Deep Summer's joys #phenology

Black-eyed Susans brighten roadside edges and field corners. Lilies are coming into bloom. Purple(?)/house(?) finches are back at the feeders. We're enjoying a respite from Summer's high heat and humidity. Deer flies are down, mosquitos up. White sage has matured and an occasional blue spiderwort flower peeks out of a field. Days are getting shorter. Mars(?) looks entrancing in the early (4 am) morning Southern sky if there's no cloud cover. Swamp milkweed plants have increased. Monarch butterflies have found the swamp milkweeds. (One monarch stayed on the flowers as we passed within a few feet on the tractor.) Whitetails are coming to the pear tree early and late in the day. Goldenrod plants are starting to flower. Occasionally, a large, yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly will kite across the sky.

black-eyed Susans in bloom

Photo by J. Harrington

If there's no major change in the weather or bug situation, we may get to some outdoor chores like harrowing down pocket gopher mounds. There also seem to be some poison ivy plants that survived Spring's spraying. It's little more than a week until "Lughnasadh, on August 1st, the time which marked the link between the agricultural and the livestock cycle - the harvest began and both human food and animal fodder were reaped and stored." Field corn is tall and maturing. The Better Half picked several hands full of small, wild raspberries this morning. We're going to try our best to relax a bit, spend more time outside, and enjoy deep Summer's joys.

"replica 19th-century paddle-wheeler"

Photo by J. Harrington

Summer in a Small Town

By Tony Hoagland

Yes, the young mothers are beautiful,

with all the self-acceptance of exhaustion,

still dazed from their great outpouring,

pushing their strollers along the public river walk.

And the day is also beautiful—the replica 19th-century paddle-wheeler

perpetually moored at the city wharf

                with its glassed-in bar and grill

for the lunch-and-cocktail-seekers

who come for the Mark Twain Happy Hour

which lasts as long as the Mississippi.

This is the kind of town where the rush hour traffic halts

                to let three wild turkeys cross the road,

and when the high school music teacher retires

after thirty years

the movie marquee says, “Thanks Mr. Biddleman!”

and the whole town comes to hear

                the tuba solos of old students.

Summer, when the living is easy

and we store up pleasure in our bodies

like fat, like Eskimos,

for the coming season of privation.

All August the Ferris wheel will turn

                           in the little amusement park,

and screaming teenage girls will jump into the river

with their clothes on,

right next to the No Swimmingsign.

Trying to cool the heat inside the small towns

                                               of their bodies,

for which they have no words;

obedient to the voice inside which tells them,

“Now. Steal Pleasure.”

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.