WHERE'S MY GREEN

Who says trees aren't colorful in the spring? 

I found this little swamp maple seedling (at least I think that's what it is, though I'm really just guessing and will welcome any correction) when I spotted the bright orangy-red amongst the otherwise vernal greenery and dead-leaf tans of the wooded hillside. Closer investigation revealed this festive little fellow—as dressed up as any maple in autumn. 

While my botany is pretty shaky, I'd guess the coloration is simply due to a temporary lack of chlorophyll in the just-unfurled leaves. Leaves always sport those bright colors we ooh and ahh over in the fall—it's just that the color remains hidden during the spring and summer months, masked by the overpowering green of the chlorophyll.

If you sort of look at the leaves overall arrangement, I think it looks like a scarlet-orange bat spreading its wings. (Okay, you might need to sort of squint, and put your imagination in free-spool.) At the very least, the little seedling seems to saying, "Where's my green!"   

        

BEAUTY UNEXPECTED

Beauty can sometime be found in the most unexpected places.

Yesterday evening at twilight, just as the sun was about to disappear behind the higher skyline to the west, I stepped out from the great room onto the narrow deck which runs across the end of the cottage. As you can see, this deck directly faces the river—though usually, when the stream is at normal pool, the river level is ten feet or so down. Now, of course, it is high from all the rain we've had these last couple of weeks. And yes, that water is as close as it appears—about 6 inches below the bottom edge of the deck's 2x12 stringers…and under it, in case you're wondering.

Scary? No, not any more. I've learned this is the usual rise-level after a few days of heavy rains. At this point I have about another 12 inches before it tops the bank and comes into the yard, and 18 or so additional inches of leeway until the water would actually be level with the doorsill and about to get into the house. Somehow I knew, before these rains even began, that the river would treat us right—and I trusted that intuition. I don't want to make too much of this, but it was a gut feeling that should have been unreasonable given the dire forecasts, yet one I believed with a trust beyond mere wishful thinking. 

Anyway…what you see here is the river in front of the cottage, the pool and big riffle—now deep underwater—which appears in many posted photos, and the island across from the house—also mostly underwater. 

While an expanse of high, muddy floodwater might not usually be photogenic, the portion where the golden light of the setting sun smears across the fast-moving surface was—or at least seemed so to me.

What do you say? Hidden beauty, or ugly old floodwater?

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A RIVERBANK FIRST

I spent all of yesterday writing a couple of deadlined columns and keeping an eye on the storm situation. Except for a few 90-second trips onto the deck to check on the river level, I never went outside. Nevertheless, I managed to log, and even photograph, a new bird to the list of riverbank visitors.

Ohio has six year-around resident species of woodpeckers—pileated, red-headed, yellow-shafted flicker, red-bellied, downy, and hairy. (Arguably, you could also include the yellow-bellied sapsucker, though most of these birds simply pass through during migration to their breeding grounds in northern deciduous forests. Only a handful hang around for nesting, and almost never in this southwestern corner of the state—though a few might overwinter hereabouts. The state's Division of Wildlife lists the bird as "endangered.")

Of the half-dozen species, all but one, the red-headed, are common year-around visitors along the riverbank. In fact, I see the other five woodpeckers almost daily. However, until yesterday, since moving to this riverside cottage almost seven years ago, I'd never spotted a single red-headed woodpecker in the trees along the stream, or hanging around any of the seed or suet feeders—though they're not particularly uncommon throughout the rural farmlands a few miles to the west. So I was momentarily flabbergasted when I looked out my workroom window and saw this handsome red-headed woodpecker investigating the box elder near the front door. It was drizzling at the time, the light dim, and I had to shoot at an oblique angle through a glass that badly needs cleaning, hand-holding my 70-300mm zoom—so the photo isn't all that good. But a moment after I recorded this image, the bird flew off across the river to the island, and that was the end of my photo-op. I'm glad I got what I did.

That makes it a banner bird week here…first, my annual grosbeak showed up (here) for a good long look, and yesterday a red-headed woodpecker. Wow! 

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COMELINESS IN THE COMMONPLACE

My neighbor has an apple tree that grows on our mutual property line near the drive. By most standards, as apple trees go, this one is a rather poor example…though not through any fault or neglect on Everett's part; he simply acquired the medium-sized tree when he purchased the wedge of land. A tree of uncertain origin and heritage—perhaps wild—it was thoughtlessly planted in partial shade, on a steep, eroding bank. While it annually sets quite a number of fruits, only a very few apples manage to mature, thanks to the ranks of gourmandizing squirrels whose den is in the hollow of the huge sycamore a few yards away. And though I'm one of those wild-foraging apple junkies who almost never finds an apple he dislikes, on several occasions I've tried one of the dozen or so of this tree's apples that somehow survives predations—and the plain truth is, the tree's apples taste bad.

However, every April, this lowly apple tree finds its moment of breathtaking glory—responding to the ancient calling of increasing sunlight, feeling the pulse of rising sap, it bursts out with fragrant blooms worthy of anyone's attention.

Yesterday evening the showers let up for awhile. During the sort of gloaming period before too-dark twilight, I made a series of photos of the apple tree's blooms. The more I composed and shot, the more I became entranced by the subtle charm of the pink-and-white flowers with their delicate yellow stamens. Later, after I'd uploaded the images onto the computer where a single blossom covered the entire screen, I was even more astounded by their incredible splendor.   

