July 5th

The 186th Day of the Year

 

All-conquering heat, oh, intermit thy wrath!

And on my throbbing temples potent thus

Beam not so fierce.

 

James Thomson

Sunrise/set: 5:12/8:07

Day’s Length: 14 hours 55 minutes

Average High/Low: 85/64

Average Temperature: 74

Record High: 100 – 1911

Record Low: 50 – 1972

 

Weather

There is a 30 percent chance of highs in the 90s today, 55 percent for 80s, 15 percent for 70s. The skies are partly sunny 9 years out of 10, but showers pass through 1 day in 3. Nighttime lows are in the 60s or 70s 90 percent of the time.

Natural Calendar

    Mimosa webworms appear on locust trees. Potato leafhoppers reach economic levels in some alfalfa. Bagworms attack arborvitae, euonymus, juniper, linden, maple, and fir. Root diseases stalk the soybeans. The wheat still standing in the fields sometimes suffers from rust, powdery mildew, head scab, and glume blotch. Canadian thistle, ragweed, foxtail, lamb’s quarter, dogbane, velvetleaf, nut grass and Johnson grass may grow up through the fields from which herbicide has leached.

Daybook

1983: A baby robin in the yard hopped away from me into the bushes.

1984: Leafcup just starting to bloom, enchanter’s nightshade late bloom, asters tall and branching, zigzag goldenrod foliage lush, avens still flowering. First sweet corn tassels in the village.

1986: Cardinals woke me up before dawn, were strong all morning. Elderberry flowers along the railroad tracks gone to green berries. Bull and field thistles budding, downy wood mint seen, soapwort, catmint, great mullein. Timothy to seed, early tall bellflowers out maybe two to three days. Wild lettuce has been blooming for a while. Early figwort discovered. Leatherflower just starting. The last days of the large, pink wild roses. Teasel tall but not blooming. A couple of white snakeroot budding. Grapes almost full size. Meadow goat’s beard seeds in the wind. Burdock five feet tall but not budding yet. Goldenrod plants six feet in places. Big, fresh, red, long seed pods on the locusts. Late this afternoon, I saw the first fat cricket in the grass.

1987: Touch-me-nots and leafcup well into bloom. More hummingbird moths and even another hummingbird at the south garden, and still cardinals singing. First yellow jacket seen, fields are full of Queen Anne’s lace and daisy fleabane.

1989: Last year, there was deep drought. This year, the dam at the pond broke in a heavy rain.

1990: Full bloom of summer hydrangeas, including the Hydrangea paniculata. At South Glen, hundreds of yards of thistledown, hands full, clumps, soft, translucent. A flock of gold finches flew up from one patch. Some black-eyed-Susans, one moneywort left, galls on the goldenrod, some loosestrife, dogbane, and wood mint blooming, Rugosa roses still full bloom. Germander early, yarrow full and rich. Angelica with red stems and black seeds. Paths covered with white clover. In the deep woods, strong wood nettle and touch-me-not emerald green.

1991: To Breezewood, Pennsylvania: Tree of heaven still blooming in the mountains. First sundrops past the West Virginia border. Common knapweed suddenly everywhere 230 miles east of Yellow Springs.

1993: First cicada of the summer found resting on a lily bud along the north hedge, no cicada song yet. First teasel spotted blooming this afternoon. Black walnut fruits close to full size now. Fireflies were thick over the soybean fields tonight, thousands of them glittering above the dark plants all the way to the horizon.

1996: Fishing with John again at Caesar Creek. One catfish caught at a new spot across from far hole. The water is deeper there, with logs and trees. At far hole, a large fish broke John’s line in the early afternoon and then again in the late afternoon. Two bluegills also caught at the new location. The weather had warmed up since we were last here on the 3rd, the sun intense, the wind down.

1997: Damselfly found in the garden today, first one attracted by the new pond. First Japanese beetle found on the roses.

1998: The Frances Thompson and the Giant Blue hostas are ending their flowering cycle now.

2000: Lamb’s ear all cut back, seems attacked by some fungus; many plants appear dead.

2001: Dolly Sods, West Virginia, about 4,000 feet elevation: A high plain habitat of laurel, silver beech, red maple, aspen and red spruce. Bluettes still in bloom here, heal all, orange hawkweed, yellow pussy toes, wild daisies, yarrow, elderberries, Deptford pink, some goose grass, timothy, bottle grass and deer grass, new lichens with red bloom, new growth on the sporangium moss, dogbane beginning, blueberry shrubs hugging the ground, their berries starting to come in, mountain laurel in late bloom, small creeping blackberries found, similar to the variety that flowers along the coast of Georgia in March. Deer plentiful throughout the fields.

2004: Showy coneflowers are just starting to open in the yard; in Miri’s garden at the corner of Dayton Street, they have been in full bloom at least a week. Throughout our north garden, more and more lilies are coming in, filling in the entire span with assorted shades of yellow and orange and white and pink. Tiny black gnats seen swarming on a bright yellow zinnia and yellow daylily. A black swallowtail and a yellow one seen yesterday.

