Phenology Daybook: June 20, 2020

June 20th

The 171st Day of the Year

From brightening fields of ether fair-disclosed,

Child of the sun, refulgent Summer comes.

James Thomson

Sunrise/set: 5:06/8:07

Day’s Length: 15 hours 1 minute

Average Hi/Lo: 83/62

Average Temperature: 72

Record High: 100 – 1888

Record Low: 47 – 1980

Weather

Rain occurs a little more than half the time on June 20, making this the day with the greatest likelihood for precipitation since June 2. Clouds completely cover the sky three years in ten. Chances of highs in the 90s rise to 25 percent; 80s come 35 percent of the years, 70s thirty percent, 60s just one year in ten. The odds for a cool night in the 40s or 50s remain steady at the mid-June level of three in ten.

Natural Calendar

Throughout the Midwest and East, milkweed bugs appear for Milkweed Blooming Season. In the mild nights it is Giant Cecropia Moth Emerging Season; throughout the days it is Monarch Butterfly Caterpillar Season. Across the countryside, the last week of Early Summer brings Wild Black Raspberry Season, Golden Wheat Season. Garden seasons include Great Blue Hosta Season, Gooseneck Season and Russian Sage Season. Damselfly Season and Lizard’s Tail Season reach their peak by the water. Elderberry Blooming Season and Yellow Sundrop Season and Black-Eyed Susan Season are visible from the freeways. Enchanter’s Nightshade Season joins Honewort Season in the dark woods. Chigger Season and Mosquito Season and Tick Season make outside activities more challenging.

Daybook

1981: Wild black raspberry season began in the yard today.

1983: Scarlet pimpernel found at Wilberforce today.

1984: First yucca seen in bloom (held back by the cold spring).

1986: Milkweed bloom is well underway now.

1987: Night walk: only a handful of crickets chirping, fireflies no thicker than at home, small moths crossing my way, no mosquitoes. It was warm and close in the woods, cold and wet out in the open fields of Middle Prairie. Mist became much thicker after eleven o’clock. Full moon rising in the southeast, Arcturus overhead, Regulus and Leo west, Spica in Virgo, Vega behind Hercules, then Altair, Deneb with Cygnus. Wingstem, blackberry, ironweed, daisy fleabane, soapwort, elderberry, all easily identified under the moon and stars. Timothy was sweet: I pulled and chewed the entire walk.

1990: Madison, Wisconsin: Peonies late full bloom, mock orange, coral bells, primrose, catalpas, snow-on-the-mountain, all the clovers, spurge, nodding thistles, honeysuckles, panicled dogwood are in the middle of their seasons, two to three weeks behind Yellow Springs. In the late morning, I drove up into northern Minnesota: the wheat (which is nearly all gold in Ohio) hasn’t started to turn yet, and sugar beets are six inches high.

1995: Boise, Idaho to Portland, Oregon: As we drove west, the landscape became richer, and more like to the fabric of Yellow Springs. Cow parsnips, yarrow, late potentilla, moth mullein, yellow sweet cover, milkweed, great mullein, and Canadian thistles were in full bloom (the thistles at early June Ohio levels). Boise’s wheat was half turned, even green in some fields, like the wheat around Yellow Springs a week ago. Late iris near Boise, iris done close to Portland. Blackberries in full flower from Portland down to the coast.

2001: Madison, Wisconsin: For the most part, this Wisconsin season is close to Yellow Spring’s this year. Potentilla, spirea, hosta, daisies, tall meadow rue, yarrow, white-flowered waterleaf, spiderwort, honewort, daylilies, snow-on-the-mountain all close to southern Ohio level. False prairie indigo common, full bloom. Avens are open here, as are Asiatic dayflowers. Still, I saw one peony bush still in flower, one Solomon’s seal, remnants of Late Spring. Poke milkweed identified in Tat’s back yard, flowers just starting.

2002: Robin chorus strong when I got up at 4:15 a.m. The first cardinal sang at 4:28, the first doves at 4:30, first titmouse at 4:41, blue jay at 4:45, wren at 5:00. By the time the bees came out at 6:30, the robins and cardinals were silent. By 6:00, the morning exuberance had dissipated, midsummer silence setting in. By noon, the robins were clucking their mentoring sound. In the North Glen, avens and yellow touch-me-nots are in bloom. The cohosh has pale blue-green berries. The mood of the woods is quiet and dark. The first pink hollyhock and the first purple daylily opened in the north garden this morning.

2003: The first tall pink mallow opened in the north garden this morning.

2007: Several monarda plants have fully developed flowers this morning, and several of the red phlox buds have opened. Young robins and doves feeding in the yard, some robins opening their wings in the sun, stretching them out on the lawn as if to dry them. The finch feeders are full of golden finches. Small white bindweed flowers have disappeared in the alley, replaced by a mound of purple morning glories.

2008: Throughout the Glen, tall wood nettle, honewort, waterleaf, wingstem, ironweed, weathering May apples, and touch-me-nots have obscured the web of spring, all the trilliums, the violet cress, the ragwort, the purple phlox, toothwort, Jack-in-the pulpit and bluebells.

In my garden, giant hosta leaves have covered the foliage of snowdrops, aconites, crocus and scilla. Pigweed, creeping Charlie, wild violets, waterleaf, dandelions and amaranth have filled in all around the remnants of the April windflowers. The stalks of hyacinths, daffodils and tulips have fallen over and are ceding to the next planting of zinnias and Mexican sunflowers.

