Summer Arrives With a Vengeance

Hot. Hot. Hot. Although in the blur of busyness, it was hard for me to realize that summer solstice had passed, the heat in Southern Illinois clarified for me that spring was over. Gerald, who works outside, was more aware than I was and had opened our garage windows that help reduce the temperature in our tightly insulated garage. Even so, the heat there makes me welcome stepping back into the air-conditioned kitchen.

Our baby geese are full-size now and with the addition of some other geese who have flown in to join them on our lake, we have quite a flock enjoying the wheat and other goodies available to them.

Finally yesterday, Gerald could not stand watching the poor goose out in one of the floating nests, who had been there much too long. She was patiently waiting for the hatching of what Gerald had realized were infertile eggs. As he tested the eggs, every egg floated, and he broke up the nest hoping to free the mother from her burden of needlessly setting on useless eggs. He was feeling bad for her.

Our baby duck crop remains zilch. All the babies and some mamas have fallen prey to the predators despite Gerald's best efforts. Our flower beds also contain broken shells where coons or some hungry creature have feasted on embryos that never had the opportunity to develop. Nature can be cruel.

I had planned to get back on schedule by blogging here last night only to have a program Gerald was downloading for his photography project to take much much longer than it was supposed to download. (We cannot obtain high-speed Internet out here in the country though Gerald and our neighbor have both tried hard to obtain it.) Since I am trying to make allowances for growing older by trying to get to bed earlier, when the computer was finally available, I decided to postpone blogging until this morning.

Going to bed is not an easy thing for me to do. I never like endings, and all my life I have hated that a day must end. Theoretically, I can sleep in most days since I am retired, but the day light comes through our thin bedroom curtains and the ducks made noises and once I wake up, I can't always go back to sleep. So I am trying to grow up and get to bed earlier.