July 17th
The 198th Day of the Year
But I will walk dry stream beds,
break sycamore skin beneath my feet….
Liz Porter
Sunrise/set: 5:20/8:02
Day’s Length: 14 hours 42 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/65
Average Temperature: 75
Record High: 102 – 1888
Record Low: 51 – 1976
Weather
The 17th typically has fewer clouds than almost any other day of the entire year. And it is normally free from precipitation: this is the second day of a three-day dry spell during which the chance of rain continues at 15 percent. Highs reach into the 90s forty-five percent of the time, to the 80s another 45 percent, and to the 70s just ten percent.
Average temperatures in Yellow Springs reach their peak today with highs at 85 and lows at 65. Averages remain at that level through the 28th of the month, after which they begin their autumn descent almost everywhere in the nation. The coldest averages of the year remain steady for a similar period, reaching a normal high of 34 and a normal low of 18 on January 16th, and starting their rise to summer on January 29th.
Natural Calendar
Just another week until blackberry season. Two weeks until ragweed starts to flower, three weeks until fireflies stop flickering, a month until the first Judas maples turn and goldenrod comes in, five weeks to corn silage cutting and the end of the oats harvest, six weeks to tobacco cutting time and puffball mushroom time, seven weeks to grape harvest, eight weeks until acorns, buckeyes, and Osage fruits fall, nine weeks until the corn and soybean harvest and the sowing of winter wheat, ten weeks until the beginning of Middle Fall.
Daybook
1981: First red raspberry of the second raspberry season.
1983: Pointed-leafed tick trefoil blooming. First goldenrod (Solidago odora) seen along highway 68 (but never seen so early again near Yellow Springs). Joe Pye Weed heading. At the Cascades, enchanter’s nightshade, lopseed, avens, hobblebush, agrimony still in bloom. Bull thistles seen in Wilberforce, spiny-leafed sow thistle found.
1984: Joe Pye weed heading.
1986: Cicadas strong. Blue jays and wren are quiet, blackbirds too. Last week, they were all over the yard, boisterous. Crickets are moving in, a vague increase in the background sounds tonight.
1988: South Glen: Narrow-leafed mountain mint in early bloom. One small batch of St. John’s wort in middle bloom. Yarrow declining on schedule, soapwort full, wingstem wilted in the drought, ironweed holding on. Wild cherries and roses seem to be dying. Blackberries reddening on schedule, but the foliage is withering from the drought. Sycamores, young, and away from the river, are dropping their leaves like they do in October. Ginger dying. The Miami River is at its lowest level in recent history. Milkweed decaying without rain. But miles of blue chicory along the highways, untouched by the weather.
1990: First stag beetle of the year gets into the house.
1992: Heavy rains cause flooding throughout the state, Miami River out of its banks. Coneflowers, snapdragons, and north wall hosta are in early bloom now.
1993: First white hairy caterpillar appeared in the garden, a day later than in 1987. First local sweet corn on the market. The worst flooding on record continues along the Mississippi in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.
1998: I have not been so attentive this summer, but the colors are shifting around me, and things are feeling so different. The morning is quiet now. The monarda slowly disappears as the showy coneflowers of August open fully. Liatris is still blooming but seems to be on the other side of its peak. The first burdock blossomed a day or so ago. Hollyhock season will end soon in the yard; if I kept the leaf miners away from it and managed the blooms a little better, maybe it would last until August. Mallow still holds along the south wall. All the Asiatic lilies except the turbans have lost their petals.
2001: The path into South Glen was muddy, the undergrowth bedraggled after July’s Corn Tassel Rains. The barometer was rising, the air still muggy, the sky still overcast, but a light breeze promised the approach of cooler weather. Mosquitoes followed me. Cicadas buzzed in high trees. Crows were calling on the far side of the road toward town. A squirrel was chattering.
I saw few flowers in my short walk under the canopy: agrimony, avens, lopseed, enchanter’s nightshade, a few lanky Lysimachias. At my approach, two daddy longlegs hurried across the drooping wood nettle. Three green damselflies floated away from me near the river. One red admiral butterfly watched me from the touch-me-nots.
As I headed back to the truck, the sky cleared, and the sun came down through the trees, brightening my mood and the mood of the landscape around me. Then, I heard a hoarse two-syllable birdcall in the Osage ahead; I was able to get close enough to identify my first Eastern towhee of the summer: black head, white breast, rusty patches on his wings.
