Category Archives: Nature and Gardens

Hornworms

Late summer, and this year the tomato hornworms are out in force. I have mixed feelings about these creatures, because once they hatch into hawk or sphinx moths, they are wonderful pollinators for many plants, fascinating to observe as they hover like hummingbirds over the buddleia. But as caterpillars, do they have to be so damned voracious? Most years I can remove them to places far from the vegetables or snip them in half, but sometimes–like this year–I resort to spraying tomatoes with Bt.

We are having a wet August, however, which is a problem for Bt application: I have to keep applying it after every rain. Not to complain of rain in August–so much more welcome than drought. I always look for hornworms to remove them by hand, but they are so good at camouflage that I’ve only found three so far, and two of those were carrying parasitic wasp cocoons so were not going to live to do much more damage (I removed them anyway). Yet each morning I find further “pruning” of my plants. Sigh.

It’s not a big problem, really. My tomatoes have been going wild this year, with plants 7 feet tall, 8 feet in circumference, all of them loaded with fruit. I should not mind sharing with a few very hungry caterpillars when, after all, I’m loading my friends with tomatoes and making more sauce than Best Beloved and I can possibly consume in a year. And yet, it is rather annoying. So I was scouting the internet when I found this blog from Brie Arthur re hornworms. It’s a nice overview and shows “both sides” of hornworm invaders (though as she is in North Carolina, she has tobacco hornworms on her tomatoes).

Hornworms bring to my mind two very astonishing Stanley Kunitz poems written from the worm’s viewpoint. A tricky task, taking the persona of a non-human and still avoiding the more common issues of anthropomorphism. Kunitz, a master, pulls it off. Here is an excerpt from “Hornworm: Autumn Lamentation.”

~

All day, all night, I carry on my back
embedded in my flesh, two rows
of little white cocoons,
so neatly stacked
they look like eggs in a crate.
And I am eaten half away.

If I can gather strength enough
I'll try to burrow under a stone
and spin myself a purse
in which to sleep away the cold;
though when the sun kisses the earth
again, I know I won't be there.
Instead, out of my chrysalis
will break, like robbers from a tomb,
a swarm of parasitic flies,
leaving my wasted husk behind.

~

I encourage you to read the entire short poem. So layered. And it gave me new respect for the animals that eat the same things we want to eat, who can blame them?

Photo by Chris F on Pexels.com

Arts, gardens, bicentennial memories

When I was a second-grader in Yonkers, NY, our school took us on a class trip to an art museum in New York City. I could not tell you which art museum it was (possibly the Whitney, possibly MoMA), but I remember how vividly impressed I was by one of the things I saw there: a very large mobile suspended overhead, ever so slightly moving. I had never seen anything like it before, and it rocked my world. It was clearly art, but unlike any art I’d seen before. Thus began my lifelong love of art museums, which my parents were glad to encourage.

When a new art museum opens near me, which certainly isn’t all that often, I try to get to it. Philadelphia is a little over an hour away, so I was thrilled when I heard about the new Calder Gardens, (opened in late 2025) which combines two of my favorite things–art and gardens. Not to mention the opportunity to wander past old an favorite, the Rodin Museum, as well as the reflecting pools and tall pines surrounding the much newer Barnes Museum, and to stop at Buena Onda for fish tacos. The Calder gardens were designed by Piet Oudolf and are lovely. Evoking plains or meadows in the midst of a very urban environment, the landscaping proves that pollinators will find their way to plants even when surrounded by traffic and skyscrapers. Delicate grasses were setting seeds when we arrived, giving an airy lightness to what was a typical hot, muggy summer-in-the-city day. Bees and butterflies were as busy as the streets.

I have to say that I don’t much like the museum’s exterior, but the interior architecture suits Calder’s works perfectly. The galleries are unexpected, curving, textured, with walls that range from wood to lava-like to smoothly-polished stone, and they feature niches for seating and gazing, in addition to huge windows that look out onto Calder’s larger stabiles that are situated in well-like, below-ground outdoor spaces. Lighting allows intriguing shadows to be cast by the mobiles; a soundscape softly fills one of the galleries. Docents offer detailed talks and answer visitor questions. The whole place, though on the small side in terms of “quantity,” is a memorable experience.

