It's too early for outside Spring chores, but...

Most of the snow is melted. This is the time of year when we have a very strong urge to "get a jump" on whipping the yard into shape: clean up the leaves; collect and burn fallen branches; start trapping pocket gophers; etc. This is the time of year when we have to slow down; remember to let the soil drain and dry. Don't compact the soil by working on it too soon. It's way too early to plant anything outside. Just enjoy the early spring season. The yard work will still be there next month. Have you finished doing the taxes yet? Then, next week, when conditions may be conducive to flying a kite or practicing fly casting in the yard, you can reward yourself for finishing this season's inside chores.

maple buds beginning to swell

Photo by J. Harrington

It looks like the leaf buds on the maples in front of the house are beginning to swell. Warm days and cool to cold nights should be supporting a good run of maple sap in the sugarbush. We've noticed the squirrels are chasing each other around the oak trees. Mating season should be over by now so we suspect they're just celebrating Spring in their own way. If they're careful, they won't become lunch for returning hawks like the one we saw and heard heading North yesterday.

We seem to be recovering nicely from the effects of yesterday's second COVID-19 vaccine shot. We still have a sore left arm, but the rest of us appears to be coming along with no more aches and pains than our normal old age provides.

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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The geese are back!

Today's posting will be brief. This morning we got our second shot of COVID-19 vaccine. Despite being only slightly sup-par so far, we want to report that on our drive to and from Minneapolis, we saw several small flocks of Canada geese along the mostly open water of the Sunrise River main channel just north and south of County Road 36 in Wyoming. We also saw a flock of 5 geese in the air as we headed toward the cities and, on the way home, noticed several small flocks of small ducks, species unidentified, mixed with the geese. The early scouts of the waterfowl world think it's Spring. Still no sightings of sandhill cranes, robins or red-winged blackbirds to report.

the geese are back!

Photo by J. Harrington

Over the weekend we hope to put aside the irrational exuberance we experienced due to the excessively warm weather over the past week or so. We're grateful most of the snow has melted and that last night's tornadoes weren't really close and the heavy snowfall stayed further North, where it belongs. Unfortunately, our dog SiSi was once again deeply troubled by the nearby thunder and lightening. We keep hoping she'll outgrow it and she keeps reverting to puppyhood whenever there's a thunderstorm in the area. Despite that, effective this afternoon, we're going to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, and not mess with Mr. Inbetween.

Spring Snow

By Linda Gregerson

A kind of counter- 

blossoming, diversionary, 

doomed, and like 

the needle with its drop 

of blood a little 

too transparently in 

love with doom, takes 

issue with the season: Not 

(the serviceberry bright 

with explanation) not 

(the redbud unspooling 

its silks) I know I've read 

the book but not (the lilac, 

the larch) quite yet, I still 

have one more card to 

play. Behold 

a six-hour wonder: six 

new inches bedecking the 

railing, the bench, the top 

of the circular table like 

a risen cake. The saplings 

made (who little thought 

what beauty weighs) to bow 

before their elders. 

The moment bears more 

than the usual signs of its own 

demise, but isn't that 

the bravery? Built 

on nothing but the self- 

same knots of air 

and ice. Already 

the lip of it riddled 

with flaws, a sort 

of vascular lesion that 

betokens—what? betokens 

the gathering return 

to elementals. (She 

was frightened 

for a minute, who had 

planned to be so calm.) 

A dripline scoring 

the edge of the walk. 

The cotton batting blown 

against the screen begun 

to pill and molt. (Who 

clothed them out of 

mercy in the skins 

of beasts.) And even 

as the last of the 

lightness continues 

to fall, the seepage 

underneath has gained 

momentum. (So that 

there must have been a 

death before 

the death we call the 

first or what became 

of them, the ones 

whose skins were taken.) 

Now the more- 

of-casting-backward-than-of- 

forward part, which must 

have happened while I wasn't 

looking or was looking 

at the skinning knives. I think 

I'll call this mercy too.

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