The merry month of May ...

The sickle moon is looking right into my window as I write this, but the night, beautiful as it is, does not feel like a spring night yet. Like the last few nights the temperature will dip a few degrees below freezing, and if I want to watch the Eta Aquarid meteor shower later I better dress accordingly.

Not even a week ago we were sitting outside in our shirt sleeves on the deck watching the sunset, and so easily I was fooled into believing that it could stay like this. I should know better by now. Lately I have been reading the letters I wrote to my parents before the telephone largely replaced this lovely method of communication, and hardly a year went by where our hopes for a smooth transition to summer weren’t dashed at some point. Still ...

Yet even if tiny snowflakes were drifting down this morning when I woke up and a thin layer of snow covered the lawn before a feeble sun made it disappear later there is no denying that the stirrings of spring are getting stronger. Every trip to the garden brings new discoveries. Things are coming up: those I welcome and those I would rather not see there. It is always exciting for me to find the beginnings of a new crop of fresh produce without having done anything (or should I put that more directly: by doing exactly nothing) to have this happen. Little delights: here a clump of tiny lettuce plants, there some darker green (and a bit bigger) spinach seedlings, an undulating carpet of soft tendrils of dill, a couple of onions I forgot to dig up. This year for the first time a profusion of round little leaves around three groups of cut-off dry stems shows that the hollyhock plants, too, did not invite all those bees and bumble bees in vain last summer. Oh, there is an enormous amount of work that could be done - or I could just let things run rampant and be happy about the wilderness. I suspect it will end up being a bit of both. 

The afternoon found us in the garden to continue what I had started early last week: putting the first seeds in the ground. It might be cold still, but lettuce and spinach, carrots and radishes, onions, peas, corn and even potatoes won’t mind that too much. With luck it won’t be long before they join that brave little troupe of volunteer seedlings, not to mention the already lush crop of chives and the slowly unfolding rhubarb. 

So much for news from the garden – but what about the beaver? I have spent several evenings sitting on my log, looking out onto the surface of the water, sometimes still and smooth as a mirror, sometimes crinkled by tiny wind-driven waves, waiting for the beaver, Leo engaged in his usual surveillance of the grounds. At times I wondered if it was really still around, but a few newly felled trees, some freshly chewed bark made me hopeful, and finally I was rewarded three nights in a row. 

The first time I happened to look to my right at the neighbour’s dugout on the other side of the fence when a dark head surfaced and the beaver started to do its rounds. When Leo couldn’t contain himself and ran up and down along the water’s edge it slapped a warning with its tail and disappeared again, only to re-emerge moments later. Worried that Leo might jump in after all I called him back and left. 

The next evening we arrived at our own pond with not one, but two beavers enjoying the sunset, though more likely each other’s company. They were so focused on one another that they didn’t pay any attention to us, swimming within a couple of metres of where we were standing, round after round. It could be still mating season for them, according to my reading, but the peak of the mating time is in January, so maybe the beaver couple simply was out for an evening stroll. 

Once more I found the beaver swimming in the neighbour’s pond, and this time I had my camera with me. It obliged and stayed afloat long enough for me to take its picture. Will they stick around to raise their young here? I hope so!

Stirrings

The sun is getting ready to slip beneath the horizon, far enough north by now that its setting will soon be hidden from my view by the big spruce trees beside the garden when I’m sitting at my desk. Nights might still be cool from time to time (last night it was -7), a feathery layer of snow might have covered the lawn this morning, but there is no denying anymore that spring has arrived. 

The last two weeks have seen rapidly shrinking snow banks so that, by now, just a few dirty remnants are left on the north sides of buildings and tree lines. For days last week ditches were filled with quick-running water, its gurgling as cheerful a sound as I could imagine at the end of a long winter. 

A little over a week ago I heard the honking of a single goose on my evening walk; the next night I saw six, and three days ago the first long drawn-out ‘V’s passed overhead. Ever since then the air has been reverberating with their voices in the half hour or so just before sunset: they gather in the water-filled low area in the field adjacent to our home quarter, convening from all directions. During the day couples pass overhead, long necks stretched out, black feet tucked up against their creamy bellies. They give the impression as if they know exactly where they are going. 

Ducks have not yet made it this far north, and I have not yet seen a hawk either. Gulls, on the other hand, have arrived with the geese, and their raucous calls mix with the honking in the early evening hours. In vain I keep looking for the robins, for many the true harbingers of spring. It feels as if this is late for them, but I’m not sure that is true. The last few years we still had snow at this time, last year massive amounts. Maybe the earlier snow melt has clouded my judgement.

One faithful messenger has been with us ever since we came back from Arizona on March 26, however. A group of starlings braved much colder conditions, huddling close together in the tall spruce at night, heads pulled low between their shoulders on especially miserable days. They spread out to the higher poplars when the sun is starting its descent. Then, their sweet voices sound back and forth between the tree tops. 

Most people look at me a bit askance when I talk about my delight in these birds: starlings have a bad reputation for some reason I cannot understand. They are only noticeable now, before any of the other song birds return, and again in the fall when they gather on power lines before they leave for their winter quarters. 

Nobody seems to understand how I can call their voices beautiful either. Maybe it is because nobody takes the time to listen. Sure, it might be a bit presumptuous to call their whistle, repeated a few times like a clearing of the throat, a song – but that is only the beginning. Soon, this evolves into a low twitter not unlike that of a swallow, followed by variations on the theme. They have quite an amazing repertoire, and I haven’t tired of listening to them yet. Wings drooping at their side, head thrown back, iridescent chest feathers sparkling in the late sunlight they are, to me, as much a joy as soon the robins will be. 

Most afternoons in the last while my walks with Leo have taken me to the dugout – the pond – where I found evidence of beaver activities in the fall. I am curious, of course, if they are still around, if they indeed spent the winter in this small body of water, sustained by the tree limbs they harvested before it froze. Every day there is a bit more open water, partly from melting, partly because water runs in from the neighbour’s field south of here. I sit on one of the bigger logs the beavers felled before winter set in and wait. I hear Leo rustling in the long dry grass on the other side, never able to sit still for more than a couple of minutes at best, prowling, pushing his nose in mouse holes. Once he lifts up his head with four feet and a tail hanging out of his mouth. 

Clouds and branches are reflected in the still water, the slender smooth trunks of the young poplars have gathered the rays of the sun and seem to glow. The only foreign sound is the slowly nearing rumble of a train, its mournful howl at every crossing almost silenced when the wind is coming from the west. It is a very peaceful place now.

When I went out yesterday a thin layer of ice covered even the water that had been open before. The night had been quite cold, and all day the temperature had hovered just above freezing. I noticed several holes in the surface of the dugout, about thirty or forty centimetres in diameter, shards of ice along their edges as if something had pushed up from below here. Could these be the beavers’ exit holes?

Leo, too, acted differently than the days before. He was very excited, kept stepping on the thin ice at the pond’s edge, sniffing intently, ears and tail quivering with concentration. He raced to the other side, continuing his quest, almost bursting with the desire to step on the ice, yet thankfully smart enough not to attempt it. I held onto his collar, searching for a brown head, a hunched body – nothing. Maybe I was just interpreting what I saw because I wanted to see it. But suddenly there was a splash, followed by another, quieter one. While I didn’t see the beaver I now know for sure it is (they are?) still around. 

A moment later all was silent again, the surface still and unmoving. I will come back, but I think it might be better if Leo stays home.