Emerging!
It's spring. No longer any doubt about it. No more prevaricating. There's lots of spring cleaning to be done, and it doesn't get done by wishing. So I set about spring cleaning, tackling the kitchen first, as usual. Cleaning out all the kitchen cupboards, starting with the pantry and in the process discovering food items that had grown venerable, but not wise. So I bagged shelled peanuts and on one of our forays into the ravine early this week I scattered them about on tree stumps and wide rails of our wood ravine bridges. Next day, gone. We've lots of squirrels and although Bluejays also love peanuts, we haven't seen many of them around of late.
Yesterday's cleaning foray left me with a bag of small round crusty rusks for ravine distribution. I laid them here and there in fairly much the same places as with the peanuts. Button and Riley evinced some early interest in this strange new ritual which, although food was involved, appeared to preclude them so I offered one each to them and they sniffed, tentatively, mouthed, then politely declined. Later in our walk I crumbled one into my hand and they happily lapped the more manageable-sized tidbits.
It was a balmy 12 degrees celcius, with full sun; sublimely beautiful to our winter-hardened hearts. A slight breeze brought seductive fragrances to the noses of our two little dogs and they busied themselves running about to check out all the potentials-for-pleasure. Irving brought my notice to a small orange moth fluttering past. Up high in a pine tree came the rubber-ducky call of a nuthatch, sidekick to a small flock of chickadees.
Yesterday the crows were mobbing and their rough cacophony echoed over the treetops. Today, silence. But high above a small hawk circled on the wind, possibly looking for what was left of the sad cadaver of a grey squirrel which we'd sighted the day before, but not likely since they're raptors, not carrion-hunters like the crows. Poor thing had managed to survive winter, but spring denied him the pleasure of life.
The snowpack, thick though it still is in many places has receded on the slopes of the hills and the dark, stark and dirty-looking earth and undergrowth are a promise of things to come. Already we can see the bright green of ferns newly released from their winter purgatory, and clover, and violets, anxious to greet a new season. Rivulets of meltwater course through the now-rotten snowpack. The ice has turned to mush; not much of a challenge now to clamber uphill and sidle downhill.
A bright orange, black-spotted skipper floats past, to our amazement. Surely it's much too early for these beautiful little creatures to hatch out yet? A middling-size terrier-cross by the name of Rachel whom we occasionally see in the ravine rushes toward us excitedly and Riley, though recognizing her, growls his displeasure at her presumption. She has long, straight grey hair covering even her face which gives her the visage of a werewolf. Rachel deftly flies over Riley, further alarming and incensing him.
A whoop from Irving and darned if there isn't a cream-edged, charcoal-grey-winged Mourning Cloak drifting slowly across the trail. Just exactly where we tend to see them every spring. Just yesterday Irving had mentioned them, wondering when we'd begin to see them, and I'd laughed, telling him it was much too early for them to make their presence. Aren't I the knowing one?
Seems that the woods have lost so many trees this winter. The freeze-and-thaw, freezing rain followed by heavy snows, the ice storms and high winds have taken more than their usual toll, crashing down old firs, lopping the tops off pines, so that the floor of the ravine is heavily littered with those and smaller boughs, still hosting bright green needles. Irving laughs at me, teases that I'm always "discovering" fresh instances of tree loss, forgetting from one day, from one week, one month to another what I've seen before. Of course he's right, but the carnage is still there.
A newly-emerged fly flicks past and somehow manages to stumble en route right into Irving's ear. Serves him right. The fly. Him too.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, March 30, 2006
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