Two weeks ago, I wrote about the Belmont Stakes, the June jewel of Triple Crown races, last weekend I was in Washington, D.C.—a fine day in the nation’s capital—coming off several nights at the beautiful Chesapeake Bay, and today, a friend has organized a boat trip around Manhattan for her 90^th birthday. What a way to celebrate summer!

Up early this morning to write this, I was treated with the sight of a deer with six-point antlers picking his way across twenty feet of grassy back yard and disappearing into the woods. My glance flew to my hostas (intact) and deck planters (ditto), so the pleasure in seeing him remained intact. I haven’t been to the other side of the house yet to see whether he’s eaten all the buds off my daylily collection. One year I had no flowers at all, thanks to this unauthorized snacking.

Early summer is the season for black bear sightings in Princeton. This year, one even scouted the campus. Cubs or young bears, usually. Since New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country, when bears go walkabout, it usually ends badly. A town councilman explained, “They come down from New York,” a statement that raised more questions than it answered. How does he know? Why?

It’s firefly season! The woods in the back of the house are full of them. I like to watch them testing their batteries for the night, down in the grass and slowly rising. PS – this neighborhood has no cicadas at all so far, while the town up the road a piece is dense with their noise.

A frog is in the pond, croaking noisily all night. I reassure myself that little frogs can have big voices. Still, I count the fish in the morning when I go out to feed them. A heron ate ten fish—and a couple of frogs, too—a few years ago, so the net remains on the pond all the time. Diminishes the effect, but the fish are safe. Fellow pond-owners describe the huge heron colony nearby in apocalyptic terms.

These days, my fish-feeding and desultory weeding are supervised by a catbird that must have built a nest in the shrubbery near the pond. She misses nothing. A wren established herself in the birdhouse out back. Every spring, the chickadees bounce among the branches, checking it out, but they are lookers, and she’s a buyer.

Enjoy this too-short season!

Summer Soundtrack

• New Jersey edition – Frank Sinatra’s The Summer Wind
• The Other Coast – Beach Boys’ California Girls
• Everyone Else – Rascal Flatts and fans’ Summer Nights