~

On our way to the Calder Gardens, we passed the monumental Philadelphia Museum of Art and noticed that part of the Parkway and “the oval” were blocked off; there was a huge array of theater lights and speakers that technicians were raising in front of the museum’s famous steps. If we’d visited toward the end of the week, we’d have found the Parkway considerably more limited.

Oh, right. July 4 in Philadelphia: always mayhem, but this year the semiquincentennial.

We avoid Independence Day in Philadelphia because I don’t care for crowds, though I’ve been known to make exceptions for a march or a concert. Not to mention the traffic and parking or the fact that Philadelphia in July is miserably hot and humid, absolutely without exception. Anyway, the nation’s 250th doesn’t feel all that celebratory to me. I suppose I have become cynical.

But seeing all the setup in Center City took me back to Philadelphia on July 4, 1976, when my family lived across the river in New Jersey. My parents–they must have been crazy!–drove us into the city for the evening’s bicentennial party. I had just turned 18, my sister was 16, our brother was almost 12. We saw the musical “1776” on the big lawn in front of Independence Hall (no lawn there now–it’s the Liberty Bell Center). We then walked around the city, going from park to park to watch the fireworks, the five of us holding hands sometimes, trying to stay together and not get separated in the crowd. An enormous crowd! It was exhilarating and a bit scary, and I recall thinking that it gave me a sense of what a war zone must feel like. All those bangs and booms, so loud and so frequent I could feel the vibrations in my body; and sprays and fountains of light overhead, and actual fountains reflecting sparklers and fireworks, warning lights, streetlamps; cars driving past, honking; people singing and shouting. There were protesters, too, but despite the protests (we applauded their efforts and the right of citizens to protest), and despite the presence of police and federal troopers, I don’t recall feeling fearful or anxious. It may be the closest I’ve ever gotten to feeling “patriotic.”

Well, I was very young, and I wasn’t following the controversies very closely (curious about said controversies? See this article). I was aware of conflict and division in the USA, but youth tends toward optimism and energy; I was excited about art, music, books, my college education. That was 50 years ago. There’s much I have forgotten, but the arts haven’t let me down in all those years. Poetry, sculpture, music, painting, dance, and the “humanities” sustain me still.

Invention

I’ve been thinking about creativity in the sense of inventiveness, spurred by two recent visits to two very different places. The first place is the Hagley Museum, an industrial museum, site of the original DuPont de Nemours gunpowder works in Delaware, along the quiet Brandywine. The area was not so placid from 1803 to 1920 when the factories were active and a town’s-worth of people lived and labored here doing a dangerous job. The historic non-profit has created a “museum of invention” at the works, in what was once a textile mill, and it features a large number of mostly 19th-century patent models. Also some of the mechanical drawings that accompanied them. Inventors from all walks of life are represented, and I was impressed by the usually-anonymous craftspeople who made the 3-D models for the Patent Office. So cool!

I think this is the west side of the house…

Then, a couple of days ago, we visited Luna Parc, which is quite an experience. It is a handmade house, sculpture garden, and studio that Ricky Boscarino has been working on for decades. A Rhode Island School of Design student fascinated by silver-smithing, Boscarino decided early on that he wanted to make a living doing art. He began by making unusual (and sometimes slightly alarming*) jewelry and creating art from found objects. He’s also a painter, ceramicist, welder, woodworker…and trying to make his housing needs, studio, and life as sustainable as possible in the wooded region near Stokes State Park in New Jersey. Now, the place is a non-profit that trains students, sponsors art interns, and continues to grow and morph into, well, who knows? He’s devoted his life to art-making. And the place is really fun to explore.

Talk about inventive!

