by Hal Borland
So many wildflowers now one can’t keep count. This is the time of burgeoning and swift, insistent growth. Wild raspberries, the little black-caps, come to white blossom. Wild grapes, sprawling on the riverbank and climbing the trees, seem to grow a foot a day. All the bush dogwoods are in flower, tufted with white. Shadblow, foamy, filmy white when May began, fades after ten days or so.
The fruit trees are huge bouquets. All are loud with hungry bees. Pear trees are pure white, cherries pink, apples pink as the buds open, then white. When apple blossoms open I go to find showy orchis in damp, leafmoldy places, and always find it in bloom too. Wild ginger blooms with its three-lipped brown cups close to the root. Late bloodroot and anemones are nearby. They all like the same kind of soil.
Of all the birds, the busiest seem to be the fox sparrows, the towhees, and the redstarts. The fox sparrow, to my mind the jauntiest of all sparrows and one of the biggest, is conspicuous for his rich cinnamon-brown crown and tail; I see him scratching like a Leghorn hen among the old leaves in the flower garden. The towhee, only a little bigger than the fox sparrow, is also an energetic leaf-scratcher, but he carries his warm cinnamon-brown on his sides, has a black head and back and a white belly, really eye-catching. Some call him chewink, for the most common of his calls, and some know him as the ground-robin. The redstart is a flutterer who dives after insects the way a flycatcher does. He is one of the larger warblers and one of the few warblers with much black plumage—predominately black except for red wing and tail patches and a light-colored belly. In May the redstarts are busy on my lawn and surprisingly tame. I seldom see a redstart or a towhee as late as mid-June, though I know they nest in my area.
By late May the June bugs, big, bumbling scarab beetles, thump the screens at night and bang at outdoor lights. They look and fly like awkward tin insects, and if one gets indoors, it lies on its back on the floor, legs waving, like a mechanical toy running down. There are dozens of different kinds, but all are big and bumbly and, like moths, can’t resist the light.
June
The big surge of green is past. Now there will be several weeks of urgent growth before the Midsummer lull when that growth will be completed and the energies will go into seed maturing. Trees are a more uniform green. Meadows are lush. Farmers begin to cut hay, always early, I think, but always on time. The undergrowth in the woods is full-leafed, a green carpet waist-deep.
Pasture roses are in bloom along the fence rows. Wild strawberries ripen in the grass. Yarrow is in bloom, gray-white. Daisies frost the roadside. The first black-eyed Susans appear, orange-yellow and eye-catching. We pick our first garden peas and luxuriate in garden asparagus and new lettuce, scallions and radishes.
Young woodchucks appear outside the dens. Up in the woods I see a mother partridge, who squawks, drags a wing, feigning injury, tries to lure me away from her brood of chicks. The chicks are no bigger than a dandelion bloom and scatter at her signal, vanish. I stand still and look, finally see one chick wink an eye, the only motion it makes, and thus can distinguish it from a dot of shadow in the dead leaves. Perfectly color-protected, the chicks hide by squatting motionless among the woodland litter. Baby raccoons begin to travel with their mother, chiefly at night.
Garden iris is in bloom, and ruby-throat hummingbirds are feeding at it until the bee balm, still in bud, opens. Another few weeks and they will be at the jewelweed, another favorite. Nettles are thick along the garden fence. A few drops of 2–4D solution, applied with an oilcan to each of them, stops them in their tracks.
Baby barn swallows are so big they crowd the nest. The parents force them out, make them learn to fly. Two evenings of practice and they are flying circles over the river, catching mosquitoes.
Kingbirds are still nesting. Kingbirds are tough fighters, but a ruby-throat hummingbird can rout a kingbird. I’ve seen it happen.
Red squirrels are birthing. Cottontails have a second litter. I found a litter, only a few days old, in a nest under a rosebush in the flower garden. Young gray squirrels, half grown, are out and climbing, but stiff-tailed with fear at leaping in the treetops.
A big snapping turtle digs a hole for eggs in the pasture 200 yards from the river. She is there several hours, covers the eggs with dirt, then goes back to the river. The sun will hatch the eggs and the young will make their way to water they never saw.
