July 8th
The 189th Day of the Year
O God! methinks it were a happy life,
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,
To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
How many make the hour full complete;
How many hours bring about the day;
How many days will finish up the year;
How many years a mortal man may live.
William Shakespeare
Sunrise/set: 5:14/8:06
Day’s Length: 14 hours 52 minutes
Average High/Low: 85/64
Average Temperature: 74
Record High: 104 – 1936
Record Low: 51 – 1908
Weather
Today is a classic Dog Day, with heat, humidity, sun, and an occasional thundershower. Fifty percent of the highs are in the 80s, thirty-five percent in the 90s, and the chance of a high of 100 is five to ten percent – the same chance as for cool 70s. The sky is mostly sunny 75 percent of the time; showers pass through four years in ten. A cool night in the 50s occurs two nights in ten.
The Weather in the Week Ahead
The Corn Tassel Rains continue through the period, and temperatures, which cooled somewhat during the first days of July, begin to grow warmer. After the 7th, there is a full 90 percent chance that afternoon highs will reach 80 or above. July 7th, 8th and 9th are some of the worst Dog Days of the year: all three bringing a ten percent chance of heat above 100 degrees. The period between July 13th and 15th brings cooler conditions in the 70s twenty-five percent of the years, with the 13th being known to see a high just in the 60s. On the other hand, highs above 100 are more likely to occur on July 15th and 16th than any other days of the lower Midwestern year. Nighttime lows typically remain in the 60s, but chilly 50s occur an average of 15 percent of the time.
Natural Calendar
Early this week, the first cicadas (or harvest flies) of the year begin to chant. Making way for cicada calls, the robin and grackle fledglings have quieted as they have learned to feed themselves, and morning birdsong continues to diminish.
Black walnuts, Osage fruits and hickory nuts are more than half grown, sometimes fall in a thunderstorm. Corn is ready to tassel. The first rose of Sharon blossoms. Hydrangeas like the Anna Belle, the Oakleaf and the Indomitable Spirit are visibly aging now, white turning to pale green, pink becoming brown at the edges.
Blueweed flowers are at the top of their spikes just as the first giant burdock plant blooms in the alleys. Under the high canopy of the woods, avens and thimbleweed are forming seed heads. Blackberries sweet and black in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, are August-size across the North, but still green. Milkweed pods emerge, pushing out past milkweed beetles. The pods burst their hulls and spill their silky seeds at the approach of Middle Fall, just a dozen weeks from now.
Daybook
1982: South Glen: First swamp milkweed discovered, Heliopsis blooming, first mountain mint found in Middle Prairie. Wood nettle and touch-me-nots dominate the darker woods. Large patches of soapwort, wild petunias common. Ironweed has purple bud clusters. Giant Indian plantain discovered, six feet tall, with one white flower cluster. First large, black cricket seen in the house.
1986: At the mill: Wingstem with some centers yellow, no petals yet. White vervain open. Grackles cluck and cackle, yucca fades. Cardinals still sing. Ailanthus webworm moth on the front porch. Ironweed budding, Indian plantain in bloom. First grasshopper with black and yellow wings.
1990: Mid-season hosta open now along the north wall.
1991: When I have just emerged from winter, I refuse to imagine the return of cold and snow. The magnitude of the new warmth and the benevolence of green leaves skew my sense of time, and I instinctively multiply the 100 days of summer by 1,000 or by 10,000, and, faced with the number 100,000 or 1,000,000, I simply dismiss the idea all those days could ever be used up. My reason is overwhelmed by emotion. “This warmth and sun will never leave,” says my heart; and I believe it all.
Then, in just a few days, maybe 50 days or so, halfway through the summer, the mystery disappears. The mathematics of self-deception fails me. Only half the days of the season are gone, but the veil of June magic has gone too. The possibility that frost could arrive in 60 days suddenly makes sense. Autumn and winter suddenly make sense, too.
