Second May Day

The combination of all the new spring growth with the withdrawal of my students to produce their final big papers calls me out for regular morning tours to keep up with what's going on.

Yesterday, May Day, the floodwaters reached nearly their highest level this year. The River now is flowing through acres of Marsh Marigolds a foot high. In this deliciously wet season, May-apples are shooting up in great multitudes down by the Cedars and in among the Aspens. When they first break the surface of the soil, they look like green fingers reaching up; then the finger turns pale and the furled leaf on its stem emerges from the sheath. This resembles the emergence of many insects from cocoons, chrysalises, and larval skins: wasps, moths, and mosquitoes. (Remember "Aliens"?) There are so many of them in some places that they seem to form little towns or villages, with a kind of intelligence you don't expect from the vegetable kingdom. They seem to know that they're all doing something together. It's easy to think that they're aware of one another.

Over the past several days I have found four Wild Turkey egg shells along the terrace above the marsh. Apparently raccoons rob the turkeys of their eggs and stop along the trail on their way home to eat them. They're large eggs, a bit larger than the Mallard eggs we found a few weeks ago, light tan in color with darker tan speckles. I'm surprised, though, that a Turkey couldn't fend off a raccoon. Maybe they work in pairs, one rushing in for the grab when the other makes the Turkey mad enough to chase him away. I'll have to read Bent on this.

I was surprised to learn that there is a spring Turkey season. Why allow hunting when they're trying to reproduce? Neighbor Jeff explained that in the spring hunt, you can shoot only the Toms as he handed me the container of stewed Turkey that Alison and I had over rice for our supper last night. Alison really doesn't like to eat things she knows were formerly walking around in our river bottom--saying "Gobble, Gobble" and the like--so we pretended that the meat came shrink-wrapped on a foam tray from a vast box-store, but it was far too flavorful for that.

The top photo above shows the Aspen buds I'm watching closely. I fear I'm having the same effect on these buds that one has on the water in the pot he's watching. But I'm anxious to know whether the twenty Aspens and Basswoods I transplanted will survive. Maybe this afternoon.