Starting Over...Again

I catch it every year. No, not spring fever. It's much too early for that. Or is it?

This is, rather, a sort of prequel to spring fever that I get every year about this time. The holidays are blessedly behind me again, and then there is that gap during which there is nothing at all to celebrate. So, I start celebrating the slow approach of the next season.

Unlike fall, which I also love, spring offers me more options. I can start browsing through seed catalogs and planning what I'm going to order, which isn't much anymore, as all I do now is grow things in containers. But still, it fulfills that need to grow SOMETHING, anything, that has never left me no matter where I've lived. I can also start thinking along the lines of starting some plants indoors. My options here are once again few, as I get sunlight only through the kitchen windows. Whereas my cat loves to perch on the table to look out the window, setting some pots up there is not an option. Not only are they in both our ways, but she loves to dig in the dirt. As an indoor cat, that's quite a treat for her, as is nibbling on the first few green things that appear above the soil once the seeds have germinated.

My only viable option to get things going on is the counter that spans the space beneath my other kitchen window. The window itself isn't high, but it is long, and the sill is wide enough to support a row of small pots. It does entail removing my decorative cobalt blue and clear glass collectibles. But it's a trade-off, as most things in life worth doing are. I can also perch small pots on top of storage canisters where they will also benefit from the bright sunlight. There, I can pretty safely get things going and keep them going long enough for them to be ready to put outside once the weather warms above 40 degrees F. at nights. Not only am I getting my garden ready, I also have signs of new life to enjoy inside until April. And the cat seems not to have discovered that cache or is just not interested.

It'll probably be my old reliables again this year: marigolds (of course), zinnias, and nasturtiums. Some parsley and maybe some basic...I saved lots of seeds from last year's plants, so that will save me a little money. Otherwise, I'll shop the dollar stores and treat myself to one extravagant purchase from a company like Burpee or Gurney's. That kind of makes it official that the growing season is once again off to a start. And as the old saying goes, "There is no time like the present!"

Indeed, there is not!

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My Feathered Visitors

While the earth continues to provide bounty for both earthbound and avian creatures, the time is approaching when my feathered visitors won’t be able to find enough to eat. The ground will freeze and be covered in snow and ice, and they will be hard-pressed to find some bit or morsel that will help keep them warm during the bitterly cold nights of deepest winter.


Research shows that birds are warm-blooded animals whose internal body temperature is roughly 105 degrees Fahrenheit. As they have virtually no body fat in which to store heat, it is crucial for them to eat almost constantly during the colder months, especially during those times when they are cut off from a natural food supply that includes seeds, berries, and insects.
Sudden dips in temperature can be fatal to birds, and it is then that they need our help more than at any other time. To maintain their body temperatures, birds need the extra calories that seeds and suet cakes can supply. Thus, it has been my practice here to try to fill that need as best I can, all the while fighting the good fight with squirrels and raccoons to make sure that the birds are the ultimate victors.


I recently downsized my feeding arsenal to just one feeder and one suet-cake holder, and these I place close to my front door for easy access and a fast approach during squirrel skirmishes. No matter how squirrel-proof the more sophisticated feeders are said to be, I have found none yet that those clever creatures cannot somehow defy. I have hung them from wires, from poles, and used all the baffles and foils I can think of. Yet, sooner or later, the feeder is on the ground, its contents scattered, and I’m faced yet again with deciding on another approach that, next time, may just work. I’ve even hung feeders from a long clothesline that is nearly 10 feet from the ground. Believe me when I say that squirrels can and do hang by their paws like high-wire acrobats and somehow make their way to the feeder. As frustrating as it is, it is nothing short of amazing.


Perhaps the greatest pleasure in feeding birds is seeing the vast numbers of different species that visit the feeder each day. Most bird-feeding devotees can attest to the thrilling antics of the chickadees, almost always the first to give in to hunger over fear. Other birds, like nuthatches, titmice, and woodpeckers take a while longer to trust that no harm will come to them if they come near. As for the seed that ultimately ends up on the ground, the ground-feeders such as juncos and chipping sparrows make short work of it. And barring that, raccoons can always be counted on to clean up the mess. A small flock of turkeys visited my porch on a cold winter morning a few years ago, and even an opossum visited once. Hunger is a powerful force that compels these creatures to go well beyond their natural boundaries.


It is a necessary and humane interdependence. For do we humans not reap, and sometimes even recklessly, from the animal kingdom for our own sustenance? And isn’t it only right to give something to them when they are hungry? As long as I’m here, or wherever I am, I will continue to provide a feast for the birds and other creatures while this good earth sleeps beneath its mantle of snow. And I will always believe that part of the reason they keep coming back is that they are indeed thankful.


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Water Lilies

The characteristics and origins of garden flowers and wildflowers are pretty straightforward and obvious most of the time. It's all pretty standard and routine in the flower world. They germinate from seeds, tubers or old roots left to winter in the ground, emerge as foliage and burst into bloom when they're supposed to. Nothing mysterious about that. Some, like marigolds and impatiens, die after a single season and must be replanted anew each year. Hence, their status as annuals, many of which produce seeds that can be harvested and saved for next year.

