As the signs align

It’s mid-afternoon, Saturday, August 13, here in the North Country. The temperature hasn’t yet reached 70℉. Returning from a visit with the Son Person, the Better Half and I noticed a maple tree whose leaves have turned from green to autumn colors. Roadside ditches are full of goldenrod, joe pye weed flowers, wild cucumber in bloom and some thistle flowers.

Hummingbirds are still at the sugar water feeder. Purple finches again are showing up at the sunflower seed feeder. The folks at Journey North remind us:

Time to think fall migration. During August, the monarch super generation will emerge and start their migratory journey south. 

monarch butterflies on blazing star

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve seen very few monarchs this summer. Of several possible sightings, the critters didn’t hold still long enough for me to be sure whether I was looking at a monarch or a viceroy.

There’s about 2 1/2 weeks of meteorological summer remaining. September 1 starts meteorological autumn. We have once again entered a season in which I’m never sure what to put on when I get up in the morning. It seems as though I’m usually over or underdressed. The Better Half and I are now regularly turning the ceiling fan on or off. Soon it will be time to get the furnace tuned up for heating season.

“And the seasons they go round and round ...” 

 

As If

By J. Allyn Rosser

How do you explain why elephants

appear to move their unwieldy hulks

with greater dignity than most humans do

in their finest moments,

as if they had evolved beyond wanting

anything but what they have?

Why does the field begin to ripple

before the wind arrives in whispers,

as if there were a communication,

as if the landscape were poorly dubbed,

and we weren’t expected to notice?

What butterfly does not dart away from us

as if it could sense our latent cruelties,

and yet return to check and double-check? 

Has the night not gotten recently darker,

as if to insinuate that we have squandered 

the light that was there?

Have we made too much of our own?

And did you notice afterward the dawn 

opening up with a tentative eagerness

as if there were something crucial to illumine,

as if we would wake up early just to see it?

I imagine you reading this now 

with an expression of quiet trouble

itself troubled by currents of hope, 

as if you imagined me here with you, 

as if I might be able to see your expression,

and at least answer it with mine.

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

An early taste of the upcoming restless season

Yesterday afternoon -- early evening, a whitetail doe helped herself to a green salad from the nominal wet spot behind the house. This morning, as the rain was thinking about getting organized, a whitetail doe and her two fawns wandered, zoomied and scampered through the yard on their way to somewhere else. Mom was being characteristically cautious and each of the fawns, characteristically, could stand still only for so long and then had to dash somewhere and, sometimes, back.

yesterday’s visitor to the “wet spot"

Photo by J. Harrington

A bit later this morning, the flock of four or five turkey hens came out of the woods heading southerly. No poults with them. As this is written, the girls have returned, headed northerly. I’d be happier if they had some poults along. Did the wet spring have a really negative effect on the local flocks?

Anyhow, here in the North Country we often go weeks on end seeing not much of anything but the songbirds at the feeder. Then, for a day or two it’s like the back yard is Grand Central Station for local wildlife.

We finally got around to heading out to pick up this week’s Community Supported Agriculture [CSA] share. It includes:

• BASIL
• CABBAGE
• CUCUMBERS
• GARLIC
• GREEN ONIONS
• GREEN PEPPER
• KALE and
• SUMMER SQUASH

While we then headed to the credit union and book store, we noticed a flock of geese flying over one of the farm fields and sandhill crane pairs or so in several of the fields we passed. Folks are warming up and filling up in anticipation of the upcoming migration season. We’ll stick around and keep an eye on the place for them.

Deer Descending

By Philip Terman

Perhaps she came down for the apples,

or was flushed out by the saws powering

the far woods, or was simply lost,

or was crossing one open space for another.

She was a figure approaching, a presence

outside a kitchen window, framed

by the leafless apple trees, the stiff blueberry bushes,

the after-harvest corn, the just-before-rain sky,

a shape only narrow bones could hold,

turning its full face upward, head tilted to one side, as if to speak.

I want my life back.

Morning settles around her like a silver coat.

Rustling branches, hooves in flight.

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