Looking through some milkweed for caterpillars this morning. The grasshoppers were everywhere. Didn't see any caterpillars, but saw three of these.
Fruit from the wild apple trees is maturing and dropping. Deer and cows have plenty to eat this time of year.
The corn is amazingly tall this time of year. It's got to be eight feet high. Soon it will be reduced to silage and stubble.
Wild Morning Glory along the road in West Rutland.
I remember my first summer in Vermont. Allyn and I lived in a cabin in the Mt. Snow area. Being from California, the greenery was a revelation. And the wildflowers, I'd never seen anything like it.
Season of grace here on the other side of the creek. Greenery throughout Vermont is adorned with crowns of wild cucumber.
Stumbled on a wild blackberry patch along the Crossroads when walking the other day, and gobbled them all up. They were delicious!
Hazy hot and humid replaced by cool and clear the past few days. Temperatures in the forties this morning. Cows lazily eating apples from the trees that have sprung up in the pastures over the years. Shadow of a big bird glides across a field. Season of sunflowers.
August is upon us. Goldenrod appearing.
The days are noticeably shorter. There are as many bird calls now as there are in the middle of January and that would be none. Their absence has been replaced by the raspy voices of grasshoppers. Shiny black berries appearing in Allyn's blackberry patch.
Back from the wedding/family reunion in Whitefish, Montana. The trip was full of memorable moments, but, honestly, the highlight was a trip we took to the eastern side of Glacier National Park. We headed east along the Flathead River along the border of the park until we encountered the great plains on the eastern side, running through Browning up to Babb and into the Park, ultimately at Many Glacier.
The overriding feeling during this trip was one of immensity, certainly expressed in the colossal peaks of the Rocky Mountains to be found there.
When we were driving through the plains, I happened to stop and step outside of the car for just a moment. There was this same sense of immensity, except there was nothing visible on which to attribute this feeling, just the sound of the wind as it blew through eternity.
I didn't take this photo(Wikiwand), but you get the idea. In his poem The Snowman, Wallace Stevens says,
...and not to think
of any misery in the sound of the wind.
In the sound of a few leaves.
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place...
I remembered visiting Ryoanji and its zen gardens in Kyoto, Japan many years ago. When we were there, I remember my zen Teacher saying to me that there are some places that help to knit the world together. Certainly this corner of northwestern Montana is one of those places. It's no coincidence that the Blackfoot nation picked this area as their ancestral home. There is great power and sustenance there. Thanks to Russ and my sister Ellen for suggesting that we take this trip to an amazing part of our world.
The seeds of spring have sprouted and are growing fast in the long days of summer.
Some sprouts take longer than others. But they are the most fun to watch as they ripen.
People living in the west are baking in triple digit figures. The temperature this afternoon is 72 degrees, a little cool for this time of year. A nature walk while mowing the grass, saw two snakes slither away from the mower. Saw the fawn frolicking in the back field, didn't see mom. The fawn is much bigger than the last time I saw it, but still full of vim and vinegar.
It's the middle of summer, but I saw a fresh load of firewood in the neighbor's driveway.
We have had bluebirds in the back for probably 15 years.
They are beautiful and I have become very attached to them. I feel their welfare in the birdhouse I have provided is partially my responsibility. For most of those 15 years, the bluebirds have nested successfully, having a couple of broods every summer. There have been some years when they have not been successful, and that has almost always been due to competition from other species, mostly sparrows and sometimes house wrens. I have come to hate those birds, everything about them.
This year has been one of those years when we have not had any baby bluebirds in the birdhouse. They started a nest, but were driven away by sparrows and ultimately the nest was taken over by house wrens. I started to empty the birdhouse of the nesting material brought there by the wrens. I didn't want them nesting there, but they are very persistent. I would empty it out and they would try to fill it back up. I even thought about taking the birdhouse down altogether. That would really show them.
But something happened. I won't bore you with the details, but I realized that the problem was really with the sparrows and not with the wrens. I think I can minimize sparrow activity in our back yard which should facilitate nesting for the bluebirds nest year. The bluebirds are the earliest arrivals in the spring and they should be all right moving forward. As far as the house wrens are concerned, their nesting this year shouldn't impact the bluebird's chances next year. I decided to stop emptying out the birdhouse every day. Live and let live seemed to be the proper course of action.
As I said earlier, I've always hated everything about sparrows and house wrens. The call of the house wren has always been especially aggravating to me. It seemed so shrill and jarring. It actually affected my ability to fully enjoy these precious days of summer. I noticed that when I stopped fighting with the house wrens, however, my hostile reaction to their calls went away. Instead of a hostile intrusion into my consciousness, it was just the call of a wild bird. The animus I had been experiencing had gone away.
This experience was a powerful lesson. I had always known that my "picking and choosing" of birds in the natural world was arbitrary and gratuitous, but I had always thought that it was basically harmless, like my animosity towards the Los Angeles Dodgers. But I was wrong. Indulging in anger has a negative impact first and foremost on he who is doing the indulging.
