July begins — the year’s seventh month and the first full month of summer.
July acquired its name in 44 B.C. when Marcus Antonius bestowed it to honor Julius Caesar, whom he’d tried — unsuccessfully — to crown as Emperor. Unfortunately, while the name survived, the complement failed to prevent Caesar from being fatally stabbed by Brutus that same year.
American Indians, finding inspiration in nature, knew this seventh month by a variety of picturesque names. A partial list includes Heat Moon, Thunder Moon, Moon of the Red Lilies, Blackberry Moon, Blueberry Moon, Moon When Cherries Ripen, Buck Moon, and Moon When Birds Cast Their Feathers.
Each of these lovely “moon” names is thus grounded in the natural cycle, which always seems so much more logical than our classically-based Anglo-European nomenclature.
In many ways, July is the season at its quintessential best.
Long, lazy days made to order for a midday swim with perhaps a stop by a country ice cream shop for a sundae on the way home. Hot, though not such blast-furnace heat that you avoid outdoor activities.
Dusks come late — lingering, deliberate, making full darkness await its turn. The sultry air is redolent with a mixed natural perfume.
Helping night find its way, the gloaming is enchantingly a’twinkle with the citron-yellow taillights of romantic-minded fireflies.
Yet even while temperatures increase, each succeeding July day grows ever shorter as the seasonal pendulum swings slowly but inexorably toward winter.
We’ll lose forty-four minutes of daylight between July’s beginning and the month’s end.
As disappointing and paradoxical as it may seem, summer starts to wane the moment it begins. Though average temperatures are increasing, each day grows incrementally shorter.
This inescapable countdown seems reason enough to spend as much time outside during July as possible. Besides, July is gorgeous! Many of its colors are strong and eye-catching, almost tropical.
There’s the van Gogh orange of black-eyed Susans nodding in an abandoned field. The blood orange of butterfly weed and roadside daylilies. The showy south-of-the-border orange of jewelweed along the creek. Plus, plenty of primary yellows to carry things along — from mullein to evening primrose, ragwort to sunflowers and cinquefoils.
Of course, July is also the time when chicory blues the meadows and Queen Anne’s lace adds its snowy elegance to fallow pastures. Elderberry bushes sport frothy white blooms and daisies stand in simple and lovely innocence.
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 hint of mint and spice.
How can anyone not like the look and smell of July?
Walk a quiet backroad about the middle of the month and sniff this richness for yourself. And if July’s uniquely sweet perfume reminds you of something familiar…switch senses a moment and listen.
Hear those humming bees?
This very essence of summer is right now being busily stored in a 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 the month before, although it has certainly not ceased entirely.
Robins still carol in the twilight. Mockingbirds run their repertoire whenever the mood strikes. And indigo buntings, yellowthroats, catbirds, flycatchers, and vireos call from brushy lanes and woodlots.
In the hill country, whippoorwills resonate monotonously from dusk until dawn. Bullbats swoop and roar in the darkness. And bullfrogs harrump in rhythmic basso from cat tailed ponds.
July evenings are often filled with the rumble of distant thunder and the electrifying play of sheet lightning along the western horizon. Most of these summer storms tend to be more noise than actuality, petering out after an hour or so of flashy grumbling.
Still, a few storms do keep their promise and take matters to heart — growing in intensity until they suddenly erupt full of lashing rain and frightening zig-zag lightning bolts which are almost instantaneously followed by spine-shuddering, ground-trembling, furious and tumultuous thunderclaps. A display of sound and fury that no Independence Day fireworks display could ever hope to rival.
July, of course, also means sweet corn, muskmelons, green beans and early tomatoes — the penultimate quartet of garden delights. Early peaches sometimes ripen in July, as do a few of those tasty harvest apples. And us free-range foragers can get giddy over wild blackberries.
July is simply the heart of summer — bright, bold, languid, lovely; a generous, genial month.
Reach Jim McGuire at [email protected].
