The speed of summer seemx to be accelerating with the heat of Dog Days. I rest in my yard, holding the day close, binding it together with what lies around me.
In my garden pond, the three-petaled flowers of the arrowhead opened overnight, a few days before they did last year. The yellow coneflowers are a week ahead of schedule.
The zinnias and the Shasta daisies I planted from seed are finally blossoming, bright oranges and reds joining the white phlox and the pinks of the petunias. The lilies are almost done blooming now.
Tent caterpillars hang from the apple tree, like they do every year about this time. The cabbage butterflies cluster at the purple loosestrife, up to a dozen at once, joined by the bees and a tagalong spotted skipper.
Dragonflies weave back and forth, a giant black and white skimmer, three or flour big blue-tailed skimmers, a few needle thin bluets or short-tailed damselflies, too.
A hummingbird visits the rose of Sharon. The young daddy longlegs are growing up, have doubled in size over the past couple of weeks. Cricket hunters, long thin black wasps, hunt the newborn crickets at the pond’s edge. The first monarch butterfly sails by.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the final week of middle summer. In the meantime, pay attention when you can…it’s all going by so fast.
