Saturday 12 July 2008

Saturday Photo: Daylilies for a Summer Day

Two things arrive in July here marking the beginning of high summer: daylilies and cicadas. When I was out walking this morning I heard the sharp, metallic buzzing of the bugs, and all along my path I saw daylilies in bloom or ready to bloom.

The flowers are among my favourites, and I've come to associate the strange, un-animal sound of the cicadas with good times too.

The first time we heard them was a different matter, however. That was many, many years ago when we drove across the continent for the first time as we moved to Montreal. Within 50 miles in eastern Wyoming and western Iowa we dropped down from the dry Colorado Plateau into the much more humid basin of the Missouri-Mississippi basin. Suddenly we heard a terrible racket and Lee, who was driving our VW Beetle, pulled over on the roadside to see what was wrong with the car. But the noise did not stop when the car's engine stopped. It was at that point that we began to see what differences climate zones make.

Daylilies--which I don't remember blooming in such profusion on the West Coast--were much easier to get used to.

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