You hear the change in the birdcalls, fewer songs of ecstasy, more parental alarms and scoldings….Harvest flies buzz and shrill in the heat of midafternoon.

Hal Borland

 

Sunrise/set: 5:19/8:02

Day’s Length: 14 hours 43 minutes

Average High/Low: 85/64

Average Temperature: 75

Record High: 100 – 1988

Record Low: 52 – 1945

 

Weather

Today is one of the hottest, sunniest, and driest days in the whole year. Highs above 100 come 15 percent of the time; 90s are recorded 25 percent of the time; 80s occur on 55 percent of the days, 70s just five percent. The sky is typically sunny to partly cloudy, with completely overcast conditions recorded just five percent of the days. Rainfall on the 16th occurs on fewer than 20 percent of all the years.

 

Natural Calendar

Harvestman, harvestman, what do you reap?

Tides of the morning, remnants of sleep.

Harvestman, harvestman, what do you cull?

Bobbins and baskets of dull fulvous wool.

Harvestman, harvestman, what is your store?

Clamber and amble and ramble some more.

Harvestman, harvestman, what is your treasure?

Pastures of solitude, moorlands of heather.

Harvestman, harvestman, where do you garner?

Nearer and nearer, farther and farther.

 

“Harvestman” (another name for daddy longlegs)

Robert Paschell

 

It is Deep Summer for harvestmen as well as for other residents of Yellow Springs. Now that katydids are chanting into the nights (Matt hearing the first one on July 15), the cycle of the daddy-longlegs or Opiliones (not spiders) approaches its autumn closure.

My daybook has them emerging in the village when tulips are in full bloom. They hatch from the safety of their eggs – or crawl from their winter quarters – as average daytime temperatures pass 60 degrees. Digging in the garden on April 12 of 2012, I lifted up a rock and found five or six of the young, maybe half an inch long, clinging to the irregularities in the stone.

Daddy longlegs wander the undergrowth as late spring deepens, reaching full size in May. Ruby-throated hummingbirds arrive at local feeders, and the first wave of goslings has emerged from its eggs by the time harvestmen are mature. I have watched them early in June mating just as the first fireflies were glowing and the first mosquitoes were becoming pesky, when the first orange daylilies flowered.

By this time in the year, I sometimes see them with red, oblong egg sacks attached to their legs. Although they may lay their eggs by September, the young appearing in the spring, local daddy longlegs probably have more than one brood, many of the tiny Opiliones coming out by this week of Deep Summer, destined to wait out the winter with their siblings.

When goldenrod flowers are tufted and gray, the daddy longlegs usually disappear from the undergrowth, but they often form clusters (or aggregations) against the cold. On October 2, 2013, Ed reported finding hundreds of daddy longlegs in his woodpile. The same day in 1995, Jeanie said that her Antioch School students found a “city of spiders” near the old shed.

My latest sighting of harvestmen in the year was on November 19 of 1983, two of them lying together against the cedar siding on the west wall of my house. The day was warm, 65 degrees. Deep yellow mulberry leaves were floating down around me. Honeysuckle foliage was holding on across the village, offering a new season of golden-green, gift of the mild autumn.

 

The Stars

The Corona Borealis, the horseshoe-shaped configuration which moved overhead in Early Summer, finally shifts to the west after dark, signaling also a shift toward Late Summer. Lanky Hercules replaces it. The Milky Way, along with the constellations of August and September, Cygnus, Aquila and Lyra, approach from the east.

 

Daybook

1983: South Glen, 7:30 a.m.: Virginia roses finally gone. Heliopsis, soapwort, avens, leafcup, enchanter’s nightshade, wood nettle, touch-me-not, wood mint, daisy fleabane, Queen Anne’s lace, thimble plant, germander, swamp milkweed, black medic, great mullein, common milkweed, southern loosestrife, wild petunias, goat’s beard, an occasional yellow sweet clover all in bloom. Dock seed browning, yarrow starting to fade. Tall meadow rue and timothy have gone completely to seed. White snakeroot has buds. Small and large milkweed bugs identified.

 

1984: Grinnell Swamp: White snakeroot budding, adolescent cattails emerging, yellow with pollen – while along the roadsides, they’ve been mature and brown for weeks. At home, apples are half size.

