Sights and Sounds of Summer

Editor's Note: This post was drafted earlier this week.

Summer is in full swing here at the Roediger House, so there is much to celebrate. Friday night was the first time I noticed fireflies about, and the first strains of singing cicadas were music to my ears. We are almost to the summer solstice, of course, and I love seeing the 9 pm dusk. I also loved seeing a second round of bluebirds coming to the house on the fence, beginning Sunday morning. Over the next few days, the couple was very busy rebuilding a nest inside. On the morning I drafted this blog post, Winston-Salem was enjoying a welcome break from its June heat wave, and the week started out allowing for plenty of outside time. For Sumner, that's always better if the squirrels are active or if he can find an especially large dead branch that's finally tumbled from the huge tree cluster in the rear corner of the parking lot.

Delivery of cake slices on the official Juneteenth holiday Monday led to my first visit to see a condo in the old downtown YMCA building, a long block east of here, a solid brick building that is itself about 100 years old, plus some pleasant outside visiting and ball-tossing in a church yard. In the afternoon, the parking area turned into a four-dog playtime, with two puppies joining Sumner and his cousin Henry in the nice sunshine.

It was cool and breezy enough across that holiday weekend's mornings that I don't think my citronella incense was necessarily needed...but better safe than sorry.

For lack of a better place to mention it, and in service to my incessant penchant for documenting all things both interesting and mundane, let me remark about a couple of new wild creature sightings that occurred back in the starting days of summer. Above is pictured a groundhog that had secreted himself temporarily amongst the plant buckets and gardening stakes and such at the back wall behind the basketball goal. Sumner scented and then spotted him and it was not going to end well if I'd not interceded to allow him an escape. (For whom it would not end well was not clear.) On a May morning, a major expanse of birdwing flying toward the back of the property drew our attention to the arrival on the back fence of a turkey vulture. I was in the grove at the front of the yard so this was my quick attempt to snap a phone photo while he briefly perched before jetting across overhead.

Last weekend, Pride and Juneteenth coincided and the city was hopping, although the events did not include a route down Spring Street as has sometimes occurred. A small protest and attempt to disrupt was suppressed by a larger crowd of better Americans. To be quite frank, I will never understand the convoluted prevailing position of the GOP—and of so many empty-moraled conservative Christians: what bothers them is not for kids to be gunned down but the ridiculous fantasy that that might somehow be gayed up. The trendline of the current political climate does not leave me much room for hopefulness for the future, and the simple joys of Roediger House homelife will continue to be both a balm and a sanctuary.