Season's ending, season's beginning #phenology

For the record, Wednesday, September 14 was probably the last observance of hummingbirds at our feeders for this year. That seems to be consistent with the Journey North/South map, but then we wrote something similar a week or so ago. The long-gone bluebirds left behind one unhatched egg. We're already anticipating next Spring's return, although there's a house move that needs to be attended to before then. We'll see if we can get enough separation between the bluebirds and the tree swallows, the ones that nest in our purple martin house, to keep them from squabbling. (Did you catch that word play?)

abandoned bluebird nest with egg

Photo by J. Harrington

We are into the last possible week of Summer, but that doesn't foreclose more Summer-like weather. The roller coaster continues. This Friday will be the Autumnal Equinox. Meteorological and astronomical seasons will be back in alignment, although the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms and temperatures near 90℉. In anticipation of today's and tomorrow's cooler temperatures providing for more comfortable working conditions, yesterday afternoon the Better Half suggested a trip to Prairie Restorations in Scandia. We're working on a planting scheme to replace the buckthorn and cedar that some of us have been busy pulling from a small patch of oak's behind the house.

(Every time we read through "how to remove and replace buckthorn," we get almost overwhelmed but the levels of knowledge, work and patience involved. It makes us yearn for the Zen (and Tao) perspective from the Tao Te Ching:

When nothing is done,

Nothing is left undone.

But then we remember that's how we ended up with so damn much buckthorn in the first place.)

Prairie Restorations' field edge

Photo by J. Harrington

We don't necessarily expect to end up with parts of the property looking like the PR fields in Scandia, but our hopes, often dashed, are slightly diminished but unquenched. If our hopes were a wildfire, figure they'd be about 8% or 9% contained. Although we are leaning more and more toward a permaculture approach to invasive species management, we think buckthorn presents a more difficult constellation of issues, since we've yet to see reference to hardly any beneficial uses by either wildlife or humans. (The wood from larger trees is pretty and can make some nice tools, like spoons, but the brush and berries, NO, they suppress native plants and provide minimal nutrition.)

On a brighter note, it looks as if at least one of the sweet grass plants that was planted last Spring has made it through the Summer. There's also some tall grasses, not big bluestem or sweet grass, that we need to try to identify. We noticed those as we were fertilizing the asters the Better Half planted yesterday. End of season sales at Prairie Restorations induce irrational exuberance in some of us.

                     Native Trees

By W. S. Merwin

Neither my father nor my mother knew

the names of the trees

where I was born

what is that

I asked and my

father and mother did not

hear they did not look where I pointed

surfaces of furniture held

the attention of their fingers

and across the room they could watch

walls they had forgotten

where there were no questions

no voices and no shade

Were there trees

where they were children

where I had not been

I asked

were there trees in those places

where my father and my mother were born

and in that time did

my father and my mother see them

and when they said yes it meant

they did not remember

What were they I asked what were they

but both my father and my mother

said they never knew

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

Autumn leaves #phenology

It is a pensive, cloudy morning. Summer's leaves leap from the only home they've ever known onto the backs of passing winds. Their rides will be brief but, oh, so exhilarating! Freedom comes rarely for them. It will be eons before they get this thrill again. First, they must spend Winters and many seasons following as they reshape and return to their source. Only then can their journey again become a climb to reach for the heavens.

leaving home

Photo by J. Harrington

destination unknown

Photo by J. Harrington

journey interrupted

Photo by J. Harrington

Wish them timely, uninterrupted journeys and godspeed on their return.

                     Immortal Autumn

By Archibald MacLeish

I speak this poem now with grave and level voice   

In praise of autumn, of the far-horn-winding fall.

I praise the flower-barren fields, the clouds, the tall   

Unanswering branches where the wind makes sullen noise.

I praise the fall: it is the human season.

                                                                  Now

No more the foreign sun does meddle at our earth,   

Enforce the green and bring the fallow land to birth,   

Nor winter yet weigh all with silence the pine bough,

But now in autumn with the black and outcast crows   

Share we the spacious world: the whispering year is gone:   

There is more room to live now: the once secret dawn   

Comes late by daylight and the dark unguarded goes.

Between the mutinous brave burning of the leaves   

And winter’s covering of our hearts with his deep snow   

We are alone: there are no evening birds: we know   

The naked moon: the tame stars circle at our eaves.

It is the human season. On this sterile air

Do words outcarry breath: the sound goes on and on.   

I hear a dead man’s cry from autumn long since gone.

I cry to you beyond upon this bitter air.

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