Somewhere between the time the fireflies start to flicker and the cicadas start to sing, the illusion of an indeterminate 100 days unravels. My faith comes apart. At some point between the number 99 and the number 50, innocence is lost, self-deception revealed, and counting becomes an exercise in measuring the fragility of summer.
1992: Primrose done, and most daisies. Lilies at their peak. South wall coneflower buttons about to unravel. Gay feather and tall yellow yarrow early bloom. Raspberries almost gone. Everbearing strawberries are setting fruit. Carrots small but ready.
1995: Return from vacation to the garden overgrown with weeds, some of the roses choked with bindweed, no blooms at all. The strawberry bed, which I had cleared of sorrel three weeks ago, is full of it again. The impatiens has hardly grown at all, subjected to a heat wave and drought, then deluged by the Corn Tassel Rains.
1996: Robin call heard this afternoon, almost like an autumn migration cluck.
1997: First teasel seen blooming along the roadside.
1998: Garlic dug about a week too late. Soft necks are way past saving, should have been taken up the third week of June.
1999: White cabbage butterflies, sometimes up to ten at a time, cluster at the lavender and purple loosestrife. Black, long-bodied cricket hunter seen by the pond today.
2000: Cool from the July 7th weather system. Tree frogs almost all silent by 12:30 this morning. Faint crickets at 3:00 a.m., loud at 5:00. Full cardinal song by 5:30. Tonight at work: no frog sound at all by 11:30. At Serendipity Gardens this afternoon: the daylily sale, digging, separating, sorting. On the return drive, we saw a very young fawn with clear white spots eating grass by the side of the road near Yellow Springs. This evening, sitting by the pond, I noticed that the very first white arrowhead had opened.
2001: Spruce Knob, West Virginia to Yellow Springs: Crown vetch, wild bee balm, parsnip, touch-me-not, tall meadow rue, sundrops, moth mullein, smoke bush, mimosa tree, goldenrod, Joe Pye, Japanese knotweed, wild lettuce, knapweed blooming. The Ohio Valley is well ahead of the West Virginia and Ohio highlands. Almost all the wheat has been cut between home and the mountains.
2002: Driving across the Great Plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan: Bright yellow canola in bloom, field after field. Salsify and heal-all continue throughout the day, then daisies and sweet clover gradually appear as the land becomes wooded near Winnipeg. At Kenora: tall buttercup, wild Rugosa roses, white yarrow, some milkweed, yellow hawkweed. Mosquitoes encountered at Regina, then thick past Winnipeg. Biting flies appear as we approach the lake country.
2004: I went outside at 4:00 this morning. No sound of birds at all. One sparrow chirped at about 4:10. Roosters called off and on. The first cardinal sang at 4:25. Doves were not audible until near 5:00. The robin song never materialized at all, their morning chorus ending for the year during the first week of July. Throughout the day, starlings fed heavily in the mulberry tree, joined by robins and cedar waxwings. A song sparrow worked steadily from one side of the yard to the other. One viceroy butterfly identified. Greg said he found a cecropia moth caterpillar today on a crabapple branch. Annual cicadas heard at dusk. Fireflies still plentiful.
2008: The red-bellied woodpecker called once at about 7:30 this morning. The fritillary was here then, and a small orange fold-wing butterfly. Jeanie said she heard the first cicada of the summer about 8:15. Intense heat and humidity through the day. A flock of at least ten starlings seen in the back yard after lunch, the first time they have been here in those numbers in quite a while. Two fledglings were with the adults, and begging for food. One of the four young squirrels showed up without a tail. Some euonymus vines had buds.
2009: Cardinal sang at 4:45, but little cardinal song today. Robins peeping around the yard at 5:00, then only doves. Crows passed through at 5:20. Squirrels chattering after 6:00. In the garden, half the yucca flowers have turned to large, green pods. Fireflies very common this week.
2010: Heat, cicadas, butterflies (red admirals, spicebush swallowtails, skippers, browns).
2011: Don’s cherry tree is getting yellow leaves, and his oakleaf hydrangea flowers are blushing (as is Lil’s burning bush shrub across the street).
