Misty mountain morning

Roundtop is turning green again, after weekend rains provided a half-decent soak. The rain should have raised the level of Beaver Creek somewhat so the adventure camp kids will benefit from that, if not the crayfish and frogs they will probably catch.


The leaves that dried and fell from the extended lack of rain still litter the mountain, making it look a bit odd to my eye. The trees are all green again but when I look at the ground, it is covered with yellow and brown leaves, almost like fall.

Much of the underbrush or yearling plants of the understory didn’t make it through the rainless time, so I can see the ground again and see a bit deeper into the forest than before. When I look through the trees at the leaf-shrouded sky I am trying to tell if the canopy is a bit more open than before. I can’t tell, and if there’s any difference it sure isn’t enough to matter.

What I am noticing is the shortening of the days. The evenings are a bit shorter and the mornings even more so. This morning under a clear sky, it occurred to me that in another week I will probably need a headlamp to start my morning walk with Dog. This morning I thought about it for the first time in months, but I waited for a minute or so and in the interim the sky lightened enough to do without.

Rain and finding normal again

Raindrops on spruce

Rain! It is much needed and should do a lot to ease the damage caused by the lack of it over the past few weeks. It’s too soon for the grass to turn green again, but I’m sure it will. Overnight I had just under an inch of rain, most of which fell gently enough to soak in. This morning I saw a few small puddles but water wasn’t gushing down the lane or off the mountain.
Lately I’ve been a bit bored with taking summer photos in the season’s harsh light and distant haze. This morning’s fogginess makes the mountain look a lot more interesting to me again. That, and a new and empty photo card had me snapping shots like crazy.

The rain comes too late for the spotted touch-me-not plants that withered and died, leaving the ground bare of vegetation where they grew thickly. It comes in time to save the local corn and boost the water in Beaver Creek (and elsewhere). So for at least a little while the mountain will look and feel “normal” to me again.

I have lived in my cabin now for more than 20 years, and over those years I’ve developed a sense, perhaps a memory, of how the forest looks and feels, for lack of another word, in all its seasons. I know when the migrating birds should arrive and leave. I know when the trees should turn color in the fall. I know what winters and summers should feel like. I know what blooms here and what lives here, what the sky looks like when the weather will turn nasty. And I know that things are out of whack.

That sense began slowly, when I started noticing that leaves fell later and later each year. They now fall a good three weeks later than they did when I first moved here. I know that the trees are budded and leafed out far too early for the warblers that arrive in the spring. That used to be such a beautiful thing, a perfect balance in nature, with each species arriving at just the right moment, coinciding with the first appearance of the insects each preferred. The ground-loving warblers arrived first, then the mid-canopy birds and finally the ones that sought food from the highest branches of all. Now, the trees are nearly fully leafed out by the time the first warblers arrive, even though the warblers are coming earlier too.

My sense of normal is solely based on my observations of what happens in the forest around me. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to support what I’m saying. Others do the science, though the science supports my observations.

A new article to be published in an upcoming issue of Rolling Stone starts off with this: “ June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.” If you’d like to read the full article, it’s here.

Two deer

Not Maude or Murgatroyd

The two deer that seem to always wait at the bottom of my lane were dubbed Maude and Murgatroyd by my neighbor. He can’t tell them apart and neither can I.

It made some sense that they would hang out in the 5x10 patch of grass between the lane and the woods when the weather was sweltering. The grass there wasn’t entirely brown, the woods were just a jump away, and the small open area at least held the promise of a breeze. But now that the weather has broken, Maude and Murgatroyd (spelling uncertain) still haunt this small patch.

They’ve nearly been hit more than once because, as deer will, instead of retreating to the woods on the side of the road where they are standing, they decide they must retreat by crossing the road and jumping directly into the path of the oncoming car. And naturally, we can’t really see them until we are right on top of them.

I have tried, when I can see them, driving past them very slowly, hoping they will not jump onto my car. This has had an unexpected result in that now I can get nearly close enough to touch them before they move. If I rolled down the window, stuck my arm out of the car, and if they’d let me approach another 5 feet, I think I could touch them.

