Note from the Times: The Kaw Valley Almanac is a contributed piece that runs each week. Find more information and older editions at kawvalleyalmanac.com, and follow @KVAlmanac on Twitter.
The seasons are literally a cycle that repeats itself every year, and, like the earth revolving around the sun, has no starting or ending point.
Our local pattern of the seasons is unlike any other place on the planet, meaning it is central to what makes this place what it is. Furthermore, even with a changing climate, the sequence of this unfolding pattern is pretty much the same pattern as what the first settlers saw, or the Kanza tribe saw before them, or what the hunter-gatherers who lived in this area thousands of years before the Kanza saw.
Observing these cycles is a fun and lifelong way to place your plant or animal observations into the time/place context of all the other plants and animals who are living their lives in this grand unfolding pattern.
Ken Lassman, author of Seasons and Cycles: Rhythms of Life in the Kansas River Basin in 1985, Wild Douglas County in 2007, and curator of www.kawvalleyalmanac.com, will be posting his weekly nature updates here to help you tap into those ancient, ever-renewing cycles that might even help you find your place on this planet more interesting.
See additional Kaw Valley Almanac posts via The Lawrence Times here.
