June 2024

A Fragment from Weeds and Clouds “June”

May always seems to pass quickly with fickle weather unsure if it’s late winter, spring, or a tease of summer. This May was no different and suddenly it was June. June marks the time when summer waits in the wings, a little shy about presenting herself. Decked out in flowering trees and iris in the yards around town or the riot of yellow and pink old roses blooming in the ditches and hedges of older places on the prairie. But June has been late the last few years and it’s always troubling when there are not hints of wildflowers on the hillsides, when it’s suddenly ridiculously hot and we’ve been without rain or snow for two months. One year our June was chilly and wet. The wet was a blessing but the sixty degree temperatures were mysterious with their foggy mornings throughout the month. A friend refers to those days in June as our “Irish Weather”. And when we have rain in June it isn’t a typical summer shower pushed over the Front Range giving us a quarter inch of rain within an hour and moving towards Nebraska so we have a sunset to enjoy. June rains are storms, wildly dramatic with Wind! Hail! Lightening! but precious little water actually quenching the thirsty prairie.