It’s woolly thinking time

Today is the penultimate day of September 2024. Haven’t seen a hummingbird at the feeder all week. Wasps and/or hornets are about everywhere, building nests and being annoying. Temperatures have been running close to 20 degrees above normal this week past but are expected to become seasonable, or close to it, come mid-week, early October. This in a state that decades ago became famous for a Halloween blizzard. This morning I found a woolly bear showing four bands of ginger, of 13(?) total bands. It’s an unrepresentative sample size, but it may portend a winter thats more wintery than usual. Meanwhile, there’s at least half a dozen lilac bushes in the neighborhood that are in bloom.

woolly bear says winter will be ???

Photo by J. Harrington

In a typical year, we’d be looking toward peak leaf color over the next couple of weeks. It’s been very slow developing this year. September has been more like July, plus we keep discovering more lilac bushes in bloom. Birds and butterflies seem to be moving south, but that must be due to day length more than our weather. Did I mention all the lilacs in bloom? In September?

We aided and abetted our Granddaughter and her friends and relations celebrate a 4 year old's birthday last week. I had forgotten that just opening presents is considered as much fun as playing with or trying on what’s getting unwrapped, especially if there’s a big pile of presents to be unwrapped before we get to the birthday cake. There was a strong horsey theme since a certain 4 year old has been taking, and enjoying, riding lessons these days.

It looks like, with two minutes to go in today’s game and a nine point lead, the Vikings are going to beat Green Bay and start the season 4 and 0. Our football fan son will be gleeful. I’m still touchy having rooted for a team that’s lost the Superbowl four times. (Final today: Vikings 31 Green Bay 29)

I’ve been working, without as much success as I’d like, at letting go of expectations and living in the moment. With the weather changes and the constant revisions in technology and business practices, that seems wise but requires the retraining of a lifetime’s conditioning. I have a book on order that should arrive this coming week, written by Jenny Odell, titled How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. I’d been toying with reading it and, in one of the reviews I read, saw the mention of bioregionalism. I was hooked and look forward to reading about the combination.

The Woolly Bear

Along a silvan lane, you spy a critter
creeping with a mission, a woolly bear
fattened on autumn flora. So you crouch,
noting her triple stripes: the middle ginger,
each end as black as space. Her destination
is some unnoticed nook, a sanctuary
to settle in, greet the fangs of frost,
then freeze, wait winter out—lingering, lost
in dreams of summer, milkweed, huckleberry.
Though she’s in danger of obliteration
by wheel or boot, your fingers now unhinge her.
She bends into a ball of steel. No “ouch”
from bristles on your palm as you prepare
to toss her lightly to the forest litter.

She flies in a parabola, and lands
in leaves. Though she has vanished, both your hands
hold myriad tiny hairs, a souvenir
scattered like petals. When this hemisphere
turns warm again, she’ll waken, thaw, and feast
on shrubs and weeds (the bitterer the better)
then, by some wondrous conjuring, released
from larval life. At length she will appear
a moth with coral wings — they’ll bravely bear
her through a night of bats or headlight glare,
be pulverized like paper in a shredder,
or briefly flare in a world that will forget her.

by Martin J. Elster

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

Happy Autumnal Equinox and Alban Elfed

As of 7:43 this morning, local time, we are into full autumn, if not fully into autumn. The equinox has occurred but the season has not matured. Leaf color is still less than 10%. Some monarch butterflies have fluttered by. Flickers are flittering through the backyard. Strangely, several lilac bushes in the neighborhood have produced a second bloom recently. Meanwhile, the size of sandhill crane flocks has grown and Canada geese are doing training flights. We even saw a woolly bear caterpillar this week past.

just a hint of color in the trees

Photo by J. Harrington

No sign yet of the first frost or the first snowflake in our neck of the woods. Either could arrive any day now. The local crew of hummingbirds seems to have headed south. We’ll leave the feeders up for another week or two in case northern migrants stop by. I think, and hope, high temperatures will now stay seasonably less than 80℉ at least until next April.

As we enter the darker seasons, many of US hope that will only be literal and not figurative. The latter depending on the results of the upcoming presidential election. In our funkier moods, we wonder how many days of relative peace and quiet we’ll get before campaigns for the mid-term elections start up.

Archery deer season opened the beginning of last week Friday brought a handful of thunderstorms, complete with boomings, lightning flashes, and downpours. Will that be the last until next year, or might we experience thundersnows? Stay tuned.

Something we couldn’t share before this because it might have spoiled a birthday surprise was one of this month’s high points. For his birthday, we got the Son-in-Law an Early Lessons print from the BobWhite Studio. The Studio is located not far from our home so we made arrangements to take a peek prior to completing the purchase. In the process, we enjoyed a nice visit with Bob and his charming wife, Lisa. The story behind the print as a gift is that it depicts a man, presumably a Dad, standing behind / beside a girl holding a fly rod. The Son-In-Law has been taking his almost four-year-old daughter fishing quite a bit this summer. She’s a bit young for a fly rod, but, as most Minnesota sports fans have learned to say, “maybe next year.”

Poem Beginning with a Line from It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Maggie Smith

Just look—nothing but sincerity 
as far as the eye can see—
the way the changed leaves,

flapping their yellow underbellies
in the wind, glitter. The tree
looks sequined wherever

the sun touches. Does anyone
not see it? Driving by a field
of spray-painted sheep, I think

the world is not all changed.
The air still ruffles wool
the way a mother’s hand

busies itself lovingly in the hair
of her small boy. The sun
lifts itself up, grows heavy

treading there, then lets itself
off the hook. Just look at it
leaving—the sky a tigereye

banded five kinds of gold
and bronze—and the sequin tree
shaking its spangles like a girl

on the high school drill team,
nothing but sincerity. It glitters
whether we’re looking or not.

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