Middle Season #14 - 2026

 

just opened driveway lily, pale blue wild hyacinth  in Bemis forest floor all over, clematis blooms loudly by end of this MS, wild blue indigo in the front landscape.

MS 14

Monday May 11

1. Cardinal eating from garbage can 
2. Another poppy opened. Some petals from first open one strewn in dirt
3. Watched mom and dad starling looking in front yard for stuff to feed chicks
4. Small crescent moon to south on my ride to school
5. Nothings briefer than the smell of lilacs while riding your bike downhill
6. Watered all the garden seeds. Garden is full now. 

Tuesday May 12

1. Sounds coming in at upstairs bathroom window. Hungry starling chicks. Cardinal. Geese. 
2. Starling looking in a new yard for food for chicks?  Do they have a schedule?
3. Strange flight of bird down a downtown street away from me. Pale. White. Hawk?
4. Horaecheatnuts still blooming
5. Coming to the end of tulip season. Tulip time. Poppy time now. 
6. First colors showing at the tops of bulging peonie blossom balls. 
7. Hummingbirds in action at 8:07 PM
8. RWB greets me as I ride in to the school driveway. Old car horn sound. Rising and falling crunchy octaves
9. Another poppy opens this morning. Contrast of new bright and old bloom. From Friday! That’s haggard. Short lived and beautiful for a short time. Then it gets to work. 
10. Lawn under silver maple on 58th st filled with standing up helicopters. 
11. Archery practice set up at school
12. Lilacs now just bushes. Shrubs. Lilac left some brown dried flowers.
13. Oak trees along grant st showing me their pale backsides. 

Wednesday May 13

1. AJ Jacobs. https://experimentalliving.substack.com/
2. 3 suspicious looking squirrels by neighbors front porch
3. 3 sets of newly married ducks in suburban front yards. 
4. 3 robins hunting doggedly along lunchtime walk path
5. JG tells me she saw brunch involving CCL and she’s got a cast on her leg/foot. Or boot?

Thursday May 14

1. 5:59 hummingbird visiting feeder
2. Season of irises. Not just purple but yellow and pastel tan
3. Flowering tree on 294 bridge. White blossoms. Maybe a kind of fat leafed locust?
4. Messy bird nest under the solar panel
5. More scent clouds of lilac on bike ride from school. 
6. 7:45 pm.  Bird bath like a drive through: red house finch, sparrrow couple, starling with characteristic way for dipping body back to swallow. 
7. Front poppy opens!  First time!
8. Dusk at 8:07. Hummingbird. Then Cardinal. 
9. From silver maple. New cheapings from a newly hatched unseen nest. 
10. Wild blue indigo now showing blue in front garden beds. 

Friday

1. Barely enough light to see first hummingbird visit at 5:26
2. Every day a new poppy blooms
3. Last of standingvmilkweed casing. Handsomely designed. 
4. 3 hawks at school. Over stoplight. Strange to see 3 in a group
5. Carolina wren in Bemis. Baltimore oriole red headed woodpecker several warblers
6. Tennessee warbler red eyes vireo 
7. First flash and song of scarlet tanager
8. Lots of pretty stands of pale blue wild hyacinth with yellow flowers. These have spread a lot since the forest preserve took out all the junk trees
9. Fireplace clematis blooms
10. Recalling that there are “regular places” in Bemis for did kinds of birds - wrens in the forest edge, orioles by the southern end of the go ape, tanagers to the s of the creek by wolf road. 

Saturday 

1. Hummingbird at raspberry bushes
2. Quietly the tulip stems are drying thinning
3. House finch comes for
4. Water while I’m reading on patio
5. Starling chicks are sounding like birds now… when mom leaves the nest she is rasping and goes to a branch for a rest
6. First radish tonigh

Sunday May 17

1. Front yard 2 tiny 3”? poppy open to join his friends. This stem had been looking yellow and thin. I watered over last couple days. 
2. Hummingbird at 5:28
3. All 3 clematis boooming. The one on the fence a beautiful blue  color and big. And exuberant 
4. First peonies open in neighborhood. Many are still tight. 
5. Flowering black locust with bigger leaves than my locust. Flowering profusely some with pink purple and some white. (Like one in park)
6. Compost pile an infinite source of dirt this spring. I take two more 5 gal buckets. 

Monday may 18

1. HB 5:32. Cardinal 5:46
2. HB repeatedly constantly at 4:30
3. Baby bird on driveway. Google lens says a common starling 
4. The new poppies in front yard got pummeled by the thunderstorms today and the orange petals are on the ground. 

Tuesday May 19 

1. Loud dawn chorus at 5:15
2. Daisies blooming along 294 seen from bridge
3. Large fields of clover in spring rock park
4. Black locust blooming strongly , scent included, on the other side of the 294 bridge. 
5. Iris by driveway blooming purply. 
6. So many ant corpses lined up in the HB feeder. 
7. HB at 8:04. 

Wednesday May 20

1. Viburnum blooming
2. Ninebark blooming
3. Backyard clematis fully blooming
4. Starlings above driveway still growing b talking 
5. Red necked green backed HB at 8:11 drinking from. Multiple plastic flowers