After last week's storm, the snow bank in front of the house is back to about where it was on April 1. The gap is 27 inches (about 70 cm) between the bottom of the bird feeder and the top of the snow. You can also see the largely ice-free driveway for which the dogs and the dog walkers are grateful.
We couldn't grab any photos of them yesterday or today, but bufflehead have arrived and are moving through. As this is being written, the outside temperature is in the low 50's. Some members of the household have planted seeds and are anxiously awaiting sprouting. Others keep finding what, in person, appear to be undersized compost bins, suggesting a home-made solution may be needed. We're all also working on the question of where the beehives and the chicken coop should go, remembering that locations that are convenient in summer may not be so with a foot or two of snow on the ground. The same issue is playing out with the "permanent" location for the compost bin. Country living at its best is a four season affair. The pond up the road hasn't yet reached open water, but it's getting close.
David Mason
The Pond
Downcast thermometers record one truth
of winter, through the clear light hints of spring.
The furnace blows a warming reverie
where I drop anchor somewhere in the woods
with a girl I haven't seen for twenty years.
I find the pond secluded in the park,
filled by a waterfall beside a bluff
where we held hands and jumped, yelling love,
laughing to find ourselves alive again
and young as always, touching each other's skin.
Tonight the temperature is due to fall
an arctic stillness settle on the prairies...
The years slow down and look about for shelter
far from forests and far from summer ponds:
the mind ghosting out in a shoal of stars.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
Monday, April 7, 2014
Snow melts, ground warms, ice goes out
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Jobs: yes; Environment: Yes; DFL: ?
This morning, a planter of tulips has replaced the holly bush that used to be on the book case. A pot of yellow narcissus adorns the dining table. It's two weeks until Easter and waterfowl plus open water have arrived at Carlos Avery. The mallards were far enough away they only show in a larger picture. The trumpeter swans and Canada geese are large enough to stand out in a blog-sized photo, as is this close up of a red wing blackbird.
Perhaps as significant as the open water is the fact that, for the second time within the past week, our driveway is functionally ice free. A different significant discovery was reported in today's Star Tribune. "Iron Range rebellion halted wild rice initiative." Having tracked this issue for some time, I can't say I'm surprised, just deeply disappointed. As far as I can see, Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor party has two major constituencies these days: labor and environmentalists. It's been too long since we've seen any sign of the kind of political leadership that could create necessary alliances (like the Minnesota Blue-Green Alliance) in northern Minnesota. It seems to me that lacking leadership with foresight and direction, the Iron Range communities will always face the kind of future Loren Niemi describes in his poem Hibbing, a future with neither jobs nor a desirable environment.
Loren Niemi
Hibbing
In the town where I was born the scarred
earth could always be seen, the bloody
slag piles, the boom and bust on the fortunes of steel
making mountains where molehills once stood.
My father's and a thousand other fathers'
childhoods carried away in ore cars
to feed American progress while
the mines devoured the ground where houses stood.
If I were there, I'd join the crawl
up First and down Howard
behind the wheel of a souped-up hot rod
capable of speed but rumbling in second gear.
Nowhere to go, nothing to do,
my cousins boil the night away with unnamed desire
to graduate and leave looking for anything
that is not this town, this work, this life, this fear.
If I were there, I might not be so lucky—
end up supporting a family for union wages
measuring time by the mine whistle
in a land dying but never quite dead.
Never quite rich, still restless and working for retirement and the cabin on the lake or
a kid's college education like the one I'm getting
because my old man left that town long ago.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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