The Taurus Sun warms the land so quickly that I keep having to watch closely where I am and what is happening. The middle of Deep Summer is not so far away, and I wonder how far, and I measure time ahead in flowers and fruit and seeds.
And I count: just one more week to strawberry pie and rhubarb pie, and then two weeks until the first orange daylily blossoms, and three weeks until roses flower, and four weeks until thistles bloom in the fields and the first mulberries are sweet enough for picking, and five weeks until wild black raspberries ripen, and six weeks until the very longest days of the year when fledgling robins call in the bushes and fireflies mate in the night, and seven weeks until farmers cut their winter wheat all across the country, when cicadas chant in the hot and humid days, and eight weeks until thistles turn to down and silver queen Anne’s lace sways in the roadsides, and nine weeks until sycamore bark starts to fall, marking the center of Deep Summer, and ten weeks to the seasons of peaches and blueberries, the time of singing crickets and katydids after dark.
This is Bill Felker with Poor Will’s Almanack. I’ll be back again next week with notes for the third week of Late Spring and the second week of the Golden Buttercup Moon. In the meantime, it’s ok if you don’t count weeks. Just stay right here with the first peonies and mock orange and lilacs and everything is just beginning and is perfect the way it is.
