Midsummer 2021

The sky is dark and soft, and the air is filled with the scent of a brewing storm.  But the grey of the cloudy sky has its magic, for, in the absence of the blinding summer sunlight, I can look straight upward at the sky. Dozens of songbirds and their fledglings are scattered in a crowded, busy silhouette against the grey.  I don't know if there are always so many at the edge of the woods when I walk here, but they are remarkable today.

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Green is the grass and the leaves of trees,
Green is the smell of a country breeze.
Green is a coolness you get in the shade
Of the tall old woods
Where the moss is made.
Green is an olive, and a pickle.
The sound of green is a water trickle.
Green is the world after the rain,
Bright and bathed and beautiful again.

 - Mary O'Neill, What is Green?

Here at my thoughtful spot the dark sky is hidden by the engulfing, dancing shades of green and growing things.  Not a flower bloom is to be seen - the jewelweed is late this year - everything is all rich, deep, multi-hued green.  Even the oddly handsome little fellow who has decided to sit next to my mossy rock blends almost invisibly into the green around us.  He looks like some sort of Katydid, but I can't seem to identify him concretely. 

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The earth has donned her mantle of brightest green;
all things are glad and flourishing.

 - Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

There are candy-pink mimosa blooms, and the red and yellow honeysuckle, and the lacy cream blossoms of the elder tree just around the corner, over the hill, and beyond the little bend in the creek.  But in this little hollow of moss and tumbling water that I have come to love so well, there seems to be no need for such ornaments, lovely though they be.  It is perfect today in its unique, subdued sort of monochrome.  How different it looks from midsummer a year ago, when iridescent dancing damselflies and sparkling orange jewelweed blooms met me for the first time at this thoughtful spot.  How pleasant it has been to return to it often, and to glimpse the ever changing yet ever present beauty of this little place.  How quickly this year in my Thoughtful Spot has passed by.

And so... with the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow fast in movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The air has cooled in an instant, a rumble of thunder is overhead.  Old childhood words dance through my thoughts, as they always do in this particular sort of weather.  Wind's in the east, mist's blowing in/Like something is brewing, about to begin...