I know many people actually like summer, but for me it’s simply the dull time between spring and fall migration Oh, I can find some interesting things to enjoy about it—the arrival and growth of new baby birds, for one. The house might actually get straightened up to some extent in this lull time, but mostly I am waiting for the first migrants to head south again.This weekend I hiked around the cabin a bit, surprised to notice that it is almost as dry as August right now. Grass is brittle under my feet, and bare patches of ground show through where I wouldn’t expect to see that in June. This weekend my area was under a severe thunderstorm watch or warning most of the time, but here on Roundtop nothing really came of it. Friday night I had about 15 seconds of pea-sized hail, followed by 30 seconds of heavy rain, and all the while I could see the sun shining to the west, but that tiny bit didn’t improve the overall dryness any. By Saturday evening any spot that sees much sun was sun-baked again.
In the forest under the protective canopy of the leaves, the vegetation seems much the same as ever, or at least not affected by dryness the way areas in the open are. Most of the blooms of spring are gone, and the forest has settled into that deep green shade of mid-summer. The deerflies were not in evidence this weekend, so Dog and I enjoyed walking down whichever woods road we happened to find beneath our feet. We stick to these roads now; the underbrush will be too dense for much wandering until fall. And so we wait, with me counting down the days until the air is crisp again and the birds will fly.
Posts
5 comments:
Sounds like you're getting our weather from last summer. Last year we had hardly any rain, with weeks on end of sunny skies, and rainstorms lasting an hour at best, but usually much less than that. This summer it seems like we've had an afternoon thunderstorm virtually every day. At least the gardens are well-watered.
Here in Oklahoma we are about to enter the part of summer where I stay in out of the heat. Hold tight, I noticed stores are already putting out Christmas stuff. I know the season is a long way off, but we can close our eyes and pretend fall is almost here!
Oh yes, fall is coming. I don't need anymore 3am T-storms to keep awake like the two that went through last night.
How have you missed the rain that everyone around is getting? Things do quieten down in the summer as far as the birds are concerned. We do have a lot of mosquitoes this year and deerfly with the wet weather.
All: for once, the weather around the cabin this year seems fairly normal, if a bit on the dry side. Still, I don't think of dry weather as something I usually experience in June. I haven't gotten the full brunt of the thunderstorms that have passed through every other day or so, though last night I got a tiny bit of rain.
Carolyn H.
Post a Comment