A Day of Spring on the Commons
Program Report The Commons A Day of Spring on The Commons The Commons is the online discussion group of The Orion Society. Dialogue on Tire Commons drifts in and out of a number of environmentally...
...I still find it amazing that the flowers precede the leaves...
...Nancy Hayden Too Bad Farm Marlborough, New Hampshire DATE: WED...
...Many thoughts and a mighty sunburn...and the first bug bites of the year...
...12:53 - And a sunny, Chamber of Commerce day it is...
...The newspaper says that recently discovered wolverine tracks may stall a locally proposed ski development...
...Les Palmed Sterling, Alaska DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 09:24 PST FROM: BDOYLE@UP.EDU Note from Hallinan Hill, Oregon: Gusts of winds shower-ing cherry petals on children and dogs...
...Started clearing the garden...
...Valerie Mapstone Ackerman...
...A boy's fishing fantasy...
...heard there is snow in the forecast...
...It is now 87 degrees...
...We'll have more cold weather before spring is truly here, but this last day of March brings signs that the end of the long winter is in sight...
...FRI, 27 MAR 1998, 09:59 EST FROM: RMSTAPLETON@COMPUSERVE.COM Nice idea, but I'm afraid I can't participate...
...NICOLEGREENE@INFO-ZONE.TELLURIDE.CO.US In the tiny town of Ophir, Colorado, at 9,600 feet, I woke...
...It seeps through the porous soils, which will soon return to dust as spring gives way to summer, and the dry winds that blow across the northern Great Basin once again reclaim the land...
...I ought to have called work this morning and told them I was feeling too well to come in...
...Peter Grant Hobart, Tasmania DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 12:34 FROM: A.GUNN@WAIKATO.AC.NZ Hello...
...Enough to turn umbrellas to trash...
...Places in direct sunlight (and on rocks, no less) held onto their white...
...We have no "snow birds" from the south yet, no robins, swallows, geese, or Winnebagos...
...Spring, you see, occurred Wednesday here...
...Two magpies hop nearby, waiting their chance...
...Dialogue on Tire Commons drifts in and out of a number of environmentally related topics from environmental issues, activism, and education to literature, the arts, and field observations...
...the furnace room flooded...
...I just looked out the window as I wrote this and saw the resident mink patrolling his territory along the edge of the stream...
...the first bat came back to my summer bedroom...
...Persistent as the catclaw rising from the shallow Texas soil, life asserts itself again...
...I heard my second grandchild is to arrive in November...
...19:41 - Today's sun melted all but scattered snow pockets...
...kept clearing the garden...
...silence, except for a breeze gen-fly soughing through the pine, fir, and larch trees, as though nature is holding her breath in that instant after winter ends and before spring begins...
...was 14 degrees C, but the forecast max.: is only 15...
...Today is one of those days: very strong equinoctial winds interspersed with showers and sunshine...
...kept clearing...
...We are just learn-ing to pay attention...
...1 APR 1998, 01:05 EST FROM: 32F3D5Z@CSV.CMICH.EDU It is actually an hour past the 31st in my little corner of the world, Mt...
...Now it is summer...
...It was a day to be alive...
...Thomas Cox DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 22:53 PST FROM: MIKEB@BENDNET.COM Here at Latitude 43 North, Longitude 120 West I awoke this morning to the rolling sound of red-winged blackbirds...
...Extremes are the norm in the desert...
...But the peregrine falcon has returned to the spire of First Unitarian Universalist Church at the corner of 57th and Woodlawn and the green parrots are squawking (yes there are parrots living year round in Hyde Park...
...The sound of dripping water fills the high desert on these beautiful spring days...
...Bluebonnets, pink evening primrose, Texas baby blue-eyes, yellow Texas star—spending themselves in a single explosion of spring...
...05:25 Mountain Time - Yesterday's snow has stopped...
...two geese flew over and a coyote stopped nearby to scope out my sandwich at lunch time...
...Any takers...
...Nature's pulse continues unabated and undaunted by the defining and constraining words of the people of the world as we struggle to communicate and understand the great unfolding...
