Are we creating a new normal for summer?

If I'm correctly reading the year-to-date precipitation chart for Wild River State Park, we're about 3 or 4 inches below normal YTD, and May and June look pretty dry. A graph of normal highs, lows and precipitation for June can be found at this link. We're doing our best to not completely avoid outside chores, but are limiting work times until 10 or 11 am. Then it's inside to the air conditioning for the hottest parts of the day. If you had asked me before this week, I would have told you there's no such thing as summer cabin fever, but now I think I have a case most every afternoon.

red admiral a.k.a. white admiral butterfly

Photo by J. Harrington

Butterflies have started to appear from time to time and place to place. One, a white or red-spotted admiral, stopped at the bird bath to grab a quick drink. Another admiral, or, perhaps the same one, has been hanging around the flower garden in front of the house. Every once in awhile what looks like a monarch flits from flower to flower. We've not yet started to check milkweed for eggs or caterpillars. There's also been a hatch of some sort of vicious biting flies, possibly deer, but not horse, nor black as far as I can tell, that took a couple of chunks out of my bare arm this morning and then, after I put on a shirt with  built-in bug repellant, spent time chewing on the sleeve cuff.

Did you ever read about Tom Sawyer Whitewashing the Fence? I'm trying to work some of Tom's psychology on myself, to convince me that doing yard chores is actually fun and yields a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when the day's to do list is done. On a good day it works. Days when the bugs and the heat and the humidity are all up there make it more challenging. At least as more of the grass gets cut, the number of ticks the dogs bring into the house, or we go and collect on our own, seem to be diminishing. It's going to be interesting to see if the remainder of summer continues to be as atypical, and in which ways, or if we get a July and August that are cooler and wetter than normal to compensate.

The Butterfly’s Dream

By Hannah F. Gould

A tulip, just opened, had offered to hold 

   A butterfly, gaudy and gay; 

And, rocked in a cradle of crimson and gold, 

   The careless young slumberer lay. 

For the butterfly slept, as such thoughtless ones will, 

   At ease, and reclining on flowers, 

If ever they study, ’t is how they may kill 

   The best of their mid-summer hours. 

And the butterfly dreamed, as is often the case 

   With indolent lovers of change, 

Who, keeping the body at ease in its place, 

   Give fancy permission to range. 

He dreamed that he saw, what he could but despise, 

   The swarm from a neighbouring hive; 

Which, having come out for their winter supplies, 

   Had made the whole garden alive. 

He looked with disgust, as the proud often do, 

   On the diligent movements of those, 

Who, keeping both present and future in view, 

   Improve every hour as it goes. 

As the brisk little alchymists passed to and fro, 

   With anger the butterfly swelled; 

And called them mechanics – a rabble too low 

   To come near the station he held. 

‘Away from my presence!’ said he, in his sleep, 

   ‘Ye humbled plebeians! nor dare 

Come here with your colorless winglets to sweep 

   The king of this brilliant parterre!’ 

He thought, at these words, that together they flew, 

   And, facing about, made a stand; 

And then, to a terrible army they grew, 

   And fenced him on every hand. 

Like hosts of huge giants, his numberless foes 

   Seemed spreading to measureless size: 

Their wings with a mighty expansion arose, 

   And stretched like a veil o’er the skies. 

Their eyes seemed like little volcanoes, for fire,—   

   Their hum, to a cannon-peal grown,— 

Farina to bullets was rolled in their ire, 

   And, he thought, hurled at him and his throne. 

He tried to cry quarter! his voice would not sound, 

   His head ached – his throne reeled and fell; 

His enemy cheered, as he came to the ground, 

   And cried, ‘King Papilio, farewell!’ 

His fall chased the vision – the sleeper awoke, 

   The wonderful dream to expound; 

The lightning’s bright flash from the thunder-cloud broke, 

   And hail-stones were rattling around. 

He’d slumbered so long, that now, over his head, 

   The tempest’s artillery rolled; 

The tulip was shattered – the whirl-blast had fled, 

   And borne off its crimson and gold. 

’T is said, for the fall and the pelting, combined 

   With suppressed ebullitions of pride, 

This vain son of summer no balsam could find, 

   But he crept under covert and died.

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