly approaching the festival of Lughnasadh on August 1. Summer begins to slide into harvest season which flows into Autumn. This summer has been one of the least enjoyable I can remember, compounded by the fact that I've yet to wet a fly line (see first sentence above).

The Dragonfly

by Louise Bogan

You are made of almost nothing
But of enough
To be great eyes
And diaphanous double vans;
To be ceaseless movement,
Unending hunger,
Grappling love.

Link between water and air,
Earth repels you.
Light touches you only to shift into iridescence
Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,
You split into the heat.
Swift beyond calculation or capture
You dart into the shadow
Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.
But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,
For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall
With the other husks of summer.  

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

As we approach a time of resurrection

We’re close to mid-April this Palm Sunday. Here in the North Country, April is a time of snow showers and wild flowers. Wild turkeys begin mating rituals. Song birds return. Pregnant whitetail does will be dropping fawns in a month or two. Plant life (re)emerges from its winter retreat. Lakes and ponds lose their ice cover and some of us begin to lose our cabin fever as we wander about noticing Spring’s buds and blooms and growing warmth and open waters.

SiSi the yellow lab in her new home

Photo by J. Harrington

It was twelve years ago this month that SiSi came to live with us. She was between one and two when she arrived as a "rescue." We have had many happy times since she came and she has definitely done a good job of rescuing me. I'm glad we get to enjoy another Spring together, even though the Better Half has already found the first tick of the season on her.

April is also National Poetry Month. As part of my celebration, I bought a copy of Heidi Barr’s latest book of poems, Church of Shadow and Light, at a local independent book store, Scout & Morgan. As soon as I finish posting this, I'm going to start reading some of those poems as a reward for beginning Spring chores today. The back blade came off the tractor; both the front and back hoses got hooked up and water turned on; pounds of winter's mud got rinsed off the Jeep. It feels really good to be out and about doing something other than blowing snow, although we didn't have much of that to do this past winter.

Ever since last November, I've grown more and more concerned about the direction the returning administration has been trying to drag US and about the limited resistance expressed by those who are intended to serve as checks and balances to unbalanced behavior. Our current situation makes me think off how Native Americans have felt about the trail of broken treaties left behind by US. Maybe we'll respond to the stresses we're experiencing by realizing that we've allowed our spirits to be broken by relying on transactions instead of engaging in relationships. Perhaps we can learn what to do if we read and remember this poem.

For Calling The Spirit Back From Wandering The Earth In Its Human Feet

by Joy Harjo

Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that
bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel
the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and
back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were
a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the
guardians who have known you before time,
who will be there after time.
They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people
who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought
down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises,
interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and
those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few
years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and
leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the
thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning
by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call yourself back. You will find yourself caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.
Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It will return
in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be
happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and
given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who
loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no
place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

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

On the transformation of plants

It’s time for the weekly report on our community supported agriculture [CSA] share. Here’s what was in our box this morning:

• Broccoli Raab
• Summer Squash
• Tomatoes
• Green beans
• Onions
• Cucumbers
• Carrots with tops
• Parsley

Meanwhile, a messy field of weeds that was growing along the northern side of our driveway a couple of days ago has become a beautiful field of wild flowers that’s attracting several butterflies who enhance the attractiveness of the blossoms. One of the advantages of being a procrastinator is that it sometimes keeps me from making horrible mistakes. The “weed field” now looks like this:

our transformed "weed field"

Photo by J. Harrington

The picture, and the flowers, remind me of the paintings in our copy of American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide. As I recall, some of the a field guide entries include recipes for wildflowers good enough to eat. I wondered if anyone had focused a field guide on edible wildflowers when I remembered we used to have a copy of Euell Gibbons' Stalking the Wild Asparagus. A quick online search revealed the existence of several more recent volumes of a similar nature but they also cover wild plants rather than primarily wildflowers. This may be fun to explore some rainy day (or next winter).

