A Strange Complaint

It looks brown out. In the hedgerows, tree branches are empty except for the occasional adornment of Osage oranges. The prairie has shades of yellow, tan, brown... but no green. Insects no longer hop out of the way as you walk through the dried grasses. The chickadees have gathered for the winter, and juncos dart from here to there. I haven't seen a heron in a week or so, or a redwing blackbird in longer...

So WHY is it supposed to be in the mid-60's today and all week? Seems like it's much higher than average... I do like it, but it's starting to seem odd.

Not a Lot to Say, but...

I saw a bluebird.

Come Again Another Day

RAIN!

The ground was parched and dusty. The air was dry. We hadn't had any real rain in 6 weeks or more? And then... after a nice rain in Saturday, the "worst storm in 70 years" hit the mid-west on Tuesday. Sideways rain. 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts. Branches down, roadsigns flying, semi-trucks blown off the road. General craziness. I don't want to sound Naomi-centric, here, but I feel I did two things to precipitate this weather event.

1. I finally hired someone to paint the outside of our house, who started in the middle of last week, and is not yet finished.

2. I went to Minneapolis (for the 1st annual National Green Schools Conference, which was awesome) in a large rented van with students in it. Needless to say, our homeward travel was delayed. Also, we got to see our first snow of the 2010-2011 winter season, though it did not get that cold here... until last night, when we had a hard freeze (but no precipitation).

Falling into Spring?

I suppose the sight of a redwing blackbird, silhouetted against a bright blue sky, sitting proud on the highest branch of the aspen tree should be a vision of March or October. I guess their clear whistles slicing through the crisp air should remind me of spring or of fall... but really, I hear that noise and I think of early March, that first sunny day when it's still very cold but it feels quite warm, comparatively speaking. That day when the redwings first show themselves and you know that you're out of the woods... it's all downhill from there, so to speak... it seems a little wrong to hear it now, knowing that the cold months are just beginning. But here they are, five of them this morning, all perched atop trees, their calls piercing he chill. The message this time? We have a long trek through slush and ice ahead of us!

Also, still seeing a lot of robins and grasshopper. Can't think that I've seen a dragonfly in a while...

Notes to Self.

As of this week, I am still seeing:

• frogs
• monarchs (though not in the great numbers I was a few weeks ago)
• grasshoppers
• milkweed bugs
• garter snakes

Also, notes from the bird world...

• goldfinches are brown (have been...)
• yellow rumped warblers are coming through.
• juncos are here.
• so are sandhill cranes, though I haven't seen or heard them, other people have been reporting it for a few weeks.
• Geese are going crazy. I know that a lot of them stay around all winter, and a lot of the big flocks I've seen have been going north... but the amount of goose activity... the number of times I've had to stop class and just wait because 50-100 noisy geese were flying over in the past week has been quite high. Say what you will, something is going on with the geese right now.

Sometimes, we just need some boring record-keeping notes.

Falling

The prairie is becoming increasingly crispy and brown; the trees in the distance continue to shed. Milkweed seeds beckon from across the fields, white half-released puffballs that catch the sunlight and practically beg you to come and grab them and toss... you feel their softness and weightlessness as you lift them skyward and open your fingers, keeping your hand up in the air as the last of the potential plants takes off and joins the world on its own. And you watch as they float in the air, gracefully hanging from their parachutes. They drift like big flakes of gently falling snow, until they land... everywhere... on my coat, the trail, the water... below, they adorn all sorts of non-asclepias plants... and I hope some land in ideal places for new milkweed to grow. Although they may be somewhat... well, weedy, they provide countless minutes of pure and youthful and worry-free joy.

Random Things From the Past Week or So...

The same class that found the dismembered deer leg also found this lovely specimen... a muskrat tail, severed from its former muskrat.
Woolybear caterpillars, appropriately dressed for chilly weather, are some of the earliest insects I see in the spring and the latest in the fall. We started seeing them last week and have seen several since... Another sign of autumn.

Witch hazel flowers are starting to bloom.