Tag Archives: spring

Spring Annuals: Warblers, Daffodils, Haircuts

22 Tuesday Apr 2014

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MH before

Winter.

MH after

Spring.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

It’s April. The first warblers are back, the skunk cabbage has popped up, the daffodils are beautiful (until hit with an unexpected return of cold, cruel New Jersey winter), and my husband is getting his annual haircut.

Yes, I said annual.

When I met him in college, in 1977, his hair was longer than mine. When we moved in together, and later married, I cut his hair. It was very simple to do – just follow an imaginary line. No layering or fancy stuff.

However, a few years ago he decided that. No offense – he wanted a professional to do it.

I was not upset. I was glad he wanted to neaten his appearance. He has a beard that tends to get wide and bushy unless he trims, which he doesn’t do in winter. (At least once someone will yell out “Hey, Santa!” at him, and if you saw him you’d understand why.)

He is philosophical about his bald spot, and figures leaving his hair to run long in back for a good hunk of the year balances everything out. Same with the gray in his temples and beard. At least he has hair.

When he decides he’s ready, he starts trimming his beard heavily. A day or so later, he goes to a local barber shop. He doesn’t wait long, and listens to the regulars (including the two women who cut the hair and the male owner) gossip around him with the customers. Maybe a TV is on, maybe not.

I, meanwhile, stopped pulling out the gray hairs when they got too numerous. I go to a cut-rate chain (pun intended) where, usually after a long wait, I have rarely had the same haircutter twice. Music blares, and it is hard to make conversation, presuming I wanted to, much less hear others. I am never sure I am correctly telling the young woman (or occasional man) what I want. Sometimes the result is less than great.

I think of getting my hair cut the way I think of the hospital – a place I want to avoid unless absolutely necessary.

That’s why for the last two winters I have skipped the haircut and let my hair grow. Maybe I’ll trim my bangs. MH is the only one who sees me every day now, and he accepts me as I am. Like him, I know when to finally get that haircut, usually when I start looking like my 1974 high school yearbook photo – long, straight hair, parted down the middle.

MH is fine with whatever I do, or don’t do, because after so many decades together, we know what’s important is not how we look, but being with each other. The whole package, including good and bad hair days. Our friends are now like that, too, because we are all over 50, and are tired of working to impress anyone – either on the job or in the bedroom.

We can be real, and ourselves, at last.

Hallelujah.

Hold the Flowers. It Might Snow

10 Thursday Apr 2014

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flowers in snow

Springtime in New Jersey.

BY ANTHONY BUCCINO

When cherry blossoms bloom in Belleville Park, it’s time to put away the snow blower. Usually by this time of April, in Belleville and Nutley, we watch the falling cherry blossoms and think, oh, they’re like little pink snowflakes. But this year, things have changed. We predict snow falling just once more.

Can anyone blame us? It seems like we’ve endured the winter of “Dr. Zhivago” here in the Northeast. Don’t bother me with the old, “We’ve had worse winters with more snow.”

That’s all ancient history. What matters is right here, right now. Will it snow again before the May flowers bloom?

This was the winter we finally made up our mind that we were going to do it. Yup, this was going to be the year of the snow blower for us. Too bad we dallied when we should have dillied. We got hit with the first snow storm before we made it to the store. As soon as we recovered from shoveling, and clearing our driveway apron a few times, we headed to the nearby big box store.

It was easy to spot the snow blower section. It was the rows of empty racks with little picture cards of what snow blowers would look like if they had any in stock. Stealthily, we eavesdropped as the man in the orange apron explained to a befuddled snow-shoveler the subtle differences between the petite, sissy snow throwers, and the humongous, super-charged blowers that will toss snow over your rooftop onto the path of that annoying neighbor so he’ll think it’s still snowing.

As soon as that dolt shuffled off, it was our turn to be tutored. The man in the orange apron patiently went through the differences between the wimpy and the walloping snow movers.

You got your sizes: 21″, 24″, 28″, 30″. You got your stages: Single-stage, gas-quick, chute snow blower; two-stage, electric-start gas, and three-stage, electric-start gas. You got your accessories: heated handle, shear pin kit, clean-out spade tool, silicone lubricant, snow blower cover, engine additive – fuel stabilizer, oil – synthetic, gasoline, and a heavy-duty, floor-protective mat.

And while we actually began to understand what he was saying, in the end, there were none in the store. He suggested we order online.

