Summer is Here!

We missed a month! Enjoyed a spectacular trip (to the outer isles of Scotland), but missed a month at home when the world burst into green everywhere. We left when the leaves were barely coming out, and spring flowers were blooming both in the garden and the woods. We returned to grass 3 feet tall in the meadow, hawkweed, buttercups and daisies everywhere, and peonies and iris in bloom in the garden.

I love the bright green of the leaves in spring and early summer. When the leaves are still unfurling, and the sun shines through them in the early morning, they are almost fluorescent. Watching over the seasons the unfolding of leaves on our deciduous trees really is an amazing transformation, which we totally take for granted every year. And the shade and cooler temperatures under the trees make my favourite sitting spot.

It appears that it's a very heavy seed crop on the white ash trees this year, with thousands of keys already hanging from many of the ash. I wonder what the trees know that we don't. And I've heard that the Emerald Ash Borer, which can devastate entire forests of ash trees, has now reached Guelph. I can't imagine this place without ash trees. We would lose half our large trees, and virtually all of the younger trees growing up by themselves. Natural succession in this landscape is driven by young ash; without them who knows what the landscape will look like.