Summer Doldrums

This seems like more of a hellish summer than usual, which is what I think every year. Summer is always a time when I stay indoors with the air conditioner on if the heat and humidity get to extremely uncomfortable levels. Even when it is cool in the very early morning I have to dress in long sleeves and head covering, my pants tucked into my socks, to protect myself from the many insects that would otherwise bite any uncovered area.

Summer flowers - coneflower, zinnias, daisies,
coreopsis (Margo D. Beller)

This year's weather has produced enough rain to make me glad I did not call for the sprinkler to be turned on, and to produce mushrooms in the lawn. It has kept my half-dead dogwood tree alive and given my yard guy gainful employment.

The rain has been good for my cannas and my flowers, including the zinnia and marigold seeds I planted. With the daisies, coreopsis and conflowers blooming now I can finally cut my own bouquet instead of paying to make one at the farmstand I frequent for summer vegetables. The rain also prompted enough weeds to force me to pull them from all over the garden over the course of three early mornings, before the sun, humidity and my sore body drove me inside.

I gave up on what I had thought were pepper seedlings. They were weeds, so I'll be buying my peppers this year.

Not a pepper after all. (Margo D. Beller)

And then there is the continual prospect of smoke from Canadian wildfires mixing with the usual high levels of ozone each time the wind comes out of an otherwise pleasant northwesterly direction. Will the fires continue into the fall when the migrants start heading south?

It has been hard to get myself walking in this weather, even harder to go listen for birds. At this time of year it's rare I find a bird that I couldn't find in my backyard, so I don't usually bother. In the backyard the robins are going after ripe fruit in the black cherry tree, the catbird family members chase each other around the yard, and chipping and song sparrows call from the trees. I hear the cardinals in the morning and have a brief temptation to put out seed for them. But then I remember these birds eat the insects that plague me and don't need my seed now.

I could follow the usual flock of birders down the coast and look for the shorebirds that spend the summer in New Jersey. But the one time we went shorebirding in summer we were attacked by greenhead flies, which meant staying in the car with the windows up as we drove the tour road. 

So I sit on my porch in the early morning with the fan on, sipping my coffee as my neighbors go off to work or get their kids ready for camp. That is how I see the cardinals, robins, catbirds and occasional others in my yard. (The hummingbird feeder has yet to draw a single bird, unfortunately, even with the pink flowers in bloom near it.)

Wren nest box (Margo D. Beller)

Then there is the house wren box. A few weeks ago, long after the first pair of wrens and their young departed, another pair actively investigated the box and seemed ready to use the old nest inside. Then, once again, something happened. 

After a few days when I wasn't on the porch I came out one morning to find a male singing loud and long but no activity at the box. In fact, over the next few days if a female showed up he chased her away. We went away for a few days but as of yesterday he was still around, tho' not singing as loudly or as often. I am no expert on house wren behavior despite all the writing I do about them, so I have no idea what is going on. 

In a few weeks the male will be gone and the box will be brought down and emptied. The summer heat will be a distant memory, I hope.

Hot Enough For Ya?

I have lost count of the number of extremely hot and humid days we have had in my part of northern New Jersey, part of the New York City metropolitan area, this week. Four? Five? Does it matter when the prediction is for more of the same?

I suppose temperatures 10 degrees above the normal for this time of August and humidity more likely in a tropical rain forest than the former temperate zone that is New Jersey is a good thing - compared with killing floods once again striking Louisiana a few short years after Hurricane Katrina.

How bad has it been? So bad that finally, after four years of working at home in an office that faces southwest, MH and I bought curtains and rods and he spotted and assisted me as I installed them all. Yes, I used a power drill. Yes, I stood atop a step ladder hoping I would not topple over. Yes, I used a level to make sure everything was straight.

Office curtains Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

It was only this morning I realized the patterns don't exactly match. However, the room is dark and helping the AC and fan make it cooler.

The heat and humidity have not stopped the goldfinches and chickadees from visiting the dwindling thistle seed in the sock feeder. I have not been able to stand on the enclosed porch for very long, even with a fan on, to see if the refreshed hummingbird feeder is drawing anything, although I notice the joe-pye weed is flowering and that has brought the bees.

Meanwhile, the same heat and humidity that makes me feel like the walking dead until I put the house AC on is doing wonderful things to the plants I have outside in the sun and on that enclosed porch.

The cannas, which are tropical plants, have grown large and their foliage is bigger than dinner plates. They are also sending up flower shoots, red trumpets that will be attractive to hummingbirds and others. The orchid I keep on the back porch has been loving the humidity and showing me its three white flowers all summer, and the Chinese evergreen is sprouting new leaves, something it doesn't do much when it is inside for the winter in a heat-dried house.

But it is the peppers that have really thrived.

