The Coming of Spring

It's not spring yet according to the calendar, but we in the Southern Tier of New York got a sneak preview on Sunday, when it got into the upper 60's. Then, last night, strong storms blew through. This morning, I woke up to a dusting of snow.

But I have my memories of Sunday.

Birdsong filled the air.  A tufted titmouse called over and over. A bright red Northern Cardinal fed from our feeder while a black capped chickadee took a seed and hit it on a nearby branch (normal eating behavior).  We heard American robins, house sparrows, and house finches.

We took a walk in a Binghamton, New York park, heard red winged blackbirds trill, and saw a bald eagle sitting in a tree across the river. Canada geese honked, and walked on a still frozen pond.  A male and female mallard duck swam in the river.  We heard what our Merlin app's Sound ID (which can identify birdsong) identified as red bellied woodpeckers and possibly a cedar waxwing.

The snow is melting.  Almost all of our yard was bare, brown but with signs of new life.

Nature is stretching and coming awake.

No crocuses are coming up yet.  But under the blanket of leaves that fell in the fall, some daffodils are starting to emerge on the side of our house.  These daffodils came with the house, some 35 years ago. Maybe I can call them heirlooms.  We've thinned them out from time to time. They bloom early.

Hopefully, our thyme plant made it.  Some other parts of the yard are too muddy for me to want to walk there yet to check on other plants, such as our crocuses.

Best of all, I have a white Lenten Rose that had buds on it back when the snow started to fall in January.  The plant is mashed flat but, below the dead fall leaves are - yes, more buds.  It's hard to see here but they are there.

Spring in our climate has always been a time of renewal, of hope.

Our winter respite was short.  Winter is back now.  But we know now that spring is on its way.

28 Years Later

It's the things we can't see that scare us the most.

Chernobyl.  Actually, Pripyat (Chernobyl was a power plant, Pripyat was the city the workers lived in.) A city in the Ukraine, now abandoned except for some elderly who insist on living there.   Photos taken in the abandoned city show a rotting landscape of rusting buildings, overgrown yards with broken swing sets, weathered dolls, and even abandoned amusement rides.

You can even tour the area and, believe it or not, I have some interest in doing that.

To my generation, it's hard to believe that some 28 years have passed since we first found out about a nuclear accident in the then Soviet Union.  On April 26, 1986, life changed for thousands and thousands of people in the Ukraine and in Europe, including, possibly, a former tennis star from the Ukraine who passed away earlier this week at the age of 30 from liver cancer.

Since then, scientists have been studying wildlife in what some call the Zone of Exclusion and others the Zone of Alienation, where radiation levels are too high for humans to safely live there - although some people do.

It's even more amazing to me that some people only know Chernobyl from a game called Call of Duty 4.

Last night, I saw a post on my Facebook fall from Mental Floss, linking to a New York Times article about a scientist from the University of South Carolina studying life in the Zone of Exclusion.  His subjects of study include mushrooms, insects, spiders, birds, mice, voles, and bats.

His findings include insects with strange versions of their normal spots, spiders with warped webs, birds with deformed beaks. But they also include certain animals seeming to be adapting to the high radiation levels in ways that include the increased production of antioxidents.

Some animals even seem to be doing better in zones of higher radiation than in zones of lesser radiation.

Now, this scientist is also starting to study the site of the Fukushima nuclear disaster of 2011.
I wonder what scientific finds will be made at Chernobyl (and Fukushima) by the time my son is an old man, and what he will live to see.

Do you live near a nuclear power plant?

A Crocus Grows in Brooklyn

February 20, 2012.  Crocuses are blooming in Brooklyn (an  "outer borough" of New York City.)  in a front yard.

What a winter we have had.  Crocuses do not bloom in New York State (usually) in February.  But now that they are, some symbolism, please.

Crocuses are a symbol of spring, of plants coming to life from their winter's nap, of recovery, of life.

If I hadn't gone to Brooklyn this weekend to visit a friend undergoing treatment for cancer, I never would have seen the crocuses in her front yard.

So how did the visit go?  It was wonderful, every minute of it.

We laughed - a lot.  My friend talked - a lot.  We went to a local pizzeria and ate pizza.  Her husband took the four of us (my friend, my spouse, her spouse and I) to Fairway, a "gourmet" supermarket in a neighborhood called Red Hook.  Once a slum, Red Hook (or parts of it, anyway) is on its way up.  You can see the Statue of Liberty from the patio.

I took nearly 90 pictures of the trip.  And one of my friend.

My friend is undergoing chemo.  This is her second round with cancer (the first was 30 years ago with Ovarian cancer) and she has been very involved in cancer fundraisers. She has always been physically active, but wasn't sure she would be able to participate in the Revlon Run/Walk on May 5.  She loves the energy of these events and really wants to do it.  But her energy levels are unpredictible.

One year she met Haile Berry at one of these events and got her cap signed. 

She is realistic but optimistic.  She talked frankly about the side effects of her chemo.  The cold that nothing can warm up.  The terribly dry skin.  The sudden trips to the restroom.  The days where walking down the stairs from her bedroom to her living room tires her out so much she needs a nap.

We also talked about ...oh, so many things.

We plan to see each other again in May.