Only nine days into June and it has been eventful! Four days with temperatures reaching the mid-90s. Yesterday we hit 96, and the forecast is the same for today. Four of those 90 plus degree days set record highs for June. Today will also be a record high if indeed we make 96 again.
Jack thinks I obsess about the weather and doesn’t understand why. Well, yes, I do! I’m that person who loves to check out weather records. How hot/cold is it going to get? How does that differ from last year? Five years ago? How much precipitation did we get last month versus last year? Why should scientists keep records except to excite people like me? I just like to know things.
Meanwhile, this hot spell is drying out our raised beds in a hurry, but it is also making our veggies and other plants spring out of the ground. Peas are a foot high already. Lettuce is ready to eat, tomatoes are forming on the plants, peppers have buds forming. Beans are turning into little bushes. Water them first thing in the morning, by the time I get home from work it seems they’ve all grown two inches. The raised beds all have a bumper crop of lamb’s quarter. I pull them up with a smile, thinking how Robin buys my weed at her local farmer’s market and eats them with delight.
June is a funny time for me. So many plants bloom. Clematis, roses, daisies, peonies, columbine, plus the shrubs such as Black Lace Elderberry, honeysuckle, weiglia, and summer sweet are just a few in my yard ready to burst or already at peak bloom thanks to the elevated temperatures. Why is it a funny time? Intellectually, I know these all bloom in June, but in May, they are just leafing out, starting to grow. Then wham! Out of nowhere they are covered with blooms. It happens so fast, even though I walk the yard daily, weed around them, water them, watch the progress, I still get startled at the profusion of color.
May 31st is our last frost free day. It’s the weekend everyone is out planting tender annuals. So somehow June isn’t that far away from the mental images of frost, cold, winter.
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| Helen's Aloha rose |
This year the roses are stars—such a profusion of flowers! All you have to do is walk by and you get bathed in their fragrance. It's pretty heady!
Two years ago Amy had given me a couple starts of an Aloha rose that came from her mother’s garden, from the house in Dearborn where she was raised. It is a beautiful pink with a delicate fragrance. These poor roses have been moved at least three times. This year they are thriving and are covered with blooms and many buds. I looked it up and found it is classed as a Modern Large Flowered Climber. Modern? Hybridized in 1949. That is 63 years old!
This year, all the yuccas that I rescued from Betty’s foundation plantings are sending up bloom stalks. They had never bloomed for her—too much shade. It will be fun see the stalks in full flower. David has a fabulous patch of yucca that are show stoppers when they bloom. Mine will get there.
Critter report. On Sunday, Jack and I decided it was time to finally clean all the grass out of the front chain link fence. It was a shady spot in our yard on a very hot day. We worked across the fence from each other loosening the roots and pulling up the grass. At one point I pulled a really huge clump of roots out and disturbed a stag beetle. He was not happy about it. He stood up on his rear, balancing like a tripod with his butt and two back legs. He gnashed his mandibles and waved his other legs in a threatening manner. I ran…for my camera. He could have been a model for some SF alien. I am very proud of this photo. Check out the interesting antennae and the sensory organs at the tips. He shouldn’t have any problem locating female pheromones with those.
Years ago I read Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster. It is a first contact novel told from the perspective of the insectoid race, the Thranx, and deals with their encounter with the monstrous, fleshy, alien mammals known as humans. One of the things I remember best about this is that the Thranx could not show emotions due to their rigid exoskeleton and their society had come up with an intricate way of showing expressions through body part positions. Antennae, mandibles, palps and appendages were arranged just so to suggest emotions such as fifth degree of apology or third degree of subservience. I think my stag beetle is in the first degree of aggression.
Really odd looking ants, as you can see from the pictures. For several days I watched them run up and down the boards and considered the whys and wherefores of their over-sized heads. What would be the advantages of a bigger head? How do they carry things around as well as hauling that great big head. And what on earth would be have caused this kind of evolution?
I finally got down on hands and knees for a closer look. Ho! A surprise! They weren't big-headed at all. Each big-headed ant was merely carrying the carcass of a smaller black ant. I tried following the ants to see where the bodies were coming from but I didn't have much luck, or maybe it was a lack of patience. I can only surmise that they were raiding a nest of a smaller species of ants and bringing the bodies back to their own nest. I tried to get pictures. Do you have any idea how hard it is to focus on an ant? They are fast and travel in erratic paths.
Babies. We have robin, grackle and blue jay nests in the yard. Two weeks ago I found a dead, gawky baby jay under the silver maple. This morning I found a live baby robin. Pin feathers were just starting to come out. It is an awful feeling to know that it will be cat food before the day is out.
Our hollow catalpa tree is home to two kittens belonging to the tabico. Seems fitting as the tabico was born in the hollow boxelder stump. Her kittens are white, with orange ears, tails and top of head markings. Cute, but dang it, more cats? The girls have seven kittens in their yard, and Hughie is still lumbering around in a state of huge pregnancy. We thought she’d give birth a week or more ago due to her rotund state. Any day now.
Her babies from last July: Little Fluff and Big Fluff are still living in the backyard. Big Fluff has become quite the company cat. He likes to be petted, scratched and played with. He loves to chase the end of a rope around the yard. When Jack and I are working in the yard or hanging about on the deck, he is usually not far. When he isn’t up for a pet he likes to lie a fingertip out of reach. Close enough. Big Fluff is oddly colored--head and shoulders are black and the rest of him is more brown.
"Would you tell me, please," said Alice, a little timidly, "why you are painting those roses?"
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began, in a low voice, "Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose tree, and we put in a white one by mistake..."
Did we have another record high today? You betcha. Topped out at 96 degrees again. Now, at 8:45 pm it is still 91 out and 82 in.
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