August

August was named for Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor, who lived from 63 B.C to A.D 14.  Much of the month is included in the dog days of summer, when the hottest days typically occur, when dogs and men alike tend to go mad from the heat.  It’s a big month for vacationing, for home canning, for swimming in lakes when water temperatures are at a seasonal high.  It’s a month when warm, humid nights are alive with the drone of cicadas, katydids and crickets, when summer, though still firmly engaged, begins to show evidence of submission.

Bird migration has begun, and almost daily we see swifts, swallows and martins winging their way south in loose groups.  The orioles have left, shorebirds are on the move, grackles and blackbirds gather in fall flocks.  Restless.  Flighty.

In the garden, ripened sunflower seeds are picked clean by goldfinches.  Overripe tomatoes plop to the ground.  Potato vines wither. Butterflies and hummingbirds stock up on nectar from zinnias at the garden edge.  Three months ago we were dropping seeds in the ground, and today the freezer and pantry are full to bursting.  

In spring it’s easy to take notice of toothworts and Dutchman’s breeches and bloodroot.  Spring flowers garner worthy attention as they light up forest floors awakened from winter dormancy.  The flowers of late summer are no less varied, abundant, and impressive but many aren’t fussed over so much, perhaps because things green and growing have become routine and we’ve stopped looking.  We can’t help but notice field thistles and goldenrods and giant sunflowers, but the less obvious knotweeds, skullcaps, bugleweeds, willowherbs, snakeroots, and nearly endless others, are often met with little more than a casual glance.

Maybe it’s anticipation. We look forward to spring wildflowers as indicators of a new season, a clean slate.  By the time August rolls around we’re caught in the summer doldrums, hardened by heat and a sea of green, and maybe not so thrilled by yet another flower, especially if it doesn’t stand out.

But summer is ebbing.  It shows in the walnuts that litter the woodland trail, in the stickseed entangled in the dog’s fur. It’s there in the sound of hickory nuts banging off the metal roof of the pole barn.  And soon a spell of hot weather will be short-lived and the nights will be cooler and we’ll rummage through dressers for sweatshirts and socks. The fields will brown, the trees will take on new color, and the night insects will grow quiet.  Frost is still weeks away but its promise is shown in August.

Our two sons are somewhere high in the sierras, carrying their provisions on their backs.  They are hiking across one hundred million year old granite, following waterways at 10,000 ft and higher, exploring the western backbone of the US, a place naturalist John Muir called the Range of Light.  Knowing them as I do, the boys will not be blind to the details they encounter, and they’ll view that spectacular alpine country through eyes that recognize how fragile and vulnerable it is.  All around them the fires burn, the land dries, the drought intensifies.  The worst of the California fire season typically comes in September and October, but already there are over 800 more fires burning a million acres beyond the average for this time of year.  California, and other many western states, are breaking long held norms.

August falls in hurricane season and a mean storm has struck Louisiana.  The region braces for 150 mph winds and intense flooding.

In comparison, those of us in the Midwest are fairing pretty well.  There are areas that could use rain and others that have had too much.  It’s hot, and right now that’s about all the weather drama we can muster.  There’s plenty of other drama, of course, plenty to get worked up over, much of it beyond our control.  

Paraphrasing a post from Wyoming resident John Roedel, we live on a spinning wet rock next to a constantly exploding fireball in the middle of an ever-expanding universe filled with mysteries beyond our wildest imagination. We’re hurtling through the great expanse with billions of people who have free-will and whose own experiences shape their perspectives and beliefs. And while this is going on our souls are residing in a physical body, a miracle of delicate engineering, which at any given moment could produce its last heartbeat. So, what is it we think we control?

There is an abundance of small but dramatic August flowers blooming.  Look for them.