July 14th
The 195th Day of the Year
Summer’s robe grows
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows.
John Donne
Sunrise/set: 5:18/8:03
Day’s Length: 14 hours 45 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64
Average Temperature: 75
Record High: 106 – 1936
Record Low: 48 – 1894
Weather
Highs rise into 90s on 45 percent of the afternoons, are in the 80s on 40 percent, in the 70s the remaining 15 percent. Totally overcast conditions dominate today’s weather just one day in four. Rain comes one day in three, with hail a slight possibility. Morning lows in the chilly 50s occur 10 to 15 percent of the years, sometimes accompanied by fog.
Natural Calendar
Farmers and gardeners now count the days: 60 to 90 frost-free mornings remain in the season, and about four months of growing weather are left for cabbages, kale, collards, beets, turnips and carrots. Summer apples are coming in. Blueberries are ripening. In both Yellow Springs and most of the nation, molting ends for Canadian geese; they will soon be testing their new feathers, flying back and forth between ponds and lakes.
In the West, kestrels, gray owls, osprey and bald eagles leave their nests, and the number of insects and small rodents reaches its annual peak, providing food for the new fledglings. Mating season is almost over for the last of the spring and summer mammals – the ermines and weasels, bobcats and bears,
The peak period of heat stress has usually begun now for summer crops, and high temperatures turn some pasture grasses dormant. Although this is typically the driest time of July, sometimes rains can cause soybean root rot and leaf yellowing. San Jose scale and flathead borers are active on flowering fruit trees. In woodlots and towns, walnut caterpillars assault walnut trees. In average years, almost all the field corn is tasselling.
Daybook
1980: Rose of Sharon bloomed today.
1982: Touch-me-nots bloomed today.
1983: Covered Bridge: Slight leafturn beginning on the redbuds, Virginia creepers, box elders, and buckeyes. Japanese honeysuckle and multiflora roses are yellowing. Most parsnips are brown. Wood mint identified for the first time, and wild monarda, both well past their prime. Most honewort gone to seed under the canopy, undergrowth colored in patches by dead grasses and withered garlic mustard.
1984: To Cleveland: first teasel seen in bloom.
1985: First cicadas start to sing in the evenings.
1987: South Glen: White snakeroot budding. First dusky blue tall bellflower and first bright ironweed, first yellow wingstem bloom. First small milkweed pods. Boneset budding now in the garden. At home tonight, a loud “late cricket,” first of the season in the yard.
1988: Celandine has died back in the long drought. Apple and peach leaves are falling, more cottonwood and poplars turning, a whole line of them along the road into Xenia. Sycamore bark is shedding on schedule, marking the center of Deep Summer. Blackbirds still chatter in the back trees, mulberries holding. May apple plants completely withered. Boneset and burdock budding. Catmint and yellow moth mullein still full bloom. At the swamp, a pair of girl’s white, silk bikini underpants hanging defiantly from a box elder limb.
1989: South Glen: Sycamore bark falling, white snakeroot budding, tall bellflower in early bloom, first ironweed flowers, first heliopsis, first wingstem. Doe and fawn together, the doe barked a warning, and they bounded away. First small milkweed pods seen. Fringed loosestrife full.
Jacoby West: Yarrow fading, daisy fleabane still full, bouncing bets tall and lush, elderberries all green now. Some pokeweed flowers have turned to small green berries. Hummingbird moth sighted. Blueweed at the top of its spike, perfect monarda everywhere here. Gray-headed coneflower just opening, first burdock budding, bottle grass tender for chewing, late cinquefoil here and there, red honeysuckle berries, three- fourths of the avens to seed heads, butterfly weed full, Deptford pink still blooming, tattered great mullein, too. Blackberries pale red, moving toward August.
1996: Dark-leafed coral bells with the white flowers are still strong. Blue-flowered campanula opened suddenly a couple of days ago in the east garden. Wrens active, probably feeding their young. Robins still eating berries in the mulberry tree. One of our cats is catching shrews at night, bringing them home to the back porch.
