Beginnings of Summer

Five minutes before Neighbor Aaron and I completed installing the retractable awning over the south-facing deck last Sunday, the Nineties descended upon us like a brick kiln in the Mojave Desert in August. OK: I exaggerate, but only a little. But after three days in the low 90's, we feel the effects of having endured more than 270 degrees of a rogue Michigan summer. Too much, too soon, and the river is as low as it ever gets.

The still-dripping raccoon above almost fell victim to a deer stampede I caused as I approached the river. Seven or eight very comfortable deer leapt up, snorted, and thrashed through the river, where it seems the young raccoon had been hoping for crawfish or mussels when all hell broke loose from the left bank.

King birds and Peewees have recently returned. The songs of Northern Orioles and Scarlet Tanagers interweave in the mornings. Veeries send out their elusive song from the woods in the river bottom. Great Crested Flycatchers seem to be everywhere. Barn and Tree Swallows pursue flying insects in the air close around the house. Our "prairie dogs" are busy in their burrows and running through the grass, and their population seems to have spiked this year.

Alison is training very well for the Marquette Fifty-Miler in August. She whines almost constantly about being "slow" or that her legs feel like lead, but she is a disciplined, dedicated runner. Two days from now, she and a couple of friends will run the Bay Shore Marathon in Traverse City (while I read and sip coffee on the porch of the cottage). Then we drive to South Carolina for an eight- or nine-day visit, at the end of which she will run a 50K in the mountains near Mountain Rest, SC. The scenery will be breath-taking, as will the long, steep hills, but this will be an important training run for the Fifty-Miler in the Marquette National Forest, not least because it will get her accustomed to steep mountains, inadequately marked trails, deer flies, mosquitoes, roots, loose rocks, copperheads, and bears.

Otherwise, Oyster Mushrooms and Damsel Flies.