Nothing to See Here, Except . . .

Things have been quiet around here for the last week or so. Traffic is light, Starbucks has been mostly empty, and there's a feeling that everybody must be out of town on vacation. It's very pleasant. Even the fireflies seem to be off napping somewhere.

Coinciding with that, we've had sort of a summer version of a polar vortex, with a storm front moving in and cooling things down, trailing ragged thunderclouds and pinkish-gold sunsets in its wake. It's amazing how charming a cold spell can be when it happens in the middle of July, dropping temperatures to the 70s, lowering humidity, and still allowing the sun to shine.

A little over a week ago, it was so humid that even at 8:30 at night, walking was like wading slowly through curtains of moisture. I much prefer that to walking through sleet and snow, but it does sap your energy if it goes on long enough. After a week of storm clouds wildly chasing sunshine, and vice versa, we're back to heat and humidity, though I understand we're in for another cooling spell in a day or so.

Among the charms of a summer evening's walk this week, I have spotted: toadstools, like something from a nursery rhyme, right on my street; a cardinal on a treetop silhouetted against the sky; two rabbits sitting together in a field; scampering chipmunks; porches edged with riotous flowers; and a complex sunset of mauve, pink, and orange. Tonight, big, fat cumulus clouds, tinged with apricot from the setting sun, seemed too lazy even to move, as if an artist had painted them on the backdrop of the sky and then went off on tea break, leaving them hanging.

If you looked at the image of July in one of those medieval books of hours, like the Très Riches Heures du Duc Berry, you would see what July looks like around here, minus the sheep and the castle. In fact, there is a street named Kastle near here, and there's a house not far away where (I'm not kidding) a sheep used to graze in the yard, so with a little imagination you can see some overlap. It's a pity the sheep is gone. I never saw it in the summer, but it would have made a lovely Très Rich Hours scene, Kentucky style, to go with all the cardinals, rabbits, hostas, and begonias of our suburban summer.