They are not quite tame enough to be handfed and not nearly spooky or wily enough to stay out of trouble. The 4 year old neighbor adores them, though she is just a bit too noisy for them. Her squeals of delight when they tiptoe into her front yard while she is in her playhouse can be heard all over the mountain. That’s usually followed by the two deer crashing down the side of the mountain by my cabin, which sets the dogs to howling again. Then the deer gallop through the other neighbor’s vegetable patch and flower garden, while she was at the far end of the garden, armed only with a hoe.

This morning? Maude and Murgatroyd are back in the 5x10 patch of grass. We’re still trying to avoid hitting them.

Too hot!

Normally I love the Tuesdays I spend down with kids from adventure camp down at a little bridge across Beaver Creek. I have to admit that yesterday, with its 97 degree heat, wasn’t one of my favorites. There’s just no way to enjoy spending the day outside when it’s 97 degrees and humid.

The kids didn’t seem to mind. The first giant crayfish they caught was all they needed. Suddenly the creek was full of kids catching crayfish of all sizes, from large down to nearly microscopic. They also snagged a few frogs, a couple of salamanders and even a few minnows, which are quicksilver fast and hard to catch. The kids quickly settled into groups working in teams so they could outwit and herd the crayfish into the nets. A few decided to “guard” the prisoners to keep the frogs and crayfish from escaping the bucket. A few others decided to create a dam to keep the crayfish was escaping downstream.

By noontime I was wilting and by the time camp ended I was ready for a cool shower and some air conditioning. Sometimes I long for the days, a mere 20 years ago, when summers in the woods were cool enough not to need air conditioning. Fortunately for me, this latest heat wave is ending today. As long as the afternoon storms don’t damage anything at the cabin, the cool air that accompanies them will be much appreciated.

I know it’s not just me that will appreciate cooler weather. My hens haven’t laid an egg since the latest heat wave began—not that I blame them. And my elderly Dog isn’t much interested in a long walk either. I’ve been seeing deer along the edges of the roads, no doubt hoping to catch something that resembles a breeze. Cars whizz by and the deer just stand there. They aren’t going to move until they are good and ready.

The storms are coming, and I hope some rain comes with them. It’s only the lightning and the wind that won’t be welcome.

A (very) little rain

Brown-eyed susans

A bit a rain dampened Roundtop this weekend, though I seem to have missed the bulk of it. I had enough rain to dampen the forest, but only a few miles away more than an inch was recorded. I could have used more than fell here but at least there was something.

Even that was too late for some of the forest flowers. The spotted touch-me-not, among others, have shriveled and died. As a result, I can now see the ground in portions of the forest, instead of the knee-high understory that covered it as recently as last week. The rain also knocked down the yellowed leaves that made the forest look as though the season was early autumn.

I hope I had enough rain to replenish the little stream where the camp kids will attempt to terrorize catch crayfish tomorrow. With the next few days edging near 100 degrees again, any benefit from the rain is likely to be short-lived. Still, a bit of rain is better than none.

What rain I had did wonders for these brown-eyed susans. They bloomed almost overnight. I have been watching this patch on the edge of the forest near the cabin for a while now, waiting for the buds to bloom. And waiting. Even on Saturday the patch was not completely out. It was only during this morning’s walk with Dog that I saw they were all finally fully open. And now I am eager to revisit other spots on the mountain to see what else a little rain has done.

Odds and ends

Bird song was much in evidence this morning for some reason. Is it that the morning was overcast and hazy? Is it that sunrise already creeps up minutes later than just a few weeks ago? No matter.

This morning the distant call of a yellow-billed cuckoo from somewhere over on the other side of the mountain was enough to keep my ears perked up during my morning walk with Dog. I’ve never seen the cuckoo on Roundtop but it’s not hard to know when one is around. It is very persistent and calls over and over again, often moving around between calls so that each is in a slightly different spot.

The more common of the summer residents were all out this morning, too. I expect to hear a pewee and a phoebe each morning. Ditto the Carolina wren and the squabbling blue jays. Also this morning I heard both wood thrush and ovenbird. Both had been quiet for some weeks during nesting duties. Does the new round of calling mean nesting is over, that the birds are in between multiple nestings or did the first nest fail? Even the hummingbird put in an early morning appearance.

