It looks like the first of our backyard sunflowers (to survive being stealthily beheaded by marauding squirrels who’ve de-budded three of them — the damn varmints!) is juuuuuust about ready to open up. The bud’s been playing peek-a-boo this way for a couple days and I’m hopeful we’re but a day or so away from it opening up and saying aha!

The evenings have brought us a bloom of another variety entirely. Beginning the first night of the heat wave last week, we’ve been sweetly serenaded by crickets, at a level unlike anything I’ve heard in the backyard in the six years I’ve lived here. Have a listen: