Summer is coming to an end. You can feel it in the chilly nights and see it in the morning fog that hangs over the yard. The cherry tree has already lost all its leaves, and scattered them over the thick and ever growing grass. The apples never got sprayed this year and consequently are small knots of fungal misery. The squirrels and bunnies will have a few drops, and that will be the end of that story. A pretty sorry state of affairs, vegetatively, except for the roots of everything, which have been well-soaked this year. The wisteria went wild, climbed all over the house and became so full of itself it began to seek entry. Finally, the H. Saps. had to get up on a ladder, onto the porch roof and counter attack, yank roots out of the gutters, and pry them out of the aluminum siding, before the vine made its way indoors like some Chas. Adams invasion.


      Down in the pond, it's been a pretty good summer. Not too hot, and lots of nice green pond plants with dangling roots under which to hide. Plenty of mosquito larvae to eat, keeping away the West Nile Virus. And Fish Mom noticed and thwarted the little pump, when knocked on the ground, from pumping out all the water and leave the Goldies high and dry, even though Old Man Orangeo managed to perform this trick twice.


      "But it's such fun, Mom," he protests. "Drinking out of the fountain, watching the Goldies, and patting the water with my paw to make them flip their tails and dive with a slosh!")


      Cicadas singing-lots of them. I wished for them to begin their song cycle all through July, anticipated them, as one of the few truly beautiful things about summer. Choruses weren't as large as last year, but there was some passionate call and response between the old, ever dropping swamp maples. From one shaggy gray trunk to another, the cicadas sang and sang. Inspired, went Google-ing and found out that the 17 Year Locusts are coming to our neighborhood next year!


      I can hardly wait. The last time they sang was momentous in several ways, one of them being that my youngest, JL, went to college, up at Penn State. On the way up into the mountains., into Happy Valley, enormous cohorts of magicicada were chorusing like crazy. You could hear them clearly, even inside a roaring VW Diesel Rabbit! The sound wasn't quite Cicada Annual, either. The Periodics' song is more like the soundtrack of War of the Worlds. Very impressive, and the ultimate (and original) trance music. Perhaps some great cycle is over, now that 17 years have gone by, and another is about to begin. Always looking hopefully for some kind of change.


insects at University of Michigan.edu

www.nature.com


These are informative cicada sites, with sound.


      But just wait until next year, when the magicicada emerge once more and sing for all of us lucky listeners! It will no doubt be a summer to remember, especially in the life of a person who, only infrequently, leaves the pond.