Goodness! I can’t believe it. It’s mid-June already — “knee-deep in June,” as James Whitcomb Riley said in one of my favorite poems. The first day of summer, which is also the longest day of the year, is just ahead. The season starts at 1:04 a.m. on June 21.
Each day now we have some 15 hours of daylight. Just six months ago, in mid-December, we had only about nine hours per day.
The long days of summer are fine with me. If there is ever a time to spend at least a few minutes of the day appreciating Earth’s generosity, late June is the best time to do it in Georgia. As Riley said, now is the time “to jes’ git out and rest, and not work at nothin’ else!”
Take time now to smell the roses, whether they’re growing in your garden or wild in the fields and roadsides. “Tis June, the fairest month of all, bright June, the month of roses,” wrote poet Elva May Root.
June has been called predictable as sunrise, a month with its own serenity. The sometimes violent weather patterns of spring are giving way to the more stable weather of summer. With the trees and shrubs fully leafed out, the color green dominates the landscape.
The pastel-colored woodland flowers, the “ephemerals,” that bloomed so prolifically in April and May are all but gone, replaced by the brightly hued flowers of summer — black-eyed Susan, oxeye daisy, Turk’s cap lily, black cohosh, cardinal flower, Queen Anne’s lace, bull thistle, fleabane, prickly pear, passion vine, butterfly weed and many others.
One of my particularly favorite wildflowers now is the neon-orange trumpet vine flower, a big favorite of ruby-throated hummingbirds. Fewer scenes are more beautiful in nature than a hummingbird hovering over a trumpet flower, sipping the nectar.
By the way, several folks say they’ve had no hummers this year. I say give it until July 4, when the tiny birds’ nesting season is over and they begin fattening up for fall migration.
Songbirds are singing throughout most of the day now. In North Georgia’s woodlands, the ovenbird, the Johnny-one-note of the bird world, knows only one song and sings it repeatedly. At the other end of the scale, our state bird, the brown thrasher, is singing from a repertoire of hundreds of songs.
IN THE SKY: The moon will be first quarter on June 16, rising out of the east around lunch time and setting in the west around midnight, said David Dundee, Tellus Science Museum astronomer. Mercury and Venus are in the west just after dark. Venus sets about an hour later. Mercury and Venus will appear close to each other on the evening of June 20. Saturn is high in the east just after dark and will appear near the moon on June 19. Jupiter and Mars can't be easily seen right now.