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

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

Summer scenes seens

I’m happy to announce that the fields behind the house are home to a handful of black-eyed Susans, plus an abundance of spotted horsemint and what I’m guessing is round-headed bush clover. As the soil slowly dries out, I’m again taking a crack at doing some yard work, without overdoing it. So I was driving the tractor this morning to dump a garden cart full of leaf rakings and grass clippings that had been unattended to because it has been either too hot, too wet, or I wasn’t in the mood. There’s most likely other plants that have grown and developed since I last was in the fields, but I was just noticing the obvious changes.

spotted horsemint (Monarda punctata)

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday afternoon, three wild turkey hens again escorted a mob of poults through the yard, this time they came right up to the house to check the droppings from the bird feeder that hangs on the deck railing. The feeder is constantly being visited by chick-a-dees, rose-breasted grosbeaks, goldfinches, hairy, downy, and red-bellied woodpeckers, white- and red-breasted nuthatches, occasional red-winged blackbirds, bluejays, and sometimes “others.” We even get ruby-throated hummingbirds at the sugar water feeders once or twice a day.

After today we’re looking at a ten-day forecast full of temperatures in the upper 80’s+. That’s going to limit my yard work ambitions but we’ll see if we can just pick away at it before it gets too warm each day. Then we’ll sit in the air-conditioned house and read more of Sarah Kendzior’s They Knew. I’m checking to see if my cynicism is well-founded or misplaced. We are in election season you know.

July prayer to survive the summer

Robin Walter

Today was the first day I saw
the father of the chicks
come to the antlers—First,

he landed on the doorframe—looked at me
hard—before making the short flight
to nest—

The mother came busily on his tail-feathers—
a small grey worm in her beak—
ushered him out of her way—

                                    *

I wonder about the day
these birds will first
take flight—

which instincts they’ll suspend
& which they’ll trust—which of the tiny birds
will last the Fall—

                                   *

I am ahead of myself again—wanted
to tell you about instincts—how sometimes
they betray the body—no, sometimes
I betray the body—
 

                                  *

The father is back again—nothing in his beak.
Their chirps are so much louder today—almost like tiny bells,
or water spilling—

 

                                  *

Here, there is a father.
There are not always
fathers—

but always, birds,
& sometimes, yes,

a window.

                                  *

My mind flips to a line
I love: You can fall a long way in sunlight.
You can fall a long way in rain.

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

Getting real

No matter how inane our politics get, it's hard to be grumpy when faced with an abundance of wildflowers along roads and in summer fields. Again this morning I was reminded that I need to get out of the house and into the countryside more. Folk music on the Jeep radio as we head to the farm pick up barn, combined with an occasional sighting of does and fawns, or sandhill cranes, provides a wonderful respite from doom scrolling and headline scanning.

a field of black-eyed Susans

Photo by J. Harrington

Here’s what’s in our community supported agriculture [CSA] share this week:

• CUCUMBERS
• SUMMER SQUASH ASSORTMENT
• GREEN or RED SALANOVA LETTUCE
• TOMATOES
• ONIONS
• PARSLEY, and
• KOHLRABI

The Better Half has been flexing her creativity muscles finding new, and relatively appetizing, ways to use up the fresh vegetables I keep signing us up for each year but hate to eat. I’m not sure I can live long enough to actually enjoy veggies but I like to idea of supporting organically grown and local. These days it’s similar to the way I like the idea of being a Democrat more than the reality. Then, again, when I look at much of the rest of the world, our trials and tribulations are so much less than being bombed or jailed for doing your job as a journalist or just being who you are. That level of problem makes junk mail, spam calls and texts and even software system failures not less annoying but put in a different perspective.

Beans

Mary Oliver
1935 – 2019

They’re not like peaches or squash.
Plumpness isn’t for them. They like
being lean, as if for the narrow
path. The beans themselves sit qui-
etly inside their green pods. In-
stinctively one picks with care, 
never tearing down the fine vine,
never noticing their crisp bod-
ies, or feeling their willingness for
the pot, for the fire.

I have thought sometimes that
something—I can’t name it—
watches as I walk the rows, accept-
ing the gift of their lives to assist
mine.

I know what you think: this is fool-
ishness. They’re only vegetables.
Even the blossoms with which they
begin are small and pale, hardly sig-
nificant Our hands, or minds, our
feet hold more intelligence. With
this I have no quarrel. 

But, what about virtue?