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And from the "it never fails (and I’m convinced it’s a conspiracy) department: Just when a class X1.4 solar flare is released, prompting a good possibility of aurora borealis displays this far south, the forecast for the weekend is for cloudy skies. Really, overcast skies and a high probability of auroras must go together. I can’t even tell you the last time I had clear skies when the aurora probably was high.

Dry

Perhaps you are wondering, “Why is she running fall photos in July?” The answer is that these are not photos of fall foliage. I took them this morning.

The lack of rain is starting to have a devastating effect on the forest here on Roundtop. The grass is as brown as ripe wheat. The forest understory is crackling and withered. And now the leaves on the trees, even large trees, are yellowing and falling to the ground. At this point, the majority of the yellowing leaves are from tulip poplars. At first I thought the yellowing was restricted to the trees at the forest’s edge. Naturally, those would bear the brunt of the sun and its heat. That is not the case, though I do think those edge trees look worse than the ones deeper into the forest.

Though tulip poplars are the species that is most affected by the dry weather, they aren’t the only one. Locust trees are affected, too, and even a smattering of white oaks are among the leaves scattered on the ground.


Although the last week’s heat wave has dissipated, this week’s temperatures have been normal. But a week of extreme heat followed by a week of normal heat but no rain is enough to weaken even the largest trees in this forest. It has now been more than three weeks since any measurable rain has fallen. June’s precipitation was actually above normal, but all of it fell in the first few weeks of the month.


The only chance of rain in the forecast over the next week or so is in the low possibility for thunderstorms. So this situation is only likely to worsen. I’m not one who enjoys thunderstorms—lightning has struck too close to the cabin and winds strong enough to down trees have worried me too many times for that! But I’m starting to hope for a thunderstorm to bring some much-needed rain to this forest.

Blessed relief!

Indian pipes

The heat wave has finally broken, after topping out at 101 degrees F. on Saturday. Storms rumbled past that evening but missed me entirely. I don’t mind that I didn’t get the wind or that lightning never struck closer than a few miles away, but I sure could have used some of the rain. A week of temperatures that ranged from 93-101 just sucked the moisture out of the forest, leaving it wilted and crackly.

So perhaps the drying out and thinning of the forest understory is the reason why I was able to see these Indian pipes. Indian pipes are a parasite, technically, and not a fungus, which is what you’d probably guess they were if you didn’t know. Without chlorophyll, it’s a plant, a parasite of a fungus that takes nutrients from a tree. And Indian pipes need nutrients both from the host fungus and the tree, making it a double parasite. They were one of the first woodland plants I could identify and probably the first I ever remember seeing, somewhere way back in my childhood. I still think they are a neat plant. They don’t grow very large, usually around 4-6 inches tall. Occasionally I see a taller grouping that is 8-10 inches tall, but those aren’t typical.

American beech trees are a host for the fungus that Indian pipes like, and my front forest has several of those. This little group is just a few of the 12-15 pipes I found yesterday under one of the beech trees.  The others are still just poking their heads out of the ground.  These are still growing and while the heads will always droop, the plant will uncurl more than they are right now. The plant is also called corpse plant and ghost plant, and it’s waxy to the touch. If you pick them they wilt and turn black right away. I learned that at a young age, too.

Still in the heat wave

Chickory

Day one of the latest heat wave is over, and I’m currently in the middle of day two. I will need to make it through Saturday, with a forecast of 100°F, to reach the end of the worst of this heat.

In the woods where I live, the temperature is always a few or several degrees cooler than in the surrounding towns, though I never get a break from the humidity. Today at noontime it is already above 90°, which makes me think the prediction of 96 for today could be on the low side.

The heat just sucks the moisture out of the ground. Last evening Dog was klutzing around in the forest undergrowth and it sounded like he was breaking glass. Every twig, every leaf he touched just crumbled. The corn is so dry its leaves are curled up and look like pineapple plants. An outside plant that I watered one evening is dead and brown by the next.

