Category: Summer

Choices on long days

It’s the first full day of summer, yesterday’s midday solstice behind us. I have 15 hours and 38 minutes to work with, or play with. What should I do as the sun takes its leisurly most northerly path, from sunrise in the northeast to sunset in the northwest?

Should I share the day with the skippers in the hay, trying to match their nonchalant ways as they bounce from daisy to daisy, drawn to oxeyes? Maybe I’ll look for agates in the dry creek, though maybe I’ll wait for the next hard rain to tumble them into view.

Should I ease into the morning with a cup of coffee on the quiet porch, or with a fishing rod on a quiet lake, the silence broken only by the call of a loon? That could also be saved for sunset, though I’m leaning towards a trout stream, watching brookies break the surface for mayflies, and for my imagination if not my imitation.

Also near sunset I could choose to walk with the cooling of the evening, perhaps seeing a deer doing the same as it tiptoes through corn rows or pauses in the fold of ferns to query my presence.

And the long hours between sunrise and sunset? What about them? I’ll watch a catbird at the bird bath, then walk a trail and make notes of tiny blossoms on brambles where green blackberries will begin their journey to sweetness.

Should I mow lawn or drive through the countryside and smell fresh-mown hay? I could follow a bumblebee or look for a walking stick—one the insect, the other a walking aid. I’ll check the bluebird box.

So many ways to go on long days in the greenness of June as nature takes up a myriad of matters in the extended light. The seasons turn on the solstice and the sun trails the corresponding path, keeping all in balance

Is there a solstice, a turning point, a path and balance in my own life? Am I on course, connecting the natural world with my inner self? There’s plenty of time to find out today.

Summer settles in

So it’s June already. Not quite summer solstice time, but feeling plenty like summer just the same. Kids are off the hook from school, and now are hooking up worms. Bigger kids—that would be adults—are thinking of playing hooky, though the weedy garden and peeling paint say otherwise, not to mention the lawn.

Where did spring go, along with its hoped-for early camping, perhaps pitching a tent before mosquitos are itching to bite? But the tent stayed stored away, holding the scents of summers past, each past season remembered as more simple the further I think back. And with more time to fish and camp.

And so now comes another chance, for the bluegills are biting as ferns spread among the blooming wild geraniums. Rain clouds drift away, and the sky is as blue as the leaves are green. One color against the another, complementing each other.

It’s the month of the longest days, light arriving by 5 a.m., sunsets edging up against 9 p.m. The Milky Way snakes northward through the sky when it’s finally dark. The orb weaver spider spins its tale in the dew of a warm sunrise as herons take off on fishing trips, and deer and raccoons sneak home from a night out.

There are strawberries for your sweet tooth and wild roses for your sweetheart. It’s time to hear the slate-gray catbird singing some other bird’s song in the low bushes. And then I stumble upon a fawn, its brown eyes as big as its white spots as if its amazed by its new world as summer settles in.

Trails to new nugget

There’s plenty of comfort in knowing where you’re going in life, short term, long term, figuratively and literally. But in my summer of intensified camping I’ve had to look beyond the comfort of my two or three favorite campgrounds.

Not that I want to, for my favorite spots are where it’s easy to pull in or back in the fifth-wheel camper, where the windows and chairs face the lake, and where I get a clear view of the stars and planets at night while at the same time it doesn’t feel like a bear is ready to join my wife and me at the campfire.

So when my brother-in-law said he had made reservations at Nugget Lake County Park in Pierce County in western Wisconsin, and would we want to get a site there also for the last weekend in August, well, I didn’t know if I wanted to. It’s not on my “favorites” list, never mind that it had never even been given the chance to make the list.

But I was forced, no, that word’s too strong, persuaded to pick up the phone. We got Site 32, right across from my brother-in-law and his wife in Site 33. So we were headed somewhere different—translate out of my comfort zone—among the fields, hills and creeks between Plum City and Ellsworth, about 10 miles from the Mighty Miss.

In the days leading up to the Nugget Lake trip I eased my apprehension by making light of our destination, calling it Nutsy Lake and recalling scenes from vacation movies where everything can and will be wrong and go wrong. Boy, was I wrong.

This isn’t a travelogue blog, but I can tell you that I’ve added Nugget Lake County Park to my favorites list. The back-in wasn’t as hard as I thought—my brother-in-law trucker made me do it myself because I “need the practice”—the sites are large and wooded just enough to provide some privacy, and there are clean bathrooms/showers and a park staff patrolling and helping.

But what sold me were the miles of trails cut into the woods and meadows all through the park, neatly-mown 6-foot wide grassy paths right up my trail running alley. Foot bridges cross over Rock Elm Creek, and one outing took us to Blue Rock, a massive rock of dolostone that is part of the Rock Elk Disturbance. That wall of jagged rock, which has both underview and overview areas, was formed by a “cataclysmic explosive event,” in other words, a massive meteor impact, say the geologists.

To think of the shock wave that formed this 470 million years ago and then see a group of kids playing beneath it in Rock Elm Creek catching crawdads as their mother and dog watched in the afternoon sun was truly bringing the past and present together in this special geological spot.

We were also surrounded by the yellow hues of goldenrod and Jerusalem artichoke, the purples of blooming Canadian thistle and the orange of touch-me-nots in the wetlands. As I gazed on the sprawling, rising meadow in front of me, I thought of how a few weeks earlier I was not excited to touch this Nugget Lake campground just because it wasn’t on my comfort list. It is now. Like the Blue Rock, this spot had an impact on me. A new nugget.

The hum of August

The bird takes a break from feeding and darts straight for a tiny branch, no thicker than your little finger, about 15 feet away from and higher than the glass of nectar. The short bare branch was left behind from when I trimmed the small maple. Little did I know it would be the bird’s staging and resting perch.

The bird is only 3 inches long, so to see it perched in a rather sizable tree is almost comical. If I had not seen it fly from the feeder to the branch it would be hard to pick out. Its beak is proportionately too long for its body but just right for probing nectar from the sweet tubes of bee balm—by nature—or the hanging red feeder—by human.

When the ruby-throated hummingbird returns to the feeder, I watch in awe and ask aloud: Little bird, are you really going to fly to Mexico next month? There’s no answer, just a chipping call as the tiny diner gets excited when another hummer invades its air space. Then there’s a whir of wings, at 80 beats per seconds, as the birds nearly tangle and then jet away.

They’ll be back. The hummingbirds are feeding heavy now, building up fat reserves on a body that normally weighs 3 grams. That’s, well, almost nothing. That’s the weight of three paper clips. Hold three paper clips in your hand. You’re holding the weight of a hummingbird.

So feed they must to store enough body fat for the 1,800-mile trip to Mexico, a trip demanding 500 nonstop miles over the Gulf of Mexico. That is, unless the bird spots an offshore oil rig or fishing boat during the 20-hour gulf flight. It has been known to stop for a rest on such structures or vessels.

Averaging 30 miles per hour, while flying daytime only and taking feeding breaks, it’s a long trip no matter how much whir is in your wings. The hummingbird at my feeder isn’t thinking about miles right now. It’s living by instinct. Time to feed, fatten up and fly away.

Gold in that thistle

The goldfinch pecked at the rose-purple flowerhead of a bull thistle, its bloom burst into fluffy down spotted with brown seeds. What appeared foreboding to me was the lifeblood of the goldfinch, providing food and nest material for our latest-nesting songbird.

The finch picked through the down, extracting the seeds. By its bright yellow body I knew it was a male, and that it was feeding, for only the duller olive-colored female gathers thistle down to line its nest. At my approach, the goldfinch fluttered away, landing on a nearby blooming Jerusalem artichoke with just enough weight to bend the tall sunflower slightly.

This was a scene with mid August written all over it. The bull thistle blooming along with the Jerusalem artichoke, and the goldfinch finally nesting. It’s the bird that waits for the thistle to mature.

The goldfinch is content to sit out late spring and early summer, when a myriad of songbirds are nesting, some nesting twice before the goldfinch determines the thistles are ripe for down and seeds. These are the tickets of the goldfinch’s survival as nature spaces out the goods of nesting. This is why those wanting to attract goldfinches will allow some thistles on their property and hang thistle seed bags in the winter.