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

Signs of deep Summer

Roadsides are sporting patches of bergamot and black-eyed Susans. Some fields of corn are starting to tassel. Flocks of swifts or swallows (both?) are gathering on phone and electric wires. We’re into the second half of July, deep Summer. Are we now at Summer’s nadir or its peak, or is there a better word? Remember, one can only go halfway into a forest before starting back out. Is this also true of seasons?

roadside bergamot in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Last night the temperature dropped into the mid-50’s. This morning’s air held the slightest hint of autumn. The Druid harvest festival of Lammas, or Lughnasadh is two weeks away, on August 1, followed by the beginning of meteorological Autumn on September 1 and then the Equinox, about three weeks later. There’s still plenty of time to enjoy summer before we reach my favorite season.

This morning I ate one of the juicier peaches I’ve ever enjoyed. Peaches are one of my summer symbols, along with heat, humidity, thunderstorms, ice cream cones, and bugs. Guess which are my favorites.

Yesterday I finally caught in a live trap the chipmunk that lived under the front stoop. Apparently mice ate the peanut butter I had been using for bait. I reset the trap with an apple core for bait and a day or so later, success! The critter has been translocated to some woods across a nearby river so I’m not expecting a return. We now have to keep our eyes open to see if anyone else moves in.

Summer Haibun

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

To everything, there is a season of parrots. Instead of feathers, we searched the sky for meteors on our last night. Salamanders use the stars to find their way home. Who knew they could see that far, fix the tiny beads of their eyes on distant arrangements of lights so as to return to wet and wild nests? Our heads tilt up and up and we are careful to never look at each other. You were born on a day of peaches splitting from so much rain and the slick smell of fresh tar and asphalt pushed over a cracked parking lot. You were strong enough—even as a baby—to clutch a fistful of thistle and the sun himself was proud to light up your teeth when they first swelled and pushed up from your gums. And this is how I will always remember you when we are covered up again: by the pale mica flecks on your shoulders. Some thrown there from your own smile. Some from my own teeth. There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air

the cool night before
star showers: so sticky so
warm so full of light

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

What if “highly irregular” becomes the new regular?

The good news is I wasn’t in the midst of yard chores, or standing in a river waving a stick, when the down pour let loose. A few rumbles of thunder, but no lightning that we saw, accompanied the rain. If I had been wading, I probably would have to have fallen into the river to get any more wet than the  “showers” would have left me. Then, it was all over in ten minutes or so. Will there be more today? Who knows? Certainly not the meteorologists who cover themselves in glory with a forecast that includes “isolated thundershowers” or “scattered thunderstorms.” 

our wildflower meadow, late June 2024

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, there are no rain events in the 10-day forecast, except for today. The (abnormally) wet weather we’ve had so far this summer created some beautiful patches in the fields behind the house. [see above.] To paraphrase a line from an old Tom Paxton song, “I can’t help but wonder where I’m [it’s] bound.” After all the years we’ve lived here and let much of the property enjoy benign neglect, this summer’s rain has transformed the fields from scraggly grass and sedges into wildflowers and/or weeds, depending on your perspective. What will be growing next year and where are this year’s mulleins? [Until today, I had no idea that mullein has so many medicinal uses.]

Some of us suspect that what we’re seeing this year may be the results of intermittent seedings over the years finally getting enough water to trigger germination. If that’s the case, and we refuse to install an irrigation system, will next summer provide only scruffy grass again? Last summer the extended drought triggered massive fields of yellow flowers in several local wetlands. So far this year, we’ve seen no sign of them but the season’s not over yet.

All of this makes me wonder what life may be like if the “new normal” doesn’t provide regular patterns and rhythms as much as it offers persistent inconsistencies in weather.

Characteristics of Life

Camille T. Dungy
1972 – 

^{A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
—BBC Nature News}

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
                          speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
                                        of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
                                                        I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
                        one thing today and another tomorrow
        and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

                        I move as the currents move, with the breezes.
What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle
ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day.

Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that's all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of distances
        between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
                                                        I will speak
                        the impossible hope of the firefly.

                                                You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must understand
        such wordless desire.

                                To say it is mindless is missing the point.