...The juncos have returned, otherwise...
...Pleasant, Michigan...there are no mountains and today could have been more pleasant...
...There is still warmth in the sun, when it appears, but autumn has a hold on everything...
...We can breathe again...
...The rains brought cooler temperatures and washed away the sunny 70s of the last few days...
...What did they eat yesterday...
...Only an occasional blade of green grass...
...The first magnolias are in bloom and, like many other places, the forsythia have burst on the scene...
...The first daffodil opened in the garden...
...Delicate fire ants mating at 2,000 feet while the progeny of the colony ravages below...
...Note: On Sunday, we shoveled snow...
...Last week folks were running around in shorts and t-shirts planting flowers in windowsill boxes and flashing bits of white skin around...
...Debby Churchman DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 08:26 AST FROM: LPALMER@ALASKA.NET On the central Kenai Peninsula, in Alaska, it was -5 degrees C at 7 A.M., not quite time to be celebrating spring...
...09:41 EST FROM: JOSEPH.B.NELSONE@DARTMOUTH.EDU Thanks, Peter, for sending the sun our way for a few months It is full mud season here in Vermont—our fifth season—and as the dirt roads fill with car-firing ruts and potholes, we watch expectantly for each new sign of spring...
...Ah fecundity...
...On Wednes day, the daffodils bloomed...
...M. Stapleton, NYC DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1S98, 09:03 FROM: PETERG@DELM.TAS.GOV.AU As the sun rises over the Pacific first, I suppose it's up to someone from my part of the world to start proceedings...
...Next time...
...Use it well...
...Fruitless, yet somehow...fulfilling...
...Barbara Paschke Kalispell, Montana DATE: 31 MAR 98...
...They shift noisily on the open water, a blizzard of their own...
...remembered the Red Sox and how they tease, then fail...
...Snow is expected in the highlands later—the first in months...
...This is a land of change, where that ceaseless process is driven not only by time but by topography, elevation, and state of mind...
...Brian Doyle DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 11:03 MST FROM:FREEMAN@M.CC.UTAH-.EDU The mountains look amazing ..these days—a fresh cover of snow nearly daily and the cloud cover causes wonderful plays of light: bright mountains against dark clouds...
...Richard L. Dube Lexington, South Carolina DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 07:25 MST FROM: ANLANEDIGISYS.NET On a Montana mountain the snow has been going quickly the last couple days...
...19:20 MST FROM: CANYONGNOME@BIGFOOT.-COM It is, perhaps, too much to ask one who lives in the Sonoran Desert to comment on the pro Agression of spring—even a single day of it—in only one message...
...A friend died...
...Like the human beings who remain here when the snow flies, they are the real Alaskans...
...Sean Gillihari Klamath Falls, Oregon DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998...
...31 MAR 1998, 23:16 MST FROM: ERBRUMME@UCCS.EDU Northeast Colorado Springs, USA...
...it was the worst of days...
...First sightings of new squirrels with their shy narrow tails...
...VALMAPACK@AOL.COM Rain...
...Alastair S. Gunn Hamilton, New Zealand DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 09:13 EST FROM: NATUREDAN@AOL.COM The green powder pollen of pines coats the unfurling white bracts of dogwood...
...this morning to bright sunlight illuminating the surface hoary crystals on a one-foot-thick layer of fresh powder snow...
...The first colorful sunset in a long time last night—purple clouds and gold-going-to-orange sun...
...Susan Hanson San Marcos, Texas DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 14:51 PST FROM: GILLIHAN@CDSNET.NET The furnace is still on...
...These birds, along with the ravens, chickadees, and gray jays, are with us all winter...
...Having missed Equinox, will March 31st work...
...Hawthorn juuuuuuuuuuuust opening...
...The nicest feature of early autumn, with a cool night following a warm, humid day, is the sudden and ephemeral appearance of all kinds of fungi including edible field mush-rooms, puffballs, various poiso-nous toadstools, and Ammonita muscari, aka fly agaric, aka magic mushroom...
...Here in the high desert of southern Oregon, a couple inches of snow covered everything last night—everything that wasn't moving...
