Ruminations

Blog dedicated primarily to randomly selected news items; comments reflecting personal perceptions

Saturday, August 02, 2008

A Summer Day

It hasn't been very hot throughout the nights yet this summer, but for a few weeks earlier, before we resigned ourselves to the reality that we could expect, this extraordinary summer of hastening climate change, rain each and every day.

No complaints; besides the rain we've also experienced almost-daily episodes of almost-clear sky with plentiful sun, and the gardens are happy. To a certain extent, so are we; no really hot days, although plenty of humid ones, and far less need to water the gardens - in fact, little at all.

The gardens are blooming wonderfully. They're lush and colourful, wonderful to behold. So much so that when we wander in them we can hardly believe they're real; all that colour, texture, shape, fragrance, in our own little piece of Paradise.

Our hidden gardens, known only to ourselves, and just occasionally opened to the gaze of others, by invitation or when we have visitors staying over with us. At night, the fragrance of the lilies, the phlox and the petunias waft through the windows of the house, overwhelming us with their rapturous exuberance.

At breakfast this morning - a late breakfast, reminiscent of our working days when Saturday mornings automatically translated into luxuriant late mornings in bed - we were heralded by the precisely exquisite trill of a song sparrow.

He must be nesting nearby; we thought we were certain in the spring that a family of song sparrows had made their nest in our large pine on the front lawn. Now, much later in the summer, we see the male often in the backyard. And it was he who perched on top of the lattice surrounding our deck, singing his little heart out.

In the ravine, vines, encouraged by the ongoing rain events, grow rampantly over all the other, more moderate-to-respond wild plants. There, also, the various types of fungi are erupting, delighting us with their variance in size, shape and colour.

Not to mention the lichen covering the damp tree trunks, littering the ground, shaping into unlikely similarities to other growing things. The mushrooms are amazingly prolific, and wondrous to behold. From the slender white strings racing along the damp ground, to the large dinner-plate-size disks.

Their colours and their shapes are truly fascinating. The tiny bright yellow buttons, maturing into flat, more muted yellows, sometimes nibbled by the wildlife enliven the dank earth. We see crimson, purple, white, blue, beige, mahogany toadstools popping up as though overnight, there to entertain us during our hike.

Above the muddy creek there are pairs of dragonflies circling about one another. Less attractive, there are moths, and we're fairly certain they're the spruce budworm variety. We'll keep an eye on our spruces in our gardens; forewarned. Off in a near copse of trees we hear the cardinal's trill.

A rabbit sits on the trail as we turn the corner, unconcerned at our approach, even though Button strides ahead of us. The rabbit continues to hold his ground, enabling us to see him full on, his fur, that grey-beige, ruffled with white, as he stays right there - because it is, after all, his home turf - until Button is a mere two metres away, and he decides finally to make for the underbrush.

Button spurts a tentative, halfhearted run, then subsides, as the rabbit's white tail quickly disappears. Too hot, too humid for pursuit. The sun is out and it's a hot sun. Even while we're sheltered from its heat by the leafy canopy above.

From above and seemingly at a close distance, there's the first clap of a thunderhead and we wonder whether we'll complete our hour's hike before rain descends. But there's still sun, still clear spots between the clouds, and we take heart, decide to continue, not double back. As we proceed, thunder continues to rumble, but the sky has not yet succumbed to the dark promise.

We can still amble on with a good degree of confidence, we feel. As long as those rays shine down on the goldenrod, the bright blue cornflowers, the white Queen Anne's lace, the purple loosestrife, the orange lilies, and yellow loosestrife.

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