I have one plant I planned to keep alive over the winter inside until I discovered it was infested with white flies. It got moved to the one sunny spot on the enclosed porch until it became too cold, at which point the worst foliage was removed and it was brought back inside and kept in a dim corner apart from the other plants until I could finally put it back in its usual sunny outside spot - at which point the temperature dropped. So this plant has been through a lot and I finally cut off the top of it and hoped for the best.

Italia peppers, Aug. 2016 (Margo D. Beller)

Well, below are two of the three fruits I have picked from this plant once the peppers turned red. (This is a sweet pepper and gets sweeter when redder.) The top pepper is what I usually get, most summers. The bottom is a monster that is the biggest I've ever grown.

Peppers, even sweet peppers like these, like it hot. I'm not sure if the humidity is helping them directly but the nightly thunderstorms we've been having during this period have kept down the white flies and the aphids that usually bother my other plants.

At the farm markets, the tomatoes have started coming in and I have several on the window sill to ripen. The zucchinis are huge and somehow, despite the heat, there is still lettuce and cucumbers and even rainbow chard to be had.

The people who don't believe in global warming say, "It's summer. Get over it." Those who see this tropical weather as unnatural hope it doesn't foretell a return of the polar vortex and above-average snow this winter, as some predict.

As usual, there is good and bad with everything. So as the plants thrive, I wilt.

At Mid-Summer

As expected, the Brood II cicadas are gone, leaving behind green maple and oak trees loaded with brown leaves from where the females cut into the bark to drop their eggs, thereby killing that part of the branches. It would look autumnal if it wasn't for the fact the leaves are brown and the weather is extremely hot and humid.

Brood II cicada (photo by RE Berg-Andersson)

The annual cicadas started calling a bit early but are now, in mid-July, in full voice, creating that strange effect as the calls seem to move from tree to tree. They were likely spurred by the first summer heatwave, in early July, actually the second of the year (we had one in late spring).

The migrant birds are long gone and those that stayed to breed are either feeding young or leading young around the yard. I've heard families of chickadees and titmice and soon the male goldfinches (which breed later in the summer) will be doing their swooping overhead to draw the attention of females. Less-common birds are harder to find.

July also brought ruby-throated hummingbirds to my feeder. I don't know why feeders in other places - my brother-in-law's porch in New Hampshire, my friend's back deck in Bernardsville, N.J. - draw them as early as May while the hummers don't discover mine until after the pink flowers of the geranium and the coral bells have faded but before the joe-pye weeds have bloomed. Still, they are reliably, fashionably late and if it's July, there must be hummers at the sugar water. I saw the first one on July 3 and have seen one just about every day since.

At this point in the year I can finally rejoice in locally grown fruit and vegetables. Reading Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" about farming, agricultural conglomerates and the hidden costs of getting food to the supermarket was an eye-opener. It inspired me to time my eating to the season and shop local rather than go to the market for peppers in the middle of winter grown halfway around the world. (I do a lot of cooking and freezing to tide me over.)

At this time of year the asparagus is gone (except for the soup I made and froze) as are the strawberries and peas, but cherries and blueberries and lettuce are in abundance and the cucumbers are coming in. I also go to a cooperative in the next town from me. It grows flowers and vegetables picked for you with more to come, including potatoes and tomatoes.

House wren

When the first summer heatwave struck in early July, the house wren young finally left the box. Their parents had been traveling back and forth with food and on the last morning they were in the box, there was a lot of activity. The temperature was over 90 degrees, and I was not surprised to hear no chittering when I walked near the box later in the day. I was surprised, however, to hear the chittering coming from a nearby hedge. Probably a lot cooler for the young being hidden in a hedge than inside the box.

Each year I hang that box in the one apple tree I kept on my property because it provides sweet fruit I use for pies and apple sauce. July is when I must start collecting apples. Last year was a very poor crop, so poor I had to go outside with my long walking stick and beat the tree to bring down the few apples there before the squirrels could get them (and, by extension, the deer). This year I have the opposite problem - lots of apples.

House wren box hanging in my apple tree.

However, with our long, cool and wet spring the squirrels weren't interested in the apples and I had several weeks to pick them. But with the early July heatwave the squirrels were back. Still, I have plenty of apples and have spent plenty of weekend hours on my feet peeling, chopping and separating the apple flesh I can use from the stuff that must be thrown out. (I don't spray my tree.) My freezer is filling with the fruits of my labor, mainly in the form of apple sauce.

It is a long time between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and around now I start wishing I could quit the job, leave the house and do a lot of traveling. But out there it is hot and humid, and when I am not inside where the fan and/or the AC keep me cool, I have a hard time functioning and thinking.

We have had a few days of cooler (but still humid) weather, and that has allowed me to feel more like myself again. But there's another heatwave coming and it will last longer. I do not like heat and I like humidity even less, but my husband likes to remind me it is summer, and summer is hot and humid where we live.

So the AC will be on during the day. Any walking I do will be early after a night where I won't sleep very well. My brain will again turn to mush and I'll feel trapped.

Winter seems a long way away.