We hadn’t been that excited tracking a delivery in 33 years. This time they delivered it to our door. The crates go to a local service shop for assembly, and then delivery to eager new parents, er, owners. We have to say the guy was thorough explaining everything from the forward speeds, reverse, chute direction, on-off switch, pump-primer, pull cord, and where the extra shear pins were for when our big blade tries to throw the ice block of our newspaper.

Dang. We couldn’t wait for it to snow. And so it snowed.

Dang. We couldn’t wait for it to stop snowing.

For years, whenever it snowed, we’d wait until our neighbor finished snow blowing his walks, then he’d hand it off, still running. He moved down the Shore last year, and we couldn’t really expect him to bring his snow blower up, and clear the snow for the new owner, now, could we? They were nice neighbors, but, apparently, not that nice.

The perception is that a snow blower makes clearing snow easy and fun. And you’ll be so popular with your neighbors when you do their walks because, no, you’re not a nice guy, you haven’t figured how to stop, and turn around, so you go all the way around the block.

The reality is that it’s more like plowing the south 40 acres behind an ornery mule. It’s great on a straight run, but try turning that baby, or backing up, or squeaking past the cars parked in the driveway. Not to mention the trudge across the deep snow to the storage shed to get out a shovel to clear out the doorway to get the snow blower out to start it. Yikes.

And don’t forget the fun clearing the driveway apron over and over with each pass of the town plow. We’re sure the plows carry an additive that makes apron snow heavier, colder and wetter than real snow anywhere else.

After several snow falls, we’d worn a path through the snow to the shed. Our technique in clearing apron snow has been nominated for an award for our precision directing the chute to toss across our cleared walk, and create a four-foot decorative berm on our lawn.

Sure, we’ve had worse winters. One winter started so early the autumn leaves weren’t cleared until March along with the wooden-stick deer and Santa ornaments on our lawn. That was then. This is now. When this last spring snow falls, we’ll be right over to do your walk. As soon as we remember how to start this thing. anthony snowblower

Realization: I’m No Spring Chicken After This Winter

21 Friday Mar 2014

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bee

BY MARGO D. BELLER

As I’ve written before, I have anger issues. 

I’ll be having what I think is a good day – sun shining, birds at the feeder, husband smiling by my side – and something will set me off. My husband, poor man, takes the brunt of it. It is irrational, and I don’t like being irrational. If I was more like the 50-plus crowd AARP features in its magazine, I’d be embracing life, traveling to new locales, surrounded by family and friends and enjoying my golden old age.

This is not my reality. I am cranky. It seems to take me longer to get out of bed.  My family is dead or living far away, as is my husband’s. Most of our friends don’t live close by, we don’t mingle much with the neighbors, and we have no children to make me, at least, forget the signs of my slow disintegration. Bills are high, and my income isn’t keeping pace.

Usually, walking in the woods and looking for all sorts of birds helps me out of this funk. As I write, it is once again March, and that means migrant birds – including my favorites, the warblers, are slowly making their way north. 

But this has been a bad winter, and the cold and snow turned me into a hermit most days. It is with a shock I realize I have not done the basic garden cleanup – usually finished by now – because of the cold, snow still on some of the lawn, and most recently, the wind. In every sense, I have to relearn how to walk.

The other day MH and I went to an area of the New Jersey Meadowlands where we knew the trails were clear. We were walking, and heard a singing bird. We didn’t know what it was but knew it was familiar. I went through my mental database. Listen to the tone and pattern of the song, I thought. What time of year is it? What’s usually around now? What bird songs do you know for sure? All of this took place in milliseconds until I came up with, “Goldfinch.” I was proud of myself for this mental exercise.

But because I was not completely sure, I was reminded I am going to have to relearn bird calls yet again. There came the anger, as well as the sadness, that comes with seeing what I consider another sign of deterioration. Write Side of 50 readers know there is a lot of good that comes with being over 50. Even I know that. I mean, consider the alternative. So I truly hope that as we come out of winter, and into spring, I can  put this funk behind me and be the energetic, almost obsessive bird observer I was just a few short years ago.

If I can hang on until spring.

As Winter’s Grip Loosens, Here Come the Birds

18 Thursday Apr 2013

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two Canada geese

Two Canada geese. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

There is a brook beyond the backyards of some of my neighbors. Canada geese have been hanging out there for years. But each spring they get very restless, fly up more than usual, call to each other continuously, then circle and land not far from where they started. Some long-held instinct tells them they have to be going. But they and their forebears have been on the fields and office park lawns of suburbia for so long they wouldn’t know where to go if they had a GPS strapped to their bills. Meanwhile, their cousins, the migrant Canada geese, have been heading north to their breeding grounds for weeks in long, v-shaped skeins.

