Que Sera

Mon-

It’s not so much that March or April snow is unknown around here, but given the month we’ve had this does seem to be just piling on.  Old Man Winter is thumbing his nose and refusing to leave gracefully.  It’s all the more shocking to wake to an unpredicted squall.  Oh, and it’s baseball home opening …

On the other hand, I looked around the yard carefully yesterday and all the buds are advancing rapidly.  The forsythia are showing green shoots, the maples have red tips, the roses _ well, the ones not totally dark from freezes _ are ready to leaf out.  Perhaps this will be the week _ but I’ve been hoping that for a while.
Tue-

Snow quickly melted, cold morning remains, and this old standby is ready to go.  Crocuses are circus performers, always doing the magical and unexpected, popping up anywhere, surprising and astonishing.  I too easily overlook them because they are tiny and _ well _ being crocuses they are common.  And not native.

The whole debate on native species is a bit weird.  The world has gone global, everything has been imported everywhere, including us.  What astonishes now are any plants or animals who can survive and thrive on their own in modern environments, no matter what their origin.  That’s why ragweed has to be admired as much as some rare bog dweller I will never encounter.
Wed-

Speak of the devil _ here are shoots of ragweed getting a jump on the rest of the plant world.  This joins the bright sun, continuous and noisy birdsong, and mating frolics of waterfowl to lift my mood a bit, even if the temperature remains a bit low and the sky is often overcast.

In no time at all I will probably be complaining about yard chores and keeping up with life bursting its bounds _ why must dandelions pick my lawn, or garlic grow in my flowerbeds, or ragweed and poison ivy colonize forgotten corners?  Sometimes we say we want nature, but only on our own terms.  Nature has other plans.

Thu-

Willows are about two weeks behind.  Even from a distance, you can see the branches brightening into a brownish green, and close up green shoots are starting to form the leaves for the year.  Even the perennials along the little stream here at Hecksher park have some green tinges at their roots.  Overall, even in this picture, the world seems brown and sleeping, but the alarm clock has gone off.

I sat here on a bench and ate a peanut butter sandwich as two fat ducks with obvious experience waddled over for a handout.  It’s nice to rest here _ even with the temperature just near fifty _ without freezing, and anticipate what is coming or absorb what already is.

Fri-

  

Might still look like winter, but that’s because of what mere photographs leave out.  The ground is no longer frozen beneath my feet _ that’s good thick spring mud down there.  Off to the left in the reeds red-winged blackbirds are screeching constantly.  The wind has no bite so a lighter jacket and cap have replaced the heavier garments of March. 

Not to be discounted is the intangible mood that envelops us this season.  Grey skies and rain seem temporary, we look forward to a long period of the world becoming paradise, swimming and barbecue and vacation.  In some ways the anticipation is better than the real thing when it arrives, always tinged with regret that it is going away almost as soon as it arrives.  But now _ ah now, all is hope.
Sat-

 

In a few weeks, brambles such as these will be completely clothed in verdant new green.  They begin the full transformation of the landscape from one palette to another, until by May except to our jaded eyes the world has become completely transformed.  We busily scurry about doing important things until forced to look up and out for one reason or another.

Dire consequences are predicted almost daily as the result of “human activities,” and we may study and tremble for the future.  But all anyone every really has or had is their present, and we are even more negligent to ignore the day before us than to heedlessly ruin the future.

Sun-

Patches of true spring are appearing everywhere now, although some of the more interesting ones may be hard to find.  This view, for example, is hidden behind a low wall on East Shore Drive.  Crocuses tend to colonize wherever they have been planted over the years, even though the use of the ground changes, and they remain blooming long after their original gardener has moved on or died.

In a few months, from this exact spot, you would not be able to see the water and boats.  Those innocuous looking vines draping picturesquely about fill in with thick leaves and form a verdant wall.  Being aware of what has been and what will be, expectations and fulfilment and surprise, is one of the essential joys of hiking the same trails throughout the seasons.

 

  

Awaiting the Break

Mon-

In spite of temperatures in the teens at night, at least part of the time, the first crocuses are arriving.  They probably won’t get to shine in singular glory for long _ likely by the end of this week we will have some higher temperatures and other flowers popping.  Can’t be too soon for most of us.

