Sharp County record., 1879-09-11
Summer Out of Doors.


blossoms, and, like fragments of yel-
lowish cord, they strew the ground.
(Some poet speaks of them as "silken
tassels,'' but they are really coarse cot
ton or hempen goods.) All that thick,
prickly sheath and rich-meated nut is
TO be developed and matured before
frost time, say the middle of September.
The sycamores are barring their arms be-
meath the midsummer heats. About
this time these trees shed the bark from
their branches, revealing smooth,
light-greenish-yellow surface, that gives
one the impression of coy nudeness; it
is not unlike youthful form stripped
to the waist and partially screened be-
hind green leaves. The bark lies in
rolls and fragments, like thin leather,
beneath them. Vegetation is rank and
ripe. The boys and girls no longer go
to the woods for birch and wintergreens,
nor for the pungent crinkle-root, nor to
the fields for wild Strawberries. The
cattle do not find browsing so much to
their taste as in the earlier season, but
seek the woods now for GOODNESS and to
avoid the flies.
The rye is ripe for the harvest, and
the lawmakers are at work-should, in
deed, be nearly through their work.
The clover heads have been black some
weeks, the daisies are becoming dry
and seedy, and the timothy stock is
getting hard and fibrous. The Indian
corn has its main growth yet to make.
No crop shows more insignifcance in
the early summer, nor more conspicu-
ously and more flauntingly in the later.
It makes tremendous strides during the
sultry and oppressive nights of late
July and early August. When the sleep
ers turn uneasily on their beds, and
seek in vain for cool spot, the corn
luxuriates, it wakes strong and rank.
But how it trembles at the thought OF q
frost, and turns pale if the nights are
cool! ...........
The cicada has just began to sound
her shrill, brassy crescendo, which she
does not do till the season has struck II.
She celebrates the fierce MONDAY glare
of midsummer. There is no tenderness
or mercy in her. The heat and dryness
maketh her glad. Indeed, hers is the
most parched and torrid sound to be
heard in our groves. The seventeen
year locusts come earlier in the season,
come in May or June, and their notes
are softer and less piercing. They have
not heard the rattle and shuttle OF the
mower, or hay-tedder nor filed their
teeth on the finty stalk of the timothy.
The cicada leads the insect band, and
her instrument is the loudest and most
stridulous of them all. In marked con-
trast to her shrill kettle-drum, is the
soft, multitudinous hum that begins to
be noticeable in the upper air about this
time-the voice of innumerable flies and
bees-though l confess l have never
been able to analyze it or trace the sound
home. 1t is everywhere, it is as contin-
uous as the sky, over the woods, above
the hilltops, over the river or lake,
canopy of sound, woven, no doubt, of a
great variety of chords. 1t contrasts,
also, with that pulsing, purring sound OF
the little green nocturnal insect that
fills the ear of night with such a soft,
monotonous undertone little later;
but evidently has some relation to that
tiny creature that beats his castanets
under your window in the late July
nights.
No more swarms from the hive. After
the middle of July the bees begin to
set their house in order for the fall and
winter; they economize rigidly, no
more colonies are planted, the drones
are kicked out or killed, and all availa-
BILE space is filled with honey.
The birds, for the most part, have had
their day, they are beginning to be old.
When their plumage begins to fade,
their songs begin to decline. The voice
of the oriole is heard no more, the bird
is, indeed, rarely seen; hence, when
one of our poets make him flash by in
midsummer, and makes
The partridge beat her throbbing drum
in late haying-time, he takes unwar-
ranted liberties with Nature. The par
tridge's drum is silent now; and he is
busy with his mate watching their grow
ing brood in the coolest places in the
forest He may resume it again ftful-
" in September or October. The epoets,
notice, are quite apt to shape the facts
of Nature to the exigencies of their me-
ter or rhyme. One of them, l see,
makes the chestnut.tree bloom with the
fruit-trees, and another, in one of the
July magazines, to help the matter out,
delays the blooming of the apple.tree
till June; then, to get more than his
share of delectable things in his verse,
makes the fields sweet with new-mown
hay. He may keep the hay, but he
must give up the apple-blossoms. But
brother poet had set the example in
the previous number of the same maya
zine, by making the yellow cowslip
(marsh marigold) bloom in June with
oior,o,,, ,r nan in fact as far nnrfh