Even leaves on some trees are turning brown and falling to the ground. So far I’ve seen mostly tulip poplar or maple leaves. Likely, the leaves that fell came from previously-damaged or weaker twigs. I’ve seen this happen before, though always in September after a hot, dry August. It does not bode well, methinks, to see this in early July.

Although no rain is in the immediate forecast, I’m already hoping for a wet or a cool August. This heat wave is more like August, anyway, so perhaps August will do something else this year. I can only hope.

Too much heat!

Nature's snowflake, Queen Anne's lace. I wish I had a few of the real snowflakes right now.

The current heat wave is too hot for me to be spending much time outside gallivanting through the forest. I am staying where it is cooler. When I am outside I am usually sitting, often with an icy beverage in one hand.


I did, however, still manage to see something I found interesting. I’ve been spooking a deer, a doe, about once a day when I am outside. Usually my first sighting of her is when she bounds away, often from very close by. She’s surprised and startled me a couple of times. I figure she has a fawn hidden somewhere nearby, a fawn that is still too young to be following mom around. I don’t expect to find the fawn until mom is convinced the new baby is ready for travel.

What has surprise me is how close the deer has been to me when it takes off, and I have wondered where it could be hiding so that I couldn’t see it. And I’ve finally figured that one out.

Last year during Snowtober, my lane was so cluttered with tree halves and large limbs that it took me hours to clear it. The rest of the forest was just as thick with broken limbs and trees, too. In the past when I’ve cleared brush, I would just drag it off into my brushpile in the woods. After Snowtober so many trees and limbs were down that I couldn’t even reach my brushpile. The whole woods looked like a brushpile. I just dragged the limbs off to the side of the driveway and left them there; even so I had to struggle to find somewhere to leave them or had to toss them atop the other limbs that came down but didn’t land in the driveway. The side of my driveway looks like an impenetrable barrier now.

This mass of limbs and half-trees is proving to be useful for the deer. Many of those downed limbs are a single main branch with lots smaller branches at the end of it. Those smaller branches don’t lay flat on the ground but instead create a kind of mini-teepee. Dead leaves still cover the branches, and the deer crawl into the circle of the smaller branches and lay down inside. When they do that, they are invisible to me. The deer, and this doe in particular, just stays inside that circle of branches unless I walk too close to her. Then she bounces up and rushes away, but I never knew she was there. If she hadn’t run off, I would have passed within 10 feet of her and never known it.

Surviving the heat

A strong thunderstorm blew across Roundtop Mtn. around 4 a.m. this morning, disturbing my sleep. The dogs cowered under the bed, and once I was half-blinded when I was looking out the window at the moment of a lightning flash. Instead of cooling things down, the air turned steamy and warmer within moments of the storm’s passing.


Last night the fireflies were out by the dozens. Earlier in the summer I worried there were fewer of them than usual but no longer. Until the storm was overhead and forced them into hiding, the fireflies created their own tiny versions of lightning in the forest.

So now the heat wave is here and the forest life is slowing down to deal with it. My chickens retreat under the cabin during the day, where it is cooler. Birds are quiet earlier in the day. The deer are also in hiding, emerging only at night; I see their tracks along the bank of the nearest pond. It might not just be the heat that keeps the deer from appearing either; the dreaded deer flies have arrived, too, harassing deer and humans alike. Deer flies have a nasty bite, but they spend more time circling the target of their attention than biting. Still, the constant buzzing noise and the anticipation that at any second the deer fly might land and bite is enough to drive deer and humans half-crazy.

For the next few days until the heat breaks sometime next week, my own forays into the woods will be limited. Like the deer l am likely to emerge outside only at night, or in the faded light of early dawn.

Heat wave's a coming

Are you ready for the heat wave? I’m not. Heat waves are why I don’t like summer. Even as I type, one is building up, planning on settling in for a few or several days. It was only a few years ago that I discovered different regions have different definitions of what constitutes a heat wave. In this area, a heat wave is at least three days with temperatures at 90°F or above. Usually, this is accompanied by high humidity, too.