Spring peepers are now through the tadpole stage, have lost their tails, are frogs the size of a honey bee. Cattails are in bloom. And wild iris, beautiful deep purple that catches the eye in the bogland.
The Summer Solstice occurs about June 21. The year’s longest span of daylight comes, and from here on, till December’s Winter Solstice, nights will slowly lengthen, days diminish. Summer has begun by the almanac, but the light already leans toward Fall.
July
Wasps are nesting. Mud wasps try to build their adobe structures on my front porch, have to be discouraged. I let them build in the garage. They build the nest cells, paralyze spiders with their sting, stuff the nests with spiders and caterpillars, lay the eggs. Eggs will hatch and wasp larvae will have food at hand. In the garden I see dozens of holes in the path where ground wasps are laying eggs. I resent them there, for their tempers are short. Then I see them stocking those nests with bugs from my potato vines. Two days and they have cleaned the vines. I change my tune. Welcome, wasps!
Few bird songs except in early morning and at dusk. Robins never sing at midday now. Sometimes I hear the brown thrasher in mid-afternoon, more musical than a catbird but just as versatile, almost as talented as the South’s mockingbird. The thrasher repeats his phrases, each one twice over. As dusk comes on I hear the mourning doves and the wood thrush, that magnificent contralto. And at dusk the whippoorwills begin to call. Just now they start at 8:15—I can almost set my watch by them. But I deplore the habits of a few who also sing at 3:30 a.m. Sing? Well, call. One night I lay awake and counted 456 calls in a row from one bird. John Burrows once counted three times that many in one series.
Queen Anne’s lace is in full bloom. Chickory flowers at the roadside. And the first goldenrod, late in the month, which somehow makes it seem later than it is. Bouncing Bet makes a pleasant pink-white accent—it will be blooming till hard frost. And wild bergamot now is in full bloom, mostly the lavender here, but a few patches of bee balm, the deep crimson variety. Bumblebees compete with the hummingbirds for bergamot nectar.
Wild raspberries, black-caps, begin to ripen. Up in the woods I find the first bloom of the lavender-flowered raspberry, big as a wild rose, beautiful; but the berries that follow are insipid. At the roadside a creeping raspberry with small white bloom is in flower; its berries will be sweet but few next month.
Moles are busy, heaving runs across the lawn. It’s a toss-up what to do. They eat grubs that feed on grass roots, but the moles kill the grass over their runs. I give in, invite a neighbor to come and gas them with his cyanide gun. Let them kill the grubs in the pasture.
I see raccoon tracks in the mud at the river’s edge. And a fresh corncob. They have been helping themselves to my sweet corn before I got a taste. I look, and they are right; it’s ready.
A doe and two fawns are in the edge of the pasture at dawn, the fawns well spotted.
Frogs clunk the night. And an old drake, probably one of the black ducks that nested in the reeds just upstream, has the bad habit of squawking loudly two hours before dawn. I see a mother swimming near the far bank with eight ducklings in her wake. They keep to the shadows, wary of hawks, muskrats, turtles.
Bush dogwood has green berries in clusters. The birds have cleaned the shadbushes of their fruit—I didn’t get a taste. Milkweed is in bloom, sweet as tuberose. I look for the tiny golden beetle in the dogbane blossoms. And for the pink and yellow moth, only an inch long, in the evening primroses at the roadside.
The big moths are out now, the spectacular ones. At night the lovely light green Lunas, with the long, trailing “tails” on their wings, come to the screened wi
ndows and fray those fragile wings trying to reach the light inside. Occasionally I find a Polyphemus on the screen. This big brown moth, sometimes six inches across, has one big blue “eye” and one yellow one on each hind wing.
In the flower garden at dusk I see Sphinx moths, dusky brown, hovering at the petunias and nicotiana. As a boy I thought I had found a hummingbird at the giant evening primroses on the High Plains of Colorado. I caught it and held in my hand the first Sphinx moth I had ever seen. And I marveled, as I still do, at the coiled tongue case which it can straighten out, like a beak, to reach deep into a flower to tap a hidden nectar sac. I didn’t know then that this lovely moth was once a big, ugly green tomato worm in the vegetable garden. It still seems incredible.