 

1985: Vale Habitat just south of town: First white snakeroot blooming. Boneset and small-flowered agrimony budding. Mountain mint found, hoary tick trefoil, and Scutellaria versicolor, a skullcap. Tall bellflowers full, white vervain well past its best. First thin-leafed coneflowers, first burdock flowers, first Asiatic day flowers, full bloom of the gray headed coneflowers, St. John’s wort, butterfly weed, monarda, avens, Deptford pink, Indian hemp, and spurge. Huge foxtail grass perfect for chewing. Good-sized thimbles on the thimbleweeds. Yarrow dry and brown, a few blueweed still flowering. Field thistles tall and budded. May apple foliage tattered, eaten by insects. A few hickory nuts fallen. Crab Bermuda grass everywhere to seed.

 

1987: Small, white, hairy caterpillar found today.

 

1988: Germander in mid bloom, another early white vervain, very first touch-me-not blooming in standing water, and next to it the first flower of wood nettle. Cicadas stronger today, damselflies congregating on the thin-leafed coneflower at dusk. Carp by the shore, frolicking in the shallows, frogs croaking, more Osage leaves falling, cherry tree dropping some leaves. The shedding of the gray sycamore bark seems more intense, bark building up in the sloughs like autumn leaves, and the pieces crunch under my feet as I walk along the path.

 

1990: First woolly bear caterpillar seen today. No cicadas yet. Rose of Sharon early bloom.

 

1992: First fog of autumn this morning, thick and wet. First berries of the second crop of strawberries. Rose of Sharon has been out a couple of days now.

 

1998: Deep Summer leaving as quickly as it came, pulled away by the first ripe blackberries. John and I picked quite a few as we walked the woods near Caesar Creek. And they were soft berries, as much as a week old.

 

1999: Blue jays very loud and active for the past few days. Last night I heard katydids calling in the yard. Fireflies scarce this year because of the drought. The mornings become quieter and quieter, no robin singsong, no early chorus. Feverfew declines and loosestrife moves higher on its stalks. Phlox open all about town. Gay feather late bloom, oak leaf hydrangea late full, lilies still full. End of the gooseneck, yarrow aging. Mallow holding. Ironweed buds appear. Late full teasel. Early bloom of the showy coneflowers. Midseason hostas in decline. Frog quieter. Queen Anne’s lace and rose of Sharon lush.

 

2003: Butterfly bush has its first purple blossoms in the south and north gardens. Daylilies in full bloom. Sum and Substance hosta, huge and pale green, in full flower. Ramp flowers have wilted, stems toppled. First cicada of 2003 heard about noon in the back yard.

 

2005: Giant swallowtail in the red monarda this afternoon. Still no cicadas. Mike Miller reported a nest of newly hatched wrens in a box in his garage this evening. Pollen noticed on hawthorn berries in the triangle park.

 

2007: Layering of time and events: Time as circular, time as layered. Like the rings on a tree, like geological strata, the soul and the body and the landscape contain all the compressed events or signs of the events. There is always a kind of density, a compactness that the past contains. But memory allows it to be drawn up to the surface, separated and reconstituted. Layers are also sacraments, signs as well as substantial maps of remnants, transubstantiated, connecting time to itself like the radii of the history.

 

2008: Buds on the tall coneflowers are beginning to break just a little in the alley as feverfew and yuccas decline more quickly in Mrs. Timberlake’s yard. Grackles still numerous and loud in the back trees, fledglings ravenous under the bird feeder. I found a dead sparrow by the feeder this morning; another was dying by the back porch last night. Spider webs are suddenly appearing in the bushes, especially webs of the “high-backed” black spiders, the micrathenas. Cicadas are calling today as the weather gets hot.

 

2009: No grackles at all this late in the year. No cicadas in the mild days. Very last pink spirea flowers.

 

2010: Starlings and maybe grackles still cackling in the mulberry trees these afternoon. When I walked down Davis Street at about 7:30 this evening, I heard a squawk to my right – a baby crow (almost as big as its parent) fluttering and begging for food. The mother/father finally gave in and fed it.

