Sweet Songs of Summer



So many summer songs! Sit on the porch in the evening and listen to the grand variety of insect sounds – sweet or shrill, soft or metallic, melodic or droning.  Unlike good children who are seen but not heard, summer insects are usually heard but not seen. 

 It all begins with the sweet piping of the spring peepers.  As the soft gray pussy willows turn to yellow catkins, the volume of this cheerful chorus grows almost deafening until the skunk cabbage leaves rise to fill the marsh when it peters out.

When April slips into May another frog choir made up of the greens and the leopards tunes up at the edges of the pond as dusk falls.  These fellows (girl frogs hardly ever speak, much less talk back) are followed by the belching “chuggarums” of the bullfrogs.

Soon the tree toads start, a happy trilling from the treetops. And by July the evening is filled with the rasp of the katydids.  As the days grow hot and sultry we hear the scratchy buzz of the cicadas, constant and monotonous.

Then all too soon we hear the cricket’s serenade, the finale of summer’s sounds.  As the days grow shorter and woodland green turns to scarlet and gold, this black instrumentalist appears from wherever he’s been hiding, tunes up his squeaky violin and offers us a plaintive requiem.  When those sweet notes are gone, autumn has buried the gardener’s season under a blanket of fallen leaves.

The joyful chorus of the peepers each April tells us spring has arrived.  These tiny creatures are less than an inch in size, but their “pee-eep,” two notes between B and E two octaves above middle C, can travel over open meadows for more than a mile.  They get their Latin name, Hyla crucifer, because of the small black cross on their brown backs.  Like bigger frogs their tiny throats balloon out just like bubble gum with each peep.

Tree frogs, Hyla versicolor, are not much bigger than peepers, and as you might guess from their Latin name, can be brown, gray, green or mottled.  They start life as minute tadpoles, but as soon as they replace their gills and tails with lungs and feet, these little frogs hop to land and head for the trees.  They have large disks on both their fingers and toes to make climbing easy.  Their enthusiastic trill is at least an octave below the peeper’s song.

One rarely sees the tree frog, but one year there was such a  stupendous trilling in our front yard that we went out to look.  Apparently dozens of tadpoles had suddenly turned into tree frogs all at the same time.  Hopping up the bank from the pond, they’d mistaken Bridget’s bike for a tree.  The handlebars and seat were solid tiny frogs, squished together and trilling with all their might.  What a sight!

The cicadas,  from the 17-year variety, which remains underground for that length of time, to the annual, dog-day cicada, which is the primary food of the digger wasp, all emerge from the soil in August and live in the treetops, enjoying the hot weather and making their atonal buzzing both day and night.  But they live for only a few short weeks before returning to the ground to lay their eggs and die.

The great green katydid is a long-horned grasshopper, who makes his summer noise by scraping the toothed file on his left wing with the “scraper” on his right wing.  Normally he picks his tuneless banjo only twice, “ka-ty” but sometimes three times, “ka-ty-did.” He’s likely to repeat one or the other 30,000,000 times a summer.

All too soon we’ll be hearing the cricket’s requiem that ends the summer’s symphony.  Enjoy it while it lasts. 

Teaching Kids a Love of Nature



I became a great grandmother on March 16^th, but it was only this past week that I finally met my first great grandson.  I feel very flattered that Twain (no relation to Mark.) has my middle name, Evans, as his middle name.  Such a smiley baby! I’ve yet to see him cry. 

Having a new small child sitting in the garden on Locust Hill has reminded me of all the years I spent educating children about the joys of Mother Nature. I guess I was too busy to teach my girls much except how to weed and pick the beans, but I had a grand time teaching my grandchildren.

I have six, but sad to say, Trum’s two girls grew up far away in Oregon, and Tam’s girl and boy far away in New Orleans.

Fortunately Bridget’s two boys spent summers on Locust Hill in their early years, and were constantly helping me in the garden.  

Eli, pictured above, was particularly enthusiastic, even as a toddler.  Both he and Reed learned a lot about what grew on Locust Hill, and when they were seven and nine I sent them on a treasure hunt together to see how much knowledge of the farm they’d acquired.

I wrote out my clues on white cardboard and tucked them in a variety of places. “Look behind the biggest pumpkin for your next clue.” “Where are the sunflowers?”  “Your next clue is hiding under a delphinium.”  “Tired?  Have a rest on great grandfather’s big swing.” The two boys raced around Locust Hill and had no trouble finding the clues, galloping up to the manure pile behind the barn to check out the pumpkin patch and remembering the sunflowers I’d planted way down by Hank’s shop. 

The treasure hunt was such a success that the next summer I designed a scavenger hunt, giving each grandchild a basket and a list of things to find.  The list included items such as a birch tree catkin, a stinging nettle, a poppy seed capsule, a feather, some frog eggs, a ripe raspberry, and a pachysandra leaf. They had a real struggle to figure out that long word!

Reed was smart enough to hold onto an old rag when he pulled his stinging nettle, knowing how to avoid the awful itch.  Eli knew about the itch, too, and explained that he'd picked a beautiful blue lobelia as a substitute. 

The last thing on each list was “the most beautiful thing and the ugliest thing you can find.”  Reed’s choices were a perfect lemon lily bloom and a festering, moldy apple that had been floating in the pond for a week. Eli’s choices were a bird’s pale blue broken egg shell and some scummy green algae vegetating in a neglected birdbath.

It was very satisfying to discover how much knowledge of flora and fauna my grandchildren had absorbed in their short lives.  I hope in a few years that baby Twain will be as much fun to teach. 

I’d like to remind everyone that the Norfolk Library’s fabulous book sale will be held on August 25^th and 26^th from 11 to 3PM.  There have been many more books donated than in past years.  From the first of June until the deadline on July 31^st, the 40 foot long ramp that slides the donations down to my sorting table was solidly full of boxes day after day. 

Obviously dozens of people have switched to “E-books” and decided to give the library what I call their “Real Books.” As a result over 100 hard-cover novels in mint condition have been donated this year.   And as usual, there are beautiful books in all the other categories,  from History and Biography to Gardening and Cooking, Sports and Science and of course hundreds of children's books.  There are 14 categories in all, so do come browse and buy.