...Fresh snow has made the mountains and foothills hypnotic...
...Today it's partly sunny, partly cloudy with temperatures in the low 20s Celsius...
...Today, I question whether it would be possible to even find the ground...
...Eduardo Rey Brummel To subscribe to The Commons, send an e-mail to majordomo@orionsociety.org with "subscribe the com-mons" in the body of your message...
...After growing up in the Midwest what I love most about the West is the light—piles and piles of light...
...It's already lunch time here in NZ...
...Morning sky holds its cards close to the chest...
...Pete Fonken DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 21:39 EST FROM: NYAYDEN@TOP.MONAD.NET It was the best of days...
...Above, the last winter cranes head north...
...But out here at the National Wildlife Federation, we're closely following the courtship of a pair of red-shouldered hawks, who seem to be fussing with not one but two nests outside our office windows...
...Eduardo Rey Brummel DATE...
...Donna Nelson Thetford, Vermont DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 10:39 EST FROM: CHURCHMAN@NWF.ORG In Washington, D.C., where I live, it is raining cherry blossoms onto a billion gazillion tourists— probably the best cherry blossom season in the last ten years...
...Today, Friday, the temperature will clear 80 degrees.] —R...
...Wind blows from the northeast, but I haven't been able to read the messages it sends...
...David Williams Somerville, Massachusetts DATE: TUE, 31 MAR 1998, 14:27 CST FROM: SH17@NYSSA.SWT.EDU Here in Central Texas (between Austin and San Antonio), a late March cool front has lifted the pall of humidity that covered us these last few days...
...Just south of town out at Miller Island Refuge, snow geese by the thousands wait fori the weather to clear before they head north...
...So here goes: They say of Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, that if you don't like the weather, come back in 5 minutes...
...Steller's jay and scrub jay having heated argument about crust...
...two of my friends sank in the mud of my road and had to be towed...
...Tlie following is a small sampling of excerpts from this electronic efflorescence...
...Wind...
...DATE: WED, 25 MAR 1998, 22:47 MST from: ERBRUMME@BRAIN.UCCS.EDU Something I've been kicking around in my head for some time is that on a specific day, we post to The Commons how that day was where we were— weather, trees budding, frogs cacophoning, birds migrating, critters running mellpell, that sorta thing...
...If I get in quick I'll be #2 to post on this topic...
...Prompted by the suggestion of one subscriber, over 40 Commons participants posted March 31st reports on the progression of spring in their home regions...
...Cooper's hawk testing anti-stalling equipment over a red cedar...
...The old grasses between remaining snow banks lie smashed against the ground after the weight of the snow...
...These are bright red with vivid white spots, and there's a nice clump bf them under some silver birches by one of the entrances to our campus...
...No figuring...
...March 31st dawned clear and cold, with the...
...Every: day that I wake up here is a gift, as I revel in the ecstasy of this spectacular landscape...
...31 MAR 1998, 14:20 EST FROM: 647834@LINK.COM The headline of the normally understated Boston Herald says it all: "HOT...
...on hold here in the southern mountains at the edge of the Colorado Plateau...
...promise of coming warmth but the certainty of killing frost that gardeners fear...
...The daffodils stay hidden, the sap still runs, and worms, worms, worms everywhere...
...and the numbers keep rising—72, 74, 80...
...Nicole Greene DATE: TUE...
...On the two-foot-thick shore ice of the Kena River, a lone bald eagle rips at the carcass of a spawned-out silver salmon...
...As the world turns, we pass the sun on to you in the Northern Hemisphere for a season or two...
...Mike Benefield DATE: WED, 1 APR 1998, 02:01 EST FROM...
...Charlotte McGuinn Freeman University of Utah DATE: 31 MAR 1998, 18:32 IVtST FROM...
...Low-hanging clouds that covered Pikes Peak this morning have broken and the mountain is all white and blue...
...Chicago, Illinois DATE: TUE...
...Spring seems to have been put...
...The temperature at 8 A.M...
Vol. 2 • June 1998 • No. 3
