Summer sunshine

Ahhhh! The heat and humidity are gone, if only for the next day or so. Still, after 98 degrees on Saturday, I will certainly take whatever relief I can get.

For me, summer is simply what I have to put up with to get to fall hawk migration, so attending a get-together with other hawk people in midsummer really gets me ready for the new season. I was at Hawk Mountain on Saturday for the annual Kittatinny Roundtable, where hawk counters from the region get together to look at last season’s results, hear a few hawk-related presentations and just have fun. And anything that gets my mind off 98 degree temperatures is welcome. So with the sweltering heat outside, I spent more time inside than I did wandering around the forests of Roundtop Mtn.

On Sunday the weather turned nasty. Driving home I saw a wall cloud with a vague amount of rotation. Or perhaps a cloud that was trying to rotate is a better way of putting that. It never did amount to much, but is indicative of what was happening as a storm front came through, and the tornado warning wasn’t far behind. Fortunately, the rotating part of the storm never got its act together and other than turning the sky midnight black and bringing some rain to my cabin door that was that.

Afterwards and this morning, the humidity is gone and the weather much cooler. Suddenly I have lots of energy and ambition, and I’m ready to tackle projects around the cabin again—at least until the weather heats up again.

My photo this morning is an evening primrose. Around the mountain, I have seen several plants over the past two weeks or so, and I have been anxiously awaiting their blooming. In some places the flower blooms in June but here I think of them as a midsummer and late summer bloom. It’s that lovely shade of yellow I find so enjoyable. The flower looks summer sunshine on a stalk.