June 19th

The 170th Day of the Year

 

These long days are all the promise we are given.

Peter Davison

 

Sunrise/set: 5:06/8:07

Day’s Length: 15 hours 1 minute

Average Hi/Lo: 83/61

Average Temperature: 72

Record High: 96 – 1933

Record Low: 46 – 1909

 

Weather

Today is another mostly sunny day (95 percent of all June 19ths are at least partly clear), but storms rise from the heat 35 percent of the time. Highs reach into the 80s sixty percent of all the years, and the chances of temperatures above 90 increase to 20 percent. Milder 70s come one year in five.

Natural Calendar

For the next week, the length of the day holds steady near fifteen hours all along the 40th Parallel, the sun’s declination varying only six hundredths of a degree. Fledglings continue to haunt the honeysuckles, adult robins continually guiding them with staccato peeps. Orange and pink Asiatic lilies and the ubiquitous ditch lilies reach full bloom. Yucca is fully open. Summer primroses, roses, heliopsis, foxglove, pink and yellow achillea, gooseneck loosestrife, late daisies, purple and white spiderwort and blue speedwell shine in the garden.

Today is an early date for starting the second cut of alfalfa in the Lower Midwest. Commercial broccoli and squash harvests are underway throughout Ohio and Indiana. Six to eight leaves have usually emerged on the field corn. Tobacco is almost all transplanted in Kentucky. Strawberries are about half harvested along the 40th Parallel, but that season is just beginning on the Canadian border. Cherry picking is taking place throughout the East. Wheat and oats are almost ready for harvest, and the Dog Days are just around the corner.

Daybook

1984: First chicory seen in town. Deptford pink found at Grinnell Swamp. The last bleeding heart disappeared in the east garden.

1989: Jacksonville, Florida: Some elderberry and yucca still in bloom. Daylilies open west of the city. Wild lettuce gone to seed. Arrived in Belize this afternoon: yucca blossoming, at the same time as in Florida and in Yellow Springs. Flamboyant trees and spider lilies in full bloom, like in Miami

1990: On the way to Madison, Wisconsin: orange ditch lilies full, Canadian thistle purple for over three hundred miles, bright blue stripes of chicory all the way north, patches of daisies, yellow sweet clover, Japanese honeysuckle, fields of daisy fleabane, hedges of white elderberry, waysides yellow with parsnips, hillsides of violet crown vetch, wheat golden across Indiana and Illinois, the roadsides and fields basically unchanged from Yellow Springs to above Chicago, land, time, space blending in the heat.

1991: Mulberries almost all gone, cherries completely ripe, mid-season hosta budding. Carnations gone today, some yucca done blooming too. Flickers still calling in the morning.

1992: First cherry pie from our tree.

1993: Yellow Springs to Houston, Texas, 6:00 a.m.: White sweet clover has started in a few places near Yellow Springs, and a few hemlocks are dying back. Chicory opening at dawn. Elderberries, and nodding thistles still full bloom near Cincinnati. A few thistles gone to seed just south of the Ohio River, first milkweed seen then, about 90 miles south of Yellow Springs, then in a few more miles, milkweed everywhere in full bloom.

Orange trumpet creeper is open below Warsaw, Kentucky, about 115 miles from home. Cattails with pollen at 130 miles. Hemlocks, which are still pretty green and stable in Greene County are yellowing, many gone to seed near Louisville. Teasel twice as tall there as at home. Now fence rows full of trumpet creeper. First dogbane and first great mullein seen open at 220 miles, Virginia roses full bloom, fields of thistles, clover, fleabane. Most tobacco leaves are six to ten inches long throughout Kentucky.

Near Bowling Green, Kentucky, 285 miles from Yellow Springs, most thistles have gone to seed. Sweet clover mostly gone by Nashville, about 340 miles. First bright orange butterfly weed open at 375 miles. Clovers and thistles disappear from the landscape at 400 miles, replaced by Queen Anne’s lace and fleabane. Elderberries start to set fruit 100 mile north of Memphis, at 450 miles. Watermelons are coming in throughout southwestern Tennessee, fresh peaches at 580 miles, new horseweed plants and old wild lettuce becoming the only roadside foliage.

