We’re about 10 days from summer solstice [Jun 21, 4:13 am locally]. Then it will be summer both astronomically and meteorologically. In reality, based on next week’s forecast high temperatures for our neck of the woods. summer is here, or will be, in all its heated glory, accompanied by intermittent thunderstorms. Somewhere in that mix we’ll find a time when we can best spray the poison ivy that’s coming on strong.
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| signs it’s summer
Photo by J. Harrington
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Trying to keep up with regular chores like cutting the grass isn’t that hard except when we’re also trying to wrap up transitional season chores such as collecting and burning fallen dead branches and collecting some of the fallen leaves after the end of No Mow May. We’re getting there. The alternative, living in an urban condo high-rise where we’ve no outside chores to do and more time to go fishing, doesn’t work for us. I’d rather put up with chores, ticks and mosquitos than a tower full of neighbors or a typical middle-class suburban development. Sometimes it’s necessary to simplify available options as a way to remember why we’ve chosen as we have.
This morning, as we were driving one of our usual gravel road routes, we saw a fair sized snapping turtle at road’s edge. The area we were driving through has wetlands and a very small creek, but not the pond or lake depth I’ve come to associate with snapping turtles. We saw the turtle about a mile from the home of the Daughter Person, Son-In-Law and Granddaughter Person and they claim to have seen river otters in their yard. There must be something going on that I haven’t figured out yet. Maybe it’s time to dig out a quad map or two or look at the air photos available on line.
That’s about it for this quiet summer Saturday. We still need to figure out how to properly mete out the proper proportions of gas and oil for our two cycle powered equipment. If we get that done, and the temperatures don’t warm up too fast, we may yet get a three sisters garden planted. Or not.
Summer Magic
Leslie Pinckney Hill - 1880-1960
So many cares to vex the day,
So many fears to haunt the night,
My heart was all but weaned away
From every lure of old delight.
Then summer came, announced by June,
With beauty, miracle and mirth.
She hung aloft the rounding moon,
She poured her sunshine on the earth,
She drove the sap and broke the bud,
She set the crimson rose afire.
She stirred again my sullen blood,
And waked in me a new desire.
Before my cottage door she spread
The softest carpet nature weaves,
And deftly arched above my head
A canopy of shady leaves.
Her nights were dreams of jeweled skies,
Her days were bowers rife with song,
And many a scheme did she devise
To heal the hurt and soothe the wrong.
For on the hill or in the dell,
Or where the brook went leaping by
Or where the fields would surge and swell
With golden wheat or bearded rye,
I felt her heart against my own,
I breathed the sweetness of her breath,
Till all the cark of time had flown,
And I was lord of life and death.
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Please be kind to each other while you can.
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