I always think of the roadside asters as Fall flowers, but most years I find the panicled white asters competing with the daisies at the roadsides, often in veritable clouds of blossom, by mid-July. The branching stem, with a host of tiny white flowers, sometimes grows six feet or more tall. And by mid-July I often find Joe Pye weed, another “Fall” flower, coming to magenta-crimson bloom in a damp spot beside my pasture brook. It catches my eye because the lance-shaped leaves at the tip, just below the buds, are flushed with the same color that marks the blossom. It reminds me that daylight shrinks, Fall approaches.
August
Dog days. Algae thick on the stagnant water at the bog, and a steamy smell of ferment and rotting vegetation. And mosquitoes. I am content to watch the bog from a little distance, preferably in the evening and with a breeze, which keeps the mosquitoes in the bog and off of me. The swallows are busy there at that time of day, caracoling, feeding in the air. What would we do without swallows?
Dragonflies and damsel flies follow the boat when I go out on the river, curious. Some are still laying eggs, dipping into the water with the tips of their abdomens to lay them. Water striders swarm in the warm shallows, dart about like skaters. None of the fish bites well, probably sated with natural food ready at hand. Little spotted turtles sun themselves on old logs, slip into the water when I come near. I hear a bittern thumping in a backwater slew, but can’t catch sight of him. A great blue heron stares moodily at me, awks testily, and flaps into the air, trailing its long legs as it flies down the river.
Flocks of cowbirds follow the cows in the pasture, but they are getting restless. Orioles begin to sing more often, but the robins sing little, scold much. Bobolinks, a great flock of them, are restless in a damp meadow not far from here; I see many of this year’s young ones in the flock. The yellow-breasted chat that was so noisy just up the river a few weeks ago is silent. The barn swallows begin to leave, and so do the chimney swifts; I see fewer of them than even two weeks ago.
Goldenrod in bloom everywhere. And asters. Even the big purple New England asters now are in bloom, some of them five feet tall. But relatively few other wildflowers. Daisies hold on, and so does Queen Anne’s lace. The sunflowers are at their prime. Milkweeds have formed their pods, still green and tightly closed. Wild clematis (virgin’s-bower) sheds its small white petals and what were blossoms become twisted tangles of wiry green stamens; they will gray with age and justify the name Old Man’s Beard in a few more weeks. Wild cucumber vines bear their soft-prickled, thumb-sized pods. Wild blackberries ripen.
Green acorns hang on the oaks, green cones on the pines. The nightshade’s purple star flowers turn to green berries. Pimbina, the high bush cranberry, begins to show orange on its fruit, to ripen to cranberry red in a few more weeks. We freeze sweet corn and lima beans. Pickles can wait a bit. Chokecherries ripen, and if we would make jelly of them we must compete with the birds. The same is true of the elderberries, which weight the brittle branches so heavily that when the birds swoop to the harvest they break the stems.
By August’s end the warblers are moving through here again, on their way south. But more quietly than they came north in May. I see them, but I have to listen to hear them. Now and then I hear a burst of special song, a house wren that just can’t contain himself another hour. But nothing like the flood of song he made in May and June. I hear a fox bark in the night.
The Summer wanes, well before the Equinox.
September
The sunflowers we grow ripen, and the chickadees know it before I do. They flock and feed, and I cut the heavy sunflower heads to dry and shell and dole out during the Winter. But good to see the chicks again. They have been up in the woods all Summer.
One year, the first week in September, I saw a huge flock of nighthawks starting their migration. There were thousands, circling slowly in a stream that must have been two miles long. I watched them almost an hour before they passed my house. Such sights are rare.
Whippoorwills sometimes continue to call here till well into September. One year I heard one the first week in October, but that was most unusual.
Flickers gather in flocks, ready to migrate, and move restlessly up and down the valley. They will act this way for several weeks, then be on their way. Robins chatter and also flock, but still call this home. But my Winter birds begin to appear by mid-September. I see a brown creeper or two, a few nuthatches, quite a few whitethroat sparrows, now and then a couple of juncos. Blue jays are more noisy. They were either quiet or outvoiced most of the Summer. And the crows talk loudly. They were very noisy a month ago, bringing their young off the nests, screaming at them and at each other; then they were quiet for a bit. Now they are shrill again, talking of days ahead when they will own the valley. Catbirds are quiet, strangely subdued. I see no more kingbirds; they have gone south.