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

June showers bring summer flowers

I was distressed that the city’s ditch mower had knocked out every milkweed plant growing between our driveway and the field entrance on our property, until this morning when I noticed how many milkweed plants are growing in the field behind the house. Rarely have we seen many milkweed plants growing in those fields, but this year’s rains have been far more than normal. Will that bring pollinators back to our property? We’ll see. Once again our pear tree, which was covered with blooms earlier this spring, has no fruit that I can see. I believe it’s due to a lack of pollinators but it could also be that there’s nothing to cross pollinate with, or both. Anyhow, our fields are full of rarely seen wildflowers and that pleases me more than the rainy, cloudy days have annoyed me.

back yard pear tree in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

The blossoms on the elderberry bush are looking much more abundant than usual. If any pollinators arrive in time, we could have a bumper crop of elderberries. Again, we’ll see. As we move into a less rainy pattern, I have to keep reminding myself that living here and managing the property is a life style, not a series of chores to get done. I “decided” toward the end of winter that I was going to take a more relaxed, less middle-class suburbanite approach to yard work. We can add one more to the list of easier said than done. Can you say OCD-type symptoms?

The tray of bergamot seedlings continues to look happy. Some day soon the Better Half and I will sketch out where we want to plant them but that’s a challenge for another day especially since the guides I’ve seen suggest planting them 18 inches apart and we have almost three dozen “cubes" of seedlings in the tray. This is beginning to remind me of the story of The Man Who Planted Trees.

Come slowly – Eden! (205)

By Emily Dickinson

Come slowly – Eden!

Lips unused to Thee –

Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –

As the fainting Bee –

Reaching late his flower,

Round her chamber hums –

Counts his nectars –

Enters – and is lost in Balms.

 

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

We’re in summer mode!

Today I think I discovered we have some yellow butterfly weed growing on the rise behind the house. As far as I know, all the butterfly weed I’ve seen previously was orange. I was today year’s old when I learned there is a yellow butterfly weed (or I may have it confused with hoary puccoon). Two of the regular, orange, butterfly weed plants appear to have survived the winter and are now blooming. Almost all the poison ivy I sprayed a week or ten days ago is looking very sickly. Once we get a cooler, drier spell, I’ll spray some that I seem to have missed or that grew since I sprayed.

Butterfly-weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Photo by J. Harrington

Now that we’re living in a city (Chisago), that was annexed from the township (Lent) we used to live in, the city started mowing roadsides today in our area. (It’s not legal before August first outside a city.) Most of the township merged with Stacy and even though we ended up in Chisago, our mailing address remained in Stacy. Go figure!

Anyhow, today is the day I trimmed around our mail box, because the city skipped mowing close to it. Getting the weed whacker started in the heat and humidity was a treat, but once started it worked fine. (Another reason to convert to all electric yard tools.) I’ll whack around some flower beds tomorrow and the day after, if it’s not raining. All the rain that’s fallen the past several weeks has the Anoka Sand Plain section behind our house bursting with wildflowers. I don’t recall it ever looking so pretty in the quarter century we’ve been here.

Since I wore myself out with unaccustomed yard work this morning, I’m signing off until tomorrow. It’ll take awhile for me to get acclimated to the heat and “homditty.”

Wildflowers

By Reginald Gibbons

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

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

... and the livin’ is easy

Forsythia blooms are gone. Lilacs are well past peak flowering. Purple vetch blooms are filling local fields. Butterfly weed, and black- and brown-eyed Susans will be blooming by month’s end or thereabouts. Father’s Day is next Sunday. Summer solstice occurs locally less than a week later, at 3:50 pm on June 20. Our community supported agriculture [CSA] summer shares start next Saturday. We’re sliding into deep summer and the weather patterns so far have left personal priorities' conflicts between catching up on yard work and catching up on fishing as the weather improves.

a field with butterfly weed and black-eyed  susans

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve basically carried “No Mow May” well into June, largely due to persistent intermittent rain making the grass too wet to mow well. If it wasn’t raining, the wind was blowing hard enough to make casting a fly line potentially hazardous. This week we’ll make a dent in the yard clean-up and see if we can squeeze in at least one trip to check out a local trout stream. It looks like water levels are dropping to something close to normal and I refuse to get too bent out of shape about missed opportunities. Controlling the weather is well above my pay grade and my son just gave me an early birthday present that promotes me from codger to curmudgeon. That means I’m officially old enough to legitimately use age as an excuse to sit on my butt and read if I can’t go fishing and don’t wanna mow. It’s not like I’ve got a Home Owners Association breathing down my neck.