1999: Bottlebush buckeye in late bloom at the Cincinnati zoo (the plant also blooming across from the laundromat in town).
2001: First monarch butterfly in the garden this morning, lighting on a red zinnia. The question mark and red admiral butterflies of late June, however, have disappeared. Young katydid, maybe half size, found while trimming the front forsythia bushes.
2003: Acorns on the red oaks near the grade school are the size of small marbles, all enclosed in their sheathes. Black walnuts are close to full size.
2004: A few yellow leaves lie about the yard this morning. In the north gardens, the lilies have begun their decline. They reached their peak about the 10th or 11th of July, and then their season suddenly started to wane. Joe Pye weed has pink flower heads now, the color intensifying throughout the past week. In the east garden, the campanula have almost completed their cycle. In the pond, the lizard’s tails are all seeds now. No bird chorus at 4:30 this morning. Cardinals started at 4:45; they were joined by the song sparrow and robin chatter by 5:00, doves a little later.
2005: Inventory: Full bloom in the garden of Shasta daisy, catmint, Russian sage, hollyhocks, midseason purple asters, monarda, rose of Sharon, midseason and bicolor hosta, Queen Anne’s lace, daisy fleabane, mallow, pale green hosta, thyme, coreopsis, gooseneck, heliopsis. Pickerel weed blooms in the pond. Twenty-six varieties of daylilies counted, three of oriental/Asiatic including one yellow trumpet lily and an orange Turk’s cap. Oak leaf hydrangea flowers have turned from white to green. Astilbe and big blue hosta are done blooming for the year. First cherry tomatoes and first zucchini squash picked in the garden. Still no cicadas heard.
2006: Some cicadas in the afternoon as I worked outside. Around the yard, the rubeckias planted from seed are maybe a fourth blooming. All the lilies are in full flower, all the Shasta daisies and the hollyhocks. The mallow, the gooseneck and the monarda continue strong in the south and north gardens.
2008: Robins, cardinals and doves when I went out this morning at 5:15. The grackles began to cackle at 5:25, and they were out feeding their young soon afterwards. Crows called at about 5:45. A blue jay checked the feeder around 6:00. Along the bike path to Goes Station: one spicebush swallowtail seen, the path lined for a while with bouncing bets. At home about 11:00, I heard my first cicadas of the summer. After lunch, I saw a mother cardinal feeding her pale fledgling.
2009: The second monarch butterfly of the year came through the garden this afternoon. Rudbeckia coming back around the yard, struggling to return after an absence of a decade or more. Don’s rudbeckia are in full bloom – the way ours used to be.
2010: Fog this morning and webs of gossamer in the grass.
2011: Almost no starling fledgling sounds today.
2012: Twenty-two lilies today, the number of blossoms continuing to decline rapidly. A fledgling red-bellied woodpecker came to the suet this afternoon. I almost mistook him for a starling baby. A white bindweed flower opened in the tangle of plants along the north side of the house.
2013: I was up at 4:20 this morning: no birdsong. Then at 4:25, walking down High Street, I came into faint robinsong that grew and grew as I turned and went down Limestone Street. The first cardinal sang at 4:30, but cardinals didn’t really get going until 4:40 (by which time the robins were in full chorus), until they dominated the sounds by 4:50. Roosters in the distance apparently sleeping late, crowed about 4:45. I heard crows at 5:00, doves by 5:10, a few house sparrows chirping then. Walking through the yard at 5:15: the sky was very pale and clear, color coming into the flowers. And I found the first white bindweed flower on one of the tree lilies on the north side of the house. Sitting on the back porch after lunch, I watched three young wrens hop through the lace vine for maybe ten minutes or so, chattering at me. A fourth wren, a little bigger, watched over them.
Later inventory in the yard: thirty-three lilies, red and violet monarda, heliopsis, gooseneck, early phlox, early full zinnias, Shasta daisies, Knock-out roses, one yellow tea rose, purple coneflower, common midseason hostas, yellow coneflowers (rudbeckia speciosa) all in bloom, Joe Pye blushing, Anna Belle hydrangea deteriorating to pale green, “Indomitable Spirit” hydrangea turned from pink to brown.
