Phenology Post for June 29

After a week that felt like July, the past two days have felt like early May again: overnight lows in the fifties (Fahrenheit). I'm loving it. A few straggler berries managed to ripen in the orchard. The wind that brought in this cool weather brought us some thunderstorms, but nothing really unpleasant--although I was caught out in a thunderstorm on Friday night, and walking on a paved road, below electric power lines, in a thunderstorm was not very pleasant at the time.

I saw a small adult raccoon and two young raccoons, dead, out on Route 23 last week. They might have been our faithless friend Rackety Coon, whom I've not seen or heard lately, and her/his family. I hope so.

More pleasant sights on Route 23 this morning were the wildflowers. Chicory, a hardy weedy wildflower, doesn't usually grow in enough profusion to make patches of pale blue beside roads. This year it has. Crown vetch and native vetch are in bloom. Daisies are still in bloom. Some tiger lilies are still blooming, although the patch that was blazing beside Route 23 last week is subsiding now. A few morning glories have bloomed. In Tennessee a few sweet peas are still in bloom.

Grandma Bonnie Peters made a point of turning onto a road called Mimosa Drive, this morning. Most street names in most American cities are arbitrarily chosen, but on Mimosa Drive we could see an especially large and fully loaded mimosa tree. At this point I'd like to throw in a Morguefile image of a mimosa tree, for those who don't have one to look at, but, despite having been promised a new computer two weeks ago, we are still plodding along with the Sickly Snail.