Tue-

For the end of March, and in spite of the inviting blues and pleasant contrast of browns, this is pretty depressing.  April is supposedly the cruelest month, and in terms of our expectations it often is. 

It’s not that we expect greens and yellows and reds everywhere, but we a counting on some fairly visible hints that they are on their way.  This year, everything has been damped behind our normal schedule.  Combined with the outdoor biting gales, it has been almost (but only almost!) as bad as February.

Wed-

Thirty degrees, fifty miles an hour near the end of the harbor here, and it looks and feels like the North Atlantic in bad times.  Even the seagulls are having such a bad time they are mostly grounded.

The only good psychic thing about a day like this is that if you really dress warmly and get out and walk anyway, listening to the rushing trees and the crashing waves and all the other sounds of nature drowning out the usual hums and whines of civilizations, you can feel virtuous.  Actually, I feel quite happily wrapped in my little shell, in spite of the dust and gravel occasionally whipping into my face.

Thu -

As a comment on this year’s harshness, it’s hard to beat this clump of wild garlic.  I’ve seen more verdant _ and much more abundant _ clumps in mid January.   This one seems struggling against doom itself.  Making it worse, this was about the only patch I found.

When you get down to looking hard for weeds to prove spring is on its way, you know you are getting pretty desperate for some hopeful signs.  Often by April I am scornfully pulling such things out of my flower beds.  It’s all relative.

Fri-

Just about a final look at the relatively clear view across Knutson’s marina before the boats start coming out of storage.  The sky and sea have radically changed since the gales and hard cold of earlier, and the seagull seems to appreciate it as much as I do.  Still look in vain for any hopeful buds or leaf clusters on vine and branch.

Any water is infinitely beautiful and mysterious to me with reflections, permutations, distortions and the endless interplay of wave and wind. Besides which, right now, is when the water is the most pure top to bottom and the most unsullied on the surface with no debris or slicks of various kinds.  I simply need to adjust my internal expectations to be able to grasp other aspects of perceptual magnificence.

Sat-

There we are _ a few small shoots somehow making it through the blasts in the wind shadow of a trunk down near the beach.  All we really need is a week of “average” weather without any “record setting lows for the date” and things will be exploding.  Even today, the birds are going crazy, flying and chattering everywhere.

I’m a little tired of small signs _ I want some big dramatic stuff now.  Lawns turning green and becoming ragged, hillsides covered with small flowers, crowns of trees glowing in fresh crimson and green which cannot be easily ignored, or too easily imagined.  Fortunately, these few leaves indicate I may be in luck.

Sun-

Perhaps a fitting end to a month that has been memorable for all the wrong reasons.  A combination fog/drizzle hangs over the cold surface, steeping everything in water, bright and dark at the same time, exactly what you might to expect to encounter in the vestibule of Hell.  Even birdsong is subdued.

Humans have been forced into necessary rhythms against their better judgment.  It’s Sunday in spring, so many people are jogging and walking and trying to assure themselves that this is a good thing.  It’s the first week in April, come a day, which calendar-drives many out to boat clubs and docks to tidy up and inspect their craft for the coming season.  I’ve done most of the hard days through the winter, I plan to just sit this one out.

 

  

Hopeful Signs

Mon-

Unexpected snowdrop flowers bursting out of the salt and grime encrusted roadbed along East Shore drive are the first floral arrivals I have seen.  Last week, even a few days ago, this was just a dirty pile of frozen snow.  Underneath it all, in some unsuspected way, the natural clockwork continues on as always.

Surprising mystery is the most enduring and endearing thing about the real world, as opposed to the logical patterns and rhythms and meanings our minds are always veiling it with.  No matter what we expect, we are mistaken in general or in detail.  You can let that make you angry, or unsettled, or you can use the wonderful gift we have been given to deal with such moments _ just laugh and move on.

Skunk cabbage flowers are reliably out by now, being endothermic which means they generate their own heat.  I guess the idea is to entrance any insects crazily ambitious to get an early start.  In any case, I always know they are there, usually in mud somewhere, by mid-March.  It’s just a matter of me getting up enough gumption to go take a look and get my feet dirty.

