Food, gardening, home, Nature, Uncategorized

Seasonal Sounds

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I picked strawberries last night after work. The task usually falls to husband, but he was still driving back from the reservation and it looked like it might storm before he got home.

It was quite still while I picked, and I could hear the outdoor sounds in the neighborhood quite well. I heard the harsh sounds of distant lawnmowers getting the grass cut before a possible rain. I heard some birds, and the occasional car driving past. I also heard a sound that I thought was a true summer sound-the distinctive, quiet, sucking  snap of a plump strawberry as it is picked from its stem.  What a lovely sound!

What sounds do you associate with the seasons?

 

 

40 thoughts on “Seasonal Sounds”

  1. Putting in the Seed
    Robert Frost, 1874 – 1963

    You come to fetch me from my work to-night
    When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
    If I can leave off burying the white
    Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
    (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
    Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
    And go along with you ere you lose sight
    Of what you came for and become like me,
    Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
    How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
    On through the watching for that early birth
    When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
    The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
    Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

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  2. the sound of the wind in the leave of the trees is a sound i love.
    ari (new grandson) was over last night and he is a sky watcher.
    he looks up. the noise in the house with the family get together is too much for him (him mom keeps life very low key for him so the overstimulation when he comes over is a good news bad news situation) so as he was stressing i took him out into the back yard on one of the perfect evenings. the wind blowing through the leaves of the oak trees made a wonderful continuous whoosh

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    1. The Sound of Trees
      BY ROBERT FROST

      I wonder about the trees.
      Why do we wish to bear
      Forever the noise of these
      More than another noise
      So close to our dwelling place?
      We suffer them by the day
      Till we lose all measure of pace,
      And fixity in our joys,
      And acquire a listening air.
      They are that that talks of going
      But never gets away;
      And that talks no less for knowing,
      As it grows wiser and older,
      That now it means to stay.
      My feet tug at the floor
      And my head sways to my shoulder
      Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
      From the window or the door.
      I shall set forth for somewhere,
      I shall make the reckless choice
      Some day when they are in voice
      And tossing so as to scare
      The white clouds over them on.
      I shall have less to say,
      But I shall be gone.

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  3. Mowing
    BY ROBERT FROST
    There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
    And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
    What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
    Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
    Something, perhaps, about the lack of sound—
    And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
    It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
    Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
    Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
    To the earnest love that laid the swale in rows,
    Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
    (Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
    The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows.
    My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

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      2. i love joni but i must have had a busy decade or two. i missed a giant chunk of her stuff. this among it. it sounds familiar but the truth is i dont think ive heard it before

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    3. This is my favorite of Frosts beside nature poems. He has poems in nature and beside nature. It is the part about the silence of the day. I remember as a child in the middle of a hot day, hot day by North Woods standards. how silent nature became. I used to lie down in the thick clover right before we were going to mow it, by machine and not by hand, and listen for the bees around me. No danger; the clover was too interesting to worry about a big white lump on the ground.

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  4. For me it’s the sound of splashing water, gentle waves and soft breezes at the beach. Although my first time at the Big Lake beach was a cacophony of unpleasant noises over Memorial Day weekend. It’s right next to Highway 10, so there was a lot of traffic noise as people were driving back on Monday night. Way too many boats careening over the lake, the smell of gasoline, aromas of meat grilling and sounds of families having fun. I love swimming in the lake, but it wasn’t as pleasant as I had hoped that day.

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  5. As someone highly attuned to the sounds of nature, this question is almost impossible for me to answer. Too many distinctive sounds. Too many specific acoustic environments. Too many unique seasonal soundscapes.

    One of the most satisfying settings for the sounds of the natural world was the little gazebo in between my cabin and Lake Superior. Swinging in a hammock, I’d go to sleep listening to the complicated symphony of sounds from the woods, the lake, the weather and all the critters out there that had something to say.

    In spring the evening soundscape was dominated by spring peppers that trilled raucously. Sometimes in spring we’d hear loons calling on the lake. I used to wonder about a strange strangled cry we heard at night, later learning it was the bark of foxes in the dark.

    Our June mornings were noisy because seagulls nested in rock crevices just yards from our cabin. Eagles regularly came to feed on seagull eggs and seagull fledglings. The seagulls had strong opinions about that, and they weren’t shy about expressing them. Sleep was impossible when the eagles and seagulls really got into it.

    As lovely as it was to hear wind moving through the woods, the sound of the big lake was even more engaging. At times the waves smashed against the rock walls with enough power to reshape the shoreline. At other times the lake was frisky but mild, sloshing merrily without force.

    Storms were an aural treat. You could hear a rainstorm approaching almost like a large animal moving closer and closer, raindrops pelting the leaves until the rain at last drummed on the flat roof of our queer cabin. Close lightning strikes were startling, although distant lightning was a treat for the ears. I used to marvel at how distant thunder sounded exactly like cannon fire–an odd thought because I have never heard cannon fire, so how would I know?

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  6. I was interrupted. Kevin was caulking and found several cecopia moths breathing their last after laying their eggs. One was still fat with eggs. He brought one and put it on our patio table. I will get pictures up as a guest blog. Not a butterfly, but sort of a memorial to my friend Jim who died yesterday. We walked many miles of the Superior hiking trail and stopped and listened and looked.

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    2. my great grandfather lived to be 96 or so. he said he always thought it was hard to bury his old friends. he particularly lamented the friends he got out to enjoy golf with. he was the county attorney up at leach lake but found a way to play golf when the season was right.

