Summer is icumen in

This is the forest primeval I thought as I walked carefully through the mud into our upper woods this morning, except it's not the forest primeval--it's just a little fringe of woods at the edge of the upper meadow, with the early light filtering through the pines in a way that made it look lovely, dark, and deep.

The mud was deep and slippery thanks to recent frequent storms, but it ought to dry out this weekend as the heat wave hits. I made it to the Farmers Market before 9 a.m. this morning but still had to retreat to a shady spot to chat with a friend. Hot hot hot! Our electricity supplier has warned us to expect brown-outs as everyone who wants to keep comfortable cranks up the AC.

But it felt good to be out and about this morning. I saw a flicker and some hummingbirds, heard the kingfishers down by the creek, visited the chickens and admired the sun shining through sycamore leaves. Now, though, I'm staying indoors. After a long wet spring, the summer sun has come to stay.

 

The wild columbines make these lovely seed pods.

Sentinel beneath the birdfeeders.

Confusion, kerfuffle, and kestrel

Our local newspaper presented the following conundrum of a headline on the front page the other day:

Confusion on sensor
plane's abilities delayed
response in Ohio train
derailment, report says 

Confusion is the right word. I've read the whole article and I still can't quite parse the headline's meaning, but here's a hint: the main verb is delayed and its subject is confusion.

Confusion reigned at my house yesterday when a box full of air fryer appeared on our front porch with no label or indication of where it had come from or what it was doing there. Later in the evening a neighbor called to ask whether an errant air fryer had entered our ken. It was needed for a bridal shower (?) but someone had dropped it off at the wrong house. Mystery solved, and I no longer have a big ol' box of air fryer on my sofa. (We kept the air fryer comfy during its brief sojourn.)

Meanwhile on campus, a massive kerfuffle has arisen over, among other things, errant boxes, asbestos abatement, and flooring. Massive amounts of money are being poured into replacing old floors and removing asbestos from the old science buildings. Faculty members have been asked to remove everything from their offices, labs, and classrooms all at once--with no designated location to stash all that stuff. A pile of boxes got dropped off in one department office but they were intended for faculty in both buildings, so people were scrambling to locate their promised boxes. Good thing our science departments get along well or we could have ended up with an all-out science war, with the chemists constructing incendiary devices while the biologists lobbed bits and bobs from the cadaver lab and the physicists created a black hole to suck up all the boxes and detritus piled in the hallways.

Finally, Facebook tells me that I took a photo of a kestrel giving me the side-eye eight years ago this week. (Good thing I've outsourced my memory functions to Facebook or I'd never remember anything important, like the fact that I encountered the kestrel along the side of a road on the perimeter of The Wilds and that it looked stunned, as if it had been struck by a car, but flew off after I'd snapped a few pix.)

I see this kestrel every day--in a photo on our bedroom wall and on my phone's lock screen--and for years it has served as my profile photo on our college email system, because why not? I'd rather look at a photo of a kestrel giving the side-eye than of me looking like, well, me, and besides, it confuses people in a not unpleasant way. If we must live with confusion, let's make it the non-unpleasant kind.

Settling into summer break

I know I've settled into summer break when I'm halfway through the morning but still can't be sure what day it is, or when you ask me how I've spent my day and my response is, "Um...give me a minute."

Sunburn on my forearms from weed-whacking and mowing this morning, crick in my neck from sitting on the back deck staring up toward the top of the tulip poplar tree, camera at the ready, in case that oriole comes back, except it has a remarkable ability to appear only when the camera is inaccessible. True story: I was sitting in the living room reading when I felt I was being watched, and when I turned and looked out the big picture window, I saw an oriole perched on a potted plant looking right at me not two feet from my face. Where was the camera? In the car, just behind the oriole. 

I've seen an oriole (possibly the same one) flitting about the top of the maple tree out front and then flying away the minute I picked up the camera, and there it was again this morning at the top of the tulip poplar out back--twice!--but I sat out there with the camera for 40 minutes hearing it sing from a tree halfway down the cliff but never seeing it within shooting distance.

Big bowl of quinoa salad in the fridge--something I always make at the beginning of summer break for reasons I don't even recall except that it's cool and lemony and makes a great lunch out on the deck on a lovely spring day, especially when orioles are singing (but not posing for photos) nearby.

I saw swallows, turkey vultures, and a red-tailed hawk, but no oriole. Didn't see any goldfinches and wondered where they'd gone--we used to have them all over the place year-round but lately it's a nice surprise to see even one. Saw two male hummingbirds fighting over a feeder, but no oriole. Saw mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, a phoebe, but no oriole--but every time I started to pack up the camera to go inside, the oriole would sing tantalizingly close but still out of sight.

It's out there still, I'm certain, and I'm sure at some point I'll be unable to stop myself from going out to stalk it some more, camera in hand. Because that's what summer break is for. Sure, I'll have to get my act together to plan some meetings and write some reports in the next couple of weeks, but while I'm still bouncing back from the busy semester, I'll enjoy some long lazy days that don't require me to remember their names.

Applause all around

I came out of Commencement Saturday with sore hands from applauding so much, and then I wanted to walk right over to the peony patch and applaud some more. How could those tight little buds burst into such massive gorgeous blossoms so quickly?

I'd like to ask the same thing about the students I clapped for as they received their diplomas. (Well, their diploma cases--the real thing comes later, after grades are submitted. Which reminds me of a great line from the Commencement speech: when he graduated from Marietta College in 1970, our speaker's diploma case contained only a bill for $2.48 for library fines--"And I don't remember ever checking out a book." It was a great speech and when I get the link I'll post it.) 

It seems like only yesterday that these bright-eyed students came toddling into my first-year classes wondering what the word syllabus might mean, and now here they are tottering across the stage on platform shoes and out the door toward jobs and adventures and real life. Go, you! Here's a round of applause!

And how did I celebrate my sudden burst of freedom? With birds and wildflowers, of course, and by diving into a good book. I have some projects around the house that need attention and my summer campus meetings start tomorrow, but right now I'm spending every spare moment doing as close to nothing as possible. Go, me! Here's a round of applause!

Birds, bugs, and beauty

I don't know which is better: hearing my youngest grandkid tell me she's "allergic to bad grammar," watching the middle grandkid holding giant creepy-looking insects in his bare hands, seeing the oldest grandkid win a prize for an Earth Day coloring contest, or hearing all of them correctly identify wildflowers--and ask about the ones they don't recognize yet.

Spring ephemerals are already fading at our house, but two hours north I saw a whole new collection of wildflowers, including squirrel corn, jack-in-the-pulpit, and four species of trillium. After a many-meeting-marathon kind of week, it feels really good to go outside and touch grass--or bugs or birds or trilliums, as the case may be.