Soon the luscious green leaves will be unfolding.  They were certainly tempting to the early colonists after a hard winter living on dried beans, ground grain, and salted meat or fish.  Unfortunately, the name is there for a reason, and they are totally inedible, even by the relaxed standards of starvation country local specialties.  One of the few plants for which humans have yet found no use but beauty, and even that is somewhat an acquired taste.

Wed-

Pussy willows are the cheap watches of seasonal indicators.  I’ve seen them breaking out after the first cold following December solstice, and any warm spell can get one or two to show up.  Often by the time they are everywhere, everything else is completely bursting with vitality.  Since they are hardly gigantic, only people on foot would really notice, anyway.

I’ve had trouble making dramatic shots of certain things.  There can be an open question about that, because some of nature is beautiful in its own right but hardly dramatic.  Our society loves the bold and grand and attention-grabbing no matter what is required to obtain it.  A blade of grass or a pussy willow bud are quiet and almost shy, but just as amazing as fierce gale or me.
Thu-

A Joker?  No sign of spring here.  Oh, the brambles may have a bit of red, but otherwise budless, leafless, brown, dry, dormant and desolate.  If you could hear, you would encounter little if any birdsong.  If you were here, you would feel the constant bitterly cold North wind off the harbor.  Finding spring in this scene is a Sherlock Holmes puzzle.  Hint: equinox.

What’s missing is ice on the fresh water pond.  In spite of all the fronts and vortexes the evil international conspiracy in Canada keeps sending our way, the day is now as long as the night and the rays of the sun at midday are more at right angles to the earth.  The brown muck on the bottom and the dust on the snow worked together to clear the water no matter how frigid it may get overnight.  Ah, spring indeed _ this is what is known as cold comfort.

Fri -

That this sailboat is afloat is actually a sign of spring.  Hard to tell from the picture, but it is covered with several years of dried muck that attach when it is submerged.  Every winter, it reliably sinks in one of the storms.  Every spring, in some Sisyphean effort, it is raised again, undoubtedly in the continuing hope that this is the year when it can be cleaned up and sold or at least used.  Until, of course, next winter comes along.

Seasonal rhythms are not relegated to what we term “nature.”  Spring’s effect on young men and women is well known.  These days herds of people migrate north and south like parasites on jetliners.  And, yes, I hope that this will be the year I finally do … whatever.

Sat-

 

Toilers of the Sea sowing boat seeds in Puppy Cove.  In a month the fleet will return, almost magically overnight, and it will be hard to recall pristine open waters. 

Everyone for weeks has been reassuring each other that “spring is on the way.”  While a good deal of nature obviously agrees, and as human seasonal preparations and rituals continue, the weather refuses to go along, with another snowstorm possible next week.  We all seem to get this way every year about this time _ March is usually nasty and April disappointing.   Unless you just accept it for what it is, which is endless promises.

 

  

Great Expectations

Mon-

Boatyards are seasonally driven, although by the calendar rather than the vagaries of the weather.  They may appear dormant, but already repairs are being made, and the various equipment like cranes and hoists being serviced and checked.  Soon they will be laying out all these buoys to mark the anchorage of fleets of pleasure craft that suddenly fill the harbor as in older days spring floods filled with log jams from clear-cut forests.

People with enough money to own expensive craft have their own peculiarities.  One of them, as far as I can tell from casual observation, is that they demand immediate use of their craft at first sign of warmth, as if it were medicine to cure their hypochondriac cabin fever.  Then they often seem to let their boats rest unused the rest of the spring and summer until they insist on one final fling as the last warmth fades from the autumn.  Of course, a lot of us are like that, who hasn’t rushed off to the beach as soon as there was a warm or hot day, and then been too busy to spend any time there until the next year?
Tue-

Sand, dock, and cove as free of people and their objects as they ever will be.  The water is amazingly clear and transparent.  Migrating waterfowl seem a bit delayed, and I think the local overwinterers have been thinned out a bit by the brutal cold.  It’s too early yet to say that everything is ready to leap toward growth, but the icy hand of death and dormancy seems to be lifting.

