New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Slipety Summer

Thursday 08/14/2014

A slipety (slippery) summer it seems. How does time slip by so with so little being accomplished by me some days it seems. I turn around and the day has vanished. Maybe it is the lack of a 8 to 5 job that has the day racing by. So it seems any ways. Slipety is a word my granddaughter Erin invented a couple years ago to describe the feeling of holding a fresh caught trout. It now is one of my favorite words.

I have already seen a few colored maple leaves here and there. In another week or two a glance at the swamp maples in our travels will surely see the wetland trees beginning to blush. No doubt embarrassed that they too have been fooled by the flash of another summer slipping from their grasp. Yes where does time go.

Already the ostrich ferns along the stone work in my back yard have yielded to the summer's heat withering to a brown stalk before my eyes. With the year just over a half year old it surely senses its age. Sun baked grasses also are showing their age with brown patches fringing the remaining green slopes and fields. And no doubt the cadence of the pace towards fall and winter will quicken as the sun casts longer shadows by the day. Yes I am lamenting the loss of day light and spring's promise of the endless summers of my youth.