California and other drier areas say a heat wave (or a heat storm as it’s called in their parlance) is when the temperatures reach 100°F for three or more days over a wide area. Other countries also have their own definitions. In the Netherlands, for example, a heat wave means five consecutive days above 77°F, with at least three of those days above 86°F, though they use the Celsius scale, so it’s 25°C and 30°C for them. Australia’s version is that a heat wave is five consecutive days over 95°F or three consecutive days over 104°F.

Anyway you look at it and anywhere you live, a heat wave isn’t going to be a lot of fun. Here at the cabin I am somewhat sheltered from a “minor” heat wave. The leaves of the forest canopy take the worst of the sun, but that helps me down at ground level, at least until the humidity gets bad. Nothing shelters me from the humidity.

Heat waves are a good time to take Dog swimming. Even though he is old now, he still swims a bit and walks through the pond a lot. Baby Dog, since she is a dark brown color, which is akin to me wearing dark clothes in the summer, would benefit from a cool swim but she refuses. Every summer I try to get her in the water, even to wade, to no avail. She will have none of that wet stuff no matter how much she sees Dog (or me) enjoying it. Maybe this year I’ll get her into that pond.

Thoughts on kids and camp

Roundtop peeking over the neighboring hill

Ah, another Tuesday, another day of adventure camp. For once the weather held no threat of anything—neither thunder nor heat nor anything nasty. In fact, the weather was perfect—clear and cool. The kids had a good session, too. One group caught the mother of all crayfish. Really, the thing was like a small lobster. And it was finally caught in a net, after what seemed like hours of kids screaming directions and advice to the kid who was holding the net. When it was finally landed, they all cheered. I know the kids are having fun. I just hope that translates into spending more time in the outdoors.

My general impression of the kids is that they don’t have nearly as much knowledge of the outdoors as the kids I worked with even four or five years ago. By the time I was their ages, I had caught countless crayfish, knew the names of lots of birds, knew what poison ivy looked like and didn’t scream every time I saw an insect. These kids can’t tell a robin from a goose, don’t know enough to look in puddles for frogs or interesting animal tracks and don’t even try to be quiet when they are walking through the woods. With the kids I see, very basic knowledge of the outdoors is missing. What’s perhaps even scarier is that these are the kids who are interested enough to come to an adventure camp in the first place. What the kids are like who don’t want to come to adventure camp, I can’t even guess. And remember, these aren’t kids who’ve spent their lives in a city for the most part either. They are kids from small and medium-sized towns and the suburbs.

What I’m afraid that will eventually translate into are large numbers of adults with very limited or very shallow knowledge of the natural world. In the future, as we face ever more extreme weather, and our ever-growing population forces ever more choices about sharing the earth with its other inhabitants, I’m afraid the choices that will be made won’t be the best ones. Those kids don’t know it yet but their future, and those of their own children, will hinge on making the best choices humans can make, and to do that they need to know and understand a whole lot more about how the world works. I sure wish I could do more to help that happen.

A little gratuitous beauty

Farmer lily

Roundtop Mountain’s early-season mini-heat wave is past its prime, if not quite done with and out the door this morning. For that alone I am in a celebratory mood, so it’s a good time to post a photo of a bit of nature’s gratuitous beauty. This cloudy morning the farmer lilies are blooming. Some were still closed up after the night but most were open and ready for their close-up. I could not disappoint them.


Like black raspberries and new fawns, late June is also marked by farmer lilies. They line the roads leading up the mountain as thickly as crowds at a New Year’s Day parade. They are 6-10 blooms deep in the ditches and often run on for the length of a football field. If you can’t count at least 100 blooms while standing in one spot, you must be inside. With the curtains drawn.

It’s not only the farmer lilies that are appearing on the mountain either. Other midsummer blooms, like chicory, are also starting to add some color to the summer green. I haven’t yet seen any brown-eyed susans but they can’t be far from showing up either.

The Canada geese babies now resemble their parents and no longer look like featherless chickens. They still can’t fly, and the parent geese still shepherd them everywhere, but already they look a lot more like adults than goslings.

Fawns are beginning to appear on the mountain, too. They’ve been born for a little while now, but are only just starting to be big enough to accompany mama on her daily rounds. Many are still hidden, curled up during the day while mother grazes on the ski slopes.