At home, I sat on the wooden bench by our small pond, surrounded by bamboo and memories of the garden that once was here: its purple loosestrife, coneflowers, red beebalm, Japanese iris, lizard’s tail, spiderwort, arrowhead, water lilies. Uninhibited by my presence, the red and gold and silver koi fed on the algae, sucking the rocks and splashing. Above me, fair-weather cumulus clouds moved steadily toward the southeast on the fresh, dry wind. I felt safe and complete.
2002: Doves still call, but there were no cardinals singing this morning until 5:50. Only a few grackles cackling in the back trees when I got up. Then at breakfast time, maybe a dozen baby robins came to play in the sprinkler. One cedar waxwing seen high in the white mulberry, and young grackles in the honeysuckles. The robins flocking and their flocking clucking signals clearly begin in adolescence, preparation for the great October migration south.
2003: Last of the lizard’s tail in the pond. Another black swallowtail seen in the north garden. More baby robins sighted in the yard. Second day of cicada song. Midseason hostas full and lush. Daylilies still lush. Mallow and hollyhocks tattered and old.
2004: Mulberries have almost ended, but grackles still call from the high canopy, perhaps still feeding on remnants. Tonight, Dayton Street was loud with cricket song for the first time this summer.
2005: Muggy, cloudy weather, no cicadas, no crickets, a few cardinals in the mornings, but only sporadic birdsong during the day.
2006: No robinsong this morning – 4:00 a.m. – 5:00 a.m. Cardinal at 4:30 a.m. and then steady for a while. Lilies, monarda and mallow continue at their peak in the north gardens. Cicadas strong.
2007: Flock of starlings seen on the way to the mall, the first flock of Deep Summer. Very little activity at the bird feeders. No robins have come to the yard for quite a while, maybe two weeks. A rabbit or deer ate off almost all the buds of the new toad lily plant.
2008: Grackles continue to feed their young. No red-bellied woodpecker heard for several days. Lilies continue at their peak. In the alley, panicled dogwood berries are small and green, feverfew and yucca done for the summer. The last lizard’s tail in the pond has gone to seed. Late lettuce picked from the garden for salad. Some cicadas. Birds continue to feed on late mulberries. Once in a while a yellow mulberry leaf flutters down to the ground.
2009: Unusually cool. The wind this afternoon brought a shower of yellow locust leaves. In the north garden, Joe Pye weed has purple heads, but the flowers are not open yet. Some ironweed budding. Buds on the late phlox in the south garden show hints of color.
2010: Heat and humidity continue, cicada sound replacing the clucking of the birds this morning. Cardinals and other solitary birds have stopped coming so frequently to the feeder. Bindweeds blooming in the alley. A small, white eggshell broken on the sidewalk.
2011: Fog across the village in the early morning. Near sunset, constant cicadas, distant cardinals and doves, no robinsong, no grackles. In front of Moya’s house, jumpseed has sent out its seed stalks, very tight and green. In the countryside, the corn, planted so late, is finally tasselling, both the sweet and the field corn.
2012: The robins were singing when I checked at 4:15 this morning. The garden keeps getting more tangled, the midsummer weeds lankier and ranker, dry and tight in the heat. Thirteen lily varieties this afternoon, but not many more lily blossoms than that throughout the yard. Two yellow tiger swallowtails seen, a few skippers, a handful of cabbage whites. Began weeding a few feet at a time, once again, having let the garden go for maybe a month without really focused maintenance. All the remaining blueberries are blue; the first blackberry ready to eat. Tonight at dusk, cicadas drowning out almost all the other calls, no bird vespers possible to be heard, and in-between, autumn field crickets chirping at several points on my walk, and a whistling cricket for the first time. And if there were ground crickets, they were swallowed up in the intense cicada calls. I got four ticks weeding for just a few minutes this evening – the first ticks I think I’ve ever had in the yard. The evening news calls this summer’s drought the worst since the 1950s and the 1930s, and this year the hottest in recorded history so far.
2013: Heat and humidity continue. The garden lily count is way up today, thirty-two counted – compared to yesterday’s twenty-six. Virginia creeper seen in full bloom in the Phillips Street alley. Last night, the cicadas were strong at the pond, tonight nothing, even though the weather has remained hot and humid.