Though the goldfinch’s nest is made of strands of weeds and vine, it is lined with the soft downy filaments of thistles, a paradox of nature—sharp thistle tines and soft thistle down.

The male goldfinch I saw was not only feeding itself but also no doubt collecting seeds to take back to its mate incubating eggs or the chicks already hatched and ready to leave the nest. I once happened upon a family of goldfinches in late August, observing the adults feeding thistle seeds to their fledged young.

After hatching the chicks are ready to fledge in a couple of weeks, ready to join and add to the slender of autumn. Thanks to the bull thistle, there will be more yellow among the sunflowers and goldenrods.

The squirrel files

One day the squirrels didn’t come. Not at daybreak, not at noon, not in the afternoon. I was surprised by my concern. I had grown more fond of the four young squirrels than I realized.

They had made our front yard part of their playground earlier this summer. It is also their dining area, as they did all sorts of acrobatics and contortions to hang on the bird seed feeder, then take a nibble at the grape jelly dish before they went to the bird bath for a drink. And then they played, chasing and jumping and tumbling, no different than puppies and kittens.

The whole show amazed and amused me, a welcome diversion in the summer of losing the second of our two little dogs. Squirrels don’t replace dogs, but they had become a welcome daily sight. And after years of trying to keep squirrels off the bird feeders, I struck a deal with the bushytails. They provide entertainment, I provide sunflower seeds. (In truth, I simply surrendered, tired of the battle.)

In my new Zen approach, the squirrels’ acrobatics and comedy are rewarded. The birds still come, so what’s the big problem, besides a bit more strain on the seed budget? To watch squirrels hang perfectly upside down from the feeder by their toes as they nibble seeds, then do a pull-up to get more seed, drops my jaw. The least I can do is support the arts.

Oh, the little squirrels test me sometimes, taking to chewing on the deck boards, even with a layer of deck stain on the treated lumber. I’ve never figured that out, but the squirrels appear to suffer no ill effects. They will also take 6-inch long strips of lilac bark, running through the yard with the strands hanging out from both sides of their mouth. Is it for fun, like a dog’s ball? Or, perhaps for their nest?

Some summer days, in the heat of the afternoon, they take turns lazing on a low horizontal branch of the small maple tree near the feeder. It’s a prime spot, and there are spats at times over who gets to rest there. A piece of unspilt firewood I happened to place near the tree one day has become their springboard to the branch. When I moved it, my wife questioned why, saying the squirrels liked it. You see, she’s softened on the critters too. I put it back.

So, what of the day they didn’t come? Well, after supper, while doing dishes with the bird feeder right outside the kitchen window, I suddenly saw the squirrels dashing across the street, bent on our yard. In an instant they were on the feeder, chasing each other around the bottom of the pole, leaping on and off the chunk of maple. Where they had spent the day, who knows? Perhaps the Twin Cities.

I shouted to my wife, “The squirrels are here!” with such glee I surprised myself. Can you believe it?

Dragons and dogs in the clouds

When I was a small boy I’d lay on my back next to the barn’s silo on summer days and watch clouds pass by the silver dome. They were puffy white clouds in a blue sky, dreams in a young boy’s eyes.

My fascination with clouds would only heighten as I studied their flight and ever-changing shapes. A cloud’s formation might be an animal, say a dragon or dog, but the head and tail would grow and shrink before my eyes. And then what I thought was a dragon or dog would suddenly be all different, transformed into a bird or maybe even a state. Look, Montana is flying!

I could also stare long enough to make the clouds stand still. This would create the illusion that the silo was moving, or falling, which caught my attention real fast. I’d close my eyes to block out the fear, and then open them again to let the clouds continue on.

Where were the clouds going? How far and how fast? Would they circle the globe or dissipate over the neighbor’s hill? Would a cloud that looked like a bear to me take on the same form 10 or 100 miles away?

I looked at clouds again the other day through the eyes of an aging man. But, squinting back to my youth and child-like view of the world, I saw two dogs in the clouds. One dog was sitting looking away from me, the other stretched out and pushing a paw toward the sitting dog. The scene changed in less than a minute, and the sitting dog cloud suddenly formed a poodle’s head.

I actually saw a poodle in the sky. And I felt a little kid in my heart.

Leaves by the number

Warning: Rough estimates ahead.