Then horseweed in bloom in Arkansas, rice fields bright green, trumpet vines continuing to dominate the fence rows. All wheat fields cut, seems relatively recently. Hemlock holds at half to seed all the way through Arkansas.

At 700 miles, false bishop’s weed takes over from the Queen Anne’s lace (false bishop’s weed is short, maybe six inches, but has a similar flower head), and black-eyed Susans become dominant to the coast, sometimes fields of them throughout Arkansas.

Large white magnolia flowers, at the end of their season, seen in southern Arkansas, and hold through to Houston, yucca full bloom to the ocean. White egrets appear in a field near Marshall, Texas, 920 miles from home, elderberries continuing half set throughout, wild lettuce full bloom mid Texas. Pennywort in bloom in Houston. Thin-leafed mountain mint, Mexican hat (Ratibida columnaris), thin-leafed dayflowers, Coreopsis tinctoria, identified in Houston, the latter common throughout eastern Texas and into Arkansas.

1995: Blackfoot, Idaho, 4,600 feet: flax, yellow sweet clover, black medic, and full red and white clovers, salsify, full lupine, tall pink balloon flowers. Iris and peonies seen in south central Idaho at about 3,800 feet. Pelicans, white and black, soared above the Snake River.

1996: Another turtle in the middle of Grinnell Road this afternoon, the second turtle in a week. Are they out so late to lay eggs?

1999: Bennington, Vermont to Yellow Springs: Deep green wheat near Rutland. Black-eyed Susans and parsnips full bloom, cattails and great mullein blooming toward the New York state border, full elderberry blossoms, chicory, blueweed, peonies, white sweet clover, haying from Albany west (and strawberries coming in with the first of the hay) hemlock done, catalpas still full, milkweeds, bright orange butterfly weed. A swarm of 17-year cicadas near Canton, Ohio.

2001: To Madison, Wisconsin: early-summer fare throughout the 500-mile trip: crown vetch, parsnips, trumpet creeper, Queen Anne’s lace, chicory, elderberry, purple vetch, milkweed, white and yellow sweet clover, trefoil, coreopsis, daisy fleabane, black eyed Susans. Canadian thistles – full of down in Yellow Springs – showed   the progress back into the first week of Early Summer, turning violet as we went north. Parsnips became brighter too, hemlock stronger.

2002: Very end of privet bloom. Only scattered peonies, sweet Williams, late dogwood, and cressleaf groundsel left from early June. Some black raspberries reddening. Pink spirea, heliopsis, and the pale Japanese iris are in full bloom. Mulberries still falling into the undergrowth. One whistling cricket heard this afternoon.

2003: Dianna Mathews calls from the Children’s Center: the kids found one red cicada.

2004: Tat’s garden in Madison seems about at the level of the first week of Yellow Springs June – her beginning primrose perhaps the best gauge. In the arboretum, prairie false indigo is in full bloom, spiderwort, heliopsis and  purple coneflowers coming in. Throughout Madison, Syringa reticulata, the dramatic Ivory Silk Japanese lilac, is at various stages of bloom. As I walked through the park with Maggie, I pulled fresh timothy to chew. I saw cottonwood cotton drifting across the fields.

2007: Robinsong began softly at 4:25 this morning, but it was nothing like the strong springtime chorus. One cardinal sang at 4:45. Doves a little later. A blue jay at 5:00, red-bellied woodpecker at 6:20. In the north garden, lilies gradually coming in, daylilies and Asiatics. The earliest Asiatics (what I called the candy lilies) have already completed their seasons. Mallow, astilbe, yarrow and heliopsis are now at full bloom. One young grackle being fed by its parents this evening. Summer squash flowering but not setting fruit, perhaps because of the lack of bees.

2009: Santee, South Carolina to Yellow Springs: The entire countryside is lush, deep green, no sign of drought or decay anywhere throughout the full 650-mile trip.

2010: Cottonwood continues to shed near Lawson Place. Tall ditch lilies at their peak throughout town. Heliopsis and mallow full now. Richard Zopf brought over a quart container full of black raspberries, just picked.

