Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Summer view


Ah, humidity! Soupy air obscures all the views today. The mountains just a few miles away look blue instead of green. The distant mountains, some 10 miles across the valley, are invisible. It’s summer.

The vegetation has that mid-summer green look to it, a deep and rich shade with not yet even a hint of the dullness that will set in during August. That month is usually the year’s driest in this area, and for many years I attributed that dull brown-edged green to the usual lack of rain. But since then I have lived through a few Augusts where rain was surprisingly plentiful, and the dullness still appeared. So now I call that dullness a sign of pre-autumn.

But today the trees are breathing nicely, exhaling oxygen and offsetting all that carbon dioxide that we humans are exhaling. Water vapor is returning to the sky, and a storm will probably result later. It’s summer in Pennsylvania, and this is just another normal day. 

2 comments:

SHG said...

Another normal day in Pennsylvania. Makes me wonder if this is what William Penn saw,

Carolyn H said...

Sam: It probably was what William Penn saw, though with fewer farms in those early days.