Officially, summer has only just begun but here it looks and feels like midsummer. To me, the July 4 holiday has always marked the “middle” of summer—six weeks after Memorial Day (the unofficial start of summer) and just nine weeks before Labor Day (the unofficial end of summer). I suppose that thinking is left over from my school days when Memorial Day and Labor Day pretty much bracketed the end of one year and the start of a new term. So whatever the calendar says, my thinking has its own version of summer.

3H's are here...and a small brag

View to the east on a hazy morning

The 3H’s are here, and the only thing good I can find to say about it is that the dreaded three will leave tomorrow. This morning the haze was already in evidence, and the humidity was cloying even as early as 7 a.m.

It’s a lot easier for me to put up with record-breaking heat and humidity when I know it won’t be here for days on end. Of course, anytime heat like this comes to an end that probably means thunderstorms and the dangers that often accompany them. Still, the heat will end and that’s the important thing for now.

So I am simply trying to bask in the idea that it’s only this afternoon to suffer through and the weather will be better tomorrow. Wrong as forecasts often are, I’m still glad I live in a time where people have some idea how long bad weather will last. I don’t even want to think about how anxious I would be about this weather if I didn’t know it would end tomorrow. Imagine living in a time where you had no idea if you’d have one day of record-breaking heat or 15 in a row. Or if you didn’t know the back edge of that winter blizzard was just one county to the west and would be over soon. All I can say is I’m glad I wasn’t living then.

On a side note: yesterday marked my 1500th post to Roundtop Ruminations. I started the blog way back in August 2005, so I’ll soon be coming up on my seventh anniversary with it. Back then it never occurred to me I’d still be posting in 2012.

A day at camp

Down along Beaver Creek

Yesterday was my first day of adventure camp for this season. For me, camp means spending a day with kids down on Beaver Creek at the bottom of Roundtop Mtn. I show them how to catch crayfish and frogs and salamanders and anything else they can find, and I get to spend the day outside.

The weather yesterday proved fine for the event. The early morning was cloudy, not always the best for crayfish catching, but the kids still found some. The groups that arrived after noon when the weather was sunny caught crayfish faster than I could keep up with how many they caught. I’m sure they found at least 30.
The kids caught the same poor pickerel frog three times. It had a damaged toe, so I know it was the same one. I kept releasing it after each group of kids left so it wouldn’t get stressed, and the next group of kids kept catching it. The crayfish ranged in size from nearly invisible to big enough to eat. The kids were also much impressed by the sheer ugliness of the hellgrammite, the aquatic larva of the dobsonfly.

The idea of the camp is to get kids outside and interested in something other than video games. I don’t have each group long enough to actually teach them very much. I consider it a good session if the kids have fun and get to see and catch a variety of stream denizens. My hope is that their fun will translate into wanting to do something outdoorsy another time and maybe another and then yet again.

Mountain babies

Ah, for just another week of this lovely weather before the dreaded 3H’s take over. Alas, that is not to be. So I took advantage of the good weather this past weekend to wander around the mountain as much as I could. Once the hot weather kicks in, my walks are shorter and often less enjoyable. No one—and especially not me—likes hiking when covered in sweat.

What I saw on my forays were the first appearances of a whole variety of mountain babies, most of them as clueless as only babies can be. Everything from just-fledged barn swallows to goslings to fawns let me approach much closer than their parents were comfortable with. The youngsters are so clueless that even a dive-bombing or a snorting parent didn’t budge them. Kids! What are you going to do?

The antlers of the male deer are in velvet already. At one point this weekend I saw a nice buck calmly grazing in someone’s front yard (they weren’t home). It was the middle of the afternoon and the deer looked as calm as someone’s cow. He looked as though he did that every day and maybe he does. Sometimes it’s not just the babies that are clueless.

And speaking of babies—tomorrow marks the first session of adventure camp for me. I’ll spend the day down at a really nice stream with at least six groups of kids. We’ll catch crayfish and frogs, probably salamanders, too. I hope the wood tortoise that was such a hit last summer is still around. I’m going to have more kids at one time than I did last year. So this noon I ran out and bought more minnow nets—great for reaching across the stream to get at balky crayfish—and another bucket for temporarily holding our prisoners. As a result, I won’t be online tomorrow, but I will have a report on how things went on Wednesday.

