Nature is Beautiful

Prairie life offers up some beautiful sunsets.  I snapped this picture before the fields were growing this year.  The artist's eye is always looking for colors and shapes in everything I see.  Some of those pictures end up as book covers or backgrounds to information like a family tree or a timeline.  I selected this one for the timeline at the end of Confessions of the Second Born.   

As Paresh notes in The Arrival, Illinois weather is incredibly fickle.  She compares it to Kansas, which is parked in the middle of Tornado Ally.  We are closer to the edge, however.  Several tornadoes recently streaked through my area - all in the EF-0 and EF-1 categories.  Scary nonetheless, especially when you consider that one or two whipped up without warning.  A few subdivisions took damage, but fortunately (not so fortunate for those hit) most of the damage was limited to farm buildings and fields.  

Most of Illinois is quite flat and perfect for farming, so even larger cities host vast fields (think anywhere not in Chicago).  Southern Illinois consists largely of Shawnee National Forest, which is most definitely not flat, but still has farms and vineyards.  It's breathtakingly lovely.  Closer to home, I love the corn and soybean fields.  Recent additions of wheat, winter wheat, and hay have added majestic fields of gold to compliment all the green.  It's fun to watch the farmers during harvest time, but sad, too, to lose all that color.

The old saying for healthy corn growth used to be "knee high by the 4th of July."  These days?  And even going back to the days when The Arrival takes place?  The corn has been head high by the 4th of July and the harvest dates seem to get pushed further and further back - sometimes into November.  It's changed so much that I can't remember when the harvest began when I was kid.

I recently spoke with a professional gardener who mentioned that we've officially been moved into a warmer climate zone.  We don't seem to have a Spring or a Fall anymore.  It's either hot or cold, and in those supposedly temperate seasons, we go from hovering over heating vents to blasting the A/C.  50 degree temperature swings have become the norm.  Larger drops have occurred - we've gone from blizzards that shut the entire area down to 70 degrees in 24-hours.

When I wrote The Arrival, I was nervous about keeping the chilly summer that greets Paresh upon arriving home.  But June in 2007 (I wrote it in 2007; it takes place in 2006) was chilly and it was weird because the corn was still head high by July 4th.  That was the first summer I noticed such a drastic shift.  Colder Junes have become more normal, which then shift into blistering, miserably hot days that tend to last until it snows for the first time.  And then it gets hot and then it snows, and then we lather, rinse, and repeat until winter actually decides to show up right about the time we're ready for Spring (which won't show up).

I know "Spring" is here when the song birds arrive.  They'll still get blasted by a few rounds of snow and drastic temperature drops for about a month or two, though.

I'm not opening a debate about Climate Change.  These are my observations.  Until my health took it away, I loved being outside.  As a kid, I loved the 4-foot snow drifts that formed around my parents' house and making tunnels and snow forts.  As an adult, I loved swinging and sipping chardonnay on 90-degree days with my laptop on my, well, lap.  (duh-doy ;-P)  At any age, I loved (and continue to love) playing with bugs, watching the fireflies at night, and listening to the cicadas in the evening.  I love it.  I love it so much that Nature became a character in my book without me even realizing it. 

It retreats to the background in Confessions of the Second Born given everything that happens and steals the focus.  Nature becomes more of a vehicle that carries the plot, but it's still important and relevant.  Nature in Orison Crossing is more magical than it is here in reality, but that's how I view it, especially in the summer with the trees and fields and birds and bugs and life.

You can probably guess that you don't have to ask if I stop to smell the roses.  I do.  Every day.  :)