Morning Glories by the Roadside
Although still hot and humid this morning, the sky looked a softer, hazier blue, with distant dreamy cumulous clouds, and something in the air felt softer, too, the heat just a little less fierce.
Traffic along Highway 441, on the other side of the old field – out of sight but not out of hearing – has become busier and louder every day this week, though. With the university and public schools about to start again, the summer is coming to a premature end.
The field itself looks, at the same time, lush and green and bedraggled and worn, with old weeds fading and new ones growing up. Lots of birds dart in and out of vine-covered trees and shrubs, but it’s hard to hear many songs or calls over the noise of the traffic. Eastern Towhee and White-eyed Vireo sing, Northern Cardinals peep and Brown Thrashers call harshly. Lots of young Mockingbirds chase each other around. Mourning Doves sit on the wires. I haven’t seen a Red-tailed Hawk the past few mornings – for the first time in several weeks, I think. But a dozen Chimney Swifts swept high overhead.
This morning a colorful tumble of morning glories spilled up and out over the tough, tall grasses that grow thick and as tall as corn in the ditch along the side of the road – blooms of delicate purple, fuschia, blue and white, and among them even a few tiny miniature red morning glories, tubular in shape and bright red-orange in color.
A juvenile Mockingbird, still a little mottled in plumage, perched on the wire over the field, with a smudge of grape color on its breast, maybe from feeding on some kind of berries.