It’s something people need to do, have an urge to do–invent stuff for some purpose, to solve a problem, for enjoyment, or out of a need to play around; we are, as Huizinga says, Homo Ludens (see this post!). Play leads to all kinds of things, piqued by curiosity and that urge to fiddle with things. The patent models at Hagley were behind glass, but I was itching to play with them, like a five-year-old.

That is what I like about writing poetry, too, the play and invention of it–using words, images, sounds, patterns. Earlier today I was messing around with quatrains that used rhyme/slant rhyme line endings, switching off between ABBA and ABAB by stanza. The poem’s content isn’t cheerful, yet puttering with possible patterns was fun and kept me thinking about the topic. Then I went inside and put Bach’s Inventions & Sinfonias on the stereo.

~

* One of Boscarino’s jewelry pieces
Inventive patterns
some wild stairsteps

All of the above by Ricky Boscarino. Purchase his work or book a tour here.

Rainy-day reading

Much-needed rain has arrived, and therefore I’ve been inside all day instead of out in the yard and gardens. I thought maybe I would feel motivated to send some of my poems out into the wider world. Turns out that the motivation was a decided maybe, leaning toward lethargy. Instead, I curled up with a cat and Jeff Burt’s collection The Root Endures (Sheila-na-Gig Editions).

Actually, I read this book a week ago but decided to take a closer look so I could post about it, because I like it a lot. Jeff Burt’s poems contain nature-images and close observations of creatures, plants, and weather yet keep reminding the reader that there’s a decidedly human component here, an interior character who speculates about what human beings are doing here, thinking about, recalling. And how the world is constantly in flux. The rural Wisconsin of the speaker’s childhood feels vividly authentic, and I learned about lime bogs and de-tasseling corn. (I love it when I learn things from poems.) The book seems autobiographical in narrative but never becomes as specifically personal as a memoir would.

And frankly, I guess I might identify more deeply with this book than other, perhaps younger or more urban readers would. I grew up in the mid-Atlantic suburbs, but I spent all my childhood summers in the Midwestern small towns where my parents’ extended families lived. I infer that Burt is pretty much my peer, age-wise; some of his remembered details conjure up a kind of resonance I enjoy. What I’d like to learn from this collection is how to sustain a longer poem, which he does quite well. Not a strength of mine, though I’ve attempted it once or twice with some success. A poem that has numerous short stanzas and travels several pages needs to keep my attention, whether I’m reading it or writing it. Burt’s title poem (the last poem in the book) does this, as does the poem “As If Copper Wire Sang the Unleashing of Time” and “Into the Standing Grain.” Maybe studying writers like Jeff Burt and others can teach me how to write better medium-long poems when a longer poem seems necessary to whatever I’m trying to express. I don’t think I’m interested in writing really long poems–think A. R. Ammons, C. K. Williams, Robert Lowell–but I’d like to explore length a little more.

Whenever I read poetry, if I enjoy the work, I try to learn what the poet is doing that makes me like it. Sometimes it’s the perspective on a topic that surprises me, sometimes it’s the way the poet handles language or forms. Some writers have memorable phrasing or startling imagery, and some poets lift a lot of emotional weight with incredibly spare, condensed, or common words. Which is kind of amazing. Writers like Rebecca Elson, Martha Silano, and Tracy K. Smith create art out of physics and astronomy so that science enhances expression in new ways, or at any rate ways that are new to me. Tyehimba Jess’ Olio rocked my world with the possibilities of nonce forms, shape poems, historical narratives, and the ongoing tragedies oppression and racism have perpetrated.

I’ve always loved pondering and thinking (as a child, I was often accused of daydreaming but it isn’t the same), and poetry moves me into that happy space. Being curled up with a cat doesn’t hurt, either.

Widget

Process & metaphor

redbud
photo: Ann E. Michael

Springtime! Bees, ants, gnats, and a few butterflies have appeared. In the veg garden, the greens are thriving. I’ve sown the ornamental corn, noted the appearance of volunteer sunflowers, amaranth, and chamomile, and moved or weeded out those seedlings coming up where I don’t wish them to be–like in the middle of my soon-to-be tomato patch. The zinnia seeds have germinated in their little square, along with lettuce and spinach in their designated rows. The swallows returned today, right on schedule. Late April, and the garden looks pristine and tidy, even relatively weed-free for now: sectioned into rows, with a couple of raised beds and some stakes ready for climbers like cucumbers and pole beans. All prepped for the mid-spring explosion. The very small part of myself that likes things neatly in place promises to keep the garden less messy this year while knowing that won’t happen. The wiser self cautions that too many rigorous expectations take some of the joy out of the work.

~

Frankly, it’s all too easy to find metaphors for life in the garden. Nurturing seeds with a sense of hope, even expectation, sure. Endeavoring to control outcomes though one cannot control the weather? Yep, that too. Culling, thinning, weeding in an effort to produce abundance, clarity, or beauty? Yes; and waiting and working under hot sun or in the pouring rain and being surprised by hail or hurricane or drought. (You can pop any of those words into the “search” bar on this blog page and find times I have written about said weather events.) In the thousands of poems I’ve drafted during the past 45 years, garden topics and metaphors abound. Lately, though, I’ve been dwelling on how change–inevitable in the garden–presents problems to solve but also lovely surprises. And yeah, there’s metaphor in that as well. Though people tend to avoid change, change brings a wealth of education in its wake.

It’s true that education is often humbling. We work our butts off only to discover we’ve been doing things wrong, or ineffectively, all along. That’s one of the things I learned when I began trying to grow things in earnest, and it is also true of my experience writing poems. You have to be willing to make mistakes and accept that you made them if you are going to improve; it doesn’t mean you have to solve each difficulty in a prescribed way. You can invent! As long as you know that invention sometimes fails, you can learn from it. Create a nonce form for a poem, for example. Or an improvised trellis for a squash vine that got a lot larger than you’d planned.

Every year in late winter, I devise a garden plan and order seeds. Every year in early spring, I revise the plan in some way. Every year in mid- to late-spring, the garden looks very different from those designs…it helps to have a flexible nature, since nature hates rigidity and thrives in its own way. Often unexpected. Sometimes frustrating. Sometimes quite a charming surprise to which I’m more than happy to adapt–I welcome the variation! It’s a process that reminds me of writing. No wonder my gardening and my poems are so connected: the processes are so similar.

NoPoMonth, but…

April is National Poetry Month; but this year, I am in hibernation mode.

I’m not going to readings or writing a poem a day for 30 days, not posting much of my or other people’s poems or poetry books on social media, and not doing much poetry writing or any submitting. What’s gotten into me? Some kind of malaise? Or just a sense of being overwhelmed by, you know, life and aging and perhaps too much reflection. Plus there’s garden catch-up to tend to, since I was away for the early part of the season opener. And we’ve had a heat wave with a dry spell and lots of wind, so I’ve had to pace myself with the heavy stuff. Thankfully, Best Beloved can pitch in with much of that. Yet I am reading poetry, and if that ever stops I’ll know I’m in trouble.

So–back from traveling westward-ho. While in Fort Collins, Colorado, some dear friends introduced me to Wolverine Publick House, Cafe, and Bookshop, where there’s a lovely poetry book room in which I found my colleague Ian Haight’s book, Spring Mountain: The Complete Poems of Nansŏrhŏn. Also lots of other fabulous poetry that I had to restrain myself from purchasing, lest I overload my carry-on luggage weight. I read many of the Nansŏrhŏn translations in earlier versions that Ian emailed to me, and it is wonderful to find the book in print (from White Pine).

While in Boulder, CO, another friend suggested Devon Price’s book Unmasking Autism, which has given me much room for reflection. For many years, I helped students write college-level papers and realized that a number of these young people had varying aspects of “autism spectrum disorder”…that I, as a writing tutor/teacher, was wholly untrained to deal with. To help them, I made it up as I went along, student by student. It turns out that most of what we know about supporting autistic people to navigate contemporary social structures has been pieced together by people making it up as they went along. It helped me that one of my dearest friends has a now-adult child with autism–I’ve known him since before his birth, and I think of him as an intriguing person who has much to offer to a society that essentially ignores or shuns people like him. He needs more support services than the students I saw at the university, but he is quite his own person, and always has been. It saddens me that people like him are not more celebrated (not merely tolerated) in our society. We would all be much richer for the experience. Devon Price makes an excellent case for how acceptance of neurodiverse people can enrich the world; however, that would mean dismantling much of the capitalist, work-ethic, individualistic social systems we have, not to mention changing how the US health insurance and health care industries operate. So–not too likely any time soon. If ever. But I believe we need more social space for people whose “peculiarities” are not harming others, even if they seem a bit “weird.”

That would be good for me, for one. Speaking as a perpetual outlier and occasionally rogue thinker, it’d be nice to feel my ideas and modes of thinking aren’t weird, just different; they can be acceptable in their own way. I do not fall under the category of adult autistic but, like most of us, I have some traits that I share with the people Price writes about. Recognizing that we share traits is a way to get to know people who seem “unlike us.” And to feel less afraid of, or uncomfortable with, having them in our lives.

~

Finally, I want to shout out to Bob Mee, whose blog I read (thanks to Dave Bonta’s Poetry Blog Digest.) Mee’s recent post questioning whether the brain, as we age, changes the way we write poetry really got me thinking. I’m getting longer in the tooth myself and, as I’ve been writing poems since I was 20, his post got me curious about my own changes in style, approach, form, content, topic, influence over the years. I will probably be mulling over this idea for some time, and it may even get me to dredge up some really old poems to see whether how I write poetry has changed. Mee says: “when I sit to write the process is different. My brain is still capable of energetic concentration but I look at some of the ‘old’ poems from twenty years ago and know I cannot write like that any more.” Hmm. I’m not sure this is as true for me as it is for him, but I think it is worth examining.

Happy places

The past few days, I have been in one of my happy places: the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico, where one of my Dear Ones lives. Cibola National Forest offers alpine grasslands and mostly-pine forests (juniper, pinyon, ponderosa, Douglas fir, white firs, aspen, oaks) and trails ranging from easy walks to steep climbs. Also horse trails. I stuck with the easier walks, but after just a couple days I adjusted to the altitude. Spring is just beginning up in the mountains, but lower down–at 5,500 feet–there were flowering trees and early “ephemerals” and even, in downtown Albuquerque, hollyhocks starting to bloom.

Ft. Union

This trip, we flew in to Denver to see as many Colorado friends as we could fit into 4 days (such fun!), drove I25 south alongside the Rockies, and entered NM through the high grasslands, where we saw pronghorn antelopes and wagon-wheel ruts, still evident from the days when the Santa Fe trail led travelers to bustling Fort Union. Now the place is quite empty; it’s even a Dark Skies park, but we were there in the daylight hours. I spied a nesting pair of western meadowlarks and enjoyed listening to their songs. The mountains make their own weather, and the clouds were constantly shifting and remarkable to behold as we drove down the highway. We were lucky to have timed our departure so as to miss most of the truly awful Denver-area traffic. Indeed, our drive southward on Easter Saturday was almost zen-like in its big-sky peacefulness. It helped that we had decided not to listen to the news media…

What is it about this high, dry region that has appealed to me from the first time I visited Abiquiu at age ten? As a child, it seemed the place possessed a soulful magic. I was fascinated by the mesas, hogans, adobe dwellings, twisting rivers, desert fauna. But as an adult, I’m a gardener–this is not an easy place to garden. The soft, rainy days of spring and autumn, the summer downpours I grew up with…these are not New Mexican phenomena. If I were to move to the Southwest, I’m sure I’d miss fog and mist and even drizzle, at least sometimes. I’d miss the deep, fertile soil I’ve enriched for 25 years in my truck patch (which I am currently sowing, slightly late, with spinach, lettuce, carrots, etc). Yet even though I have spent the past two days prepping and catching up on my garden, making bouquets of narcissus and hyacinth, and hearing the familiar birds of home, I recognize that this happy place is not my only happy place.

I thought recently of a letter I read written by, of all people, Martha Washington (to her friend Mercy Otis Warren), in which she says, “the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.” She was leaving her Virginia plantation, where her grandchildren were, to go to the Capitol with her newly-elected husband.1

I don’t know that I necessarily have a cheerful disposition, but I appreciate her metaphor of the seeds we carry with us whatever our circumstances. It’s spring in eastern Pennsylvania, and there is much here to appreciate.

~

  1. Found in American Historical Curiosities, John Hay Smith, 1860 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7912/7912-h/7912-h.htm

Sowing and reaping

Last week of March, and I suppose it is time for my customary “prepping the garden and sowing greens post.” One thing I like about gardening is that there’s constant change; each year differs somewhat from previous ones, in terms of weather/climate and in terms of my situation/plans. This year, not much seed-starting indoors. Instead, I’ll sow direct and purchase seedlings locally. So what I grow in the vegetable patch will depend on what looks good at the farmer’s market or the nurseries. It will be a surprise.

The garden does need some prep work, however, and greens need to be sown early. Today I planted spinach, lettuces, purple kale, carrots, coriander. And I set up a raised bed, which I finally moved from its previous spot, for herbs. I listened for returning migrant birds, noticed little flying insects, and found grubs, worms, and numerous arthropods (millipedes, garden centipedes, sowbugs). The usual suspects! Mild days in early spring are salubrious to body and soul.

~

The reaping to which I refer in the title of this post is metaphorical, as spring isn’t a big time for bringing in the sheaves, though in a few weeks the winter wheat will be ripe. I feel I have reaped some joy from a recent poetry reading I gave at the library of my former employer, DeSales University, and how often do we feel that way? It’s a gift! Dr. Steve Myers invited me to read with three of the alums of the MFA program DSU now offers, and last night I found myself back in the library where my office used to be (once I finally escaped from the basement where I’d been located for 17 years). The audience was a mix of undergraduate and graduate students and friends who were kind enough to show up on a Wednesday night. It’s wonderful to feel appreciated now and then. :)

I haven’t been giving many readings lately or even attending open mics. Evenings and nights are not my best time, but the college is very nearby and I really was pleased to be able to participate…Best Beloved drove me there and back, so everything was manageable. I read some quite old poems and some quite new ones, and a few in-between from my books. And I sold a few books! Always a thrill. I am dwelling in gratitude today.

One of the best things at the event was seeing a former student who was one of my writing tutors and who now works at DeSales. She’s also lately enrolled in the MFA program. What a joy to catch up with a person I met as a bright 18-year-old with a natural talent for writing, who’s pursuing creative writing now–as a mother of two, and nearing 40–not so different from my own circuitous path in poetry. Such are the rewards of teaching…occasionally, I do miss it.

Lots of rain in the forecast for next week. Things will green up, and maybe those seeds will sprout.

Snowdrops

My trip to Baltimore for the AWP Conference Book Fair didn’t happen; my immune system decided otherwise, with a resurgence of a nasty respiratory virus and a flare of fibromyalgia. I guess I can look on the positive side and say I saved a lot of money, right? Plus I can purchase most of those poetry collections online, I suppose. Still, there really is nothing like browsing through thousands of luscious books for something that grabs me, that takes the top of my head off, to paraphrase Ms. Dickinson. Through social media platforms, I can see colleagues-in-literature making connections and meeting one another face-to-face, which is what conferences are for. Another year, maybe.

And after days of necessary spring rain, drizzle, and fog, the long-awaited thaw eradicated most of our snow. Crocuses bloomed, and bees came out to visit the snowdrops.

I felt much better today and was able to take a walk in the mild sun, listening to robins, mourning doves, song sparrows, woodpeckers, redwing blackbirds, bluebirds, house finches, Carolina chickadees, American crows, Canada geese, mockingbirds, cardinals, bluejays, masses of starlings…I watched the high-flown antics of redtail hawks and turkey vultures.

In other regions of the world today, people listen and watch for fighter jets, torpedoes, drones. There but for fortune may go you or I (Phil Ochs). Meanwhile I remain grateful for feeling slightly better as the days lengthen into spring. It’s March–we could still get snow! But the spring peepers sense the warmer temperature and trilled a bit last evening while the great horned owl was hooting. Here’s a poem I wrote in 2012 about DST.

~

Daylight Savings Time

In the 21st century it seems
a bootless custom, a cultural exercise,
useless gill of the railroad era.
Yet as I sit on my porch
long past the 6 o’clock hour,
dinner already consumed, dishes cleaned,
feeling the breeze of mild late winter
raise the hairs on my bare arms,
I am glad for the extra hour
among long shadows as my dog
chases a woodchuck, as the wood-
pecker pounds in metrical progressions:
trochee, trochee, spondee.
The path the dog follows 
is greener than it was yesterday,
coltsfoot blooming and the scent
of winter-blooming hazel in the air, 
available to my senses because
the day’s now one hour further skewed
toward spring, a brief and welcome turn 
in the nature of things, 
however imposed and arbitrary.
~
~~~

A week before National Poetry Month, I’ll be reading at this event in Center Valley PA.

Comparisons

I keep a day-by-day garden journal, ten years at a time (the one I use is here, from Lee Valley). This record often proves useful and is an interesting way to compare how the seasons unfurl from year to year. After 30 years of record-keeping, for example, I can see that the summers here are hotter and drier than they used to be, and that winters are far less consistent. I note which plants thrive and which fail, and observe when invasive species arrive and when certain plants or animals seem to experience a die-off–or a flourishing. As I used to tell my students in composition and rhetoric classes, basic comparisons are a toe-in-the-water way to begin learning how to do full-fledged analysis. In what ways are things alike? In what ways do they differ?

Let’s look at February, surely my least-favorite month. In 1997, the month was mild, even warm; snowdrops bloomed on the 21st (in 1996, the bloom was the 23rd, in 2000, the 24th). Fast-forward: in 2023, they blossomed on February 13th, in 2024 on February 8th. Similarly for the bloom times of iris reticulata and witchhazel. Last year, however–2025–we had arctic air pushing through due to warming at the poles and other effects. The snowdrops opened late, on February 25th. This year, we’ve had a colder-than-average midwinter. Today, after yet another snowstorm, there’s an additional 5″ of snow cover over existing snow. I doubt I’ll see snowdrops for another week or so. But you never know. Galanthus are resourceful, having originated possibly in the Pyrenees or even Thracia, and they have adapted to many regions quite happily. They can even bloom under a light snow cover.

Comparing seasons from year to year has helped me to plan my garden, but it’s always a bit of a crap shoot. Earth’s varying meteorological systems mean that humans endeavoring to grow crops or plan for weather events will often be surprised. Nature is unpredictable, no matter how many analyses we project. The recent snowstorm here was, if not wildly inaccurately predicted, at least not following the most expected computer models. Which is as it should be. Artificial intelligence and algorithms are far from foolproof.

~~

What will the weather be like on March 7th? I’m planning to attend the book fair day at AWP in Baltimore that day, but always “weather permitting.” Last year in Los Angeles, I liked having the option of just attending one day of the event–sans panels and such, which overload my introvert personality. But Baltimore is a 3-hour drive from here, so weather must permit! The past five years, March 6-8 has been mild and reasonably fair; so says my garden journal, so maybe I will get there. If so, I’ll return bearing poetry collections…

Meantime, my mother will turn 93 this week. I wish celebration were in order, but she seems to be retreating into a zoning world of her own, less familiar to us and less aware of her surroundings. Once again, comparisons: who she was for most of my life and who she is (or is not) now. She’s weathered much in her lifetime. The analysis: I don’t love her any less.