I think we all have a tendency to overlook too many of those natural delights which are regularly placed smack under our noses. We do this, I suspect, because we're conditioned to desire the spectacular, typically expecting to be wowed, thinking we must be treated to a "big show," a sight so awesome we oooh and ahhh in giddy wonder afterwards. What we thus fail to see and appreciate is the breathtaking beauty in the smaller things, the astonishing comeliness in the commonplace.

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps that is true in certain cases. An apple tree in bloom is the most commonplace of sights come spring. But look close—there's nothing ordinary about those familiar blooms. In the end, it doesn't matter what the tree's apples taste like…the fact is, our lives can never be overfilled with beauty.

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COMPENSATION GIFT

A rather bedraggled squirrel—doubtless the very vandal who gnawed through my feeder lines last week—uses his bushy tail for an umbrella while he sits in the box elder where the well-stocked feeders once hung, and hungrily contemplates the error of his ways.    

Rain, rain, rain, heavy rain, possibly sunny, rain, rain. That's the weather prediction for the next seven days. Only worth quacking about if you're a duck. Otherwise, not exactly the sort of forecast that makes you want to bound out of bed in the morning.

Of course it rained this morning and afternoon. Most of the time not very hard, just passing bands of showers. The sun even popped out for a microsecond here and there. But after a week of similar weather already, we're getting decidedly soggy here on the riverbank. The river is up, but only a little since yesterday evening—when it was still up, but down from yesterday morning. That might only make sense to another riverbanker. During long periods of daily, or near-daily showers, the river level yo-yos by the hour—up, down, up, down, up, up, up, down, down, up. We seasoned water rats have established our personal river-level markers by which we watch to keep tabs on where we're at and which direction things are going. A glance is all it takes.   

At the moment I'm looking at a male downy woodpecker who's decided to join the chickadees and finches and eat sunflower seeds from the feeder hanging under the eave beyond my writing-room window. The poor little bird looks as though he's been whirled around in a blender—feathers either matted or sticking out every which way, like a punk-rock teenager with access to a new jar of hair gel. 


A few minutes ago a female rose-breasted grosbeak flew in for a meal. Grosbeaks are quite rare here along the river. I'm lucky if I see more than a couple per year. So on this rainy Monday, I may have just received my annual grosbeak allotment. 


Okay. I'll take that as a compensation gift for the lousy weather.

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SUNRISE…SON RISE

Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Earth and heaven in chorus say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

Today's glorious sunrise lights another Easter morning, shining triumphantly on the most holy and important day in all Christendom. Without Easter, Christianity would be just another fairytale, an old narrative about a poor carpenter's son who grew up to preach a gospel of love for all mankind. A teacher and healer who was nailed to a cross, tortured unto death, and whose body was then prepared for burial and placed in a borrowed tomb, where the entrance was sealed by a great stone.


End of story…? No! On the third day the stone was rolled away! Easter celebrates the resurrection of Christ from the tomb, the conquering of life over death. Easter is God's promise fulfilled, sealed in blood, extended through grace. And regardless of the weather, Easter is the most beautiful and joyous day of the year. 

He is risen! 


He is risen, indeed!


Happy Easter!
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RAIN, TULIPS, AND VANDALIZING SQUIRRELS

It is cool. damp, overcast, and raining lightly, with more and heavier rain predicted for this afternoon, as well as tonight, through the weekend, and at least the first couple of days next week. Some of it, they warn, will be quite heavy. Not the news a riverbank dweller likes to hear—especially since it rained earlier in the week and the river's level has already risen to within a couple of feet of the top of the bank. 

However, for whatever reason I'm not much worried. The predicted scenario doesn't seem quite right to indicate real trouble ahead—not like it did back in March. Call it faith. But the truth is, I simply don't feel the bad vibes; I trust this old river.

I did duck outside long enough to make a quick shot of these droplet-covered tulips. There must be half-a-hundred or more tulips now in bloom, in magentas, pinks, and yellows. Every fall we put out a few bulbs, but we need to mix in more colors—reds from crimson to burgundy, and those that are all but purple, various whites, and oranges the rich color of a robin's breast. A whole artist's palette of tulips to fortify the fading daffodils. 

Over the last two days, the nefarious squirrels have gnawed through the ropes suspending  one of the big seed feeders, and the wire suet block holder—thereby sending both crashing to the ground. I've temporarily sat the fallen seed feeder atop a stump, where it has been generally commandeered by the bushy-tailed perpetrators, to the consternation of the titmice and chickadees. But the suet feeder is empty, which has the various woodpeckers in a tizzy. My guilt at this neglect—not to mention the nasty looks I imagine I'm being given by the downies and nuthatches—has about reached the stage where I'm going to have to figure our how to reaffix it somewhere else for the time being. 

This is the third time in less than a month the same seed-feeder's rope has been cut. Vandals exhibiting a pattern of criminal behavior. I'm getting tired of restringing. So I expect one of the chores I'm going to have to accomplish between rains is to replace every feeder rope with chain, which means a trip to the hardware store—and I might as well add ones for the hummingbird feeders which I'll put out in the next week or so. This also means dragging out my ladder, though I don't think it's long enough to reach one of the limbs I want to use. 

Or…I could simply cook up a big pot of burgoo—squirrel being the stew's chief ingredient. Then I could just redo the feeders using more rope. 

Hummmmm?

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