It’s plum beautiful!

 For the past several days, we’ve enjoyed the roadside beauty of wild plum bushes/trees in blossom. It’s one of our favorite events, along with other trees and bushes coming into flower. Speaking of which, our pear tree is just now coming into bloom. Many years it will reach peak bloom and the next day thunderstorms and winds will strip the blossoms. Maybe this year the sequence will be reversed since the storms this week have already passed through.

roadside wild plum blooming

Photo by J. Harrington

Last year the pear tree failed to produce fruit. I’m not sure if it was due to lack of pollination, we didn’t see any bees on the blossoms, or too brief a period of flowering, or something else. The failure to produce pears over the summer ended up with very few visits from the local whitetail deer during autumn and winter. We’ve got our fingers crossed that this year the tree will be more productive.

pear tree near peak bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

Oak trees have leafed out and the spaces between the branches are rapidly infilling with growing leaves. Dandelions in our backyard have finally produced flowers a week or so after the Daughter Person’s yard, despite the fact that she, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter live about 15 miles north of us. No signs of germination yet in the newly reseeded front yard but a mole tunnel that wasn’t there when we were raking has erupted. We’ll try again to use our mole trap, which has yet, over several years, to capture a mole. Moles, pocket gophers, dead oak branches all over the landscape and deer munching on the plants are among the frustrations of country living. Then again, they’re less annoying than some of the neighbors we’ve had to tolerate in suburban and urban locations.

May to April

Philip Freneau - 1752-1832

Without your showers, I breed no flowers,
    Each field a barren waste appears;
If you don't weep, my blossoms sleep,
    They take such pleasures in your tears.

As your decay made room for May,
    So I must part with all that’s mine:
My balmy breeze, my blooming trees
    To torrid suns their sweets resign!

O’er April dead, my shades I spread:
    To her I owe my dress so gay—
Of daughters three, it falls on me
    To close our triumphs on one day:

Thus, to repose, all Nature goes;
    Month after month must find its doom:
Time on the wing, May ends the Spring,
    And Summer dances on her tomb!

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Advice for the birds

 I think that this weekend we’ll reinstall the bird feeders. We’ve read the advice from the Raptor Center and also from the Cornell Ornithology Lab. As of the most recent data, our county has identified only domestic birds as being infected. We have no reason to suspect misinformation or disinformation from any of the organizations cited, but there are, we suspect, different priorities. The Raptor Center is focused on raptors. Cornell appears to place more emphasis on song birds. Raptors appear to be more susceptible, possibly from eating waterfowl?

We have no domestic poultry nor, to the best of our knowledge, do nearby neighbors. Although it appears to be a fairly limited risk, feeding birds on our deck is not without risk, but then life itself is not without risk, n'est-ce pas?

an occasional May visitor at the feeder

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ll probably ponder this question over the weekend and see if we can gain any additional insight or information. We’d be less inclined to think about this if the storms of this week hadn’t also brought about a notable rise in local trout streams we’re familiar with, thereby presenting us with additional risks to ourselves if we were to go wading. All told, we seem to have done a remarkably good job of screwing up both the climate and what used to be normal spring weather. The advice and guidance available about bird flu and feeders is less confusing than that from federal and state governmental entities regarding cautions to be followed to protect US from COVID. All in all, we seem to have created a number of systems that don’t function as well as they should and, what’s at least as bad, we seem as a society unable and unwilling to consider alternatives for fear it may give someone with whom we don’t fully agree and advantage. I don’t think this is a sustainable culture / society / political system, do you? I think what we have now is strictly “for the birds.” Aren’t we supposed to be a different taxonomic class (Mammalia vs. Aves)?

If you have a different perspective, please share it in the comments.

Constantly Risking Absurdity (#15)

By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity

                                             and death

            whenever he performs

                                        above the heads

                                                            of his audience

   the poet like an acrobat

                                 climbs on rime

                                          to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

                                     above a sea of faces

             paces his way

                               to the other side of day

    performing entrechats

                               and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

                               and all without mistaking

                     any thing

                               for what it may not be

       For he's the super realist

                                     who must perforce perceive

                   taut truth

                                 before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

                                  toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

                                     with gravity

                                                to start her death-defying leap

      And he

             a little charleychaplin man

                                           who may or may not catch

               her fair eternal form

                                     spreadeagled in the empty air

                  of existence

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