Summer musings

What happened to summer? It’s still warm, but cool nights have moved in, as they do during August. The days are dry and sunny, the nights comfortable for sleeping—don’t even need the air conditioning anymore.

I sat on the back deck and watched the moon rise the other night. The breeze had quieted. The first star came out. OK, it was probably a planet, but still. The crickets were ratcheting up their calls, some other insistent insect was buzzing, not doubt looking for some bug-love. Fireflies soared and swooped. First here, then there, then gone again.

Crickets used to make me feel a little ill. Sick to my stomach, marking as they do the waning days of summer and warning of the start of another school year. This was back when I taught high school. I dreaded going back, but then I got there and it was pretty much OK. Now it still means the start of another school year, but I love my teaching now, though I’m more often training other people to teach the courses I write.

Maybe January, February and March will go by just as fast as June, July and August seem to.

There is a blue spruce in the front yard that my mom and wife bought for our “new house” 28 years ago. It was a little stick that almost didn’t survive its first winter. Now it’s probably forty feet high and takes up half the front yard. I just signed the contract to have it cut down. The guy will be out in the next couple of weeks. My neighbor has been really good about it, but he’s mentioned that guests parking in his driveway can’t even get out of their cars on that side. We already know it’s impossible to see down the street when we pull out of the driveway. Are we rationalizing?

I’m a tree guy. I planted another blue spruce in our postage stamp back yard and keep it trimmed so it won’t take over the landscape completely. (You know it never occurred to me to trim the doomed one in the front yard.) There is a pink dogwood that we call our anniversary tree back there too. It flowers each year on our wedding anniversary. The birds planted two maple trees by the back fence and I’ve let them grow. The goal is to have them drop leaves in the back neighbor’s pool someday.

All this is to say I’d rather keep the tree, but I will replace it with maybe a river birch to dress up the front yard. Something that won’t completely block our vision or annoy our neighbor to the east.

Every prom photo and graduation portrait featured that tree in the background. One of grandson Max’s first “jobs” was collecting its pine cones one spring day. Generations of birds have made their homes in it. The lawnmower has been bouncing over its roots for years.

Being on the north side, it probably won’t affect the amount of light in our living room, but it will certainly open a vista long hidden: that of the neighbors’ houses across the street. We kind of liked the privacy it afforded us. No reason to buy fancy curtains if no one can see them, either.

It will be different here once it’s gone, but I think it will be a good thing. We won’t have so many close calls with people driving down the street, we won’t have to worry about it blowing over in a storm. But still, visitors will not have that landmark tree to help them find our house (“Just look for the big blue spruce. That’s us.”)

So the tree is coming down, summer is winding down, school is cranking up and pretty soon we’ll be carving pumpkins and sending out Christmas cards.