Every summer I’m amazed at the height, width and fullness of our large birch tree in the back yard after its spring rebirth from winter’s bareness. It is the biggest birch I know of, though I don’t go on searches for big birch trees.

As I stare at this old, mature tree, which hides all kinds of birds and squirrel nests and has some dead spots for the pileated woodpeckers, I always ask the question with the impossible answer: How many leaves?

I finally came up with a formula to estimate the number of leaves on the mighty birch with its three trunks from which several hefty horizontal branches spread. The formula may be flawed, but I go with it.

I stepped off the widths, north to south and east to west, and they were fairly even at about 40 feet. Knowing the tallest birches in Wisconsin are 65 to 70 feet, I conservatively topped my tree out at 60 feet.

Those measurements gave me 96,000 cubic feet of space. Accounting for open spaces in the tree, I halved that to come up with 48,000 cubic feet of leaf area. Then I counted 55 leaves in one cubic foot. Multiplying 48,000 by 55 gave me about 2.6 million leaves.

Am I even close? I did some research of other folks with the same leaf question. I found one estimate of 2 million leaves on a big oak tree, so that’s close to my number. However, another leaf counter came up with 200,000 leaves on a large mature tree, so that’s not close.

One thing I am sure of is how much I, along with the birds and squirrels, enjoy this big birch, no matter how many leaves.

The queen lives

I had feared the Queen was dead, or at the least, trampled by the natives. That would be my transplanted Queen of the Prairie wildflower, and the natives would be everything from tansies to raspberry bushes to milkweed.

But after the Queen disappeared last year after a few seasons of modest reign, not to mention a season of modest rainfall, I’ve found the Queen lives! On a muggy July morning in the meadow, between the farm fields and the woods, the color pink caught my eye in midst of all the green. Could it be? Yes, the Queen of the Prairie, at least two plants, was beginning to bloom.

The balls of pink atop amber stems, with large, pointed and deeply divided leaves below, had not yet burst into flowers. They will; the Queen is a beauty in August. But I was thrilled at the sight, the transplanted prairie flower in a meadow where perhaps this North American native once bloomed a century or more ago before part of the small clearing met the steel blades of a plow.

Let’s back up to the city, where we were given a Queen of the Prairie years ago. The plant likes sun and moisture, we later learned, but the shadow of the house kept it from sunshine in the morning, and a spreading maple tree took up the shading task in the afternoon. We could give it moisture, but not sun.

So I proceeded with my plan of most things that won’t grow on our city lot: transplant it in the country. Would not a prairie plant flourish in the small meadow clearing that juts out from the field? It did, for several years, joining the other blooming wild flowers, some of which I haven’t identified. I like to think they are prairie plants, as free as wild horses, plants that are centuries old, found nowhere else for acres around.

The Queen joined the masses and bloomed, until last summer, inexplicably absent except for maybe the lack of moisture. The kingdom lived on without the Queen. And while her disappearance is the stuff of royal mystery, she has now returned to her throne, where the leaves of birches and maples wave in approval.

Summers of spittlebugs

There are spittlebugs in July’s alfalfa and flowerless tansies. And there’s a memory in the spittlebugs of a country boy and a hay field, the dew-soaked morning after a first quarter moon.

Today’s summer breeze plays once again on the tall grasses. It plays like the breeze through the fields of my boyhood days, the bobolink’s rolling notes riding the waves I still feel.

And the wild roses that begged the fence line for bit of space have now surrendered in darkened, fallen petals, giving way to potato vine, cocklebur and prickly ash … Which I cut and hope the bitter smell provides some respite from mosquitos.

It’s early July again, as cluttered in green as my mind in worry. A month of new beginnings for prairie plants and fledglings of the grassland birds. I should know this, and let the wild columbine nod away my fear.

Fear should be lost in the small bush hiding the white sparrow’s low nest. Or lost in reverie of a creek gone dry, where frogs once rippled the water, of fields of meadowlarks and in my teasing of killdeers as I briefly claimed the pasture as my own.

And when I was a boy I saw spittlebugs in the fields of green. I knew not what they were, only that it was July and breezy, warm freedom. I know spittlebugs today, but too often look past what I feel and see.