I doubt any of our surface doings mean much to those creatures living beneath the surface.  Oysters, clams, worms, fish, eels, horseshoe crabs and other denizens of the shallows go about their business oblivious to what happens above, except for maybe the lengthening of days, which somehow suggests to them the necessary reproduction cycles.  Countless microscopic life cares even less.  Since I am not one of those fellow inhabitants of our biosphere, I can waste time hoping for warmer weather soon.
Wed-

Much warmer day, many varieties of birds singing strongly over the percussion of the woodpeckers.  Snow on south-facing slopes is vanishing rapidly.  I fondly bid these fragments of harbor ice goodbye, as they float out with the tide. 

Unfortunately, with the better weather, construction and yard crews also come out of hibernation, and already there is competition for who can be loudest.  These days it seems that to get anything done requires power tools, and to prove you are actually doing something important it must be the noisiest piece of crap ever invented.  Since everything has been professionalized and turned over to third parties, instead of all the lawns being cut and leafs blown and whatnot on Saturday, as I remember from my wee youth, it is a constant round of activity from dawn to dusk, every day.  I half suspect that soon it will be edging into the nighttime with LED illumination.  Ah, anyway, still happy to have the first intimations of the coming seasons.
Thu-

A flicker of green leaves _ probably a plantain _ revealed nestled in leaves as snow finally departs for a while.  I can only hope that it is not destroyed by the 19 degree temperatures today.  Anyway, weeds are immensely hardy, as anyone trying to get rid of them finds out quickly.  Weeds are the very definition of hardiness. Like cockroaches, they’ll be here after we are gone, if anything is.

There are tiny signs everywhere now.  Reddish swellings indicate buds on the wild roses and other briars, an almost imagined blush of crimson haloes some of the trees.  Grass which is absolutely desiccated brown when uncovered one day suddenly sprouts emerald highlights overnight.  And of course the birds are in full courtship mode, males chasing desired mates all over the water, singing to attract attention, even starting on nests.  Hang on _ if you’ve made it through this far towards next summer, you’re within sight of the finish line!

Sat -

Old camera at low resolution setting cannot pick up whitecaps on the harbor, but they are there, flitting along the crests of the waves.  It is some indication of the fury of the northwest wind that there are such waves at all in a totally protected area.  This is a good idea of why photographs lie with incompleteness _ this could have happened almost any time of year, but happened to be in a near zero wind chill which made walking around a bit of an adventure.

The ducks don’t seem upset at all.  And there we have two anthropomorphisms already _ and conventional ones at that.  Wind has no “fury”, ducks don’t get upset.  Yet we find it useful to so describe the world, even knowing that we are using a kind of lie to do so.  Falsehoods everywhere! 

Sat-

Sat –

Old “Painkiller” looks to be a casualty of the wind.  Either the mooring pulled loose or a rope snapped, presumably the damage, if any, is minimal.  An unhappy surprise for the owner, when he or she comes by, no doubt.  Surely there is more damage around, less visible on the surface.

No matter how shipshape we keep our boats, or build up our bulkheads, or prettify our waterfront, the cosmic certainty of entropy keeps intruding and trying to turn concrete to dust, or pulverize boats.  It things are not maintained, they automatically become ruins sooner or later.  Old grumps like me would add that with the lousy way they build most things lately, that day is likely to be sooner.

Sun -

Looking down and out over this end of the harbor _ it may be hard to see in a tiny picture _ are countless spherical white buoys now being set everywhere by barge and winch in anticipation of the rush of pleasure boats that will soon be cascading in as quickly as spring rains.  A surprisingly careful placement is involved, as the tides go up and down more or less changing the length of the chains mooring them to the bottom. Spacing must allow tethered craft of various sizes to drift around in eccentric uncoordinated motions depending on the random pull of tides and push of winds.

At this time of year, I always think of these as “boat seeds” that will soon sprout larger aquatic inorganic flowers.  Some will be beautiful, some will be ugly, and all will be vanish once again come the cold gales of November. 

Like a Lion

Mon-

March on Long Island this year looks more like upstate with solid snow cover and frozen ponds and streams.  The temperature has been at least ten degrees below average for a while, and sometimes a lot below average.  Nor does it appear that either the snow nor cold will exit any time soon, as evidenced by the dark overcast.