The Buddha said, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." My life with bluebirds and house wrens has given me a deeper insight into the wisdom of these words.
Summer weather returned on Monday. We took our new kayaks out to Glen Lake for a paddle.
Monday was a holiday and the lakes in the area were packed. But when we pulled out of the boat launch area, the lake didn't seem busy at all. Having the truck makes these events easy. We're able to just throw the kayaks in the back and secure them with bungee cords. We got ice cream cones for the drive home. It was a lot of fun.
It was a very strange Fourth this year, cool with light rain. Temperatures never got above the mid-sixties yesterday. I made soup for dinner. It was 48 degrees here this morning. The furnace went on and woke Allyn up.
Leaves on the maple trees changing from the light green of spring to the darker shade of summer. St. John's Wort appearing.
I think Clarkie was the first to see her, a single doe feeding in the back pasture.
She appeared now and then over the course of a couple of weeks. It seemed a little bit unusual to see a solitary deer. Usually they appear in herds of a half dozen or so. Given the time of the year, I wondered whether she was prepping for a birth or whether one had already occurred. Sure enough, the other day we saw her with a fawn. The fawn couldn't have been much more than a day or two old. You could barely make her out as they walked through the tall grass. The fawn would mostly follow mom, but every once in awhile, it would start running around; for no apparent reason and in no particular direction. It was running just for the fun of it; just happy to be alive in June in Vermont. Sometimes the mom would join in the fun. It was wonderful to see.
The other day I was out on the usual morning walk and heard the sound of a crow screeching over the hill in the back. It went on for hours and I heard the same sound coming from a different crow up the road a piece. I wondered if there was some parenting going on; if they were directing/training some offspring who had recently fledged. On the same day, I heard the sound of a fox barking from deep in the woods, and wondered again if it was literally "barking" out directions to her new pups. It certainly seemed like the right time of year for that.
Part of the enjoyment of observing behaviors in the natural world is when anomalous behaviors occur; trying to figure out what's going on. I've been doing this blog for many years and this is one of the first times I've considered some of these anomalies as signs of parenting behavior. In hindsight, it seems like I've probably been missing these parenting clues for many years.
Spent a couple of days on the shores of Lake Champlain for the first time. I learned something. Conditions change quickly and markedly on the surface of a lake.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Zen Page-a-day calendar
This is kind of a blog continuation. On Wednesday night, John and his family arrived. Thursday turned out to be a red letter day in our family as all of the cousins were old enough to fully enjoy each other. They played together with wild abandon virtually all day long. It was amazing to witness as they personified a zest for life that you hope to see in your grandkids. This photo from yesterday says it all as they hopped over the gate on their way to checking out the cows.
Cows begin to shine during the month of June and so do people. There is so much beauty to experience.
Fireflies
Lupines
Strawberries
And so much more that nurtures and renews us. It's the best time of the year.
On Friday we picked up Erin and her family at the airport. They are visiting for the first time in over two years. When we got home, the cows were being deposited in one of the back fields. They stay here for the summer which is a win for us and a win for the farmer. When they get here, they are very dirty. I don't know if that's from living in a barn or in muddy circumstances. Our fields are not heavily used, and it doesn't take much time for the cows to lose their muddy appearances. After a couple of weeks here, they truly start to shine.
Yesterday I walked a section of the Ira Creek looking for Japanese Knotweed, an invasive species that has established a beachhead here in Ira. It was grueling work, walking over rocks large and small. Much of the time I was walking in the stream. The rocks in the stream were covered with moss and were very slippery. I fell a few times and got pretty wet, banged up one of my elbows pretty good. Allyn found sand in my pockets when she washed my clothes.
So I was pretty bedraggled as I headed back home along the road which follows the stream. When I was almost home I noticed something in the grass.
What a beautiful flower and one I had never seen before. My Plantnet app said it was probably Alpine Columbine, native to European mountains, but not here. As happens sometimes, I was filled with an emotion I could feel but could not name. It was something like awe and deep questioning. Where did these come from? They were partly in a roadside ditch. Did someone plant them somewhere upstream, and did some of the seeds end up here? I'll never know.
It was very similar to the feeling I have when I am up in the woods behind our house in November when I am putting up No Hunting signs. There are stone walls there that once provided a separation that no longer exists, no longer matters to anyone.
This back breaking work was done by people lost to history. There are stories buried here that will never be told, just like the beautiful purple flowers in the ditch along the road. I'm glad I live in a place where secret histories are revealed, but never explained.
One of the things about doing a blog like this is that you're not only aware of phenomena in the natural world that are returning/emerging, but also the ones that are not. False Solomon Seal are back.
But I'm not seeing the Columbine that usually appear on the big rock in the field in the back.
There were plenty of Bellwort plants to be seen, but none of them bloomed. What's up with that? Happily the thrushes have returned, but I haven't seen any Redstarts. They look like a miniature version of Orioles.
Viburnum are in bloom.
So are the Black Locusts, but they seem very late this year. Saw some blooming for the first time yesterday.