 

2011: First cardinal at 4:09 a.m., then quiet until about 4:40, when the cardinal crescendo began that lasted until about 5:15. Crows off in the distance at 4:55. Hummingbirds were coming to the feeders by 5:05, and sparrows were chattering by 5:30, only occasional robin peeping through the early morning, no early chorus heard at all, and no grackle fledglings whining. By 6:00 a.m., the intense calling of the past two hours slowed to the sporadic waves of song and visitation that characterized the day. One zebra swallowtail seen in the afternoon. In the evening, no bird vespers, but around 8:00, I saw several flocks of starlings on the high wires as we drove in the countryside.

 

2012: Loud ground crickets, full robin chorus and cardinals when I went outside at 4:45 this morning. Crows came by for a while at 4:55. Steady sparrow chirping after dawn. A thunderstorm last night brought wind and much needed rain. We are in a small pocket which has escaped the drought that is plaguing the central section of the country. Fog this morning. Sixteen lilies still in bloom around the yard, the star-gazers starting late, and the tall Turk’s cap lilies along Limestone Street are in full flower. Two male tiger swallowtails and one spicebush in the garden today. Sparrow fledglings being fed, the red-belly fledgling at the suet. Walking Bella at 6:40 this evening, I heard a field cricket chirping at Peggy’s stone fence. Cicadas fierce throughout the neighborhood.

 

2013: Only twenty-six lilies in bloom today, a quick falloff from the peak. Burdock budding in the alley. The first redbud leaves have yellowed. The heat wave that started a few days ago is expected to last four or five days more. Highs in the 90s throughout the East and Middle Atlantic states. Midmorning: Steady peeping of robins in the bushes that surround the yard. One male tiger swallowtail, one zebra swallowtail, one red admiral, several skippers, hummingbird moths and hummingbirds in the butterfly bush late in the afternoon. This evening in the yard and at Ellis Pond: the first cicadas of the summer in full voice.

 

2014: Thirty-two lilies today. In the pond, the first buds have appeared on the arrowhead brought from Ellis. Several cabbage whites and one silver-spotted skipper seen. Unusually cool weather in the low 70s carried by the north wind, in spite of the sun.

 

2015: Forty-five lilies today. The air was cool when Kathy and I went out along the bike path. I kept running into small white caterpillars, maybe an inch long, hanging from high branches on a thread.

 

2016: Lanesboro, Minnesota to Yellow Springs: Driving home, almost seven-hundred miles in twelve hours, I saw birds on the high wires and a few flocks of starlings. I was able to witness the radical color transformation of the roadsides: from fresh yellow parsnips and golden coneflowers and thick blue chicory throughout the North above Madison, Wisconsin, to old, gray grasses, spent stalks of hemlock and parsnips all to seed. On return, I found almost all the lilies eaten by deer – so instead of dozens, there were only 21 scattered blossoms, and the entire north garden appears dull and weedy. Equally as dramatic: most of the bee balm had ended its season, soft violet-red flowers having lost their glow, their rich aura of vitality.

 

2017: Fog in the morning around 7:30. One hundred twenty-one lily blossoms, most of them the small siennas and the huge bright yellow ones. Zinnias taking up some of the empty places with color. The bee balm fades, but the impression is not as dramatic as it seemed to me last year. The orange Turk’s cap lilies along Limestone remain at full bloom.

 

2018: One hundred ten lily blossoms, four of them from the tall yellow-speckled Asiatic. One lonely rose flower. One monarch.

 

2019: Two hundred and two day lily blossoms, 21 ditch lilies in bloom. Japanese beetles are eating the canna lilies, but I saw another hummingbird moth in the zinnias, the second of the summer. The orange Turk’s cap lilies along Limestone are coming in now. Bee balm holding its color.

 

2020: Lily count, abrupt decline: 147 day lily, 1 Asiatic, 9 ditch lily blossoms. I cut the spiderworts way back this afternoon, but I haven’t figured out how to compensate for their absence. Maybe more cannas. Jill and I saw an exotic multicolored butterfly at Ellis Pond today, not identified. In front of the radio station, long planters full of Canadian thistles gone to seed. No katydids heard after dark, but Jill and I sat and watched fireflies emerge from the circle garden, one after another, like lazy sparks from a fire. And it has been the best summer in years for fireflies.

 

Perhaps we have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, it see it and feel it, to know how the sky is gray, paler in the south, with patches of blue in the southwest…. I have a real need to know these things because I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place, and a day in which I have not shared truly in all this is no day at all.

Thomas Merton