Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Summer

Everyone has their own definition as to when summer starts. For some people, it's the beginning of June. For some, it's the summer solstice (which really doesn't make that much sense, but whatever). For many, it's when school gets out.

For my brother, summer has two starting points. The first is when there has been enough direct sunlight during the day to make the lake warm/swimmable. For him, this is summer.

My brother's other point for the start of summer is when the snakes come back out. Especially the black and white king snakes. He found a huge one last summer that he named Scourge. Well, I've seen two king snakes already, but apparently neither of them is big enough to be Scourge. The important point is that they're not rattlesnakes, and yet that the weather is warm enough for snakes.

I have two more finals before this semester is over. It's crazy. One of my finals today was in my Philosophy class (Social Ethics). We had to write two essays in class. I took nearly the whole two hours. I finished seven hours ago. My hand still hurts.

In other news, remember the trees I talked about two posts back? If not, you can go back and look. Well, they were supposed to be ornamental plums, but apparently they're not ornamental no more. They have fruit! I'm not sure how big they'll get this year, since no one has really fertilized them ... ever. At least not in the 7 years we've been here. Or has it been almost 8 years that we've been here now? Whatever the case, there are plums growing. They're just growing extremely slowly.

2 comments:

Patrick Shechet said...

Ornamental plumbs aren't really ornamental no. They grow cherry like fruits that are actually edible (and taste a bit like a sour plum.) We have one in our back yard and I was convinced that they were poisonous forever.

Jessica said...

See? Not even our gardener knew that. He's been meaning to look up the fruits, to see if they are poisonous. I've been letting the dogs smell the fruit to see if they are poisonous. But I suppose that would be why the fruit are taking forever to grow.

I didn't realize how many ornamental plums were in our town until spring this year when all of them were in bloom. Mine were in bloom earliest, though.