Summer Solstice

 

 

Just finished Spring - a chilly start and a HOT finish!  "Now" it feels like Summer!  Crazy stuff...

Prairie Phlox (Phlox pilosa) - photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

The pastures here have been mixed in their forbs, but mostly everything has been a couple weeks later than the average from years past. Just yesterday I realized that the Prairie Phlox just bloomed and the Spiderwort is about finished.  The June Grass was at its peak last week an now maturing quickly along with the Porcupine Grass.

 

I have been playing catch up here in the Studio as usual - I have only been able to get out one morning before sunrise this June...it has been so windy that the small stuff in the pasture hasn't been too willing to hold reasonably still for my camera.  But - the evenings on the "Prairie Schooner" (my old '82 EZ-Go electric golf cart) have been fun...one thing I've been chasing are the Dickcissels, which are more numerous this year.  

We have been hearing Bobolinks "occasionally"...don't know if they are nesting here or not?  We are just holding our breath that the pasture across the road from us "Doesn't" get mowed before the end of June this summer.  Last summer it'd been mowed early and we lost the nesting Bobolinks...a very sad occurrence...very sad.

Our Meadowlark population sounds decent - more calling than last summer...some behind us...we are hopeful there too. 

I'll end this post with a guest blog I wrote on invitation for Bleeding Heartland's "Wildflower Wednesday" - give it a read if you have a moment.  I hope you enjoy it!  Have a good summer - and stay cool out there!

https://www.bleedingheartland.com/2022/06/15/iowa-wildflower-wednesday-a-prairie-home-remnant-in-obrien-county/?fbclid=IwAR1EGI3peIrcO_mOYme0IZVqZQCphEaScnEXHLKqYI-VFYh_kCf2HE5D9oo

 

Summer Solstice

"Sunrise on McCormack"

photograph © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

Today, as I write this entry, is the Summer Solstice.  There is something about those words, "summer solstice" that I find almost mystical...mysterious...much like a bank of intangible emotions.  The evenings now have an air of insects and amphibians, carried aloft across the valley and into the yard windows.  It lulls you to sleep and brings pleasant dreams, but not really of this world.  

Does summer take on a more specific meaning or feeling to a person after many decades on this earth?  I have to believe so. The seasons have long been compared to our lives; maybe the summer solstice reminds me of younger days...I don't know.  But it does make me feel motivated somehow.  My motivation is "out there" certainly...out there, outside that yard window, that music in the valley that Georgie and I embrace each morning, afternoon and evening.

If I were to sit upon a twig and float down the creek outside our door, I would eventually pass this place I've photographed here.  It reminds me of the summer solstice...there is that same feeling of fleeting intangibles I'm so desperately trying to put into words.  And now that this moment has passed, the days will very slowly shorten once again, but I am grasping every encounter and savoring and caching them for the rest of the summer and into the final seasons.