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Category: summer

Wednesday Market

Wednesday Market

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I remembered just in time yesterday, remembered that it was Wednesday and the farmer’s market was happening in my church parking lot. The church doesn’t sponsor the market, just offers it a place to be. But having it there gives it a welcome familiarity.

As the summer has deepened, the produce offerings have expanded — and so has the carnival aspect of the event. Yesterday the parking lot was so full that I thought for a moment a service must be going on. But it wasn’t a service, just a lot of vegetable-lovers — and more. 

This market includes bakery booths and a barbecue place, organic meats and micro-greens. A steel drum player gives it a Caribbean beat. As I squeezed tomatoes and peaches, I spotted a fleet of cyclists moving effortlessly down the road. For a moment it felt like summer would never end. 

The Afternoon Amble

The Afternoon Amble

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Twice this week I’ve found myself out for a jaunt not at 10 or 11 a.m. but at 3 or 4 p.m. It’s warmer by then, so I drive to the Glade Trail where tall trees arch across the paved walk and shade pools in deep pockets along the way. 

There are fewer cars parked along the road at that hour, fewer walkers, too. And the ones I see tend to keep their heads down. I’m fine doing that, too, so strolling at that hour tends to feel more solitary.

The air is heavier and the pace is slower, with time to sniff the honeysuckle or take a detour on one of the side paths that wind into the woods. 

On Thursday, the air was so steamy that I felt as slow-moving as the stream, now in full summer dawdle. Forty-five minutes in, I noticed that heavy clouds had moved in and there was a pre-storm excitement that made me pick up my pace. 

I hadn’t been home more than 15 minutes when the skies opened and rain sheeted the house and yard. 

An afternoon amble, just in time.

Seize the Day!

Seize the Day!

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Their sound holds within it the rattle of a snake and the swish of a beaded curtain. It has more crescendoes than a brass band on a June afternoon.

The cicadas have brought us quickly to the soul of summer.  They have taken us to the brink of that shimmering, simmering time of year when everything seems more intensely alive.

Yesterday, on the Glade Trail, I moved into and out of various cicada hot zones, places where the critters congregate more plentifully, where they sing their songs with more abandon than others. 

Maybe it’s because they prefer laying their eggs on these branches (in our backyard they seem to like the crepe myrtle more than the dogwood, for instance). Or maybe it’s for some other reason buried deep in the cicada psyche.

All I know is that seeing them mate and fly, hearing them shout and sing, knowing what I do of their lifespan and life story, leaves me with one urgent message: Carpe diem, folks, seize the day. 

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

Feeling Sorry for Cicadas

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I arrived home to the sound of Brood X, the 17-year cicadas that have been biding their time underground since 2004 and are now living the high life in Virginia and other states. 

They are funny critters, singing and mating and getting stuck on windshield wipers, where one got a free ride for a few minutes yesterday as I drove home from the Reston trails. 

The hum they make sounds like a commotion in the next county, like something big is going on somewhere else, which indeed it is. 

But as I dodged their exoskeleton carcasses yesterday on my walk, my amazement at their presence was tempered with pity for their plight. What a life …. 17 years of nothing followed by three weeks of way too much. Theirs is not a path of moderation. 

On the other hand, who am I to judge a bug? My life may seem just as strange to them.

Like a Sundial

Like a Sundial

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My once-shaded morning spot is now striped with sunlight as greenery thins and light lowers. To listen to the cicadas you’d never know that summer is winding down. They’re as whirring and wonderful as ever. 

But to this stationary human, it’s all in the angles and shadows: not just a later sunrise and an earlier sunset, but countless other reminders based on known shadow points.

Sometimes I feel like a sundial, my movements charted and parsed, my dial controlled by a vast, uncontrollable force. 

Humidity

Humidity

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Humidity and dew points are meteorological variables that I’ve yet to fully understand. But I feel them and I see them and this time of the year that’s all that matters.

On after-dark walks with Copper I see dew glistening in the grass like so many diamond chips. Moisture lingers in the morning, so much so that the doggie comes back from his early constitutionals with tummy hair drenched by it. 

As the day heats up all this moisture becomes a weight I try to move with fans and shifts of posture and anything else I can come up with. Sometimes I give in and move inside. But mostly, I just live with it in the outside office I persist in inhabiting. Because it’s summer, and it’s humid, and before long it won’t be either.  

Endless Summer?

Endless Summer?

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As we head toward the midpoint of August, the summer starts to feel a little frayed around the edges. The heat still shimmers on still afternoons, katydids still serenade us on sultry evenings. But the soul of summer, its freedom and looseness, is tightening up.

In a typical summer, you might see bright yellow school buses  lumbering down the lanes, going on dry runs, striking fear in the hearts of children — and gladness and relief in their parents. 

But this year, summer continues without this ominous marker. School will be virtual here so buses will remain parked in random lots around the region. It’s what we always dreamed of as kids, what we didn’t know enough to dread as parents. 

It won’t be an endless summer. But right about now, it’s starting to feel like it might …

Precious Moments

Precious Moments

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It’s easy to feel a failure at meditation, although I believe failure is a concept frowned upon in meditative circles. But despite the wandering mind I must constantly try to rein in during my brief sessions on Headspace, I stepped outside today to pick up the newspaper and felt a thrill just to be alive.

The sun was shining, I could walk barefoot to the street — the moment was perfect for celebrating the importance of all moments.

And as if to underline this view, as I write this post the hummingbird, elusive this year, seems finally to have decided our nectar is worth sipping. Already I’ve seen her make several passes at the feeder, dipping as well into the New Guinea impatiens, her needle-like bill stabbing the flowers with surgical precision.

A summer moment. A precious moment. Precious as all moments are.

Ready for Rest?

Ready for Rest?

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Within this morning’s walk, rushing to work in a work-out before the heat begins to build, there was a sudden awareness of pause amidst the hurry. The feeling you get at the top of roller coaster, infinite and infinitesimal at the same time.

It was the feeling of summer at its peak, full of birdsong and cicada crescendo. Of crows, discussing the world and its problems as they often do, hopping along the gravel berm with their wise eyes and sleek black coats.

And for some reason this summer, what has become a signature sound, the felling of trees, the grinding up of deadwood. Are lawn services offering specials or something? Or are the trees, like so many of us, ready for a rest?

Bustin’ Out

Bustin’ Out

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I’m not sure how much of my world view has been shaped by Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals — probably more than I would care to admit. Given that, perhaps I can be forgiven for hearing a certain refrain from “Carousel” pinging through my head these days.

“June is bustin’ out all over
All over the meadow and the hill
Buds are bustin’ outta bushes
And the romping river pushes
Every little wheel that wheels beside the mill

Because it’s June — June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June.

And my favorite verse:

June is bustin’ out all over
The sheep aren’t sheepish anymore
And the rams that chase the ewe sheep
Are determined there’ll be new sheep
And the ewe sheep aren’t even keeping score

Because it’s June — June, June, June
Just because it’s June, June, June!

All of which is to say … it’s a June-is-Bustin’-Out kind of day!