a couple soaking rains and two days in the 70’s (low 20’s C) and minnesota went from looking like the tundra to …

a collection of mid-april greens

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

i see these trefoil raspberry leaves as the closed fists of winter, unclasping into the open palms of spring. i want to shake their hands.

raspberry canes with spring buds

saint paul, minnesota

i always find feathers on this trail, i said to my friend kristin today, as we set off from the vadnais lake parking lot. so many feathers, in fact, that i sometimes bring a bag with me, because feathers are hard to pinch between your fingers in a way that is both firm enough to keep them from slipping free and fluttering to the ground behind you, and delicate enough not to tear up their delicate barbs. today, i did not bring a bag with me, and was rewarded for my lack of presumption with a particularly awkward double-pinched-semi-armload of feathers both detached from, and still attached to, their owners. i carried them gingerly back to the car, and then carefully into my bedroom, and sort of let them all fall onto a sheet of white tagboard, and they fell just exactly like this. well, that’s actually quite beautiful, i said to myself. and went to find my camera.

wild turkey feathers, one owl feather, and a sparrow

vadnais lake trail, saint paul, minnesota

we had our first heavy spring rains this weekend, so buds were bursting all over minneapolis and saint paul today. these tiny blue scilla were lining my driveway this morning for the first time this spring. i bet our bees are already carrying saddle bags of blue pollen back to the hive. which is quite the day brightener to think about. but nothing really compares to the fact that today is April 15. the united states income tax filing deadline. as of midnight tonight, my tax preparer husband will take off his tax hat and put it on the proverbial hook until next january. and he will replace it with the far more dashing hat of writer and family man. happy Tax Day everyone!

scilla

saint paul, minnesota

in the three years since i have been doing STILL, i have previously found only a single cardinal feather. they are either especially tricky to spot or cardinals are lonely and reclusive molters. but yesterday on a walk with my friend kris along sucker lake, the faintest reddish glimmer in the grass materialized into a single battered cardinal feather. something about the feather seemed to speak of struggle, so the two of us clipped on our csi badges, and, over the course of a 10 minute investigation, painstakingly gathered the forensic evidence above. the evidence all pointed to a cardinal’s having had a very bad day in that spot. my feather collector’s elation at such a find couldn’t quite outweigh my birdlover’s remorse that something as ethereally beautiful as a male cardinal had ended as somebody else’s meal. i hope the tattered dignity of what remained of him does him justice.

cardinal feathers from a single bird

sucker lake regional trail, saint paul,  minnesota