Category Archives: Summer

Past Lughnasa

I happened to pick up Henry Thoreau’s journal from 1854, and read this passage from August 7, 1854:

Do you not feel the fruit of your spring and summer beginning to ripen, to harden its seed within you– Do not your thoughts begin to acquire consistency as well as flavor and ripeness– How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed time of character?

Something to consider for this week just past Lughnasa, when we are poised in expectation, the first fruits of the harvest beginning to pour in, but we don’t yet know how bountiful the harvest will be.

Heat

Our “Pods” moving container arrives tomorrow morning, and I was going to go to sleep early, so I could get up and take a walk before it arrived. But it’s just too hot to sleep — 10:05, and 86 degrees. I’m too cheap to put on the air conditioning, which means I’ll sleep fitfully, and my sleep will be filled with dreams. We hit 100 degrees here today — at least, that was the official high temperature today at the DuPage airport five miles from here. Heat advisories all day, dew point in the seventies. It stayed above 95 from late morning until after seven tonight. Hot, humid. At 4:30, I went out and walked down to the river. It was too hot to walk fast, and I always walk fast, so it was an unusual experience for me. Island Park, amazingly, was empty. The usual Sunday afternoon crowds on the river bike trail weren’t there — only the rare bicyclist passing through, one fisherman, and me. I stayed in the shade and wandered slowly downstream on the west side, behind the county complex along Route 31. Three big white Great Egrets, and two big Great Blue Herons, in the middle of the river desultorily stalking fish. Scores of Mallards stood on rocks in the middle of the water, fast alseep; the Wood Ducks stayed in the shade along the edges of the river. A few Spotted Sandpipers, who are gradually losing their spots as their winter feathers grow in, kept to the shady shallows on my side of the river. I sat in the same place for three quarters of an hour, not really watching the birds. At one point, for a moment or two, I understood something about the river… timelessness, not not quite that… the trees have actual personalities, like in those paintings by, not that’s not quite…. And it was gone. Not quite sure what it was, but it couldn’t have been put into words in any case.

Not over till it’s over

According to the almanac, the sun rose today at 5:34 a.m., and set at 8:24 p.m. On June 21, the sun rose at 5:18, and set at 8:32 — not enough of a difference to really notice, but somehow the quality of the light seemed a little different this evening.

Or maybe it’s just because the sandpipers have already started migrating south. They’re always the first migrants I see. It was with a slight pang that I saw a Solitary Sandpiper along the Fox River on Monday, the first visible sign that we are moving towards fall.

But the days are still unbelievably fourteen and a half hours long, the nights short and restless, the heat has really settled in.

((p.s. happy birthday jean!))

Midsummer night

Twenty-odd years ago, I got into the habit of staying up late in the summer. I was living outside Philadephia, it was brutally hot every day for weeks. My job allowed me to pretty much set my own hours, so I stayed up late, sometimes all night, to take advantage of the cooler night air. I’ve been in love with summer nights ever since then.

This afternoon, it got brutally hot. I’m on vacation, so I had the luxury of not having to work, and instead I sat around in a stupor. Now it’s night, a magical summer night, and I can stay up late to enjoy it.

I can see some lights on in the upstairs apartment of the house over on Ford St.; at least one other night owl lives nearby. The moon has set already. The orange hazard lights on the construction crew’s sawhorses blink on and off all along Ford Street in an odd rhythm.

And I can hear the various hums and whines from all the neighbors’s air conditioners. The third shift of the Burgess Norton factory over on Anderson Boulevard has one of the doors open again, so I can hear faint factory sounds: machinery clacking away, the “beep-beep-beep-beep” as a forklift backs up. Across town, a late-night freight rumbles along the Union Pacific line.

The first light of day will come at about 3:30. That’s the time I came awake two nights ago, to hear a few birds idly start to sing. They thought better of it, stopped, and began again in earnest at 4:30 when dawn was more sure.

Drought

The drought keeps getting worse. NOAA’s National Weather Service Forecast Office has upgraded it to the category of “severe drought (D2).” They define severe drought in the following terms:

Crop or pasture losses likely; fire risk very high; water shortages common; water restrictions imposed.

Yesterday the air was dry, the easterly breeze we’ve had since mid-week continued, and the temperatures stayed in the eighties — a perfect summer day. I decided to walk to Batavia using the paved bike path along the river.

Walking down Hamilton St. to the river, I saw the leaves on some trees were beginning to wither with the dryness. Some shrubs and smaller plants were in even worse shape. One patch of Coneflowers appeared dead.

But once down by the river, everything was still amazingly green. Even the grass was green along the river, although everywhere else it has dried to a crisp brown. Duckweed is out now, and when I squatted down to look at some, I noticed all kinds of insect activity along the surface of the mud and of the river. I realized that I have seen almost no insects anywhere for weeks, not even mosquitoes. But there are insects close to the water, which must be why the swallows are flying so low recently.

The river remains low, and you can see it flowing over rocks that are usually well underwater. The surface of the water looked bright and cheerful beside me. I walked through a stand of trees, and could feel the coolness coming up off the river, and into the shade of the trees.

About halfway to Batavia, I passed an area of grass that had not been mowed. The higher stalks, which bore the seed heads, were dry and brown, but up to about eighteen inches the grass and the lower plants growing among it were green — not exactly lush, but green.

I passed two bicyclists who had stopped to pick mulberries, which are growing prolifically alongside the river, and still bearing heavily. “Good year for mulberries,” I said.