This winter, North America seems to be in a tiny retroactive bubble, an anomaly from the warming throughout the rest of the world that lets us cheerfully ignore global problems that may be brewing in the atmosphere.  We are like happy medieval peasants collecting a good harvest while ignorant that Genghis Kahn is just over the far hill and heading our way.  Or like the characters in Boccaccio a year before the plague swept into Florence.  Day by day, ignorance may be bliss.  Given that the human race seems helpless to control its destructive tendencies, day by day may be the correct way to live.

Tue-

 

 

Important markers during normal harbor recreational use just look silly in bleak season.  Who would want to use this narrow patch of land right now?  Too mushy for eskimos, too cold for wimpy moderns.  Even the ducks have been temporarily silenced.

Yet the brighter sun and the rest of the warming world are working their way along.  There’s open water here already, in spite of low temperatures, and I am pretty sure that a few minutes or so after the final snow melts there will be green annuals sprouting and hardy perennials trying to shoot up for whatever advantage they can gain from a quick start.  When seasons seem to delay, as spring has this year, it often means that they simply occur in what is almost an overnight rush

Wed-

This year, Coindre Hall could have hosted some of the Olympic events.  Well, except for the quick-frozen dog droppings that litter the top of the hill by the parking lot.  These north-facing slopes never melt until the temperature advances pretty well.

Very little seems as hopeless as a scene like this in March, which around here is typically beginning to burst.  Not even the various thorn bushes like wild roses have begun to green up _ sometimes they are leafing out mid February.  Buds on trees have not noticeably swelled.  Birds are beginning to starve from lack of open thawed ground.  We assume it will all work out, but this is all a slap in the face of how little of the important things in the grand scheme of things we actually control.

  Thu-

A witch’s nest of poison ivy on top of a post demonstrates how it can rapidly become an impenetrable wall _ given its toxins _ wherever it grows freely.  The amazing contradiction about evolution is that it somehow leads to diversity rather than to a few dominant species overrunning the planet and crowding out everything else.  At least until humans came along.

You can’t hear the bird calls, and my camera won’t even attempt to capture their flight, but they are everywhere now, and somewhat confused by the impenetrable ground cover.  Most are frantically seeking thawed areas for food and materials for nesting.  We are promised temperature relief in the near future, but this year all predictions come with a lot of reservations.
Fri-

Soon the damage will become apparent in gardens and ecology.  Some ornamentals and invasive species will not survive through spring, and some marginal natives, primarily the youngest and oldest, will also be destroyed.  It has been intensely cold, but there was also a severe drought in the fall and heavy wind/snow damage to add to the stress.  The landscape will eventually be just as green and colorful, but the individual notes may have changed significantly.

Ducks, seagulls and crows _ like people _ seem not to pay much attention to the vagaries of daily weather nor the extremes of seasons themselves.  They always seem to find something to eat, and always have their own particular concerns which supersede mere temperature, humidity, and light.
Sat-

Ice floes appear and vanish mysteriously and literally overnight depending on temperature, tides and wind.  Clear water one day can become filled with chunks and patches of smooth glass the next.  It would be much more interesting if we didn’t keep expecting the trend at this point to be less and less frozen.

This time of year is particularly one of microclimates.  We are scarcely tracking the reported daily highs of nearby New York, for example.  Because of the intense snow cover, deeper than in many other places, we are running some ten degrees below even spots on the island a few miles away.  Places down in hollows may be even colder.  Can’t complain, because the same basic pattern moderates us in the hottest summer weather which we still believe will be arriving eventually.

Sun-

By this time last year, Hecksher park was bursting with life and activity.  Probably, under the waters and in the ground, through the trees and hidden within bulbs, the same mysterious processes are starting up and have just decided to hit snooze for a while.  But to a casual observer, it looks pretty hopeless.

As temperatures approach normal over the next week, barring a big snowstorm, the ground may finally clear.  Birds may finally find places to land and eat and begin their nests.  And people may finally shed their depressed feeling of eternal hibernation and smile once again.