2012: Fledgling sparrows begging this morning. Oakleaf hydrangea leaves reddening (like Lil’s burning bush). A raccoon took down the hummingbird feeder last night and broke a small vase that was on the porch table. Thirty-six lilies remain in bloom this morning, but the number of blossoms is declining. Constant, loud cicada calls throughout my walk at dusk. At one point, robin song broke through the cicadas, then disappeared into the rasping cries of the insects. When I checked out the back door at 10:00, the katydids were boisterous, full voice, all over the yard.
2013: Twenty-four lilies holding in the garden. A zebra swallowtail came to the butterfly bushes after lunch, only a cabbage white in the rest of the garden. Along the north border, the hobblebush’s side blossoms are disappearing, the Anna Belle hydrangea flowers have a tint of green, and the pink Indomitable Spirit hydrangea has a touch of brown. The phlox, most of which had been eaten off by deer a month ago, is budding, the bright yellow evening primrose suddenly done.
2014: Twenty-five lilies today. Rob says that the butterfly count is down throughout the state. A little blush has appeared on the Joe Pye buds. Walked the field in front of the Covered Bridge: a few ironweed budding but not the wingstem or the teasel. One dogbane opening, a few gray-headed coneflowers blooming, wood mint full, black-eyed Susans full, drifts of violet monarda (one hummingbird moth sipping nectar there), scattered daisy fleabane, St. John’s wort, white yarrow, milkweed. One cabbage white, one darner with a large pale blue tail. Many cup plants at least seven-feet tall but not budding yet, several American germanders and purple giant hyssops in flower, and a drift of woodland sunflowers.
2015: Forty-eight lily plants today, hummingbird moth working the monarda in spite of a fine mist. Hosta plants still at full bloom, but their flowers are about three-fourths up their stem. An evening primrose blossomed last night, the first of this planting that survived insects. In the pond a yellow water lily has opened, only the second of the summer. All around the pond’s edge, lizard’s tail has gone completely to seed.
2016: Sixty-four lily plants blooming today, twenty-three in the circle garden alone. The first Mexican sunflower (started indoors in late February) opened overnight. And I noticed that the first of Moya’s butterfly bush flowers had opened and that the first blossoms had appeared on Peggy’s hydrangea.
2017: One hundred fifty-nine day lily blossoms, nine ditch lilies. The monarda is in late bloom now, and the spiderwort is well past its best, perhaps has a week at most of bloom. The small-flowered coneflowers at Jill’s are budded.
2018: One hundred fifty-seven day lily, three ditch lily, four Asiatic blossoms. Spiderwort declining but strong, monarda still middle full bloom. A small spicebush butterfly seen near the lilies.
Throughout the village, gooseneck loosestrife is in full flower, has been strong throughout July.
2019: A monarch, a red admiral and a hackberry butterfly seen in the monarda this morning. The whole north garden and the west circle garden dominate the yard, their colors finally enlivening the monotone of June foliage there. The ditch lilies are down to 55, the tree lilies to three, but the day lilies are at their best so far at 188. The counting, it seems to me, is an imprecise form of precision that gives names and numbers to the season, informed by a sense of frivolity (Who counts lilies, really?) and freedom.
2020: Robins quieter this morning, fewer fledglings about. Lily count: 146 day lily, three Asiatic and 58 ditch lily blossoms. I continue each year to reflect on what the lily count really measures. Should I ask what the days measure or the hours? Lily flowers are soft substitutions for mechanical, hard and more regular, social markers. Certainly, they are more beautiful, more able to be cultivated, if less dependable, less absolute. But more honest, more true-to-life, less impersonal. Then I think of Christ’s mention of the lilies of the field, how they neither toil nor spin and yet are arrayed in splendor. And, too, how they melt to mush and to ugliness in just a day.
Zeitgebers such as the blossoms of lilies or parsnips – followed north across the landscape – become wells from which time retreats and reemerges. Like metaphors, the flowers take the place of what they signify, become fountainheads of stability, offer immanence that persists within renewal and repetition.
Leon Quel