Dear Kid,

Now it’s officially summer.

You may have thought summer started when school ended (wrong). You may have thought we needed to wait for the summer solstice on June 20 (wrong). You may have thought that summer started on the first day Dad chose to put vegetable seeds in the ground (not even close).

Summer started two nights ago.

Two nights ago I went to the gym after work. I was little later leaving work than general and I had an errand or two to run, so I was a bit later getting to the gym. Then there was the whole sports bra thing. The point is that by the time I got home and made dinner and Dad and I sat down to eat it was about 9pm or so.

We ate out on the porch and were in the midst of a fascinating conversation about which day we’d tackle the weeding when something caught my attention.

Fireflies.

Yes, the fireflies were out and flashing around and it was awesome.

Just in case you were curious, yes, the fireflies flashed in unison and lined up forming the letters SUMMER IS HERE. That’s how I know it’s summer.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

There are random tree limbs falling in our yard.

We have several ash trees and they are infested with the Emerald Ash Borer.

Apparently, this is potentially good news for woodpeckers (yum, another brunch tree opened!) and really bad news for everyone else. Especially the trees.

One of the signs of Advanced Borer-ness is parts of trees falling off at random times.

Me: Do we have to worry about the tree falling down and crashing into the house?
Dad: Nope, just limbs fall off.
Me: Are there any limbs we have to worry about?
Dad: Just a few.
Me: That is not a comforting answer.

I decided to look up EAB (that’s how people in the know refer to the bug) and found that there are many sites devoted to the subject. After picking one at random I picked another one at random (just didn’t like the first one) and found several papers about EAB. One was titled Wood Options from Infested Trees (or something like that) and I thought that would be great information to read since we clearly have wood falling from the sky.

Turns out the paper was written by scientists who wanted to be “Published” and not by someone who cared about communicating with the public. I made it through 9 pages of preface (you can tell because the pages are numbered in itty bitty roman numerals), 11 pages of introduction, and 23 pages of the paper before I gave up.

My feeling is we should invite the woodpeckers for a final meal and then have a fire. (If anyone knows any reason why this would be bad, or any other good uses for EAB wood, now would be a good time to speak up.)

I also made a note to buy a hard hat for sitting in the back yard.

Love, Mom