I’ve only seen one of the seven wonders of the world in person. But the eighth has to be a backyard in New England in August. Lucky us.
I’ve written before about the soothing power of the color green. The physical explanation that your eye doesn’t have to make any effort because the it focuses green right on the center of your retina makes sense. As does the evolutionary explanation that green sends a signal of safety and plentitude. Yet what is the science behind a hue of grass dappled with sunlight and shade so inviting you lay a blanket on it and recline in the middle of the afternoon like a character in a romance novel?
I did that recently and it felt, well, like being a character in a romance novel.
Leaves on the deciduous trees danced gently in the wind, a perfect complement to the stoic evergreens, like ladies and gents shyly enticing each other across a ballroom. (I would be a very bad romance writer.)
Both kinds of trees serve as summer homes to backyard birds and I spent one afternoon earlier in the summer watching a mourning dove patiently building its nest. It took the same exact route to a leave-and-twig- filled spot to gather materials, then perched on a fencepost adjacent to its chosen tree. It seemed to be contemplating its next move like an architect at a drafting table before hovering in front of a break in the evergreen boughs. Rather than hop or fly, the dove then dove headfirst into the opening where it presumably added to the floor or walls. Then it flew out and repeated the same cycle again and again, dive and all.
Now in August, from my position on the grass, I watched the entry spot to the nest in vain but no one seemed to be home. When else other than in late summer can you spend time wondering where the birds spend their day before returning to roost?
Similarly, a late summer backyard chorus elicited an only-in-August dilemma that Chat GPT had to resolve. The crickets were in full voice one evening, which caused me to urge David to come outside and listen. He observed that it was odd to be asked to listen to crickets when the expression “I hear crickets” means hearing nothing. Why argue, I mean ponder, when a friendly neighborhood AI bot is at the ready in the palm of your hand?
“The key isn’t that crickets are silent, it’s that their chirping is the only sound you hear when everything else is silent.” Ah. Thank you technology. A Google search also yielded that there are several members of the Orthoptera insect family responsible for the summer eve songs — crickets, grasshoppers and katydids and each has a distinct sound.
I’d try to distinguish between them but I’m back on the blanket on another perfect August afternoon waiting for a hummingbird to make an appearance near the full-in-bloom Rose of Sharon. While August lingers, it doesn’t last forever and there’s so much more to see from my blanket on the grass.
Virginia Buckingham is the former president of the Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
