Ah, Summer!

Well, not yet. It's not yet summer. Sure feels like it though. Hot again, but dry, not like yesterday's close humidity that spawned one thunderstorm after another. Storms that entertained us with their thundering claps, tantalized us with the prospect of cooling off after the downpour, but that simply passed us by, one after the other. But today there's a nice stiff breeze, and it was quite wonderful, a truly beautiful summer day. Even if it's not yet summer by the calendar.

When we wandered into the garden after breakfast to have a look around, first in the backyard, then the front, we found ourselves looking at the rather unusual spectacle of a young-of-the-year chipmunk, a tender, slender wisp of a vulnerable animal clambering up the brick wall alongside the front garden border, between a clematis and a climbing rose, going higher and higher, desperate to be away from those booming human voices. So we left, quickly.

As we entered the trail to the ravine, we noted sumachs thrusting their tender new candles skyward. Public works hasn't been around at all to mow the grass alongside the road and Button hates to plow through the long grass, which leaves grass seeds in her hair, now that it's flowering. However, because it hasn't been cut, there is now a lot of fleabane in flower; bright pink little flowerheads. Beautiful they are, belying the "bane" in their name.

At the first bridge, we lean over to note the low height of the creek. Everything is beginning to dry up. But there are bright white anemones in bloom now, their heads aloft, above the lovely shape of their leaves. Maples, we note, are opportunistically beginning to fill in the slope beyond the trail we're ascending, scraped clean of its trees two summers ago when a poorly positioned tractor had slid down the hill during the building of the bridges.

Robins are pealing their song of appreciation from overhead branches. Others run-and-hop over the trail, busy looking for live tidbits. The trees are well leafed out now, presenting a full and deep bower overhead, closing us in, shutting out the effects of the sun, the breeze cooling us and keeping the mosquitoes away. There is also now a notable presence of dragonflies and they too are concerned about mosquitoes.

Clover is in bloom, in white, mauve and pink. There's a giant burdock, we recall it from last year. Dogwood is in bloom, its white panicles reminding me always of hydrangea. The red baneberry flowers have morphed into tiny green berry clusters. False Solomon's seal still in bloom. There's yellow and orange hawkweed, bright sunny buttercups, white blackberry in flower.

Button's allergies are acting up, and she coughs hoarsely. Another week or so and she'll no longer react. There's a lot of yellow pollen drifting down from the pine trees, and white fluff in drifts from the surrounding poplars. When we reach the flats, there's a widespread bouquet of pear-scented bedding grasses, just starting now to come into bloom. There are daisies, buttercups, fleabane and hawkweed all vying for attention, complementing one another.

Swallowtails, skippers and blues drift in and out of the flower stalks. Ferns gather thickly at the base of oaks, maples, poplars, and even more so as we descend to the tributary of the ravine, where there are also a few specimens of meadow rue, not yet in flower. There's plenty of jewelweed, and it's growing lustily, but nowhere near ready to flower.

What a day.