The sounds of spring

Poets, naturalists and dreamers always look to the symphony of bird songs to welcome the Spring, In this neighborhood it's internal combustion engines and a couple of other loud noises as well,

 

From the high-pitched whine of two-cycle engines to the lower register rumble of four-strokes on such machines as four-wheelers including my own which I started for the first time this year today, the change of engines from winter to summer marks the arrival. A chainsaw snarls its way through a log, while another two-cycle, probably on a dirt bike runs up and down the scales as it rolls over lumps in the trail to the river or plows through a puddle of water and mud. When the sound stops abruptly you wonder if he didn't flip in the puddle. Over all that a big-block engine roars to life probably over at the drag strip, while small airplanes do touch-and-goes at the airfield.

Then there are more recognizable sounds: a couple of gunshots and from another direction a curse word shouted at some difficulty, the rooster crowing in the chicken yard across the street and occasionally a squirrel chattering at me from the trees overhead.

Such is the orchestration here as the neighborhood wakes up from the long winter. All  of the noise compounded by the scratching of a leaf rake gathering last fall's discards from the trees. Then in a moment of pause, the honking from a wedge of geese flying overhead sends a softer tune across the land only to be interrupted when a chainsaw again bites into a trunk of wood.

Amid it all a realization. Last summer I had great luck with sunflowers. I started them indoors and then put them in a raised garden out by the road where they would get the most sun. They grew to about eight or nine feet. Then in August one grew and blossomed in the garden next to the house. It reached a couple of feet and put out a flower, but I had no idea how it got there. I can't see that I got a seed mixed in with others or a bird found one and dropped it. Then today as I was raking around under the bird feeders before taking them down, as I looked at all the seeds that had been discarded uneaten, it hit me. Could that sunflower have grown from a seed the birds discarded during the winter? I thought those seeds were radiated before they could be sold to prevent invasive species, but who knows? Just for fun I am going to try a few of those seeds this year and see what happens. (That picture is the little sunflower growing amid the leaves of a geranium.)

And April 16, 2017, the ground is mostly still frozen just an inch or so below the surface, so it will be a while yet.
That's springtime in the Butte.

A comment on facebook from a friend in Fairbanks: Sharon Wright: "We always get some
sunflowers sprouting below the bird feeder but they land in gravel and poor soil. I do dig them up and move some of them but they're always stunted. Still, they flower. For our oak 1/2 barrels at the start of our driveway, I buy one Mammoth and one "other" from a local organic greenhouse. They turn out the best. Aren't they just fun to grow? The daily growth is incredible!"