A JUNE DAY SIMMERS...

In the heat of this hottest of days in the month of June in this valley, there is beauty despite our immersion in sweat and humidity...

I sit at noon at the rim of my garden, and the colors of Monet, and more, are swirling before me like bits of stained glass in the finest Victorian kaleidoscope. My blooms are providing the colors; butterflies and large woodland moths are adding the motion...

In the deep, silent heat of the night, my dog refuses to sleep. We go to the porch, where he sinks his tired old bones to a mat at the door and I take my place on a cushioned lawn chair. We visit with fireflies that are twinkling like stars that have left their natural place in the skies, their white-strobe brightness making us drowsy; bringing us peace...

In the earliest moments of morning, the first birdsong emerges and dawn reveals a shimmering dome of clouds in a definite fish-scale pattern of salmon and grey and soft purple. A heat-busting storm has been forecast, and these clouds are the omen. It makes me think of the skies described in old diaries by tropical people as they unknowingly faced the arrival of hurricanes.

Our northern Ohio won't be breeding a hurricane, as far as I know. How strong the upcoming, heat-generated tempest will be, I can't say.

But I'm drinking the beauty of now.

R.A.T. (Rose About Town), not phased by the heat wave.

(Direct your own weather comments to randrmoore@gmail.com)