July 20

It has been so hot for so long I think this is the first year in all time when the end of July does not bring an hour’s taste of autumn. I am painting the house obsessively, eyeing the wild raspberries that ripen along the trail. They may not wait for me to make jam. Paint or jam? Paint or jam? I can only obsess on one thing at a time.

Then, suddenly--I

wake to no swelter. Up! Quick!

Must call for hay! Now!

July 13

Along the trail near the picnic grove, a strange insect, very large, the color of old bark, perched atop a grass stem. Its wings are twice as long as its body, more than enough to carry that broad head and far-flung eyes. What on earth can it be? Next day, painting the picnic table, we paint around the leg where someone similar but bright green is stuck to a partial case made of paper and spider silk.

My son sees the news.

“That cicada is so late.

He should be dead now.”

July 6

The first groundhog pup was dead before it could squeak. The second, larger, shaken violently and flung down and shaken again, landed on its feet, spun to the attacking dogs, lunged forward and barked up their flared black nostrils.

Remember this face:

Never bother me again.

First Groundhog Rights Day.

June 28

Recently fledged birds look more or less like their parents, except they follow around their mirror image with their mouth open, screeching for tidbits. They do not know the facts of life: do not go into the kitchen; that cat is not your friend; the square of sky behind the house is really glass, and will break your neck, judo-like, with the force of your own vitality. Swing wide past the corner.

Baby woodpeckers

in the parlor and porches:

learning not to die.

June 21

The grass is getting tall now, the wild roses getting higher and pumping out flowers with equal vigor. All around us, hidden animals explode from secret resting places in the vegetation. Grass waves and earth rumbles with the shock of their hooves.

Why are fawns speckled?

Their mothers eat white roses

before they are born.

June 11

Almost the longest day of the year without ever getting light out: a good season for bare-root fruit trees, or sleeping. The hay grasses, prepared to flower, droop to the ground. The scent of multiflora hangs invisible on the trail; sweetbriars that went over the fence a century ago hang illustration-like from old apple trees.

Corgi snuffling.

Rabbit shot from grass cannon.

Too wet to give chase.

May 14

Fragrant and enormously busy orchard. Scent of apples, lilacs, honey-smelling euphorbia. White clouds in the sky, white flecks on the green, green trail—strawberry flowers or blown apple petals: fruit sooner or later. Warblers in four colors and orioles in PennDOT orange, detouring traffic around their work areas.

Bluebird flits from branch

of blossoms to bonsai jin—

dead apples still bear.