Listing of those flowers is like a recitation of historical facts. Like dates or events in human history, they are lost or do not make sense unless they are recreated in my mind. Memory and imagination tell the stories, fill in the setting with details of sound, taste, texture and color and odor, connect the stories to other stories.

The meaning of natural history, like the meaning of human history, is dependent on my reenactment of what I saw happen or of what I believed happened. Without the thinking of or the telling of what has occurred, things lose their place, become disconnected, make no sense. So I go back over what has taken place in the woods and garden. I relive as best I can the steps that brought me here, review their sequences pulled from underneath the overgrowths of previous phases. 

The sediment of passage dissolves so quickly. Natural science only goes part of the way. It is I who must move beyond the names and dates, defend imperfect memory and insufficient data with fantasy, fill in the past with my own truth. I am, like Emerson might suggest, “the owner of the sphere,” and I am responsible for not only my own narrative but for that of the world around me.

2009: First large cobweb from a long-bodied spider seen above the pond. Pale violet shading on the garlic mustard leaves and seedpods as they age. Some panicled dogwood holds in the alley, the alley overgrown with bamboo, honeysuckle, mulberry, tree of heaven.

2010: A Father’s Day ride to Chillicothe and then south and back home, maybe 200 miles: Wheat all deep brown throughout, one field cut. The roadsides were full of trefoil and red clover, black-eyed Susans, Queen Anne’s lace, butterfly weed, sweet clovers, mulleins. The corn was shoulder high or better in all the fields. Only a few washed-thin soybean fields showed signs of the heavy rains that had moved through so often earlier this month. The entire landscape was lush and verdant, the peak of Ohio Early Summer.

2011: Wheat is golden brown in most of the fields around Yellow Springs, corn three to four inches. Catalpas are shedding, linden trees very late bloom, first trumpet creeper flowers noticed on Limestone Street, some of the blossoms already fallen.

2012: I just noticed that Moya’s rose of Sharon has burst into bloom, the earliest I’ve ever recorded the flowering of that shrub. It must have come in several days ago, and I walked right by it without noticing. In the zinnias, the first Japanese beetle found. Coming home from the mall, we saw farmers harvesting their wheat. On my evening walk, I found Don’s rose of Sharon opening, and another with first flowers in the alley. Tremendous heat wave across the East, record highs in New Hampshire and Vermont. Temperatures in the 90s here for several days.

2014: Just south of town, wheat is a rich brown. Hemlock almost all to seed. Parsnips still yellow, moth mullein full near the Little Miami River. Corn and soybeans are lush and tall throughout the area. At home, the north garden color gathers momentum from the red roses, the orange ditch lilies, the blue and violet spiderwort, the Anna Belle and the hobblebush hydrangeas, the late full yellow primroses, the newly transplanted pink spirea, the first peach Oriental lily, the first full blossom of the heliopsis. The cream-colored leaves of the variegated knotweed offer an anchor at the west end. Milkweed buds are blushing, ready to open. Japanese honeysuckle vine, climbing the fences and through the forsythia and honeysuckle bushes, adds fragrance and texture to the southeast corner.

2015: Return from South Carolina: The landscape in southern Ohio is similar in color and strength to that of last year, but the yard and garden, sodden from the daily rains while I was gone, is much further along. Now the monarda is red, the Joe Pye with tight small buds, the primroses almost gone, the ditch lilies and heliopsis completely full, the Stella d’oros on the way down, all the hydrangeas full, especially the Anna Belle and the red-pink “Indomitable Spirit.” The deer have eaten at least two-dozen lily buds from various parts of the garden. The roses, stunted badly by the last two winters, are overgrown by annuals and perennials this year. And so the era of roses that Jeanie began thirty-five years ago is coming to a close, covered and replaced by more recent plantings. So many hostas have put out flower spikes while I was gone, the Great Blue beautiful in early bloom. And the trumpet creeper that Jeanie gave me put out its first orange trumpets.

2016: This morning I found that the deer had eaten many lily buds, a couple of primrose buds and half of the decorative amaranth tops while I had been gone over the weekend. Just like last year! I guess I forgot to spray again! In spite of that, there were twenty-eight lily plants in bloom this morning, down just a few from yesterday evening. A great spangled fritillary visited the garden this afternoon.

2017: Sixty-five ditch lily blossoms, fifteen Stella d’oros, seven Asiatics, two rebloomers, and the first standard day lily, a pink one – beginning the full day lily season – and  then in the evening, a small rust-colored one. The Joe Pye plants have developed small, tight bud clusters, and the wisteria is blooming again on new growth. Continual robin peeping throughout the day, earnest and loud. At John Bryant Park, only avens found in bloom. From Madison, Wisconsin, Tat writes: “Ditch lilies out all along the bike path; sweet rocket still hanging on; roses fading; small blue allium still blue.”

2018: A second day lily bloomed today, a pink one in the circle garden. The tall, floppy Asiatic lilies are in full flower, forty-two ditch lily blossoms, two day lilies, three Stella d’oros, one yellow rebloomer. Joe Pye with small bud clusters. Monarda starting. Large catbird warbling and warbling high in the spindly black walnut tree on the north border this morning at 8:10.

2019: Fishing in the evening, Hopewell, Virginia: the catfish are ending their spawn but are still not into summer mode. Three fish caught, ten to twenty pounds. We watched the gibbous moon rise over the James River, following Saturn and Jupiter, which were already well up in the southeast.

2020: Dog Day heat settles in. Eleven ditch lilies, three Stella d’oro lilies, one pond iris in bloom. Catbird at the suet.Nodding thistles open throughout the countryside, Canadian thistles holding back; usually they are earlier.

 

Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese.

David Abram

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