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Virden in July: Editorial

How do you start your day? Coffee in front of the TV? Checking your email? Shower, shave and shove off to work? In summer, I have a ritual that makes starting the day a little easier.
editorial
Linden tree flowers give off a sweet, heavy scent.

How do you start your day? Coffee in front of the TV? Checking your email? Shower, shave and shove off to work?

In summer, I have a ritual that makes starting the day a little easier.  

The Adirondack chair on my deck has the perfect shape for greeting the morning. It requires one to lean back and gaze up into the trees where the leaves are chuckling in a light morning breeze, the boughs providing perches for other things waking up: birds, bugs and squirrels.

When my mind inevitably wanders to the stresses and obligations of the day ahead (or clever things I should have said yesterday), I try to pull it back to the present and the smell of summertime in Virden.

The sun is already baking every microdrop of perfume out of the petunias and roses and dispersing it into the air.

But there’s something else in the Virden air in July – something sweet and heavy.

I finally trace it to the blossoming Linden trees along the boulevard, thousands (millions?) of upside-down bouquets of tiny yellow florets casting a thick haze of scent around the neighbourhood.

Later, the dried florets will bury my car and my dog, but for now I focus on the good.

In summer, my yard is a bit like going to the lake minus all the responsibilities of owning a cottage. The neighbours have fled, my patch of yard is surrounded by greenery, there's a hammock I have a date with later this afternoon, and the dog is sunning himself belly up in the grass. 

A walk beside nearby Scallion Creek brings the possibility of birds, muskrats, and ducks, and hope for a rare heron sighting. But even the wildlife has gone to ground - or to water - in the humid heat of high summer.

The clouds above Queen Street arrange themselves into wispy Nike-like swooshes in the sky.

A-hah, there they are! Two great blue herons fly overhead, flapping lazily and trailing long legs behind like an afterthought. This WILL be a good day. 

I hope your schedule gives you time to embrace the subtle but abundant joys of July in Virden. There are many if you stop to look… and to smell.   

 

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