Then there are the perennials, those faithful and stalwart troopers that die back to ground level but whose roots persist beneath the frozen soil. In spring, we see the result of our fall bulb-planting efforts in the form of daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses; and later come the irises and daylilies, sprouting anew each summer from rhizomes that spread underground and that must be divided when they become too congested.

Then there are those blossoms that appear in odd places, where it seems that flowers shouldn't grow, where the odds are apparently all against them and where it makes no sense for them to even be. But they are, guarding the secrets of their impossible existences in thier very fibers.

In tropical locations that never see any frost, orchids fill that bill, sometimes taking hold in the crotches of old trees where the humidity and light are just right. And here, in the northern hemisphere, in spots too inundated with water to support any other type of flower, where thick almost leathery mats of pads loll about on the gentle currents, water lilies appear, cupped and graceful, each tethered to the bottom of the pond by a single flexible stem that can measure up to six feet long.

Nymphaea odorata emerge from rhizomes, or fleshy roots, growing in the sediment that accumulates on the floor of a lake, pond or along the edges of a slow-moving stream or quiet marsh. The blossoms, composed of white petals arranged around bright yellow stamens, appear in mid to late summer early in the morning and close by mid-day. The leaves, that can measure up to a foot across, are round with a narrow wedge-shaped notch that proceeds outward from where their submerged stems are connected.

Early in the season, a dense mat of new leaves float patiently on the surface of the water for several weeks until the unopened pointed buds of the lilies appear to break up the monotony. As they open, they release the scent for which they are named, but it is a gift reserved only for those who dare to venture near in canoe or kayak or who are able to get up close and personal to the very edge of a body of water in which they grow.

Water lilies are yet more evidence of how nature works to keep the cycle of life going. For the submerged stems and leaves are not only home to aquatic creatures such as frogs, bass and sunfish, but also provide food for beavers, muskrats, deer and ducks.

Looking out over the pond just now, its restless shimmering surface aglow with millions of sun-gems, I wonder how much more breathtaking it could possibly be. Then I notice the water lilies, bobbing among the leaves, and I have my answer


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The Great Acorn Drop

It starts slowly at first, a ping here, a pop there. If I didn't know any better, I'd think someone was out there at 5 a.m. target practicing with a BB gun, or popping corn. But those particular events aren't usually accompanied by the frantic rustling of leaves or by loud and aggressive chatter.

It's the annual acorn drop, one of the few times during the year when squirrels and other small critters that cherish these tidbits steer clear of the bird seed in favor of larger more succulent bounty. Their days are spent high in the treetops, chattering away at each other and at anyone or anything that deigns to interfere with the process. They leap from branch to branch like circus acrobats, shaking the acorns off, then rushing back down tree trunks and burying their bounty or storing it away in tree hollows for a time when food will not be as plentiful.

Eastern gray squirrels build two types of dwellings-summer nests made of twigs and leaves and winter dens in the cavities of hardwood trees or in the eaves or attics of houses and other buildings. They mate twice a year, first in the early spring and then again in mid-summer. Once the second litter is born around August or September, the young from the first litter have left the nest and are fending for themselves. Two of these chubby little rascals have lately become regular visitors to my bird feeders, stopping at nothing, not even my presence at the door, to clean out the bowl or the decimate the suet cake. Cheekier than even most adult squirrels, they even go so far as to run up onto the railing when I'm sitting there with my book. They sniff at the air, decide they don't like me, and leave, but never position themselves so far away that they won't see me come inside, giving them another window of opportunity to sneak in for a few more bites of food.

As for the oaks whose bounty temporarily distracts my furry gray friends, the very large ones have been known to produce as many as 10,000 acorns in a single year. Oak trees rarely drop the same number of acorns every year, and this is actually one of their survival techniques. In years that see bumper crops of the capped nuts, called mast years, animals like the gray squirrel and others, such as turkeys, chipmunks, blue jays, deer and bears can't consume them all, and many are left to grow into new trees. Other years, leaner crops attract fewer predators, ultimately leaving enough acorns to take root and sprout. While the reason there are more acorns some years than others remains unclear, but the fact remains that it all balances out in the end, for no matter the number of acorns, there will always be some that will grow into new trees.

What this means in terms of chronology and the seasons is that we are once more well past the half-year mark and on our way toward autumn. Just this morning, I passed a small stand of maple saplings that are already sporting red leaves. Now this could mean some sort of disease or insect infestation, or perhaps the small trees have been deprived of light or are exposed to an overabundance of standing water. In any case, their color startles, for it's too soon to be seeing this now in early August, the last and most benign of the full summer months, the month of crickets and cooler nights, of a changing slant of the light and the scent of fullness in the woods and out-of-the-way places.

There's a new crackling sound in the leaves as the wind moves between them, a new crispness that wasn't there a month ago, their rustle louder as they begin the slow process of releasing their moisture toward their inevitable fall. But summer will persist until the autumnal equinox in September, the month of indecision, of the push/pull between two seasons, when the world as we know it here in the north clings to one yet is inexorably drawn to the other.


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