2011: Zinnias, primroses, red achillea, penstemon, herbs all transplanted today. A few raspberries picked, left over from the deer. Damselflies seen in the yard and around the pond. Many daylilies are budding now, and the monarda is showing color (two of Peggy’s large monardas are bright red). Heliopsis is in early bloom, spiderwort full, Annabelle hydrangea, oakleaf hydrangea, first purple coneflower, late salvia. Moya’s campanulas are in the middle of their season. Hollyhocks in early bloom at various locations about town.

2012: The pink “Indomitable Spirit” hydrangea is losing some of its color. The mocking bird-like songbird is singing steadily outside the greenhouse this morning. I didn’t hear him yesterday. The tree frog was calling at 7:00 when I went outside. A very small Savannah or song sparrow at the feeder today, very tame. Twenty lilies in bloom, blue salvia coming back after being deadheaded. Robins peeping off and on, guiding their young, cardinal singing at dusk, but a quieting of sound throughout the day, the longest days of the year creating some kind of new summer space. Starlings and grackles have disappeared from the yard, contributing to the absence of spring sounds. Three fritillaries and a polygonia seen today, many frolicking cabbage butterflies. Chiggers getting worse!

2013: I read through the inventories of past years, reminded of the different phases of our gardening, the spreading and disappearing of varieties, the continual shifting in the land’s priorities and in the intensity of our work.

2014: The first two blossoms on the large blue-leafed hosta by the back porch opened over night. Snow-on-the-mountain all to seed now. The early bright orange Asiatic lilies have faded in the last couple of days.

2015: Santee-Cooper, South Carolina: John and I fished the canal starting at 5:50. Only two small cats caught. Light wind throughout the morning. First cicada heard at 8:30. Rose of Sharon noticed in full bloom near the highway, and one catalpa tree had long seedpods.

2016: Gethsemani, Kentucky: First robins heard at 4:25 a.m., the same time as in Yellow Springs in 2007. Doves and song sparrows were loud outside the monastery by 5:00, crows joining in from the hills nearby. Driving home, I saw many orange butterfly weeds and teasel heading. At home, at least thirty-two lily plants in bloom, including a pink and yellow day lily and a pink and violet one. The first two Shasta daisies had opened in the past two days, and two monarda flowers were completely out.

2017: Fifty-three ditch lily blossoms again this morning, fifteen Stella d’oros, seven Asiatics, three everbloomers. No standard daylilies yet. The first flowers opened on the milkweed, aroma deep and rich. Trumpet creeper flowers above the greenhouse roof are climbing higher each year. A cabbage butterfly and a great spangled fritillary around 10:00 a.m. Steady robin peeping in the honeysuckle bushes all around the yard. Grackles continue to feed, but starlings have stayed away for weeks. Jill saw the first small murmurations of starlings this evening on the way to Fairborn. Walking down Wright Street, I found an ancient basswood tree shedding its flowers.

2018: Neysa’s ancient peach tree and the pear tree on Greene Street have fruit the size of large marbles. The red quince fruits are twice that size. The Osage fruits fallen to the sidewalk are golf-ball size. This afternoon, a hard long rain beat down the milkweed and the Mexican sunflowers. Late this afternoon, a hackberry butterfly visited the hummingbird feeder, sat entranced with sugar as I approached it. In the evening, the hummingbird came by, too.

2019: To Hopewell, Virginia with John: clouds and sun, gilded wheat and hay fields, blue chicory, full bloom of ditch lilies (as opposed to those lilies just starting at home), one large-flowered magnolia tree, various thistles, all the hillsides rich deep green throughout the drive.

2020: The wheat fields on the way to Cedarville are a golden brown, corn up to my calf, not quite knee high. Great mullein in early bloom. Tree crickets at the falls park near Cedarville. At home, the starling fledglings are now savvy enough to compete with their parents for suet. Blue jays in constant motion. Cardinals and grackles, a downy woodpecker and sparrows all taking turns. A few cabbage whites, one silver-spotted skipper. Eight ditch lilies, three Stella d’oro lilies, two pond iris open. The bright yellow primroses and the blue-violet spiderworts continue to give solid color to their garden patches. On Greene Street, the cottonwood still has cotton, the street sides full of fluff. A few catalpa trees still hold flowers.

 

Observe the daily circle of the sun,

And the short year of each revolving moon:

By them thou shalt foresee the following day,

Nor shall a starry night thy hopes betray.

Virgil