Winter Spirits

There are many depressing things about winter, but one of the worst is when it comes weeks early.

Shriveled viburnum leaves, Nov. 17, 2019 (Margo D. Beller)

I'm no great lover of winter, especially when it brings cold that forces me to turn on the furnace, dry air that chaps my skin, and kills off the few days of comfortable autumn weather when the foliage seems to be at its peak.

Meteorologically, winter is Dec. 21, considered the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight. Nowadays in the U.S., we turn the clocks back to standard time in early November. In the space of a day the sun sets at 5 p.m. and then increasingly earlier, bringing darkness at a time when I am trying to finish my work before making supper. I bring in the bird feeders in the dark nowadays and soon I'll be rising in the dark again, too.

We had a major cold snap in mid-November that killed or damaged any plant that was not taken inside or covered. So foliage on several of my shrubs and those I see during my hikes along the Whippany River is shriveled and brown, not given a chance to change color. And then there is my lawn, which seems to get covered with leaves about a day after MH and I take a rake or blower to it. (The large white oak leaves are the last to come down in the backyard, while the neighbor's walnut tree takes its own sweet time dropping leaves that are blown over my front yard.)

Oak leaves hanging on (Margo D. Beller)

And don't get me started on the pods still hanging in the black locust tree.

Raking is a pain, literally, and so is shoveling snow, another hazard of winter.

No, I don't like cold or the increase in darkness. I spend a lot of time in the early morning on my enclosed back porch, watching for birds and waiting for the sun to rise above the neighbor's house and hit me square in the face, the ultimate in sun lamps for those of us seasonally disordered folk.

But since my complaining about it won't change anything, at least until continued global warming brings more hot days or a lake at my front door from extreme weather, I might as well look at the good things winter brings.

With the shrub foliage down along the hiking path I can see usually hidden streams. Sometimes there are ducks - mallards but also wood ducks and hooded mergansers.  If I am lucky, there's a great blue heron. When tree leaves are down it is easier to see hawks flying overhead.

Shriveled forsythia (Margo D. Beller)

The colorful warblers and other passerines are gone but other birds are arriving from the north because they consider New Jersey warm enough to survive winter. White-throated sparrows are plentiful, as are juncos, the American tree sparrows and fox sparrows, all winter visitors. There may be the occasional surprise, such as a goldfinch hanging around my feeder or a reported rough-legged hawk over a field. In some years, birds of the far north must come farther south to find food because of the lack of seed crops or, in the case of some owls or hawks, animal prey.

And, of course, there are the local birds that don't leave so they will be coming to my feeders because they can't find enough weed or other seeds and the harsh cold has killed off the insects. I'm already seeing more titmice, chickadees, cardinals and various woodpeckers.

Another advantage: The garden work is just about over for the year and I can concentrate on important things, like taking a long walk in the bracing cold and looking for birds foraging to survive.

In the end it will still be cold and winter will still come, whatever the calendar says, and whether I am ready for it or not.

Late Summer Blues

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time.
-- Robert Browning

T.S. Eliot was wrong. August is the cruelest month, not April.

In April you can sense the days are getting longer, the plants and tree leaves will soon be coming out, the temperature will warm. In August you realize that, hey, it's awful dark at 8 pm. In August the heat and humidity eventually gives way to cooler, dryer days and you walk outside to discover the weeds are everywhere and your summer flowering plants are shot and ready to be cut down and composted.

Monarch feeding on butterfly bush flowers (Margo D. Beller)

When I look in the trees, I am as likely to see a falling leaf or a migrating butterfly as I am a bird. Already the apple tree is nearly bare and many of the maple and dogwood trees I see are losing the green in their leaves and showing the underlying red or yellow.

In August the squirrels are dropping as many acorns as they are caching, making it likely I'll either get bopped on the head or step on something that will hurt my foot and might make me lose my balance.

In August many weeds are tall and flowering, particularly ragweed sending out its pollen, just in time for when I can finally open my windows for fresh air instead of being stuck inside in air conditioning circulating the same stale air.

In August many of my peppers seem to come ripe at the same time, so I am cutting and freezing most of them. My tomato plant has suddenly covered itself with yellow flowers, so I will have more fruits soon. My basil is just about done. The coleuses are tall and lovely and I have taken cuttings to pot for next year. But because of the hordes of white flies I am leaving these and the vegetable plants outside to be killed by the frost. At that time the dahlia and canna bulbs will be removed for storage.

In autumn I prefer asters to the ubiquitous mums. (Margo D. Beller)

In August many of my neighbors go away on vacation because it is the last time they can before school starts in September. Even tho' it has been decades since I've attended school, there is something about the advent of September that depresses me. Perhaps it is realizing it is only a couple of months until the end of the year. Where did the summer go? When they return they will start filling their doorways with pumpkins, mums, ornamental kale and corn threshes to connote a harvest time they've never experienced unless they grew up on a farm.

August is when birds are on the move south. The mature female hummingbird I've seen at the feeder for the better part of two weeks has not re-appeared, although an immature (grayer) hummer has come to the few remaining coral bell flowers to feed. There have been others at the feeder but I have not been outside long enough to see if they are the same bird or different.

Inkweed, like ragweed, grows huge in fall. The berries will turn
black and be eaten by catbirds and other birds
heading south. (Margo D. Beller)

Hawk-watching season is already upon us. Hawk Mountain, one of the premier viewing sites in the eastern U.S., opened for fall watching on August 15 and has already reported osprey, bald eagles, various accipiters, harrier and broadwing hawk. There will be many more "broadies" moving through my area, peaking in mid-September. Warblers may pass through my yard but unlike in the spring they won't be brightly colored and won't be singing territorial songs. Mating season is long done, the young have fledged and now the only thing on these birds' minds is getting back over land and sea to the winter territories.

Finding these migrant birds in the trees is harder at this time of year. It's a little easier in more wide-open areas such as the shore or a sod farm. I went to one sod farm recently and found some unusual sandpipers and plovers, including the upland sandpiper, which are endangered because of increasing development eating up the dry open spaces they need to survive the trip south.

Finally, August is when I realize it is dark in the early morning and it is dark before 8 pm. Daylight will continue to decrease and before long we will turn clocks back and it will be dark by around 5 pm. Lack of sunlight makes me moody, in part because I can't avoid the inevitability of the passage of time. I know the longer days will return in the spring but until then the cold is coming, and possibly worse.