Not hot, hazy or humid

I am enjoying these all too few, lovely days of June, those rarest days of almost summer, when the weather is neither hot, hazy nor humid. If the entire summer remained as nice as the weather was this week, I’d thoroughly enjoy summer. That won’t happen, of course, especially not in these days of a warming climate. In fact, by Tuesday of next week, the weather will be hot and humid and hazy—the dreaded 3H’s of summer.

The 3H’s typically last for at least good two months, now. A wait of two-and-a-half months before the weather breaks is not unlikely. Even mid-September can sometimes be sweltering, and by then even most of the summer aficionados are weary of it. Oh, we will have (I hope) a few days of rain and a few days of not-quite-so-terrible weather along the way, but they will seem few and far between to me. I know it will be more than two months before the year truly turns towards fall and nicer weather.

In the worst of the summer I tend to read books about Alaska, hoping the descriptions of unfathomable cold help me survive the worst of the heat. Around August, I begin to search web cams in the Yukon and northern Alaska, looking for that first bit of “termination dust” (new snow on the high peaks) that promises an eventual break in the heat down here.

But for today and for another few days, I don’t need to think about that. I can enjoy the bright, clear mornings and the crisp nights that call for a sweatshirt.  I can enjoy the deep green forest of midsummer. And I will start counting the days to when the weather will turn cooler and more pleasant again.

After the rain

Ironweed or wild butterfly weed

Yesterday I was supposed to lead my first outdoor awareness session of the summer with kids from the neighboring adventure camp. Instead, it rained buckets all day long, and the camp director wisely decided the kids wouldn’t have a great experience hiking down to the stream. It rained so hard that I got soaked even in my tried-and-true backpacking rain jacket for just the few minutes I took the dogs outside. It wasn’t only the kids who wouldn’t have had a lot of fun in that kind of weather!


Each summer I take the kids down to a little stream and teach them how to catch crayfish, frogs and salamanders. Last year they also routinely found a lovely old wood tortoise who didn’t seem to mind one bit being handled by a lot of kids. That tortoise was a big hit. The whole point is for the kids to enjoy themselves outdoors and experience a little bit of what goes on beyond their video game consoles. It would be nice to think that the experience whets their little appetites for more such experiences. That’s probably wishful thinking on my part, but I do what I can in the short amount of time I have with them to broaden their horizons a bit.

Anyway, yesterday the hike and critter-catching session was cancelled. I’m sure the critters were hiding from the weather, too. This morning the sky was crystal clear. Except for the leftover puddles, I couldn’t have guessed that the day before was such a washout.

Ironweed, or wild butterfly weed, is just starting to bloom along the forest edges, I noticed. The leaves and tiny flowers on this one still carry the drops of yesterday’s rain. Do I call every flower I photograph my favorite? I think I do, and when I am photographing one that one is my favorite. I know I particularly appreciate the pink-purple shade of ironweed and its showy size. If I do have a flower preference it’s for anything of strong color and good size. I’m not a huge fan of teeny, tiny little flowers. I like something with a strong sense of its own importance. Ironweed is one of those.

Almost!

Farmer lilies

It’s no secret to readers of Roundtop Ruminations that the wild and showy farmer lilies are one of my favorite flowers. And I am happy to report that they are almost ready to pop. The morning as I was leaving the mountain I checked a favorite spot to see how they were coming along. They are almost out. In fact, I expect they will be out by evening.

Farmer lilies love the sun, closing up at night and then opening spectacularly each morning. If it’s not sunny they will not deign to open their flowers and will stay closed until the sun strikes them again.

I am also happy to report that my half-grown chickens have figured out how to navigate the ramp up to and into their chicken house. After only a few days, they’ve already perfected the routine. At dusk they all troop up the ramp, one after another, to reach the safe and dry, straw-ladened roost. After they are all in, I close the door behind them, which keeps them out of sight of possible predators. In winter the closed door will keep them warmer, too. The little girls are growing up!