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  7. Hi—
    I’m going OT to share a FB post from one of my favorites:
    “Independently speaking”, written by Brent Olson.
    Last week I said farmers were optimistic right up until we’re not. He called it in this article “Pessimistic optimism”.
    ===========

    “It’s a green morning, with loud thunder, steady rain, and puddles across the yard.
    I should get over this, but it’s not easy. I was a farmer for thirty years and there’s just something about a June rain. Everything is already growing like crazy, but a sudden rain makes life explode. Trees add a foot of height, blossoms sprout from foliage, and centuries of genetic selection pays off as crops spring into action to show their potential.
    I shouldn’t have been worried. We weren’t really dry, but the corn is almost knee high and we’d had three different days when meteorologists had given us a 90% chance of rain and nothing developed. That’s the sort of thing that makes me nervous. It’s a little like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy in “The Sun Also Rises.” A character was asked how he went bankrupt and he said, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
    Because that’s how a drought works. It starts with trying to get the crops planted and hoping showers pass you by so you can keep working. One rain misses you, then another. For a while, you’re okay with that. It’s hard to be a farmer without living in a constant state of pessimistic optimism, so you can spend a lot of time appreciating how no rain makes it possible to keep caught up on outside work. Until you find yourself walking through a corn field in August and suddenly realize it looks like a pineapple plantation. A month after that, you find yourself talking to insurance agents and trying to think about next year. It can even be difficult to pinpoint the moment you lost hope.
    I think it’s interesting that bad stuff seems to sneak up on us until it’s too late. A persistent cough, a slow leak in a tire, a saggy rafter…you can put up with all of them for a long time. A long time when corrective action would be pretty easy, until all of a sudden, it’s way too late to do anything other than cope with a disaster.
    It’s not much different with countries. The Roman Empire was a dominant force in the world for centuries, but by the year 410, there was a fracturing of society. Rural and urban areas alike felt overtaxed, the rich and the working class each resented the other, and the empire was actually split between the east and west. 410 A.D. is the year the Visigoths sacked and burned Rome, the first time in 800 years that had happened.
    The Ottoman Empire lasted over 600 years, but in the end, corruption doomed it. That, and the empire being split into smaller and smaller pieces as citizens developed loyalties to their clan and tribe, losing their identity as a member of the larger group.
    In both cases, in most cases of the fall of empires, it is a long, slow-motion disaster. Like a drought on the prairie, or like a house with a sagging roof and bad foundation, it can happen so slowly that you don’t see it coming. The difference is that you can’t do anything about a drought. It comes or it doesn’t, and you just have to endure. The decline of a house, or a country, is something completely different. There are ample symbols and symptoms, and plenty of chances to turn things around. If the citizens of a country choose to not pay attention, it’s their own fault when the barbarians storm the gates. It happens gradually, then suddenly.
    Here on the prairie it’s a green and glorious June, with puddles, blossoms, and an explosion of life. I’m not worried about a drought anymore.
    But that doesn’t mean I’m not worried.
    Copyright 2018 Brent Olson”

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  8. The sounds of the seasons in a city neighborhood.
    Summer: lawnmowers, weed whackers, helicopters, airplanes, traffic, ice cream trucks, people talking or yelling as they go by, cars playing loud music.
    Fall: leaf blowers (those are the worst), helicopters, airplanes, traffic, school busses.
    Winter: the scrape of snow shovels against the sidewalk, snow plows, school busses, car alarms.
    Spring: lawnmowers, helicopters, airplanes, school busses, the sounds school children make as they walk home from the bus stop.

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    1. … for the summer, one of the indoor sounds of summer.

      I spend time some mornings out by the garage, sitting and listening to the birds, seeing who’s here that I know and trying to identify the ones I don’t.

      We have church just a couple of blocks from here whose bells chime at 8 a.m. I can hear them regularly once the windows are opened in the spring… till they are closed up in late fall.

      I love to hear kids (and even dogs) playing outside. And there’s a little kid across the street with a squeaky-wheeled trike… 🙂 whenever I hear that I come and watch him from the window for a bit.

      Our mail-woman has an earbud hooked up to her smartphone, and is usually talking as she delivers our mail.

      Fire station coupla blocks away – fewer sirens here, but I’ll bet there’s one a day, anyway.

      I may have mentioned the loud cars and motorcycles in my neighborhood, so I probably don’t have to dwell on that.

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  13. Medical update: among many things going on, I am being tested for four forms of cancer, all because of previous finds. Most threatening was in colon. As in five years ago, had precancerous polyps. Very good news.

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  14. Flooding. Power outages in Duluth. Marathon under threat to be canceled. Supposed to last for several days.

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  15. I have Siberian peashrubs in my yard. After they bloom, they produce seed pods that look like tiny pea pods. When the pods dry, they start to split with a distinctive crackling sound. They will likely start in soon. You don’t notice them if you are busy with other concerns, but if you have time to sit and listen, there it is. Crk, crk, crk, crk.

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  16. thanks renee. fun day on a open topic. this group does have a nice dialog it maintains. i love it. i got busy and am glad i stopped back
    now on to today

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  17. Birds for me in the summer. I detest air conditioning so even if I do turn it on a super hot days (like yesterday), I usually turn it off and open up windows as the evening cools down. This means I get to hear the birds at dawn!

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