Summer

By Carlo Betocchi
Translated by Geoffrey Brock

And it grows, the vain

summer,

even for us with our

bright green sins:

behold the dry guest,

the wind,

as it stirs up quarrels

among magnolia boughs

and plays its serene

tune on

the prows of all the leaves—

and then is gone,

leaving the leaves

still there,

the tree still green, but breaking

the heart of the air.

Notes:

Read the translator's notes on this poem. 

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

There are better ways

Bird feeders are back up. Birds are temporarily boycotting because we had the feeders down for a couple of days to discourage the peregrine falcon that was checking out the place.

Yellow Goat's Beard (Tragopogon dubius)

Photo by J. Harrington

The morning’s drive to pick up this week’s community supported agriculture [CSA] share was basically uneventful. Sightings included one whitetail deer, several pair of sandhill cranes, and multiple songbirds. Goat’s beard has started to bloom. The CSA share box included:

• BROCCOLI RABE
• BABY KALE SALAD MIX
• RADISHES
• GREEN INCISED AND MAGENTA LETTUCEs, and
• ENCORE LETTUCE MIX

I've been getting more and more frustrated with myself about the amount of time I spend doom scrolling social media while accomplishing little more than making snarky comments. Then I took a look at one of today’s emails and realized I’m already doing things to help make the world a better place. Voting is very important, but there’s lots more we can do the rest of the year. Here’s a list, via AFSC, of ways you might want to consider for yourself and your familly:

De-commodify what you can. Not everything has to be subject to money. Experiment with formal or informal mutual aid practices. These can include bartering; sharing time, resources, and skills; and receiving help yourself.

Consider self-provisioning. Are there things you can do, make, or grow for yourself and others? Possibilities include arts and crafts, music, gardening, preserving food, making bever-ages, raising chickens, do-it-yourself projects, and knitting.

Think about where your money goes. Consider moving it from big predatory financial banks to credit unions or locally owned financial institutions. When possible, spend yours on locally and sustainably produced goods and services and fair-trade items. Buy from worker-friendly businesses.

Support cooperative or alternative enterprises—or consider starting one. Community land trusts and similar efforts can be a way to preserve affordable housing and even support the local production of basic needs.

Research more possibilities. There are a huge number of resources and organizations that can help you learn more and find a niche to support this growing movement. Check out the websites of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network and RIPESS, the Intercontinental Social Solidarity Economy Network.

Further reading:

• Seven ways to build the solidarity economy by US network coordinator (and former AFSC staffer) Emily Kawano
• Realizing the Solidarity Economy and System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy, by Nonprofit Quarterly

 *********

The Campus on the Hill

By W. D. Snodgrass

Up the reputable walks of old established trees

They stalk, children of the nouveaux riches; chimes

Of the tall Clock Tower drench their heads in blessing:   

“I don't wanna play at your house;

I don't like you any more.”

My house stands opposite, on the other hill,

Among meadows, with the orchard fences down and falling;   

Deer come almost to the door.

You cannot see it, even in this clearest morning.

White birds hang in the air between

Over the garbage landfill and those homes thereto adjacent,   

Hovering slowly, turning, settling down

Like the flakes sifting imperceptibly onto the little town   

In a waterball of glass.

And yet, this morning, beyond this quiet scene,

The floating birds, the backyards of the poor,

Beyond the shopping plaza, the dead canal, the hillside lying tilted in the air,

Tomorrow has broken out today:

Riot in Algeria, in Cyprus, in Alabama;

Aged in wrong, the empires are declining,

And China gathers, soundlessly, like evidence.

What shall I say to the young on such a morning?—

Mind is the one salvation?—also grammar?—

No; my little ones lean not toward revolt. They

Are the Whites, the vaguely furiously driven, who resist   

Their souls with such passivity

As would make Quakers swear. All day, dear Lord, all day   

They wear their godhead lightly.

They look out from their hill and say,

To themselves, “We have nowhere to go but down;   

The great destination is to stay.”

