What July is

“July is hot afternoons and sultry nights and mornings when it’s joy just to be alive. July is a picnic and a red canoe and a sunburned neck and a softball game and ice tinkling in a tall glass. July is a blind date with summer. ‘‘    

— Hal Borland (1900-77), American writer and naturalist and long-time resident of Salisbury, Conn., in the foothills of the Berkshires, which he often wrote about.

— Photo by Mary Kane

Spring perfume

"Cows on Old Jerusalem Road'' (in Salisbury, Vt.) (oil on panel), by Hannah Sessions, at Alpers Fine Art, Andover, Mass. 

One indication of high spring in the little town I lived in as a boy was the aroma of grass and manure that wafted over from a small farm on the other side of the road we lived on. Very rich indeed. The smell wasn't quite as pleasant in July. The road we lived on, in Cohasset, Mass., was an extension of another Jerusalem Road, this one along the ocean. Those old New Englanders liked their biblical references.

-- Robert Whitcomb