Oven Summer

All this past non-winter, we knew we were in for it. Seventy degrees in March felt great, but was a bad omen.

And now we have it: the oven summer.

Some things arrived about the right time this spring: redwing blackbirds, robins, Baltimore orioles, sandhill cranes, barn swallows. But others came freakishly early, like monster-sized cow parsnip, June bugs and lightning bugs in May, and day lilies blooming in June. I even heard a cricket in mid-June; cricket calls are a normal end-of-summer sound for my Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin.

Wierdest phenomenon so far: an abundance of red box elder bugs. They swarm around my front and rear doors. They are creepy. I hope they don't get in. The red bugs remind me of alien pod people - I feel like a victim in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

The priest in the church in Markesan, Wisconsin, called for a day of prayer and fasting for RAIN today. A very Biblical concept, and understandable: Markesan is a farming community built around a cannery. It's no big deal that folks in the city and suburbs haven't mowed their crunchy brown grass in three weeks, but for the farmers, rain means survival.

I wonder if all of this means that autumn will come early. I'm not sure what to hope for. I keep trying to be optimistic....