2005: Midseason violet aster opens by the trellis.

2006: Cardinals and robins loud at 4:30 a.m. Goldenrod has grown past six feet. Panicled dogwood has berries about 1/8th of an inch in diameter. Euonymus berries are tiny, maybe 1/32nd of an inch. A spider in the sink this morning. Black hunting spiders seem to be getting more numerous – one seen on my office wall yesterday, two on the porch. Thirty daylily plants in bloom, four Oriental lilies flowering. Black walnut leaves scattered under the tree by the church, leafdrop underway.

2008: Return from a trip to Goshen, Indiana, July 3 – 5: Throughout the countryside, trefoil, cattails, milkweed, yellow and white sweet clover, crown vetch, Canadian thistles, black-eyed Susans, elderberry bushes, Queen Anne’s lace, yucca and chicory in full bloom. Along the trace in Goshen, numerous white bouncing bets. Winter wheat dark brown in northern Indiana, one field seen harvested by hand, sheaves standing like teepees. Haying throughout Amish country. In Greene County, one cut wheat field seen. Most corn waist high or taller throughout the trip except for a stretch in northeastern Ohio along US 30 that had apparently been damaged by heavy rains and flooding. At home, our Shasta daisies bloomed while we were gone, and many more lilies came in.

2010: Scattered cottonwood leaves have turned yellow along Dayton-Yellow Springs Road, and along the northwest border of the yard, the foliage of one of the honeysuckles is white; beside that, the variegated knotweed leaves have a tinge of orange.

2011: Another hummingbird moth and another hackberry brown in at the butterfly bushes this afternoon. Praying mantis, about two-inches long, seen exploring the new car this evening, about three or four times the size of the mantises I found on the house when I was touching up the paint in the third week of June.

2013: The second hummingbird moth seen today. Only seventeen lilies in bloom today, down considerably from yesterday. Maybe twenty-five was the peak. Knotweed booming the alley. Remaining wheat fields dark brown, corn four feet, no tassels seen yet. Joe Pye weed in the north garden has prominent buds.

2014: All yucca flowers spent. Twenty-six lilies in bloom today. Ditch lilies thinning out. Mid-season hostas coming in.  Anna Belle and Indomitable Spirit hydrangeas still full. Endless Summer hydrangea still with one flower cluster, a few white petals emerging. The increased sunlight on the pond lily has encouraged two pale yellow lilies to come into bloom.

2015: An hour run to Ellis Pond and back this morning starting at 4:35 in full robin, cardinal and song sparrow chorus. I entered a zone of crowing roosters at 4:50, and I heard crows at 4:55, just like I did on July 3rd  jogging through town. Across from the pond: a bush of small Virginia roses in full flower. Teasel fully formed but without blossoms up the service road to the soybean field (plants a foot high). When I transplanted daisy sprouts this afternoon, mosquitoes were peskier than I’ve ever experienced them here. But there were forty-five different lily plants in bloom, close to a record for this garden.

2016: A sudden surge in the lily count today: Sixty-four plants are in bloom – eighteen more than yesterday, and the most ever, blossoms maybe in the hundreds and hundreds. Counting lilies and then cutting bindweed from the monarda, I saw the first hummingbird moth of the year sipping from the bee-balm nectar (a day earlier than last year). The first rose of Sharon blossom seen on Moya’s bush this evening. Looking from the studio, I discovered a small patch of monarda shining deep in the shaded northwest corner of the garden. I had not been paying attention.

2018: Ten ditch lilies, five Asiatics, 172 day lily blossoms, maybe 70 to 80 plants in all. Although cicada calls have been increasing over the past week, today cicadas fill the morning and afternoon. Five cabbage white butterflies playing together near the dark red-orange day lilies in the shade – more whites than I’ve seen together in at least two years. Three hackberry butterflies contentedly sitting on the red hummingbird feeder, indifferent to my approach. A hummingbird moth was working the red monarda when I went out at noon, continuing a pattern from many years at this time of July. Along Dayton Street, the pink spirea has almost completed its blooming season. Early this afternoon, the crows were talking, fledglings begging, adults responding. A huge male tiger swallowtail visited the bee balm and the lilies later in the day.

2020: Eighty-eight day lilies, four Asiatic lilies, and 58 ditch lilies in bloom this morning. The trumpet creeper vine is in full flower. A very pale hackberry butterfly glimpsed in the milkweed (which is fading in parts of the patch). In the west garden, the Great Blue hostas are done blooming. At Ellis Pond, elderberry flowers are turning to green berries, and black walnuts are about half their full size. On the sidewalk, Osage fruits are the size of the black walnuts.

 

Is it not the height of summer when the locust is heard?

Henry David Thoreau, July 30, 1860