Author: Dave Greschner

Dragons and dogs in the clouds

When I was a small boy I’d lay on my back next to the barn’s silo on summer days and watch clouds pass by the silver dome. They were puffy white clouds in a blue sky, dreams in a young boy’s eyes.

My fascination with clouds would only heighten as I studied their flight and ever-changing shapes. A cloud’s formation might be an animal, say a dragon or dog, but the head and tail would grow and shrink before my eyes. And then what I thought was a dragon or dog would suddenly be all different, transformed into a bird or maybe even a state. Look, Montana is flying!

I could also stare long enough to make the clouds stand still. This would create the illusion that the silo was moving, or falling, which caught my attention real fast. I’d close my eyes to block out the fear, and then open them again to let the clouds continue on.

Where were the clouds going? How far and how fast? Would they circle the globe or dissipate over the neighbor’s hill? Would a cloud that looked like a bear to me take on the same form 10 or 100 miles away?

I looked at clouds again the other day through the eyes of an aging man. But, squinting back to my youth and child-like view of the world, I saw two dogs in the clouds. One dog was sitting looking away from me, the other stretched out and pushing a paw toward the sitting dog. The scene changed in less than a minute, and the sitting dog cloud suddenly formed a poodle’s head.

I actually saw a poodle in the sky. And I felt a little kid in my heart.

Leaves by the number

Warning: Rough estimates ahead.

Every summer I’m amazed at the height, width and fullness of our large birch tree in the back yard after its spring rebirth from winter’s bareness. It is the biggest birch I know of, though I don’t go on searches for big birch trees.

As I stare at this old, mature tree, which hides all kinds of birds and squirrel nests and has some dead spots for the pileated woodpeckers, I always ask the question with the impossible answer: How many leaves?

I finally came up with a formula to estimate the number of leaves on the mighty birch with its three trunks from which several hefty horizontal branches spread. The formula may be flawed, but I go with it.

I stepped off the widths, north to south and east to west, and they were fairly even at about 40 feet. Knowing the tallest birches in Wisconsin are 65 to 70 feet, I conservatively topped my tree out at 60 feet.

Those measurements gave me 96,000 cubic feet of space. Accounting for open spaces in the tree, I halved that to come up with 48,000 cubic feet of leaf area. Then I counted 55 leaves in one cubic foot. Multiplying 48,000 by 55 gave me about 2.6 million leaves.

Am I even close? I did some research of other folks with the same leaf question. I found one estimate of 2 million leaves on a big oak tree, so that’s close to my number. However, another leaf counter came up with 200,000 leaves on a large mature tree, so that’s not close.

One thing I am sure of is how much I, along with the birds and squirrels, enjoy this big birch, no matter how many leaves.

The queen lives

I had feared the Queen was dead, or at the least, trampled by the natives. That would be my transplanted Queen of the Prairie wildflower, and the natives would be everything from tansies to raspberry bushes to milkweed.

But after the Queen disappeared last year after a few seasons of modest reign, not to mention a season of modest rainfall, I’ve found the Queen lives! On a muggy July morning in the meadow, between the farm fields and the woods, the color pink caught my eye in midst of all the green. Could it be? Yes, the Queen of the Prairie, at least two plants, was beginning to bloom.

The balls of pink atop amber stems, with large, pointed and deeply divided leaves below, had not yet burst into flowers. They will; the Queen is a beauty in August. But I was thrilled at the sight, the transplanted prairie flower in a meadow where perhaps this North American native once bloomed a century or more ago before part of the small clearing met the steel blades of a plow.

Let’s back up to the city, where we were given a Queen of the Prairie years ago. The plant likes sun and moisture, we later learned, but the shadow of the house kept it from sunshine in the morning, and a spreading maple tree took up the shading task in the afternoon. We could give it moisture, but not sun.

So I proceeded with my plan of most things that won’t grow on our city lot: transplant it in the country. Would not a prairie plant flourish in the small meadow clearing that juts out from the field? It did, for several years, joining the other blooming wild flowers, some of which I haven’t identified. I like to think they are prairie plants, as free as wild horses, plants that are centuries old, found nowhere else for acres around.

The Queen joined the masses and bloomed, until last summer, inexplicably absent except for maybe the lack of moisture. The kingdom lived on without the Queen. And while her disappearance is the stuff of royal mystery, she has now returned to her throne, where the leaves of birches and maples wave in approval.

Summers of spittlebugs

There are spittlebugs in July’s alfalfa and flowerless tansies. And there’s a memory in the spittlebugs of a country boy and a hay field, the dew-soaked morning after a first quarter moon.

Today’s summer breeze plays once again on the tall grasses. It plays like the breeze through the fields of my boyhood days, the bobolink’s rolling notes riding the waves I still feel.

And the wild roses that begged the fence line for bit of space have now surrendered in darkened, fallen petals, giving way to potato vine, cocklebur and prickly ash … Which I cut and hope the bitter smell provides some respite from mosquitos.

It’s early July again, as cluttered in green as my mind in worry. A month of new beginnings for prairie plants and fledglings of the grassland birds. I should know this, and let the wild columbine nod away my fear.

Fear should be lost in the small bush hiding the white sparrow’s low nest. Or lost in reverie of a creek gone dry, where frogs once rippled the water, of fields of meadowlarks and in my teasing of killdeers as I briefly claimed the pasture as my own.

And when I was a boy I saw spittlebugs in the fields of green. I knew not what they were, only that it was July and breezy, warm freedom. I know spittlebugs today, but too often look past what I feel and see.

How long true darkness?

Darkness comes slowly now, hanging behind the new leaves, waiting patiently in the wake of the summer solstice. It’s as if night is reluctant to disturb the bustle of early summer, respecting the need for extra daylight so birds and animals can nuture their young, so flowers and bushes can burst with bloom, and so the stewards of the earth can tend their young crops.

When do you see the last hint of light before the late June evening finally slips into true, total darkness? On these last days of June are the latest sunsets of the year. By the Fourth of July weekend, sunsets will come a bit sooner each evening.

It’s 10 p.m., and the last bit of murky sky still hangs in the portals of the birch tree’s branches. The sky to the northwest, where the sun slipped below the horizon an hour ago, still has an amber glow. I’ve read that total darkness doesn’t occur until 2 hours after our eyes can no longer detect light in the sky. So that would mean the dark of night, the true darkness, doesn’t surround us until midnight this time of year.

And is that true as dawn approaches, when a soft ripple of light is sent out shortly after 4 a.m., more than an hour before sunrise? If so, true darkness has already lifted. That leaves us with perhaps only 3 or 4 hours of total darkness in the days after the summer solstice, and it explains why birds are chirping before our eyes pick up the first light of dawn.

Though the summer solstice on June 20 this month was the “longest day” in terms of daylight, neither the year’s earliest sunrise nor latest sunset occur on that day. The earliest sunrise is a week earlier, and latest sunset is over the final days of June, when the sun finally slinks away just minutes shy of 9 p.m.

As nights now descend upon us slowly and gently, sending birds to their roost, morning is not far off, beginning with a single chirp of a bird detecting the ripple of a light wave. The first ripple in the waves of long summer days.

Soul of the solstice

The summer solstice eases upon us this 20th day of the sixth month with 15 hours and 38 minutes of daylight—the most of the year—as the sun takes its most northerly path in the celestial sphere, from sunrise in the northeast to sunset in the northwest.

So what to do with the longest day of the year? Look for agates in the storm-washed creek and then look for Jupiter and Saturn when the reluctant darkness finally falls after 10 p.m.

Sunrise. Share it with a cup of coffee on the quiet porch or with a fishing rod on the quiet lake as the first golden rays yawn across the tranquil waters, the silence broken only by the call of a loon.

Sunset. Should I sit quietly, watching a deer tiptoe through the corn rows or stop in the fold of ferns to query my presence. Or should I be on the trout stream, watching brookies break the surface for mayflies, and perhaps for my fascination if not my imitation?

And the long, lazy hours between dawn and dusk. What about them? I’ll watch a catbird at the bird bath, then walk a trail and make notes of brambles with green, budding blackberries.

Should I mow lawn or drive through the countryside and smell fresh-mown hay? Perhaps I’ll follow a bumblebee or butterfly, look for a walking stick—one the insect, the other a walking aid—then check the bluebird nest or pursue a myriad of matters nature is taking up as summer begins.

At 4:44 p.m. on this day, can I feel the solstice, the balance of the hemisphere, the assurance that the sun is trailing the correct path before it turns back toward autumn? Is there a solstice, a turning point, in my life? Have I reached a balance and found the right course by connecting the natural world with my inner self?

On this day, there’s plenty of time to find out.

The flow of green

Greenness flows in waves and rows now, across the yards, forests, fields and meadows of late spring. In my field of vision is green in all shades imaginable, until the hues seemingly stretch the color to infinity.

Some color experts say the hues of green are, indeed, infinite. Others put a number on green hues, that number in the thousands. Whichever, considering green light’s wavelengths, the human eye may be able to distinguish 40 hues of green, say some doctors.

I like green and how it flows in early June. Flowing like verses in a poem, connected in visual rhyme, one purpose in time, leading spring into summer.

Wrote the poet James Russell Lowell:

“And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. Whether we look, or whether we listen, we hear the murmur, or see it glisten.”

In his “Succession of Four Sweet Months,” Robert Herrick penned:

“Next enters June, and brings us more gems than those two that went before.”

Gems indeed, on days so full that darkness defers for a time to the beauty. There are gems of robin eggs and wild geraniums, blues and purples dotting the greenness. Of sulfurs and cardinals, yellows and reds dancing among the fullness of green.

The fullness is breathtaking. I stare in awe, as well I should. As William H Davies implored us to in “Leisure.”

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? No time to turn to Beauty’s glance, and watch her feet, how they can dance. A poor life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

Little things in the shadows

It’s the little things that make up the big picture of nature. When we look across the woodlands, back yards and flower gardens, do we see the understory, figuratively and literally? In a reverse of the old saying: Sometimes we can’t see the trees for the forest. Yes, sometimes we should get lost in the details of tiny scenes of beauty.

I was taking photos of trilliums one morning when the shadow of a fern appeared on the flower’s white petals. I say “appeared,” for it was seemingly suddenly there, or so I thought. But it was there all along, begging me to see it, and I didn’t notice until I studied the photo composition in the camera lens.

The photo became more than that of a trillium in bloom. And though I often avoid direct sunshine in nature photography, here it worked, bursting the greens of the fern out of the darkness of the forest floor, with the red of another blooming flower in sharp contrast of the black backdrop.

We have to train ourselves to see, for nature truly does conceal its mysteries, especially its small mysteries. And so, as spring greens toward summer, what can we look for as we hike along a woodland trail or survey the back yard? There have been bumblebees in our herb garden, but until I look closely, I have no idea what sweetness they might be pursuing in early June. Lungwort? I will look.

I see white-throated sparrows in the front yard, and I know they must have a nest in the bushes next to the house. Maybe I can see their cup-like nest, only inches off the ground, with inch-long, pale blue eggs distinctively marked with blotches of reddish brown and lavender.

Is that a frog’s eyes just above the pond surface? A toad flattened out in the mulch? Ladybug beetles on hostas? Spittlebug in the green tansies? What are those dainty blossoms of soft hues on bushes every direction I turn? Oh, there’s a caterpillar on the underside of a milkweed’s emerging leaf.

What am I seeing? What am I missing?

Leeks for campers

So far I’ve left the adventure of seeking for leeks to my in-laws while Northwoods camping in late spring. I’ve also left the cleaning and cooking of leeks to my sister-in-law. But I readily partake in the tastiness of this wild vegetable.

I didn’t know much about leeks until a few years back when my brother-in-law and his wife showed me where the low, broad-leafed vegetable grew wild in the wooded area behind their rural home. I’ve always avoided mushrooms for fear of picking the wrong kind, so I didn’t think wild harvesting in spring was meant for me. I head for the natural stuff in late summer to pick blackberries and wild plums and gather butternuts.

But there they were, wild leeks with wide, green leaves rising half a foot above ground and thickening near the ground into a bundle of leaf sheaths, which disappear below the surface into a short, oblong bulb with roots. So the edible part is from the bundle of sheaths to just above the roots, I’m told. All I know is that the edible part of the wild leek smells like onion and tastes like mild onion with a hint of sweetness, however that is possible.

On our Memorial Day family camping trip, my inlaws found leeks, and they were sautéed with other vegetables in a tasty side dish to the main meal of salmon slices over a campfire. It all went well with the beverage of each one’s choice, with my German heritage coming out with my choice (always) of full-bodied beer.

I’m now reading everything I can about leeks, how they have 12 vitamins and six minerals, how they can replace all the greens and spices in a recipe, including spinach, garlic and onions, a culinary fact reinforced for me by naturalist Emily Stone of the Cable Natural History Museum.

My spring woodland hikes are now more than about wildflowers and finding what winter left behind. I’ve discovered leeks.

The Comfort of Spring

What is the comfort in the return to something familiar? Why does it feel that good to return to what we know, what we like, what is comfortable? Perhaps we are returning, in spirit or flesh, to where we were happiest.

Spring is a return, a happy return, to what we like, what we know will be pleasant, what we remember as being exciting—creeks and frogs, buds and grass, exploration along trails abandoned since last fall, save for four-legged travelers. And perhaps it explains the excitement and pleasure in another return, that of numerous songbirds who once again have chosen our yard, our tree, our box on a field post to start anew with nests and chicks and the whole propagation of the species.

The return of birds now dominates the conversation of at least the folks I hang around with. A friend calls daily to report new sightings—a loon, killdeer, bluebird and oriole. The sightings turn competitive. Who sees what first? Through it all there’s comfort in the normalcy of migration. For what if the birds didn’t return?

But somehow in all the comfort there’s a little irritation, a sticker in the stock, for birds not easily identified suddenly appear and just as suddenly flit away. It drives me crazy.

I came around the corner on a woodland trail the other day and half a dozen rust-colored birds danced away through the leafless branches. Rust-colored and 6 to 8 inches long is all I could gather. And now I wonder: Veery? Brown thrush? No matter what, they returned. They were here. I found comfort in that.