Surely the nations will be reasonable;

They look at the world—don't they?—the world's way?   

The clock just now has nothing more to say.

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

Rapt or not?

Yesterday we had an afternoon visit for at least half a hour from a male American kestrel. He spent much of that time perched on the post that had held a bluebird house until a bear smashed it last year or the one before. We brought the bird feeders in early and will leave them down for a couple of days. So far today no kestrels have been in evidence but there are a number of hungry and disgruntled songbirds and woodpeckers on the deck railing.

male American kestrel in our back yard

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we were greeted by bright yellow hoary puccoon and blue spiderwort blossoms on the hillside fields behind the house. An orange butterfly, monarch I think, was nectaring on the puccoon blooms.The flowers, and the butterfly, were observed as I transported garden carts full of leaves accumulated along the foundation on the north side of the house. The leaves were too many and too thick to try just mulching them with a mower. While hauling the leaves off to the wood’s edge, I noticed a distressing number of poison ivy sprouts that will get a dose of Roundup after tomorrow’s rain, or after Sunday’s. Sometimes the joys of country living are enough for me to almost consider moving to a highrise condo. [Not really]

I don’t think we’ve any serious plans for the holiday weekend. We’ll try to get some yard work done between rain showers / thunderstorms, drink coffee and read while it’s raining, and maybe squeeze in some practice with a fly rod when and if the sun shines, meanwhile, watching to be sure a kestrel hasn’t snuck back in for a free lunch at our feeders.

Dispatches from Devereux Slough

Mark Jarman
1952 – 

Black Phoebe

Highwayman of the air, coal-headed, darting
Plunderer of gnat hordes, lasso with beak –

"Surely, that fellow creature on the wing,"
The phoebe thinks, "should fly like this."

                     And loops
His flight path in a wiry noose, takes wing
Like a cast line and hits the living fly,

Ripping it from the fluid of its life.


Devereux Lagoon

Shiners leap ahead of diving cormorants
And killdeer cry, alarming one another.
In an egret's beak, the catch flashes like shook foil.

How well these field glasses scope out the place—
A kestrel sky, serrations of the Madres,
And sand flats darkened by a rare rain shower.

Such an odd peace, as creatures stalk each other


Dispatch from Devereux Slough
               Fall, 2008
The gulls have no idea.
The distant bark of sea lions gives nothing away.
The white-tailed kite flutters and hunts.
The pelicans perform their sloppy angling.
The ironbark eucalyptus dwells in ignorance and beauty.
And the night herons brood in their heronry like yoga masters, each balanced on a twig.
The world has changed. The news will take some time to get here.


From the Garden Toad

A cri de coeur of mud, a heartfelt groan
Of deep damp, mother rainfall and her sire;

A plea from underground, from drooping shade,
From memories of sunlight and clear water;

Reproach of an old grandparent half-forgotten –

All in that voice, announcing a desire
To have sex under the giant philodendron.


Marine Layer

No one is out tonight, but just in case,
A tubaphone's deep echo, like a seine net,
Sweeps under darkness and pulls darkness in
The way a trellis shadow cages light.

To hear the foghorn is to hear your childhood,
If you were lucky to have lived near ocean,
Moving again into your neighborhood.


Overcast on Ellwood Mesa

Hawks like it. Wings cast no shadow, hovering,

And white crowned sparrows are easier to pick out
Among the foxtails, scurrying like mice.

Under the gray cloud cover, blue birds course
Like running water through the fennel stalks,

And the shrike, color of the sky, keeps watch
From the barbed wire of the startling green golf course.


September Song

Those phosphorescent shoulders of the night surf
Passing beneath the pier,
                     as we looked down,
Were an agitation in the falling water
Of creatures set to glowing,
                     all together,
By sudden apprehension, which we perceived
As incandescent wonder,
                     our eyes feasting,
Our hearts filled by the light of crashing down.


Shorebreak, 3 a.m.

At night the swell and crash, the swell and crash,
As waves rush forward, peak, and then collapse
Gasping and giving up a ghost of spray,
Sounds from a distance like a low-voiced hush.

Awake, alone, at the right hour to hear it,
That hush, for all the sleeplessness behind it,
Can lead one, walking wounded, back to sleep.


