Sudden Summertime

Summer has burst upon the land here in my part of the world in a blaze of heat and color. The cool, languid chartreuse of Spring is gone, replaced with the steamy emerald of thriving grasses, and the moist musky fragrance of new mown hay. Corn fields are nearly knee high a full week before the Fourth of July, and the countryside is lush with wildflowers of every hue, variety and size imaginable. Last week, nothing was here. Then there was the Midsummer celebration and Mother Nature has called forth her best new frock. The temperatures are soaring into the 90s, and air conditioners strain to do their job while the humidity climbs and all the world seeks shade and shelter from the afternoon sun. I am reminded of the painting by Frederick, Lord Leighton called Flaming June. It has never been a favorite of mine, even though I've seen it in the National Gallery ... I think that it always reminds me of the unrelenting heat of the Indiana summers I've suffered through all my life. I am a Winter person at heart, although Autumn with its mellow beauty and cool nights is a close second.


This morning, in the still cool of early dawn, I found a fairy ring. It wasn't there yesterday or last evening, but Magic has placed it just so, overnight, as a diversion for my frustration with the heat.

I can nearly see the celebration that must have gone on throughout the night and imagine dancing in a Circle Ring, so close still to Midsummer.

Fairy Ring, Morgan

"Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place."
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

And, a distance away, deep in the woods, the Fairy Folk awake from their winter sleep.

Rackham, Fairy Ring

"A lady, with whom I was riding in the forest, said to me, that the woods always seemed to her to wait, as if the genii who inhabit them suspended their deeds until the wayfarer has passed onward: a thought which poetry has celebrated in the dance of the fairies, which breaks off on the approach of human feet." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "History"