A blizzard is bearing down and our walk today was crazy-cold, windy and damp, the marshy spots crunchy with ice. I really couldn’t get warm.

And so I revisited summer when the grasses are tall and the milkweed blossoms. There is a certain red beetle with long antennae (milkweed beetles) that I collect in my hand and listen to their metallic callings- something I’ve done since I was a kid growing up on the farm. I always put them back on the bloom and watch as the bumble bees and Monarchs fly off- annoyed at the disruption.

Not that I enjoy the ticks, mosquitos, deerfly- or temperatures in the high nineties with humidity to match of summer- but today… today I would have embraced it all.