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.