2014: I saw a deer near the north line of the property yesterday. Last night a tomato plant and a handful of daylilies eaten off. But the height of lily bloom continues (29 today in spite of the deer), complemented by the blue-violet of mid-season hostas, just passing their peak.
2015: This morning (soft and humid, no breeze) at 4:20, only the soft buzzing of crickets, no birds at all, only an occasional firefly. By 4:40, the cardinals were in full song, but the robins were missing. Now there is a more radical decline in the number of lily plants in bloom, a sudden collapse of color (30 plants this morning, as opposed to 45 yesterday), and very few of the plants have multiple blossoms. The monarda is becoming dusky just as the Joe Pye weed behind it brightens. The ditch lilies disappeared yesterday.
Today, the last lily blossom in the dooryard garden is open, will shrivel tomorrow. The deep orange lilies in the northwest corner of the property are gone, and now that corner is unanchored. Most of the hosta flowers are reaching the top of their stalks, the spent blossoms dulling the drifts. The spiderwort continues to weaken, its foliage stained, flowers fewer. The bright orange lilies, anchors in the northeast garden near the redbud tree and the fern garden, were gone just after July 4th. The late-blooming Star Gazer lilies that Jeanie kept adding along the south edge of the house have not returned this year. I asked her where she put them, if she had taken them. Was she mad about what I used to say about them? I will have to get more. Still no cicadas heard, but one spicebush butterfly crossed Dayton Street in front of me today.
2016: Much the same as last year, but fewer lilies. The rudbeckia that I planted last summer is returning now, the first blossom coming undone.
2017: Eighty-five lily blossoms today, again the number held high by just a few plants. One of the rudbeckia that I mentioned on this day last year (even though the plants have barely survived the weeds and lily foliage), bloomed overnight. The monarda is almost gone. Japanese beetles are back in the ferns after being absent for a number of years. I used to squash them between my fingers. Now I’m glad to see them, old companions to the 20th century garden. (But the newspaper reports the Japanese beetles are becoming serious pests out in the fields.) Zinnias are reaching early bloom now, maybe a third of the plants in flower, and a few of my castor bean plants have red blossoms and are about five feet high. This morning when I was transplanting vincas and geraniums, I heard a squirrel chatter. I haven’t noticed it – or paid attention to it – earlier this summer. On the college campus: a great cluster of cup plants in full flower.
2018: One hundred and thirty-eight lily blossoms this morning, the north gardens holding full of color. The wild daisy blossoms are done, but the Shastas are vigorous and bright. The blue spiderworts are down to a handful of blossoms, but the cannas and the dahlias are gaining momentum beside the zinnias. During a few minutes in the back yard: a polygonia and a monarch.
2019: One hundred and eighty-five day lilies today, fifteen ditch lilies. A red admiral and a tiger swallowtail visited the zinnias while I was there. Cardinals sang through sunset, cicadas in the background until last light, fireflies still blinking. No katydids.
2020: Lily count: 197 day lily, 28 ditch lily blossoms today. One hummingbird moth in the lilies this afternoon, the second of the summer. Two Eastern black swallowtails noticed today, finally the swallowtails are starting to appear.
Telling Time
In his essay, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” archeologist Tim Ingold states that “Ecosystems contain as many ‘times’ as they do objects, processes, or creatures, probably more.”
Here in the middle of Deep Summer, the volume and variety of birdsong cedes more completely to the symphony of amphibian and insect song. These time keepers literally transform the rhythm and tone of the audible world.
Beginning with the lullaby of spring peepers in March and April, progressing through the shrill pleasure-seeking mating cries of of the American toad, to the bass of the bullfrogs and the bark of the green frogs in May, the soft, the sweet chirping of the spring field crickets, and the high rattle of the tree crickets and the purr of the tree frogs in Early Summer, now to the whining buzz of cicadas and the katy-did-dids of the katydids, to the steady beat of the chirps of the autumn field crickets, to the strong and piercing whistles of the whistling crickets, the year pronounces a clear and insistent narrative that not only creates natural time, but weaves stories, which are thousands of years old, through tempo and phrasing and pitch.
“Every story is a clock,” states philosopher of time, Paul Huebbener, “and we must tell the time every day.” And “What is the story and the setting and the plot?” one might ask, and “What is the time?”.
In the evening there were flocks of nighthawks
passing southward over the valley. The tall
sunflowers stood, burning on their stalks
to cold seed, by the river. And high
up the birds rose into sight against the darkening
clouds….
Wendell Berry