With winter relatively benign and safely (?) passed, the curtain rises
on an at last-full pond and a typically atypical New England spring, revealing both broad and intimate vistas of calm and content:
Mute swan
With temperatures departing in both directions from a notional norm, wind-pumping and variable water level (but not, in this case, aquatic mammals) keep open a breathing hole
in slush that nightly re-freezes
—though not, sadly, breath enough to sustain all who lurk beneath, even with chill-slowed metabolisms. So when the ice clears, placid waters
yield up the unfortunate:
Decay being much retarded by cold, this can lead to unproductive confusion when incontinent enthusiasm trumps situational awareness:
But the cycle continues,
as cycles do;
and with advancing warmth, other poikilotherms emerge to share space in the sun:
The peaceable coexistence of the mutually inedible
Plants, too, return or arrive anew: from root, shoot
Parrotia persica
or seed, with last year’s shed husks
helping to warm and moisten tender new growth. A few, desiccated in autumn to concentrate antifreeze sap, simple re-inflate, like this improbably native prickly-pear:
Opuntia humifusa
Early bees mob fragrant crabapple
and intoxicating rhododendron
R. minus var. minus
Queen of queens, older than bees (and some hills), the magnolia
M. ‘Daybreak’
M. ‘Red Baron’ × ‘Rose Marie’
depends mainly on beetles to tickle its robust fancy:
Another ‘Daybreak’
One of the earliest displays of native color, unmuted by later-emerging leaves, is the eastern redbud:
Cercis canadensis
Some species proffer catkins, like sweetfern
Comptonia peregrina
and birch:
Betula
Promises of sweet treats to come are dangled by mulberry
Morus
and Indiana banana:
Asimina triloba
Among birds, even the migratory leave winter reminders, like Baltimore oriole nests wind-tattered in tree
or driven aground:
And as returned or over-wintered birds perambulate in search of sustenance,
others are always watching for the location of food, which may include the watched themselves:
Raising a family rquires high-energy victuals, for both parents and offspring; suet is a reliable favorite with blue- and catbirds:
Even in such a rich woodland, contesting needs of food and shelter can lead to jarring juxtaposition:
House finch
Other uninvited (but not unwelcome) users of avian-targeted services include raccoon
and red squirrel:
Fleet though they are, such exhibitionists,
as well as more reclusive mice and voles, are efficiently harvested by the diminutive but un-shy long-tailed weasel:
Life asserts itself on many scales of size and time. So while humans may revel in the large and transient, as this rainy evening’s pink-on-pink bow,
an inch-wide, sixteen-year-old lichen just settles more deeply on its durable pegmatitic bed:
