With a firecracker bang, July is off and running!
Talk about an exciting start! This exuberant seventh month doesn’t simply come charging through the door and onto center stage—it flattens the wall and sends June whimpering away in terror!
July’s kick-off is noisy and spectacular. Everything from an early-evening fireworks show’s thumping booms and colorful sky-high sparkles to the musical brass-band pomp and blare of Independence Day parades.
This first full month of summer is a real showstopper!
July is the season personified—long, lazy days made to order for an afternoon swim with perhaps a stop by a country ice cream shop on the way home for a chocolate sundae or banana split.
If you love summer, you gotta love July.
“Good summer,” is how my mother characterized its arrival, referring to the month’s weather demeanor.
In my Boomer Era growing up, air conditioning was practically unheard of—a rumored, post-World War II dream that didn’t become a widely available reality and popular until the mid-1960s. Screened windows and fans were the usual means you relied on to cool the house and deal with summer’s heat.
Both did work to a limited extent. Plus, your body sorta acclimated to the heat and humidity…. though some found it easier than others.
Mom tolerated summer’s inevitable heat better than my father, who—like me—was more boreal than tropical-natured.
But even my mother wilted under the relentless, baking inferno that Ohio’s Augusts were all too prone to deliver. Hence Mom’s “good summer” designation for July, because July’s hot weather was never so brutally adamant.
Of course, July also gets hot—often soaring into triple-digit temperatures; but there’s typically still an occasional counterpointing weather regression—a cooler backtrack to give refreshment and relief. This made July’s heat enjoyable, or at least benignly tolerable.
In other ways, too, July is, indeed, “good summer.” It’s ideal weather for backyard cookouts, picnics in the park, or perfecting your s’mores-roasting skills over a crackling campfire.
July dusks come late and seem to loiter as if they’re in no real hurry to slip on westward and tuck up the covers of darkness behind them as they go.
These dawdling evenings are soft and gentle. Their moist atmosphere carries a lingering hint of heat and a pleasant redolence of pollen and dust.
Shadows are a’wink with the soft twinkles of myriad lightning bugs rising above dew-damp grass. A few birds twitter sleepily from the bushes.
Along the river, cleaving the cloying darkness, bullbats swoop and roar over the big mirrored pool. Below, along the pool’s muddy edge, bullfrogs begin tuning up, harrumphing in rhythmic basso tones preparatory to their evening concert.
Life is good in July. The world feels tranquil, innocent. Time moves slowly, deliberately. There’s an overall quietude as summer goes slipping along on its eternal sojourn.
In my mind’s eye, I might easily unspool a fantasy and imagine our home planet’s spinning blue-green sphere to be waltzing gracefully along its familiar elliptical trail across the starlit black-velvet ballroom of space. A crazy vision that gives me an inexplicable sense of comfort and peace.
There’s a honeyed sweetness to July’s air, a fragrant mix of blooming clovers and flowering milkweed, with perhaps a dash of wild bergamot thrown in for that jazzy double-hint of mint and spice.
July is the time when chicory blues the meadows and Queen Anne’s lace adds elegance to fallow pastures, while elderberry bushes sport frothy white blooms and daisies stand forthright in simple innocence.
Walk a quiet backroad about the middle of the month and sniff this richness for yourself. If July’s uniquely sweet perfume reminds you of something familiar… switch senses a moment and listen.
Hear those humming bees?
The very essence of summer is right now being busily stored in golden waxen comb. Thus, today’s balmy scent will eventually become next winter’s tasty honey—a delectable replay of July for your mid-winter breakfast table.
Birdsong has diminished noticeably from what it has been during the previous vernal weeks—although it has certainly not ceased entirely.
Robins continue to carol in the twilight. Mockingbirds run their repertoire whenever the mood strikes. Indigo buntings, yellowthroats, flycatchers, and vireos call from brushy lanes and woodlots.
Should you visit Ohio’s hill country for a night, you’ll likely be treated—or cursed!—by whippoorwills. Resonant-voiced birds who loudly and insistently repeat their identifying name, ad infinitum, from dusk until dawn.
Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that July is a truly prime time for stream anglers. Creeks and rivers have cleared and settled following June’s rains. Resident smallmouth bass are hungry—waiting and willing to tango.
Catfishermen, too, will find this month to their liking. Channels and flatheads are on the prowl nightly. For my money, a sultry evening spent tightlining a favorite pool is as fine an outdoor endeavor as summer has to offer.
Oddly, I’ve somehow come around to sharing Mom’s outlook and assessment. I no longer dread summer’s return… instead, I welcome it—at least this first portion.
August is still too much. Its typically unrelenting heat becomes oppressive. A hammering force. Day after sweltering day, and the corresponding smothery nights, wears me down.
My humor and equanimity drown in sweat. I become a brow-mopping curmudgeon. My mood darkens, my patience wears thin and my disposition turns surly. The dog starts avoiding me, and even my morning moka-pot coffee turns sour!
Still, that’s a full month away! Right now, we’re just getting started with July—the season’s adolescence. Summer in its youth.
Good summer!
Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].