2014: Sudden decline of the number of lilies in bloom: only twenty-five plants today, even though the number of blossoms remains strong. A big loss is the ditch lilies, the last of which withered overnight. Today’s inventory similar to last year’s except that the Indomitable Spirit hydrangea is holding mostly pink, some Anna Belles still white. The astilbe is completely brown now.
2015: Sudden drop in the lily count today: thirty-six in bloom this morning, down from fifty-three yesterday. Compared to last year: the Indomitable Spirit hydrangea blossoms have lost their pink, and Anna Belles are still white but totally bent over. Joe Pye plant has very violet buds and is actually blooming along Dayton Street. One polygonia seen, but no other butterflies. At 8:30 this evening, full cricket and frog chorus, rhythmic, pervasive. Still no cicadas heard this summer.
2016: Grand Forks, North Dakota, light rain, barometer slowly rising, clearing at the end of the day: Fishing for catfish with John from the shore in the Red River of the North, Grand Forks above us. Three eating-size fish between 12:00 and 3:00, two large 13 to 14-pound fish later in the afternoon. The habitat seemed a relatively simple one: dogbane in bloom all along the shore, white sweet clover, yellow sweet clover, trefoil, common white clover, late Canadian thistles, burdock-like plant with violet flowers, tall yellow sow thistles, one small patch of blue vervain, a panicled dogwood bush with white berries, great cottonwood trees lining the river – survivors of many floods, late cottonwood cotton on the paths, stella d’oro lilies in bloom near the parking area.
2017: Ninety-six lily blossoms today. Clear decline in the number of flowers and plants in bloom. The middle of July is the hinge of lily time. Anna Belle hydrangea down to just a few fat white flower heads, the Indomitable Spirit hydrangea mostly brown. Joe Pye quite pink. On the front porch steps this afternoon: another black alypia. A few starlings have arrived at the bird feeder for the first time since spring, and the scrawing in the honeysuckles is likely from their fledglings.
At John Bryant Park, Jill and I saw a small black swallowtail (the first I’ve noticed this summer), and Jill said she had seen a larger black earlier in the day. Along the high path in the woods, dusky violet tall bellflowers were in full bloom and yellow small-flowered agrimony was in late full. I came across another yellow flowering plant, tall and lanky, one I didn’t recognize, blossom about a half an inch across, five petals very close together, leaves entire and opposite and a little rough, the basal leaves large and deeply divided, stem ribbed, a Lysimachia, maybe like a fringed loosestrife.
2018: To Cincinnati and back this morning: common midsummer roadsides: chicory, cattails, Queen Anne’s lace. At the monastery, fine pink rose of Sharon blossoms. At home, a male tiger swallowtail and a spicebush swallowtail. Deer have been eating spider plant and morning glory foliage, sedum buds and a few lily buds. One hundred and seventy-four lily blossoms open. Anna Belle hydrangea flowers mostly turned green, Peggy’s tall late-blooming hydrangea still green and ready to become white. Several micrathena spiders in the bushes.
2019: Micrathena spider webs block my way in corners of the yard. Several leaves on the cherry tree in the back yard have turned deep yellow, accentuate the pale yellow and leaf fall of the diseased river birch. Arrowhead foliage fully developed at Ellis Pond. Lizard’s tail to seed in my koi pond. Two hundred thirty-two day lily blossoms counted this morning, 28 ditch lilies.
2020: Two hundred eight day lily blossoms this morning, 28 ditch lilies, two Asiatics. Lizard’s tail to seed in the koi pond. The zebra swallowtail I saw yesterday was back at noon. First cicada heard in the yard today, but Leslie heard cicadas at least ten days ago just half a mile away from here. I listened for katydids after sundown, but only late cicadas and tree crickets were active.
Each season, I picked up the feel and taste of cycles. My blood began to learn new rhythms. My body became increasingly fluent in the language of cycles.
Rick Bass