June is the year at one of its best times

June is the maturing year at the altar - a bride with a bouquet of wild roses and sweet peas.

An early morning mist veils June. Webs of dew are her sparkling jewels. She is gowned with breathtaking sunrises and trimmed with a romantic full moon. It is the year becoming its best.

June is cornflower blue and day lily gold with the white lace of Carolina daisies. June is bridal wreath mixed with mock orange.

June is a time when the year settles down to the business at hand-growth and maturity. The frenzy of preparation is past. Now comes a more leisurely time. June is a time when nature pauses to catch up. The drive of July is yet to come.

June is a time of lush ripe strawberries in the mountains. They are tempting to man and bird. June is a time of peas in the garden, first lettuce and string beans in blossom. June is a time of sweet and fieldcorn pushing green spikes toward the sun, to the delight of resident crows.

June is a melodious, full throat wren singing at the window at 5 a.m., promising more for a few mealworms for her babies. June is wood thrushes in the evening, singing their sweet contralto songs. Dusk is a silky time of day waning into soft starlight. In nature, life is good in June.

The brown thrashers are plentiful this year, coming to feed at dusk on the ground under the bird feeders. They have come to expect an unclaimed peanut or two that a careless squirrel scattered. It is a too full squirrel that occasionally overlooks a favorite treat.

Mother Nature continues to surprise nature lovers with the unexpected. Recently, while preparing the dogs their dinner, I noticed a brown whatever scurrying across the driveway and start to climb an oak tree. The dogs are thoroughly modern ones, each one eating a prescription diet taliored to its needs. Where did the dogs go that could eat anything and thrive?

My first reaction to the brown whatever was that it had to be a raccoon. Closer observation proved the creature to be a groundhog making its way up the tree with a skitter of claws. I've never seen a groundhog climb before, and assumed something was after it.

No predator showed up. Soon the groundhog was 30 feet off the ground, surveying its world from a lofty perch. Occasionally it nibbled the lichen growing on the tree, and tasted various leaves. Obviously it was in no hurry to move on.

The groundhog clung to the tree in a fork of an Oak limb, eyeing me suspiciously. It turned around head down to get a groundhog's focus on me.

Of course, the creature wasn't about to come down with the biggest predator of all standing at the base of the tree with a gadget in her hand-camera. Mother Nature came to its rescue with a thunderstorm that sent me inside. The groundhog clung to the tree and nibbled, riding out the storm. Occasionally it shook, riding its hair of excess water and spraying an arched area of several feet of nothing but air with a shower of water.

Occasionally groundhog sounded off with a high pitch-piercing whistle, giving meaning to its folk name of "whistle pig." The whistle confirms that the creature was concerned about its predicament

Groundhogs spend 80 to 90 percent of daylight hours asleep. This guy was having a high altitude adventure in an Oak tree, when others of his species were snoozing. When the groundhog descended the mighty oaktree, he did so unceremoniously and let go of the tree about six feet from the ground, landing with an ungraceful thud, but no worse for the adventure.

May Mother Nautre be kind to you, and bless you with the whisper of wings.

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P.O. Box 155
Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA 28711
A non-profit 501-3-C organization dedicated to wildlife research and education