Sundowner

Waking at nightfall like the other monsters,
The vampire and the moonstruck wolfman, arson
Is hardly required to set your body burning,

Thirsting for dryness, dry brush, stucco houses.

Flame wind, ember wind, wind of moonlit smoke,
Rolling a fog of ash downhill to sea,

The sun's down is the harsh fur of your burning.


Surgeons

The egret is more patient than any watcher
And lances its incision when its stillness
Has made one look away.
                     Its anesthetic
Is stillness, and it numbs the water's skin.

The pelican takes a hatchet to the water,
The egret plies a scalpel.
                        They extract fish,
But one by smash and gulp, and one by stillness.


The Crystal Ship
       Sands Beach, Goleta

The famous rock star thought up his famous rock song
While gazing out at the oil derrick offshore.

Lit up at night it might look, to stoned eyes,
Like a faceted galleon perfect for a song.

Tonight, as sunset gives off its green flash,
The derrick has that look.
                     And so does the oil barge
Docked to it, dead black, filling up with cargo.


To a Dead Sea Lion at Sands Beach

You had returned from dry land back to water,
Preferring it, and welcomed the new limbs,
Webbed to conceal your toe and finger bones.

You rolled along the surf, all memory
Of other motion swept back in your wake,
And ended here, among fly-buzzing kelp.

Sleek swimmer drowned,
            and with your unwebbed bones.


Heaven

When we are reunited after death,
The owls will call among the eucalyptus,
The white tailed kite will arc across the mesa,
And sunset cast orange light from the Pacific
Against the golden bush and eucalyptus
Where flowers and fruit and seeds appear all seasons
And our paired silhouettes are waiting for us.

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

No pain from the rain on the plain (yet)

As noted previously on these pages, we live at the easternmost edge of the well drained Anoka Sand Plain. We’re currently under a flood watch that’s been in place since yesterday and continues through late tonight. The Sunrise River pools and marshes have been as deep as I’ve seen them in all the time we’ve lived here and that was before the current storm pattern kicked in. On a brighter side, all the rain we’re getting is helping our plants to exuberantly burst into bloom and grow inches overnight. The lilac blossoms look absolutely giddy and the peony plants are about three times as big as they were a day or two ago. Unfortunately, all this wetness is keeping me from yard chores so I’m compensating by staying warm and dry, drinking coffee, and reading poetry because, in addition to the rain, strong winds and occasional lightning is keeping me from fly fishing. It’s heartbreaking, but I’ll manage.

Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum)

Photo by J. Harrington

On the way to visit the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law, and Granddaughter yesterday evening, we noticed some pink wild geraniums where, in past years, we’ve seen only marsh marigolds growing along the township road ditch. In our own ditch, so far we’ve got only one milkweed plant growing amidst the mix. That’s not promising for attracting monarchs later this summer. We’ll cross our fingers that there are still some late emergers to show up. We’re still watching for swamp milkweed to bloom out around the wet spot behind the house.

I suspect that I end up saying something similar every year about this time, but the mosquitos are exceptionally thick and vicious this year. Where are the predatory birds, bats, and dragonflies when we need them? The dogs are managing to attract a few ticks. Does anyone know what feeds on ticks? Turkeys? Backyard chickens would probably be more trouble than they’re worth to minimize tick threats. Maybe if I didn’t feed the birds, they’d be more predatory but maybe seed feeders don’t also feed on bugs. There’s so much I don’t know about managing nature.

Rain

By Peter Everwine

Toward evening, as the light failed

and the pear tree at my window darkened,

I put down my book and stood at the open door,

the first raindrops gusting in the eaves,

a smell of wet clay in the wind.

Sixty years ago, lying beside my father,

half asleep, on a bed of pine boughs as rain

drummed against our tent, I heard

for the first time a loon’s sudden wail

drifting across that remote lake—

a loneliness like no other,

though what I heard as inconsolable

may have been only the sound of something

untamed and nameless

singing itself to the wilderness around it

and to us until we slept. And thinking of my father

and of good companions gone

into oblivion, I heard the steady sound of rain

and the soft lapping of water, and did not know

whether it was grief or joy or something other

that surged against my heart

and held me listening there so long and late.

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