Sumac always shows traces of red in August, here and there. Now it begins to color in earnest. And some maples show color, on only a few branches. Tiny seedling maples turn early, like children being sent to bed before the grownups. The elm trees look tired and rusty and begin to shed old leaves, crisp and sere and tattered.
Our Fall rains begin. Brooks that were mere trickles all through August chatter again. I hear them in the stillness of the night. There is a yellow tinge to the birches, which turns to gold as the month advances. The aspens and cottonwoods shake down their leaves, thick and leathery, in the wind; they have turned a green-gold, not really yellow. White-ash leaves begin to turn. At a certain stage they look almost blue to me, from a distance; close up they are still green tinged with shades of yellow. As box elder trees, ash-leafed maples really, begin to shed their leaves I see their big tufts of seed, twin keys like the other maples. Those seeds cling to the branches far into Winter, quite unlike the other maples.
First frost often comes in late September. If light, it does no harm to the color in the trees. Hard frost kills the color before it really comes. The old myth of Jack Frost painting the leaves is all wrong, contrary to fact. We have our best color in a mild, dry Autumn.
Wild grapes ripen. We pick, simmer, and make jelly. Birds love the grapes. So do foxes, and ’possums.
Milkweed pods are silvery green and ripen daily, pop open, strew seeds to the wind. Sweet gum and sassafras become vivid with reds and oranges. Squirrels are busy harvesting nuts and acorns. I mark the crop on the hazelnut bushes each year, hoping to get some, but the squirrels always get there first. Bittersweet ripens, tan husks opening to reveal the orange berries.
The Autumn Equinox passes scarcely noticed. The season is well ahead of the almanac, always. All September belongs to Autumn.
October
Traditionally, Columbus Day, October 12, is the height of the color in my part of New England. It seldom varies a week either way. By then, in most Autumns, the soft maples are ruby-red, the sugar maples are dazzling gold, and the oaks have begun to show their leathery browns and purples as well as an occasional splash of burgundy. I am always so overwhelmed by the color that I can’t really see the trees. Now and then we have a day with mist at this time of year, sometimes fog enough to mask the hills; and then I always go out to look because the backdrop is at least half hidden and the individual trees in the foreground stand out.
The goldenrod has begun to fade. The Fall asters are uneven, but the big purples ones, the New England asters, are still making a vivid show. Bouncing Bet still stands, pinkish white, along most of the roadsides. Queen Anne’s lace has largely matured and begun to form those heads often called “birds’ nests,” actually the bare stems of the flower head now curled into a fist-size ball. The last of the chickory flowers make vivid blue accents here and there. Joe Pye weed and ironweed are past their prime but still in some color. The sumac seed heads stand out as the crimson leaves fall.
Goldfinches are busy at the ripe thistle heads; they have begun to show their inconspicuous Fall and Winter plumage and may be mistaken for sparrows now. Flickers flock in my pasture early in the month and are gone south by the twentieth. The hawks begin to migrate and are sometimes seen in sizable flocks. Some of the Winter birds appear in greater numbers—juncos, chickadees, tree sparrows, nuthatches, particularly. Some of these species migrate somewhat, going a hundred miles or so north to nest, then coming back for the Winter. They mingle with those that nested here, all of them more evident now that the leaves are falling and the other birds have gone south. Even some blue jays make a short annual migration. But they come back to my corn crib for the Winter. Some years we have a minor Winter population of the red-breasted nuthatches, a more northern species than the white-breasted ones we always have. But the red-breasts come later, in December.
Woodchucks are almost ready to hibernate, though I have seen one out as late as mid-November. Chipmunks are very busy building Winter nests and stocking granaries for their long retirement. Gray squirrels are busy in the woods. I find a litter of acorn cups under every white oak, a litter of green hulls and opened shells under the hickories. Now I can see squirrel nests high in the trees, big as crows’ nests and only one degree tidier.