i’m trying to be learn from the plants around me, who grow next year’s buds before this year’s leaves have completely fallen. what projects am i completing? which am i planning for next year? which are growing little buds in the back of my mind right now, and how long do i leave them to overwinter before it’s time to ask them to burst into life?

lacecap hydrangea in winter

st. paul, minnesota

for those of us who live on northern lakes, there are two important days of every year. they are ice-over and ice-out. ice-over means we will soon be able to skate and play hockey. ice out means we will soon be able to fish and swim. each one is anxiously awaited, with much speculating, for many weeks prior to the big event. on our lake, we have data on these two events going back to 1947, 70 years. yesterday was ice-out day on turtle lake. it’s four weeks earlier than the seventy-year average and a new record. similarly, for someone who has been photographing the natural phenology of their immediate environment for over five years, it is immediately apparent that these pussy willows are ahead of their regularly scheduled time. a quick search of my STILL archive tells me these reliable signs of early spring are currently 3-4 weeks early. for years i have been saying to my husband “if only winter were one month shorter”. all i can say now is…careful what you ask for.

pussy willow

st. paul, minnesota

i had a friend in school who used to eat the center out of her sandwich at lunch because even the pale golden softness of a wonder bread crust was too much fiber for her. the beetles who ate these leaves seem to have had the same attitude about the wonder bread tenderness of these leaves compared to the fibery crust of the veins.

linden tree branch with beetle eaten leaves

st. paul, minnesota

so do you see those jagged little lines of separation between the plates of this turtle’s skull? those were not visible until i corrected this photo for a black background. suddenly there they were, in high definition. previously, when i was correcting for white, the opposite would have happened. the entire skull would have been blown out in a flare of bright white. if i haven’t yet found my voice in this new country of photos on black backgrounds, these little wandering black lines feel as if they give me a few new words of vocabulary.

snapping turtle skull

sucker lake, saint paul, minnesota

it’s too early to be thinking about spring flowers, but what does one do with budding trees and green grass and 50 degrees? one makes bouquets of tulips and daffodils and hyacinth. and one reminds oneself that deep march snows always come, eventually, in this part of the world. and one hopes they do come this year. because it’s too early to be thinking about spring flowers.

spring bulbs: hyacinth, tulips, daffodil, and grape hyacinth