Like the local geese, at this time of year, I feel restless. But I know the cause. I’m waiting for the birds to come north. In particular, I am awaiting warblers. Despite their name they are not the sweetest of singers. Their “songs” tend to be more like buzzes or sounds like “weezy, weezy, weezy” and “sweet, sweet I’m so sweet.”

But after a long winter it is wonderful to be outside, looking up a tree that is leafing, and suddenly seeing a hint of movement that turns out to be a brightly colored, yellow and black bird. Then the fun starts – which bird is it? Is the pattern that of a magnolia warbler or ablack-throated green? Is it on the ground or at the very top of a tree or someplace in between? Warblers are an enjoyable test every spring for bird watchers. Their variety forces you to remember their coloring, habits and calls.

You arrive at a trail and hear nothing. A few steps later you are surrounded by calling birds. It is not uncommon to find seven or eight different types of warblers (not to mention other migrating birds) in one small area that has the benefit of seeds to eat and/or water to drink and bathe in. It can be overwhelming. During the winter I feel sluggish and slow, cold and achy no matter how high I keep the heat. (And with the cost, I don’t keep it that high.) But when the days get longer, and the winds finally start coming out of the south, winter is loosening its grip. I know the floodgates will open and the birds will come.

That is why I am restless. Just as I know the birds are pushing through many obstacles to get north to their breeding grounds, I know there will be several Saturday mornings when I will rise earlier than I’d like and drive to an area I favor in New Jersey’s Great Swamp that is hard to hike, but rewarding because it’s literally off the beaten (or boardwalked) track. There will be birds there, and if I am lucky, I’ll be able to know what I’m hearing, and will see the singers without straining my neck too badly from all the looking up. I can’t wait.

Searching for Spring, and Finding a Phoebe

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

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spring buds

Spring buds. Photo by Julie Seyler.

BY MARGO D. BELLER

On Thursday, March 21, 2013, the first full day of spring, I took a walk to get the morning paper, and detoured home through a local park. At one point, I crossed a brook. From the bridge, I saw a small gray bird fly to a branch and bop its tail.

I had seen my first Eastern Phoebe of the season.

The Phoebe is a member of the flycatcher family. There are three types of Phoebe: the Eastern, the Say‘s (its western equivalent), and the Black (found in the Southwest United States, Mexico, and along the California coast).

In New Jersey, the Eastern Phoebe is one of the earliest of spring migrant birds.

According to my various nature guides, Eastern Phoebes show up in my region somewhere around March 10-20. Marie Winn, author of “Red-Tails in Love,” posted in her blog on March 15, that the first Phoebe had been seen in New York’s Central Park that day.

So mine was more or less on time.

Yet, it did not feel like spring. The temperature at 8:30 that March morning was in the upper 20s, and it was cloudy with a breeze. I was wearing a thin scarf around my head and neck, a hat over that, and a warm parka with the hood up.

This Phoebe was hunting –  until I spooked it. It eats insects, and in the cold there were few to be seen – at least by me.

The year before, we’d had next to no snow, and the temperature was unusually warm in March. But this year we’ve had the winter that won’t end. The 50-degree days – normal temperature – had been few and far between, and the with weather casters predicting snow and warmth maybe by April, I was feeling distinctly depressed about the continuing cold. Until I saw the Phoebe. It hadn’t heard the warnings about climate change. Its internal clock said it was time to leave the winter grounds in the deep south of the United States and Mexico, and head north.

Phoebes are remarkably faithful to a good nesting spot. Once found, they will return every year. When John J. Audubon was living in Pennsylvania, he tied silver thread on the legs of young Phoebes he caught. The next spring he caught two that returned — they still had the thread. It was the first bird-banding experiment in America.

I, meanwhile, feel stuck here. It’s getting harder for me to get through a cold New Jersey winter. I feel achy and dried out by the furnace heat, and can’t just pick up and head south for the winter.

The Phoebe reminds me that there will be other migrating birds coming through my area in the next month or two on their way to northern breeding grounds. Some will travel no farther than New Jersey, and will provide a reason for me to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning.

By then – climate willing – it should be warmer.