One of the cyclists,”Oh they are so good,” with an accent that sounded eastern European. He picked another handful. “Very sweet.”

On the walk back, I picked some. The plentiful juice stained my fingers (and presumably my mouth) a bright deep purple-red. They tasted extraordinarily good, although that may be because I was getting thirsty by that point. Or because the mulberries from trees growing up away from the river are small and wizened, and taste eldery.

As I walked up State Street, climbing up out of the river valley, I noticed the trees started looking bedraggled starting at about 30 feet above the surface of the river. Our house sits beyond the height of land that marks the edge of the valley, and we are about sixty feet above the river. The house was built in the 1850’s, and still has the old water pump out front, sticking up out of the concrete cap someone put over the well. I wonder how deep that well goes, and what kinds of droughts it has seen in the past.

Summer rhythms

The herons and egrets have been back for about a month now. Breeding season is over, and they have moved away from their rookeries. Last evening, I saw a Black-Crowned Night Heron at the edge of the water near Island Park. It still wore one of the long wispy white breeding plumes trailing back over its black head.

Island Park isn’t an island any more. In spite of the rain we had yesterday, the Fox River remains low. The water is so low, Island Park is connected by dry land under both the north bridge and the south bridge, leaving a long pool of water on the eastern side which is no longer connected to the main river.

A fair number of fish must be trapped in that long pool of water. Night before last, I stood on the north bridge to Island Park and watched a Great Egret fishing, a big showy white bird completely intent on the small fish darting about in the water at his or her feet — and completely oblivious to all the people sitting fifty feet away on the deck of the Mill Race Inn.

The fishing appears to be good on the main river, too. One afternoon, I saw five people spread out across the river, wading in water up to their knees, and fishing. A Great Blue Heron waded the river a little downstream from them, and it was fishing, too. Some human beings have the conceit that we are different from animals, but I don’t see it. Like every species, we have our peculiar adaptations that help us survive, but the capacity to manufacture tools like graphite fishing rods does not make us unique, any more than the Black Crowned Night Heron’s breeding plume makes it unique. It’s summer, and all the plants and animals are responding to the ongoing rhythm of the year in their various ways. It’s enough to say that.

Midsummer’s evening

The meeting at church ended just after 9:00 p.m. It was a mild evening, with a breeze just strong enough to get your blood moving. I took a long walk.

I wandered around downtown Geneva, and got to the depot as the 9:46 from Chicago was just in. Not many people on the train. I headed back home along Second Street, and stopped to listen to a large bird squawking way up in a tree. (I have no idea what it was.) By the time I got to the Lutheran church, it was 9:55, and it looked like some meeting had just gotten out. It’s always good to know that another church’s meetings go longer than those at one’s own church.

Got across State Street in a break in the traffic. The Old Towne Pub there on the corner was mostly full. As I passed the back of the pub, a car went slowly by headed towards State Street, and someone said, “Hi!” I turned to look, but they were talking to a woman who came out the back of the pub just then. “Jesus!” she replied, in one of those Spanish accents that has a slight lisp.

No lights were on in the Methodist church on Second Street. (Maybe they got out even earlier than we did. Or maybe we’re a more active church than they. I’ll pretend it’s the latter. Not that I’m competitive or anything.)

No more thoughts of church the rest of the way home. No real thoughts at all Just: –It’s a beautiful evening.

Summer time

Ryan T. came into church last night for Game Night, and announced it is mulberry season. Ryan is enthusiastic about such things, not just because he’s five years old, but because that’s the kind of person he is. I share his enthusiasm for mulberries.

I first knew it was mulberry season three days ago because of a sidewalk near our house: I saw a bird dropping that was strangely purple. I puzzled over this for a while, suddenly realizing that it’s mid-June and time for mulberries to be ripe.

I kept watching the sidewalks on my evening walks around downtown Geneva. Within a day, I came across a short stretch of sidewalk covered with little purple squished fruits, and here and there a purple bird dropping. A mulberry tree! I picked a handful (all I could reach) and ate them. They were sweet and good.

Since then, I’ve discovered two more mulberry trees, and Ryan told me about yet a third less than a block from the church on Second Street. Ryan is fortunate enough to have a mulberry tree growing over his driveway, and he was gracious enough to bring me a small bag of his mulberries this morning when he came to church.

Mulberries are a little eldery-tasting, and usually you can’t reach the really ripe ones because they’re too high, or too clearly over someone’s yard. But most years they’re the first fresh local fruit I eat each year — for about a week each year, they are my favorite fruit.

Summer time

On Memorial Day weekend, we still had the comforter out. A week and a half ago, we were sleeping under blankets. Not any more. Summer is here. Other signs of summer:

  • Robins are molting. Robins are spring breeders who don’t start their molt until their young have fledged (raising young and molting at the same time would be just too stressful). Yesterday, I saw a Robin who had molted the first two tail feathers.
  • Chiggers are out. On Sunday, one bit me. Fortunately, only one managed to bite me.
  • The humidity is back.
  • We leave the ceiling fans going pretty much all day and all night. (We’re too cheap to turn on the A/C.)
  • The people who live to the northwest of us have opened up their pool. We know this because sometimes they leave their very loud pool pump going night and day for days at a time.

But the real sign of summer for me is days that go on forever, and short nights that bring memories of past midsummers, memories which stretch back before I can remember. The world pauses for a moment at this apex of the year, and I find that I can’t sleep deeply, or for long.