At the corner of summer

Common mullein

Summer is about to officially appear, arriving after the year’s longest day and shortest night. Roundtop already has the look of summer. The tiny first buds of spring are long gone. The summer flowers are beginning to appear. Common mullein is beginning to bloom, though the plants are still no more than 3 ft. tall, not yet reaching their full height of 4-5 ft.

The blooms appear slowly on the cone stalk, rising from the bottom to eventually reach the top of the cone. By the time the blooms reach the top, the stalk will be at its full height. I always thought it would be pretty spectacular if the entire cone was blooming at the same time, but mullein doesn’t work that way. Several rows bloom at the same time, but the lower rows are done by the time the blooms appear higher on the cone. So a few rows of small yellow flowers blooming at the same time is the way of this plant.

I saw my first snake of the summer on Sunday. It was a black snake, moving under a bush too quickly for me to even snap a photo with my phone camera. The chickens were nearby and either didn’t see it or didn’t care about it. I tried looking under the juniper bush, behind the juniper and around the juniper bush but never saw more than the back half of the snake. I’m guessing it was about a 4 ft. long snake, not one of the larger black snakes.

Generally, I don’t see many snakes here. I’ve seen water snakes, ribbon snakes, garter snakes and a milk snake, a few or several snakes a year. Black snakes are the most common. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a few copperheads are around, but I’ve never seen one here. I hope that continues, and especially I hope that continues during my sessions with the kids at camp. Last year a boy momentarily caught a brightly colored juvenile eastern water snake in his minnow net, and until it escaped and I got a good look at it (moving faster than any snake you could imagine), I wasn’t completely sure he hadn’t netted a copperhead. I was greatly relieved to see he had not.

Copperheads like rocky areas and wetland areas; a stone-covered stream bank would fall into their preferred habitat. When I’ve seen copperheads on hikes, they have been in rocky areas with no water nearby. But all land-based snakes will head down to streams in dry times, because that’s where dinner is likely to be found.